MalO starts sending you photos... From your office.

You're about twenty minutes from home, and it's getting colder out here, not to mention darker. The longer you spend walking down the roads, alone, in the near-perfect silence, the more nervous you grow. On some level, you know this mounting anxiety isn't rational. No impending harm or doom is coming your way, at least not tonight... But you still find yourself delaying your return by five or ten minutes longer, in favour of taking a less-direct route, past the shops.

Perhaps the lights emanating from the display windows, and the sparse footsteps and chatter of the evening shoppers might calm you down a little bit... Or at least make you feel a bit less isolated.

Part-way down the high street, lost in thought, you get another buzz from your phone. Your heart jumps in surprise- although you're not quite sure whether it's the good or bad kind- and you open up the MalO app again to check your messages. What you see... does not come as a surprise, if you're honest. But still, it sends more of those familiar shivers trembling through your body.

MalO has sent you a photograph. It's dark, but it's unmistakable- that's your office. In fact, that's your department... And your row. You recognise that dark blotch on the carpet, from the office Christmas party, meaning that's Karen's cubicle just there... Man, she really got chewed out for that one. They still haven't worked out how to get it out of the fibres, and the company directors are far, far too cheap to consider actually replacing that strip of carpet.

And if that's Karen's cubicle, then the next one down is Mike's... Then Audrey... Which makes the next one, right in the background there, your-

That's when you see it... In the entrance to your cubicle, only barely in view, are the faintest glints of sharp, white teeth, in an elongated jaw belonging to a large, canid skull that's not quite all the way in the shot... As your eyes try to focus in, looking closer for more detail, your phone buzzes in your hand, and that photo slides up and off your screen, to be replaced by a new one just arriving. That's... Oh... Oh my...

This photo was clearly taken from the office stairwell, which you yourself were descending not much more than half an hour ago... Even with the downward angle, you're pretty sure that's the exact floor where you began to download and install the MalO 2.0 app. However, that uncanny detail is not what causes your legs to tremble, and your heart to begin thumping like a jack-hammer.

The right-hand side of this photo, in the background, is that dark descent you took to the floors below... But on the left, the focus is in the foreground. It's a close-up... Of one half-lidded, milky-white eye, glowing in the darkness... Set above a skeletal jaw, hanging half-open, once more showing off those glistening white fangs... And a thick, long, dripping tongue... It's a selfie, sent to you by a fearful, unnatural predator... Your predator.

This photo is suggestive of nothing. Nothing, except perhaps hunger. Yet somehow, for some reason, you find the all-encompassing terror and helplessness you're feeling being confused and mishandled by your primitive brain, and more and more you feel the horror mingled with fascination and... Arousal...

You shake your head and take a few deep breathes, trying to get a hold of yourself. Shamefully, absurdly, you take a minute to allow the... Tension in your pants to subside. You glance around as you do so, checking to make sure there's nobody else nearby to notice your... Situation... As you consider what to do next.

You feel like running- as fast as possible- all the rest of the way home... And yet... Somehow, it feels like it would be rude not to respond...?