Triggered Memes Novels & Stories

So I pulled out my phone again, this time scrolling through my saved folder labeled “EMERGENCY GIGGLES.” I found a meme I knew would work. A sketchy cartoon cat trying to play a grand piano with arms that were way too short. It was dumb. Like, impressively dumb. “Look at this,” I said, turning the screen toward him. He glanced at it. Blinked. Then let out a snort. “That’s so stupid,” he said. “But you smiled.” “No, I didn’t.” “You totally did.” He rolled his eyes, took a long sip of juice, then bumped his shoulder into mine. “Okay. Maybe I did.”

Then the laughter ripped through the air, taunting my ears. “Ignore them.” I said to myself. Easier said than done, Valeria. I forced my attention to my phone, scrolling mindlessly, pretending none of this mattered. I shouldn’t have looked. Because the second I did, the screen slapped me with something that made my stomach drop. A meme. Not just any meme, me, Zane, and Landon photoshopped into a disgusting threesome, covered in crude stickers and comments. My heart throbbed with pain, my fingers visibly shaking.

The backlash began, but not in the direction anyone had predicted. It started, as all modern revolutions do, online. Not with reasoned op-eds, but with a meme. A young graphic designer in Austin, Texas, took a still from Davidson’s “Lion’s Roar” speech—his face, scarred and defiant—and superimposed two lines of text in clean, bold font over his heart: LOVE IS NOT TREASON. POWER IS NOT SHAME. It was shared. Then it was remixed, translated, animated. It became a banner, a badge, a declaration.

Pressed the button. And just like that, hell opened. Notifications exploded across the screen. Missed calls. Texts. Voicemails. News alerts. Mentions. I didn’t even know where to start, so I did the dumbest thing. I opened T*****r. I shouldn’t have. My name was everywhere. Hashtag: SylviaTheSlut Hashtag: MarioDeservedBetter Hashtag: ModernWomenTrash I stared at a tweet with my face photoshopped on a meme, me in bed with James, and Mario’s mansion in flames behind us.

" I ignored him. Group chat. 'Same time next week.' I wanted to ignore that one, but I put a thumbs up emoji. I couldn't risk them releasing the video before my finals. My whole junior year would be a waste if that happened. Fu8ck them. I would give them no emotion. They would get nothing from me except what I decided to give them. If I had to have meaningless se8x to get through this, I would. But fu8ck them both. ----- ----- -----

He's remembering her laugh. "Can I see?" The question leapt out, sharp and brittle as breaking glass. He looked up, surprised, then shrugged. "Sure?" He held out the phone. My fingers were cold as I took it. The screen was bright in the dim room. It was, as promised, a dumb meme- a photoshopped picture of a famous building with a ridiculous caption about architects. The group chat was labeled "The Drafting Table." The last three senders were Ben, another old friend, Ben again. The shame was immediate, corrosive, flooding my veins with heat. I had barged into an innocent moment and exposed the festering sickness of my own mind. I thrust the phone back at him as if it had burned me.

"It was hidden behind the tax audits for 2018!" They huddled together, the flashlight beam trembling. They tore the folder open. Inside was a single sheet of paper. It wasn't a criminal record. It wasn't a birth certificate. It was a high-resolution, color print-out of a **Garbage Truck**, with a sticky note attached that simply said: > *“Reserved for the Vances. Pick-up time: Midnight.”* > Underneath the picture was a second page: a printed meme of a cat wearing a crown with the caption: "DO YOU EVER GET TIRED OF BEING WRONG?"

How did dead men send them notes? “Oh, by the way,” Mason continued, ignorant of the mood. “The internet is having the time of its life. You guys are now a meme.” Hayden snorted despite himself. “Oh my God,” Beck muttered. “Mason, it seems like your job doesn’t keep you busy enough nowadays.” Jared pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thank you, Mason,” he said. “We’ll catch up later.” “You’re welcome. Call me if your dead boyfriend resurfaces.”

My vapidness would love to smack some sense in him. ‘Cheers!’ Another wrote with clinking glasses. His teeth would look better on the ground or better as toppings. ‘Can I have some?’ The following goes on. I'd like to have some of your arteries too. ‘Cheap drunks!’ You think you can afford the cheap in the wildest of your dreams. The netizens had a gala day sharing memes amongst themselves. I have become a laughingstock. It ranges from hilarious to disgustingly vulgar. For what? For outspeaking and spitting facts at a jerk's face. For standing up by the side of a vampiress who is forced to become his sex slave. For having opinions that do not reconcile. For wanting to be admired.

The feeling of being small and safe and loved. "This is good," Dr. Chen said. "This is very good. Music triggered it. Emotional connection. Exactly what we hoped for." She pulled out her scanner. Checked Katya's neural patterns. "And look... activity in the memory centers. They're waking up. Slowly. But waking." "Does this mean..." Katya couldn't finish. Afraid to hope. "It means the memories aren't gone. Just locked. Buried. We triggered one. We might be able to trigger more." Dr. Chen looked at Nikolai. "Keep playing music. Keep making emotional connections. It's working."