What started as the most boring grocery run imaginable turned into something I still can’t fully explain.
It was one of those quiet evenings between Christmas and New Year’s, the kind where time feels suspended. The store was half-empty, the shelves looked normal, and nothing about the trip stood out. I grabbed the same things I always do: bread, eggs, coffee, and a vacuum-sealed pack of sausages from a brand I’d bought dozens of times before. No weird packaging. No damage. No reason to think twice.
Dinner that night was uneventful. I cooked a few sausages, ate them while scrolling on my phone, and went to bed without incident. They tasted completely normal. No strange texture, no off smell, nothing that would’ve set off alarm bells. I put the remaining sausages back in the fridge and thought nothing more of it.
The next morning is where things went wrong.
I took one of the remaining sausages out, set it on the cutting board, and went to slice it lengthwise. The knife stopped dead. Not slipped — stopped. It felt like hitting a rock. I assumed it was still partially frozen, so I pressed harder. Same result. I rotated it, tried again, and once more the blade met something solid that absolutely should not have been there.
That’s when I leaned closer and noticed it: a faint metallic glint beneath the casing.
My stomach dropped.
I made a shallow cut, slowly peeling the meat back, and my brain struggled to process what my eyes were seeing. Embedded perfectly in the center of the sausage was a USB flash drive. Not loose. Not poking out. Completely sealed inside the meat like it had always belonged there.
I froze.
The first thought wasn’t curiosity — it was panic. I had already eaten from this package the night before. The realization made my skin crawl. This wasn’t just gross; it was deeply wrong. A flash drive doesn’t “accidentally” end up inside food, especially not inside a factory-sealed product.
After standing there for what felt like forever, shock gave way to curiosity. I washed the flash drive thoroughly, scrubbed my hands, and sat at my computer staring at it. Every instinct told me to throw it away. Another part of me needed answers.
When I finally plugged it in, my computer recognized it immediately.
There was only one folder.
OPEN ME.
Inside was a single image file.
The photo showed a man staring directly into the camera. His eyes were wide, intense, and his mouth was stretched into a laugh that didn’t look joyful — it looked frozen, forced, almost aware. There was no background detail, no metadata, no timestamp. Just his face. Clear. Intentional.
I felt a cold wave wash over me.
I tried to rationalize it. A factory mistake? Impossible. Food production is automated and monitored — there’s no scenario where a USB drive gets sealed inside a sausage by accident. A prank? Also unlikely. How would anyone know which exact package I’d buy, or ensure it ended up with me?
That left one explanation I didn’t want to consider: someone put it there on purpose.
The rest of the day passed in a haze. Every sound made me jump. I kept glancing at my door, my windows, my phone. I considered calling the store, the manufacturer, even the police — but what would I say? “I found a flash drive in my breakfast, and it had a creepy photo on it”?
In the end, I did nothing. And somehow, that felt worse.
What stayed with me wasn’t just fear — it was the loss of trust. Something as simple as a grocery run, something I’d done a thousand times without thinking, had turned into a reminder that the ordinary can fracture without warning.
I still don’t know who the man in the photo is.
I still don’t know why that flash drive was there.
But I haven’t bought sausages since.
