Access

Holding a cup of coffee in one hand and several folders in the other, he dragged his chair out from behind his desk and plopped down in to it.

Sipping the all important morning brew, he opened the first of the folders and read the summary on the front page. It was a minor matter, but something he’d need to deal with eventually. Some things just couldn’t be delegated to subordinates.

Glancing over at the ornate clock on his large oaken desk, he shook his head at the time. 7am. A later start than he would have liked; he’d probably have to work until midnight again.

“Oh hey,” she said sleepily. “You’re here.”

He looked up. “Mm?”

She lay on one of the two fine couches that adorned his office. Stretching, she yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Damn, what time is it?”

“Seven,” he said, returning to his reading.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” she groused. “If I knew you’d be in this damn early, I wouldn’t have crashed here.”

He shrugged. “So go back to sleep.”

“Nah,” she said. “I need to talk to you. Can I have some of your coffee?”

He sighed. “Look, whoever you are-”

“Rachel,” she said.

“Hi Rachel. I’m very busy. I’ve only got an hour to finish this stuff before a bunch of meetings that last the rest of the day. It was a godlike feat just to get my own secretary to leave me alone for this hour. Now what do you want?”

“Well, that’s kind of complicated,” she said, sitting in a chair across the desk from him. “I think we can help each other.”

“Oh really? What’s a teenager going to do for me?”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“Good for you.”

She leaned back, putting her feet up on his desk. “Thing is, I have a super power.”

“This desk is an antique, you know,” he said.

“Oh I know what you’re thinking. I’m just some crazy girl off the street. But I really do have a power. Or something. Don’t know what you’d call it.”

“Seriously, it’s like two hundred years old. Get your feet off it.”

“I first noticed it back when I was a kid,” she continued, putting her hands behind her neck.

He groaned and put his file down.

“My parents were drunks. Both of them. They didn’t beat me or anything, but they were drunks. Lowlifes. You know?

“Anyway, Mom liked hard liquor at home. Dad was more of a social drunk, so he’d head down to the bar. Everyone liked him.

“He’d bring me along. He knew Mom would be passed out soon, and he figured a bar was safer for a ten year old girl than an apartment with no supervision. It was cool. I was kind of a mascot there.

“One time, the bar got raided by the cops for letting the local high school punks in without checking IDs. I was there at the time. Nobody cared about me being there, but they wrote up the bar for all the teenagers. Technically, the cops should have written them up for me, too. That should have been a clue, but I was too young to pick up on it.”

“Pick up on what?” He interrupted.

“You’ll see,” she said.

He rolled his eyes.

“When I was twelve, Mom sent me to 7-11 to get her a bottle of dinner. I knew they wouldn’t sell me liquor, but she gave me candy money, too. So who was I to argue?

“When I got there, the place was being robbed. We lived in a pretty crappy neighborhood; it wasn’t that uncommon. A guy in a mask had the owner down on the floor, holding a shotgun to his head. The robber looked at me, then went back to threatening the shopkeeper.

“I said ‘Hey, mind if I take some booze?’ He just said ‘whatever’. So I did. And some candy, too. Then I left.”

“Huh,” he said. “You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you or take you hostage. Still not seeing a super power.”

“Hush,” she said. “When I was 14, I was in the best clique. No angst-filled high school years for me. I ended up friends with the most popular girls in school and dated the popular boys. It was awesome. Kids all over that school would have given anything to be in that group. You know what I did to get in? I sat at their table.

“Just, you know, at lunch time. I sat at their table and nobody told me not to. Eventually they started talking to me and got to like me. That sort of thing. Anyone else who got within a mile of the table got extreme bitch treatment if they were a girl, or massive wedgies if they were a boy.”

“So,” he said, folding his arms. “Your super power is to be popular?”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said. “Anyway, in high school, I wasn’t the Virgin Mary, you know? Around 16 I starting having my share of fun with the popular boys. Nothing outrageous. But a string of boyfriends during my junior and senior years.

“One time, I was with my boyfriend when his mom came home unexpectedly. I should point out she was a hard-core Christian who thought her boy was a perfect angel. We were ‘busy’ when she got home so we didn’t notice till she opened the bedroom door. All we had time to do was throw a blanket over ourselves.

“There we were, both of us in his bed, staring back at her. Know what she did? She told us she’d gotten Chinese take-out and headed back downstairs. Weirdest experience of my life, up to that point.”

