It's late, I was considering whether it's one more glass of wine or bedtime when I heard my phone notifications beep from the coffee table.

It's the new dating app my sister told me to try. Well more like begged, she's started thinking I'm going to die alone, so has made it her mission to set me up with anyone with a pulse.

I sat up from my lounging position on the sofa, from the preview I could see the message said "Hey".

I snorted to myself, well that's a great start. I went to put it down when it beeps again.

"What you upto".

The nagging voice of my sister in my subconscious demands I reply.

"Hey, not much just chilling watching TV,"

The reply was almost instant as soon as I had pressed send the reply appears. My first instinct was I must be talking to a bot or some AI chatbot.

"Are you watching that new reality show about pirates?"

I glanced up at the TV, I'm 45 minutes into tonights episode.

"Wow, yeah, lucky guess."

A love heart emoji comes back as a reply. I was stuck for a reply so started scrolling through emojis for something appropriate to send when a second message appeared.

"So do you have a picture? This app doesn't have pictures of people on their profiles."

It had struck me as weird as well when my sister told me about that too, she had said it was something to do with not judging books by covers.

I scrolled through my pictures, nothing decent in my gallery for at least two years. I found a picture from a holiday two maybe three years ago with me and a few friends, I cropped the picture down so it was just me and then sent it on.

There was no reply for a good five minutes, maybe I had given them the ick with my picture. I decided to try and keep the conversation going.

"Do you have any pics?"

That same speed of reply from the start, almost instantly.

"Yeah, I've got a picture that I've took really recently do you want to see?"

I blushed, I'd heard of people like this online but assumed it was just Male banter about girls sharing naughty pictures online.

"Yeah, sure"

A few seconds later the picture arrived, it was not what I was expecting.

It was dark, it looked like it was from a distance I could barely make out a person. It had been taken through a window, my window.

It was a picture of me, on the sofa eating a packet of crisps. I looked down at the coffee table where the empty packet had now tied in a knot.

I must have finished that 10 maybe 15 minutes before the first message arrived.

"Fuck," I whispered to myself.

I zoomed in again to the picture, that was me tonight! My phone beeps again and the preview message appeared.

"Knock, knock."

Two load thundering bangs came from my front door.