When I found a flash drive hidden in a regular sausage, I thought it was just an accident, Then I checked what was inside!

It started like any other grocery run. I grabbed a pack of plain pork sausages — store brand, nothing fancy — tossed them in my cart with some eggs and bread, and went home. Dinner was lazy that night. I fried a couple sausages, made a sandwich, and didn’t think twice.

The next morning, I pulled the same pack out of the fridge. I sliced into another sausage and felt something solid stop the knife. At first, I thought it had frozen unevenly overnight. I tried again, pressing harder. The blade hit resistance again — a hard, definite click against metal.

I frowned, thinking maybe it was a bit of bone or a broken machine part from the factory. Food contamination happens sometimes. But when I peeled back the casing, I saw a flash of silver that made my stomach twist.

It wasn’t metal. Not the kind that belongs in food.

It was a USB flash drive.

A real, ordinary flash drive — coated in sausage grease, wedged dead center in the meat.

For a moment I just stared, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It wasn’t some prank product or toy. It was the same black, plastic, rectangular kind you’d find hanging from a keychain.

My first thought was disgust. My second was fear. What if this was deliberate? Some kind of smuggling? The idea of what I might have eaten turned my stomach.

But curiosity has a way of overriding common sense.

I wrapped the drive in paper towels, wiped it as clean as I could, and plugged it into my laptop. Against my better judgment, yes — I know. But there’s something about an unexplained object that demands to be understood.

The screen blinked. A single folder appeared.

“OPEN ME.”

I hesitated. I half-expected my computer to explode in malware or start screaming with some creepy audio file. But I double-clicked it anyway.

Inside was just one image.

A man’s face.

Mid-40s, maybe. Unshaven. Staring directly into the camera with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. His head was tilted, like he knew I’d be watching him.

I yanked the mouse back as if it could burn me. My heart thudded in my chest. Who the hell hides a flash drive inside food — and why this?

I closed the image, ejected the drive, and sat there, staring at it on my desk. It looked ordinary now, like something that should belong in a drawer full of old receipts. But my kitchen still smelled faintly of cooked sausage, and that made the whole thing even more surreal.

For a few minutes, I told myself it had to be a bizarre manufacturing accident. Someone in a meat plant dropped their flash drive, it got swept into the grinder, sealed into a sausage, and somehow made it to my store shelf. That explanation made sense — sort of. But the photo didn’t. It wasn’t a random image. It was intentional. Someone had placed it there.

And that thought crawled under my skin.

I decided to check the rest of the pack. My hands shook as I sliced each sausage lengthwise, one by one. Nothing. No metal, no drives, no clues. Just normal meat.

Still, my mind kept spinning. What if someone was using the packaging to smuggle data? Hidden in food shipments? Maybe the recipient was supposed to find it. Maybe I wasn’t.

That was the first time I considered calling the police.

But what would I say? “Hi, I found a flash drive in my breakfast sausage”? It sounded insane. I could already picture the officer’s face, polite but skeptical.

I went back to the computer. The photo had metadata — I checked the file properties, hoping for something. There was no name, no date, no camera info. The file name was just “smile.jpg.”

I opened it again, forcing myself to look closer. The man’s background was dim, industrial — a concrete wall, maybe pipes or metal rails behind him. His clothes were plain: gray hoodie, dark shirt. Nothing distinctive. But the longer I stared, the more wrong it felt. There was something faint behind him. A blur that looked like… bars?

My hand went cold on the mouse.

I zoomed in, and my stomach dropped. Behind the man’s shoulder was a faint outline of another face — barely visible, blurred like motion caught too late. A woman, maybe. Eyes wide open.

That was when I unplugged the drive and threw it in a drawer. I didn’t want to touch it again.

By evening, logic was fighting with panic. Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Maybe I was imagining things. But what if I wasn’t?

I called the grocery store. The manager sounded confused but polite. He said they’d “look into it” and offered a refund. That was it. I could tell from his tone he thought I was overreacting.

That night, I barely slept. Every sound in the house made me jump. Around 2 a.m., I got up, turned on the kitchen light, and stared at that drawer. The flash drive sat there, harmless, silent — but it felt like it was waiting.

By morning, my nerves had frayed enough that I drove to the police station. I told them the story, showed them the package and the drive. The officer took notes, asked a few routine questions — which store, which brand, when I’d bought it — and then said they’d pass it to “the appropriate department.”

I asked what that meant. He didn’t answer.

They took the drive, gave me a receipt, and that was the end of it.

Or it should’ve been.

Two days later, I got a call from a blocked number. A man’s voice, flat and professional. “Mr. —” he used my last name correctly, which I hadn’t given at the station — “thank you for your cooperation. Please refrain from discussing the item you turned in. It’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

Then he hung up.

I tried calling the police station back, but the officer who’d taken my report wasn’t available. No one else knew anything about “my case.”

For the next week, I waited for some update. Nothing came. Then, one night, I went to cook dinner and realized I couldn’t bring myself to buy sausages again. Every package at the store looked wrong. Too perfect. Too sealed.

Maybe it was all nothing. Maybe the flash drive was some twisted prank, and the call was just protocol.

But sometimes, when I’m half-asleep, I see that man’s face again — frozen mid-laugh, staring right through the screen.

And in that laugh, I swear there’s someone else’s breath.