[Titus Templeton]

How well do you know the Internet? Until two weeks ago, I thought I knew it pretty well. After all, I spend a good chunk of my day browsing Landover Baptist Church and I’m always up-to-date.
Then, about a year ago, somebody introduced me to the “Shadow Web”—a sort of secret layer of the Internet that you will never find by Googling or looking up message boards. There are no “in links” from the surface web to the shadow web.
I never asked what his name was. He was a regular who often came to Church. I think it was a combination of his beige polo shirts and receding hairline that gave off the creepy vibe of a pervert.
One day after the Sermon he asked me “Have you ever heard of the shadow web?”
I hadn’t, so I shook my head. Then he looked through his wallet and withdrew a little slip, one about the size of a credit card. “If you want to find out,” he whispered. He leaned towards me and slid the piece of paper into my chest pocket. I never saw him again.

Not long after, I left my job to return to school. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I came across the old, yellowy uniform with the piece of paper still in the front pocket. When I opened it up and read its content, I immediately recalled my creepy encounter.
The piece of paper had instructions on how to get to the “gateway” of the shadow web. There were a lot of steps, some more sophisticated than others. Unfortunately, I was both tech-savvy and curious enough to follow them.

The first thing you’ll want to know about this “shadow web” is that you do not want to go there. I’ve seen plenty of piffleed up things on the web, but nothing comes remotely close to the things I saw on the SW. Thinking back, I should have noped the piffle out the instant I saw the front page. I don’t know why I hadn’t. Maybe something is wrong with me.
When I got to the “gateway page”, which resembles one of those welcome pages that pops up when you use the free Wi-fi at the airport or at the mall, the first thing I noticed was things like instructions on how to make DIY roadside bombs.. It was underneath a search field among thirty or so other words which I assumed were the most commonly looked-up things on the SW. That should have been my cue to X out.
There were a lot of other Things, too. Things like a craigslist for cannibals and people who wanted to be eaten by cannibals. Things like a marketplace to buy and sell stolen identities, either individually or in bulk.
I spent almost an hour reading up on leaked war documents and diplomatic cables on a site called avenge.shweb. The website looked very retro, if you know what I mean. The layout had frames and each frame had its own scroll bar. When I found myself clicking on links without thinking twice, I realized I had become comfortable on the shadow web.

Don’t ask me how I came across this next website. Curiosity got the better part of me, and I clicked on things I shouldn’t have. I’ll spare you the actual name of site because I know some of you will make the same mistake that I did thinking it can’t be that bad. It can.
When I got there, I noticed the UKASH logo at the bottom of the page, indicating that paid services were available. It was in fact a live webcam show, but you only paid if you wanted to be the director. Viewing was free. Beneath the live feed of a webcam was the log-in page to a chat room. It prompted me for a screen name when I clicked on the join button, so I entered JesusIsLord like I always do.
As soon as I got pass the log-in, a torrent of messages flooded the screen. Most of the messages were in English, a few were in Japanese, and I think some were Arabic or Farsi. The number of participants in the chat room fluctuated between 150-200 people, but that’s only the number of people who bothered entering the chat. I suspect many more were watching anonymously. The majority of legible messages were “STARTTTTT” or “GOGOGO” or something to that effect.
After about a minute, a man with his face hidden behind a hockey mask appeared on the feed. I remember him having dark brown skin and being really skinny. Like, starving Ethiopian skinny. Shortly after that, he started to masturbate in front of the camera.

I was in so much shock at this point that I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen. No, no, no, no, I kept thinking, somebody stop this. I tried to type into the chat, but the input field was greyed-out. Please, put a stop to this, I prayed, but I kept the mouse cursor hovered above the Close button in case he did not.
I then quickly shut off the screen before I could see any more. I wish my common sense could have kicked in earlier. I ran out to the yard where I regurgitated about two meals’ worth of vomit. It had been a long time since I’ve felt this sick from watching something. Let me tell you this: seeing a live footage of a real person doing this is stomach-turning on a whole different level.
When I was done spitting out the last bits of bile in my mouth, I heard moaning coming from my room. It was then I realized that in my haste to turn the monitor off, I had forgotten to turn the speakers off as well.
The moaning got worse and worse, until finally I was able to reach behind the desk and disconnect the speakers from the computer. The silence that followed was unbearable. It was as if by my own hands I had silenced him.
I had to find out if it was over. As I reached over to turn the screen back on, a voice inside my head begged me to stop. I do not want to see what I’m about to see.
But before I could stop myself, my hand had already acted. The image on the screen was an image I will never, ever forget.

After that I shut down the browser immediatly and reconfigured the network settings to access the good ol’ regular internet, I remember seeing one last line on the chat line. It read:
Admin: Thank you for watching. The next show will be in 1 hour.