The Dark Web Camera Sale
The dark web camera sale was probably for stolen equipment. I can’t dress that up. A discontinued model, three lenses, less than a quarter of what the kit should have cost. I told myself it came from a storage clearance because the listing said it did.
I’d found the seller through a private photography board. The actual catalogue was on an invitation-only dark-web portal. There were enough conversations about shutter counts and fungus inside lenses to make it feel like a place for collectors. People argued about postage. Somebody complained that their parcel had been left in the rain.
Normal problems. That’s what persuaded me.
I chose collection because I didn’t want to lose the money to a fake tracking number. The address was a unit on a small industrial estate. There was a sign for a company that supplied office furniture.
The Yellow Line
The woman at the door was roughly my age. She wore a grey sweatshirt beneath a blue work apron, and she had a strip of tape wrapped around the arm of her glasses.
She checked a number on my phone against a clipboard. Her hands were shaking. I assumed the unit was cold.
There was a man at a desk behind her, busy with a label printer. He didn’t look up.
I checked the camera. Battery, screen, lens mount. She watched the shutter open and close as if she’d never seen a camera work before. When I turned it towards her, she stepped back so sharply that I lowered it.
“Sorry,” I said.
She said that was all right.
I packed everything into my rucksack. The man behind the desk told her to offer me a bag. She did. I said I didn’t need one.
Then she asked whether I could wait a minute.
I asked what for.
She looked at the man. He was looking at us now. She said she wanted to check there wasn’t another part that belonged with the camera.
He said, “You’ve checked it.”
I was parked badly and had another shift starting at six. I told her it was fine. As I walked out, she came as far as the yellow line painted across the entrance. She stood there with one foot against it.
That evening the seller asked for feedback. I wrote: Friendly seller. Item exactly as described. Five stars.
The Review
Three weeks later, my girlfriend sent me an appeal for information about a missing woman. She knew I’d been collecting equipment in that town. The woman in the photograph had the same glasses, without the tape. She’d been missing for fourteen months.
I looked at the picture so long my phone dimmed.
The police took the camera, the messages, and a statement. When they visited the unit, it was empty. The office-furniture company on the sign had stopped trading years earlier. My collection wasn’t the only one recorded at that address.
An officer asked whether there was anything unusual about the interaction. I told him about the shaking. About the yellow line. About her asking me to wait.
He asked what I’d thought she wanted.
I couldn’t give him an answer that sounded decent.
They found a photograph of her at the unit among material supplied by another buyer. A delivery photograph, taken to prove that a box had changed hands. She was holding it with the bottom resting against her hip.
In the background was the same yellow line.
People ask whether I could have known. My girlfriend says I couldn’t. The officer said I wasn’t expected to solve a disappearance while buying a camera.
But I remember being mildly annoyed when she asked me to wait. I remember thinking that sellers always found a way to waste your time.
My review was still visible in the saved copy of the portal. Under my words was an automated response.
Thank you. Your feedback helps us keep good staff.
Original horror fiction by J.Dark. Fictional narrator: Adrian Vega, 24. The named submitter and events are fictional. Read more dark web stories or explore the Horror Fiction archive.
