Charlotte Little was scrolling through TikTok like usual. Fashion here, animals there, celebrities in between. Then a TikTok showed up on her feed of someone without her head. This wasn’t completely unusual; she had seen filters like it before. But the woman had a bird walking from shoulder to shoulder without any glitching when it walked in front of where her head had to be. The bird flew off when the woman’s hands reached up to her nonexistent neck.

She clicked on the filter that was used. After some investigating, she selected a bunny filter from the same filter creator and set up her phone. “Huh. Normally they give you a preview of the filter before you start recording.”

Charlotte ignored these warnings. She set a 5 second timer, pressed record, and stepped back. 3, 2, 1. There was an instant weight on her neck that felt unfamiliar. She could no longer see her phone, the room, anything. She staggered in place. The weight on her shoulders moved to the top of her massive chest.

(No, wait, this was just a filter, right? Right???)

Her hands came up haphazardly as she kept her balance. She reached for the weight on her chest and felt fur. She jumped in shock as whatever had fur jumped through where her neck should have been.

Charlotte’s phone kept recording as she panicked in place. She bumped against her furniture and walls, not doing much else besides waving her hands through where her transmogrified head had just been. As the recording finished at the one minute mark and the bunny fled the room, the malicious filter automatically uploaded the video to Charlotte’s feed.

Charlotte eventually left her room. She was still on her feet as she blindly stumbled through her apartment, not thinking about finding the bunny that had been her head. She wouldn’t know that a half hour of her headless hunt would pass until her friend Ophelia would see her TikTok and think…

“That filter looks like fun!”