Do you remember when scary URLs were all the rage on the internet? Classics like "The Red Room" or "The Homepage of Death"—proof that paranormal stuff exists online, too.

Back when I was in a dark place mentally, I used to wander around suicide boards and horror sites. One time, I stumbled across a hidden link on a certain homepage and tapped it.

The site had the grand title "Art Exhibition," but it was a total letdown. My small smartphone screen was completely filled with a black background, with nothing but white text in the center reading: "You Have Been Invited."

Still, as I idly stared at the bleeding electric glow on the display for a few dozen seconds, the text shifted. A new instruction appeared in blood-red lettering: "Please Select a Body Part."

Next, a grid of uniform square tiles reminiscent of a checkerboard spread across the screen. Looking closely, I realized that every single square contained an embedded image.

One was a human face. Next to it was a hand. Others displayed what looked like various human body parts—stomach and intestines, a heart, a right foot, an ear.

Looking at these images that seemed like stills clipped from a splatter film, I felt a strange mixture of dread and curiosity, wondering what "Please Select a Body Part" actually meant.

Since I'd gotten here through suicide and horror sites, I assumed it was nothing wholesome. I figured it was just a shock site designed to jump-scare you with gore photos or videos of whichever body part you clicked.

Spend enough years browsing those corners of the web, and you learn how they work the hard way. I'd been tricked and scared half to death more than a few times myself.

Deciding I should just pick a part of myself I disliked, I went straight for the square showing a face, since I'd always been self-conscious about my own.

An unfamiliar, pale, creepy man's face zoomed in. After forcing me to stare at it for a solid twenty seconds, his expression twisted into pure agony. An unearthly, low-frequency shriek burst from my phone's speaker, and the flesh on the man's face scraped right off, collapsing like an overripe tomato.

"Ugh..."

My stomach for gore wasn't nearly strong enough for that. Nausea hit me, and I squinted my eyes shut.

Just when I thought it was over, his eyeballs popped out like rotting persimmons. The screen faded to black again, and text appeared in the center as if confirming a reservation for a sequel: "To Be Continued in Your Dreams."

Bizarrely, the page automatically navigated back to the suicide site I had been browsing earlier. Curious, I tried tapping the hidden link again, just as I had the first time.

But no matter how many times I tapped, the page wouldn't load.

Thinking there might be a trick, I dragged my finger over where the hidden link had been, but nothing highlighted. It didn't take long to realize that I hadn't actually been sent back; I'd just been redirected to a duplicate site with identical content.

"Talk about elaborate."

Figuring there might be other cool tricks hidden on it, I bookmarked the site.

That was maybe two weeks ago, and by then, the whole incident had completely slipped my mind.

That is, until I had a dream one night. A dream about the man's face collapsing from the site called "Art Exhibition."

The forgotten imagery came rushing back in vivid detail. When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a gallery hallway inside an all-white space, where stark black lines delineated the boundaries between the floor and walls. Walking down the maze-like corridor that seemed to stretch endlessly, I saw framed pictures of human body parts lined up along the walls—just like what I'd seen on my phone, displayed like actual art pieces in an exhibition.

Except every piece was vulgar and grotesque, painted in sickly palettes of pale flesh tones and deep, dark reds—the color of blood left exposed to the air for far too long.

To an outsider, I might have looked like a retiree taking a leisurely weekend stroll through a museum. But as I recognized each painting as one of the images from the website, my brow involuntarily furrowed.

What's more, these elaborate artworks started moving if you stared at them long enough. For instance, when I focused on a picture of a right hand, it shifted into a video of the hand being repeatedly struck with a hammer, squishing like a worm while spraying blood everywhere.

Similarly, staring at a picture of an ear revealed someone grabbing it and slicing it off with a knife like a piece of steak.

Averting my eyes from the morbid splatter clips as much as possible, I pressed deeper into the gallery.

At the very back stood a picture frame one size larger than the rest. Displayed inside was the painting of the man whose face had dissolved—the one I'd seen on my phone.

