Yesterday I went to the supermarket like any other day. I wasn’t planning to buy anything special — just a simple sausage for sandwiches. Nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary. I came home, sliced a few pieces, made myself dinner, and stored the rest in the fridge. Everything seemed perfectly normal. 🤔
The next morning, I woke up early and decided to make breakfast. I took the same sausage from the fridge and placed it on the cutting board. As soon as I pressed the knife down, I felt something odd — resistance, as if the blade had hit a small stone. I frowned, thinking maybe it had frozen overnight. But when I tried cutting again, the knife stopped completely. Curious, I looked closer — and that’s when I saw it: something shiny glimmering from within the sausage. 😱
My first thought was that it was a piece of metal, maybe part of the packaging machine. Still half asleep, I began cutting around it carefully, trying to remove the strange object without destroying the sausage entirely. After a few tense seconds, something small and rectangular slid out. It was a USB flash drive. A perfectly ordinary one, silver with a faint logo I didn’t recognize. 😨
For a few moments, I just stared at it, frozen. My stomach churned as the realization hit me — I had already eaten part of that sausage last night. What if there had been something else inside the part I’d eaten? I felt sick. I washed my hands repeatedly, trying to calm down, but curiosity began to creep in. Who would hide a USB stick inside food? And why?
Against all reason, I went to my desk and turned on my computer. The moment the desktop appeared, I hesitated. Every instinct told me not to do it — but the pull of the unknown was stronger. I inserted the USB. The drive appeared instantly, its name simple and cold: **OPEN_ME**. There was only one folder inside, also titled **OPEN ME**. I clicked it, and my heart skipped a beat.
Inside was just one photo file. No videos, no documents — just a single image. I opened it. It showed a man sitting in a dimly lit room, smiling straight into the camera. There was something deeply unsettling about his expression — not evil exactly, but *knowing*. Like he was aware that I would one day see his face. 😨
The background of the picture drew my attention next: a tiled wall, white and sterile, like those in a meat processing plant. And on the table beside him — I swear I saw a sausage, *the same brand* as the one I had bought. My skin crawled.
I yanked out the USB stick and threw it across the room. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might break through my chest. I stood there, staring at the screen that now displayed nothing but my own reflection. What had I just seen?
After a few minutes, I tried to rationalize it. Maybe it was some bizarre marketing prank, a joke by the manufacturer, or a data error. But the unease didn’t leave me. I picked up the USB again, holding it with a tissue, and noticed something new — engraved along the edge, barely visible, were the words: **“LOT 214 / DO NOT EAT.”**
That was enough. I grabbed my phone and dialed the supermarket’s number. The manager who answered sounded polite until I mentioned what I’d found. Then his tone shifted instantly. He told me, almost in a whisper, *“Sir, please bring it here immediately and don’t show it to anyone else.”*
That made things worse. Why the secrecy? Why the panic? I asked if anyone else had reported something similar, but he hung up without another word.
I decided to drive there myself. The streets were empty, gray clouds hanging low over the city. I felt like I was carrying something radioactive in my pocket. When I reached the supermarket, two men in suits were already waiting near the entrance. They didn’t look like employees. One of them approached and said calmly, “You found the device?”
His voice was too calm, too rehearsed. I froze. “Who are you?” I asked. He smiled slightly and extended his hand. “We’re here to collect it. You shouldn’t have opened it.” That’s when I noticed an earpiece in his right ear.
Fear took over. I stepped back, muttering something about forgetting it at home, and ran to my car. They didn’t chase me, but I could see them watching in the mirror as I drove off. My hands were trembling so badly I almost missed the turn to my street.
When I got home, I hid the USB behind a loose panel in the wall and sat on the floor, trying to breathe. My phone buzzed with a new message from an unknown number: **“Delete what you saw.”**
I never told anyone — not the police, not my friends. But sometimes, late at night, when I open my fridge, I still see the half-cut sausage wrapped in foil. It looks ordinary. Harmless. Yet I can’t bring myself to throw it away. Because deep down, I have the feeling it’s part of something much bigger.
And sometimes… when the house is quiet, I could swear I hear a faint click from inside the wall — like a tiny USB drive being accessed again. 😰
