[STORY] Don’t play with me. What do you mean doomed?!!

Two nights ago, I was deep into debugging a stubborn piece of code.

You know that point in web development where your brain is fried, and the semicolons in your JavaScript start looking like mosquitoes mocking you? Yeah, that was me.

The time was past 1:30 AM. My desk was littered with empty coffee cups, my second monitor glowing with endless Stack Overflow tabs. I had VS Code open, and Chrome DevTools was breathing fire at me like a dragon.

That’s when my phone buzzed. A WhatsApp notification:

Tola (my designer):

“Bro, I need you online right now. The client is panicking.”

I sighed, rubbed my eyes, and replied:

Me: “What’s wrong again? The website was fine when I pushed the last commit.”

Tola: “Fine? My guy, the whole landing page is blank. Nothing dey show. The client is literally on a Zoom call waiting.”

My heart dropped. A blank landing page? On the night before a product launch? This was the stuff of developer nightmares.

I quickly SSH’d into the server. The screen glowed with terminal commands scrolling like I was in a sci-fi hacker movie.

Me (muttering): “Please don’t let this be a missing semicolon. Please don’t let this be a missing semicolon.”

After a few lines of code inspection, I saw it.

Not a semicolon. Worse.

Someone—probably me—had accidentally deleted the index.html file.

Yes. The literal home of the project. The gateway. The first thing every visitor would see. Gone.

“Tola…” I whispered into my headset mic. “We’re doomed.”

He replied instantly, his voice sharp with panic:

“Don’t play with me. What do you mean doomed?!!”

“I mean… the index.html file is missing.”

There was a long silence. I could hear Tola’s exhale, the kind that carries both anger and prayer.

Then suddenly, a new voice joined the call.

It was the client.

“Excuse me, are you the developer?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir. Just a small glitch. I’ll fix it.”

“Glitch? The investors are logging in tomorrow morning. If this site doesn’t work, we’re dead.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. My fingers flew across the keyboard like my life depended on it. I tried git revert. Failed. I checked backups. Corrupted. I even opened my Recycle Bin like some desperate last resort. Nothing.

That’s when I remembered something.

Two days ago, I had tested the page locally on my laptop. Maybe… just maybe… it was still there.

I dived into my local files, praying to the gods of web development.

And there it was. index.html, shining like treasure in a cave.

I quickly copied it, fixed a few broken paths, deployed it again, and refreshed the page.

Boom. The landing page came back to life—animations dancing, CTA buttons glowing, testimonials sliding. It was like a resurrection.

Tola screamed:

“You did it! Broooo, you just saved us!”

Even the client sighed in relief.

“Good job… but you nearly gave me a heart attack. Next time, please back up everything.”

I chuckled nervously. “Yes, sir. Lesson learned.”

As I was closing my laptop, exhausted but victorious, I noticed something weird in the console logs. A line of code I didn’t write:

console.log(“Hello from the other side :)”);

I froze. Who the hell wrote that?

I scrolled deeper. Hidden inside a CSS file was a comment:

“Nice recovery. But I’m watching you. —Anonymous”

My chest tightened. Was someone inside my repo? A hacker? A prank? Or just some ghost of a past developer who once touched the project?

I don’t know. But every time I open VS Code now, I feel eyes watching me through the code.

Maybe web development isn’t just about coding websites. Maybe, sometimes, the code… codes you back.