“She probably didn’t know how to react,” he speculated. “I bet her son caught hell for it later.”

“Nope. She never minded me being there. I could come over any time I wanted. Till I dumped him. He was a loser, trust me.

“I barely graduated from high school. No college would take me and it wasn’t like I could pay for it anyway. Mom and Dad figured I was ready to join the real world and stop being a drain on them. So I got a job waitressing. Then I lost it because I was an unreliable smart-ass who never showed up for work. That was the beginning of my ‘homelessness’ career.

“It wasn’t too bad. I would do short-term jobs from time to time and I lived in a tent. Anyway, one day it was raining buckets and the wind was like 40 miles an hour. The tent rode off in to the sunset. So now I was in a downpour and had no tent.

“I decided I was going to get out of the damn rain no matter what. I’d break in to the first house I saw and surrender to whoever was in it. I’d be out of the rain right away, then the cops would come take me to a nice dry cell.

“So that’s what I did. I wasn’t quiet or subtle. I bashed in a window with a garbage can, scraped the shards out of the way with the lid, then climbed in.

“I stumbled through the dark living room on to a couch and waited. About ten seconds later, the lights came on. A terrified-looking man with a baseball bat stared at me from the doorway, his wife peeking out from behind him.

“Once they saw me, they both let out a heavy sigh of relief and went back to bed.”

“Wait,” he said. “What?”

“Yup.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Right,” she nodded.

“Did you know them from before or something?”

“Nope. First time we’d ever met. Can I continue?”

“Uh, sure, ok.”

“So anyway, I stayed at their house for weeks and they never complained. They even chatted with me. I can’t say we became friends, in fact I could tell they resented me being there. But they never kicked me out.

“That’s when I started to realize something. I’d never been kicked out. Of anywhere. Ever.

“I decided to put it to the test. Something small to start with. I went to a bank. There was a line. I walked right to the front of it. Nobody complained. I just cut in front of like 20 people, everyone was fine with it. All right, on to Phase 2.

“They had a security door where the tellers could go in and out. I waited by it, then followed one of the tellers when they buzzed her in. Nobody cared! I even said ‘hi’ to everyone and introduced myself.

“So I grabbed a handful of money from one of the drawers. ‘Hey, what the hell are you doing?’ someone said. ‘Oh, my bad’ I said, putting the money back. ‘I’m new.’ Then everyone was happy again.”

“Seriously?” He asked.

“Yeah, seriously.”

“Cause it sounds like bullshit,” he said suspiciously.

“I did some more tests over the next few days. As far as I can tell, everywhere I go, everyone thinks I’m supposed to be there.”

“Yup,” he said. “Definitely smelling the bullshit now.”

“But it’s not a free ride. People think I’m supposed to be there, but I can only get away with doing things they expect. I stole some drugs from a pharmacy, just to see if I could. I walked right behind the counter, got an empty pill container, and filled it with Valium. The pharmacists didn’t give me a second look. People who are supposed to be there are expected to fill pill bottles. But people at a bank are not expected to grab handfuls of cash. See?”

“See? No. Smell? Yes.”

“I figure I could work for you.”

“See what I did there?” He pointed out, “I was talking about smelling the bullshit.”

“I need money. Give me a job with a good salary. I’ll spy for you.”

“On who?”

“Whoever you want! I’m sure you’ve got all kinds of people you’d like to spy on. I could just go wherever they are and sit quietly. Maybe take notes. Whatever you want.”

He sighed. “If your delusion really were true, then yes, I could use someone like you,” he agreed. “But come on. You expect me to believe you can waltz in to high security areas, past countless guards? And that you can chat with people there and they won’t know anything’s wrong? Can you provide any proof? Anything at all?”

She leaned forward. “I don’t know, Mr. President. You tell me.”

—
Credits to: Andy Weir

Black-Eyed Kids in Kansas

It was warm for a December afternoon in Hutchinson, Kan., when Katie came home from work in 2008. Katie’s ride dropped her off across from her duplex, and as she stood in the street, her ride moving slowly away, she knew something wasn’t right.

“I noticed two boys standing in my driveway,” she said. “One had longer dark hair and the other had his hood up so I couldn’t see him very well.”

The teenagers, about 15 or 16 years old, seemed to be watching her – Katie felt they were waiting for her. She steeled herself and walked nervously across the road toward her porch. The boys had lurked around her neighborhood for months, but they’d never been so bold as to stand this close to her home.