Suddenly, with a bloodcurdling scream—"Aaaaaagh!"—the man with a face like a crushed persimmon crawled right out of the frame and collapsed onto the floor. He slightly raised his head, and through the hollow sockets where eyes should have been, I knew he was glaring at me.

I spun around to run, but his arm latched onto my leg, dragging me scraping across the floor back toward the frame.

Knocked off balance, I fell hard. I tried frantically to crawl away, but the man possessed monstrous, unnatural strength, dragging me closer and closer in an instant.

"Stop it!"

Even as I yelled, the man let out an insane, grinning grimace, showing white teeth through the red-black tears in his flesh, and forced me into the frame.

Inside the frame was nothing but endless darkness, giving me the sensation of being cast into outer space. Then, to my utter bewilderment, the man rasped at me from outside the frame.

"I'm free... Next... it's your turn..."

Holding his face as though enduring excruciating pain only now, the man staggered away. I reached out, desperate not to be left behind alone, but I realized an invisible wall blocked the boundary between me inside the frame and the outside world.

I desperately pounded on the invisible wall and called after him, but the man walked down the corridor I had come from, his silhouette shrinking until it vanished.

Pitch-black darkness swallowed my view, and then I woke up.

I woke up drenched in sweat, my feverish pulse racing. Shaking off the hideous dream, I decided to head to a convenience store for a change of scenery. As naturally introverted as I was, I felt an ominous gloom hanging over me, making me feel like an alien element in the world, but I quickly brushed off the edgy paranoia and walked along the curb.

Right then, a blaring horn and screeching brakes pierced my ears, followed by a violent impact to my back that hurled me into midair.

In my sluggish, fading consciousness, I caught sight of a metal drainage grate right beneath me before slamming face-first into it, my senses cutting out in a flash of excruciating pain.

Once again, I returned to that strange dream. It seemed to be a continuation of the one before; I was left alone in the dark, peering out at the world from inside the frame.

I knew I had just been in an accident, but was I dead?

Just as I began to wonder if this was the afterlife, my eyes landed on a frame on the opposite wall outside. Unlike the others, it was noticeably larger, positioned as if arranged specifically for me to see, and a video began playing inside it.

The video showed an older guy from an angle that looked like stealth camera footage, poking at the screen with his finger. Realizing he was using a smartphone, I was effectively looking out at him from the perspective of the phone screen itself. I watched the close-up of this stranger's face with dull disinterest.

Then, text appeared on the screen: "A Visitor Has Arrived."

"That's it!" Memory from weeks ago rushed back, and I leaned forward. The wording was slightly different, but the font and color scheme were identical to the site I'd seen. Next, "Selecting Painting..." appeared, and the checkered tiles filled the screen, each displaying a body part belonging to someone unknown. I gasped.

One of those squares showed my face.

The guy must have tapped the picture of my face, because my face expanded on the screen, and

"You Have Been Chosen."

an announcement rang out from above.

Before I could register my confusion, a sharp, agonizing pain tore through my face as if it were cracking open. A sound like an eyeball crushing under pressure echoed, and gushing blood clogged my nostrils, leaving me gasping for air.

It was like squeezing a piece of fruit in one hand until juice squirted out—that was what my head felt like. I wanted to writhe in agony, but the searing pain was unrelenting and went on and on.

Eventually, the pain dulled to something manageable. I had no idea how much time passed inside the frame. I didn't know if this dreadful nightmare would ever end, but locked inside this frame like a prison cell, I prayed for nothing more than to wake up.

After what felt like days, while floating in vague consciousness, I looked down the corridor and saw a figure in the distance growing larger. Someone was walking toward me.

The unrecognizable figure gradually took clear shape. Seeing that it was just an ordinary-looking middle-aged man, I tried to call out to him.

"AAAAAGH!"

But agonizing pain ripped across my face again, the wound split open, an eyeball popped out, and all that came out of me was a scream.

Seeing the man flinch and back away in horror, I frantically clawed at the empty air and grabbed the edge of the frame.

I caught hold of it.

The instant I realized I could get out, a surge of adrenaline gave me superhuman strength. I hauled myself up and successfully crawled outside.

Watching the liquid dripping from my face stain the cream-colored floor red, I edged toward the man, desperate for him to call for help.

Mistaking me for some strange ghost or monster, the man stood trembling, looking down at me with a pale, terror-stricken face.

I wrapped my hand around his ankle and pulled with all my might.

Frustrated by his desperate resistance, I dragged him by the ankle step by step toward the frame.

Wait... Why am I trying to put him in the frame?

Confused by my own involuntary actions, I forced the man into the frame anyway.

The man scrambled up and tried to leap back out, but an invisible wall blocked him, bumping his head and sending him tumbling back.

He got up again and again, slamming his body against the invisible wall, but just like when I was inside, escape was impossible.

As I looked closely at his face, I remembered: he was the man I had seen operating his smartphone from inside the frame a few days ago. Rage surged through me—he was the one who had tapped my face, tearing it open and leaving me trapped in that frame for days. At the same time, I recalled how I had ended up here in the first place.

Wasn't I brought here after watching a video of a stranger's gruesome end? If so, was the man who crawled out of the frame at the beginning the very man from that video? Did he suffer because I picked him, and out of vengeance say "Next... it's your turn" with such hatred?

And he had also said, "I'm free." To escape this place, do you have to switch places with a human who wanders in?

As I stood frozen in thought in front of the frame, the man looked up at me with a face full of agony.

I stared back at him, then turned and walked away from the frame.

I felt bad for the guy, but I wanted out of here as fast as possible. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

I walked down the white, endless corridor lined with grotesque paintings. I kept walking along the path echoed with the frantic screams and curses of unknown souls.

In the end, I suddenly woke up.

I saw a completely different cream-colored ceiling and heavy curtains hanging from a track. Feeling comfortable support at the back of my head and the cozy warmth of a blanket, I let out a sigh of relief. It didn't take long to realize I was in a hospital room.

I reached around for the nurse call button by my pillow, felt the plastic texture, and called the nurse.

From what she told me, I had been in a traffic accident.

Unluckily, my face had slammed heavily against a metal drainage grate, crushing one eyeball, shattering my nose, and leaving my face covered in severe wounds requiring dozens of stitches. Because I'd hit my head, I hadn't woken up for three days after surgery, and if the coma had lasted any longer, they were planning to transfer me to a larger hospital.

They told me plastic surgery managed to reduce the scars to prominent stitch lines, but looking at myself, I looked like Frankenstein's monster.

The day after regaining consciousness, I found my belongings nearby, picked up my phone, and opened the browser to check the sites I'd visited before the accident.

No way.

Part of my browsing and search history was gone. Not only the "Art Exhibition" site, but also the site that redirected me there and the search terms I had typed to reach it were completely wiped.

Could a malware virus do that?

Tracing my hazy memory, I tried every search term I could remember using before the accident, but I couldn't reach that site again.

I put the phone back on the nightstand and lay flat on my back, completely drained.

Unconsciously shifting my gaze from the curtain track, I stared at the blank ceiling tiles.

What was that website? What was that dream world, the "Art Exhibition"?

At the very least, just like the man in the video on that site, I suffered an accident severe enough to destroy my face, effectively losing the exact body part I had selected.

What was the point of being trapped in the frame? In the end, I escaped by switching places with that guy, but what happened to him?

Just as I was trapped after replacing that man, did that guy suffer a facial injury after selecting a face, and will he eventually switch places with someone else who browses the site?

The blurred line between dream and reality almost makes me feel dizzy, but in the end, a dream is just a dream.

A strange sequence of coincidences happened to manifest as a terrible nightmare—that's what I tell myself.

However, if every single body part displayed in that art exhibition belongs to someone in a situation like mine, then right now, a hidden link might be posted on some site, searching for the next replacement.

A hidden link that transports you to that dream world.

And right now, someone is probably groaning inside a frame, desperate for a replacement.

Though that's none of my concern anymore.