“I had seen them before, lingering in the yard, but they always left before I got out of my ride’s car,” Katie said. “I had seen them late at night as well standing across the street when I would go outside to have an occasional late-night cigarette.”

But, although pangs of unease told her to run, their boldness angered her. She stopped and asked them why they were on her property.

“They told me they needed to use a phone and that the neighbors would not let them in,” she said. “That was when I noticed their eyes – they were coal black. Just black. No white and not even a hint of iris or pupil.”

Fear shot through her, but as evenly as she could, Katie told them she didn’t have a telephone. Katie walked up her porch steps and began to unlock her door when the boy in the hood spoke.

“He asked if they could come in for a glass of water,” she said. “I turned to look at them again thinking maybe my mind was playing tricks. But no, when I turned and looked into their eyes they were pitch black as the first time.”

These children with dead, black eyes had spoken softly to her, emotion and vocal inflection absent from their words. As she looked at these boys, whose long hair and hooded sweatshirts she felt hid more than skin, she knew she had to get away.

“I felt panicked and fearful but also very vulnerable and cold,” she said. “It was like I wanted to let them in but I knew there was evil present. I had felt uneasy before seeing their eyes but now it all came out.”

Then one boy said something that turned her fear into complete terror.

“The hooded one then told me they couldn’t come in unless I told them it was OK and that they hoped I would because they were thirsty,” Katie said. “I opened my door and darted inside. At this point I shut the door and locked it.”

She dropped onto the couch, her breaths coming in short, heavy gasps, when something tapped on the window behind her head.

“One of the boys stood there staring through the glass,” Katie said. “I remember his words very clearly; ‘just let us in, miss. We aren’t dangerous, we don’t have anything to hurt you with.’ I was beyond frightened at this point.”

Katie jumped off the couch and ran through the duplex, checking doors and windows to make sure they were locked.

“I did wonder if they really couldn’t come in unless invited but I didn’t want to find out,” she said. “I sat in the living room silently waiting for a sign that they had gone.”

When her boyfriend came home a short time later, the black-eyed teens were still at the house.

“(He) asked if I knew who the two boys outside were and I said ‘no,’” Katie said. “He told me they had been standing in the driveway when he pulled up but walked away when he stepped out of the car.”

He didn’t notice the boys’ eyes, but “they gave him a strange feeling.”

Katie later asked her neighbors if the black-eyed children had asked to use their telephone like they had claimed. The neighbors noticed the teens standing in Katie’s driveway, but never spoke with them.

Although it’s been more than a year since Katie turned the black-eyed children from her door, she knows they’re still around.

“I still see them every now and then standing across the street watching,” she said. “But they have not approached again.”

By: Jason Offutt

The SSS

I grew up in a small rural neighborhood, about twenty minutes out from the nearest town. It was a quiet place, full of kids my age. I grew up playing with my friends in the woods and swimming in the pond.

My best friend was my neighbor, a girl a couple years older than me named Lily. Lily was mischievous and was always getting us into trouble. Her favorite thing to do was take me into the woods, where we weren’t allowed. Her backyard butted up to them, so all we had to do was hop the fence. In the woods, we’d walk out to our spot. We called it the Secret Spot of Secrecy, or SSS.

The SSS was a clearing about ten minutes’ walk from Lily’s house. When we found it, there was an old wooden table and chairs. Not far from the table was an old mattress and some raggedy blankets. We made up stories about a lost princess who lived there and was helped by fairies. We were very imaginative girls.

Every day, we’d go out to the SSS. We started leaving things, like sandwiches and nail polish and books for the princess. We figured she was shy and didn’t want us to see her. The next day, the little gifts would be gone. She took them! We were ecstatic. Some days we would find little bundles of wildflowers sitting on the table. She was thanking us!

That went on for about a year. Lily started complaining of nightmares soon. She said she would see someone standing over her, breathing heavily on her. I shrugged it off, I had scary dreams too sometimes.

But when Lily was twelve, she went missing. She went to bed and wasn’t there in the morning. Gone, disappeared out of thin air. We looked and looked and so did the police, but we found no sign of her. After three months of searching, they gave up. It broke my heart. Lily, my best friend, was gone. I’d never see her again.

I visited the SSS weekly after that. I left notes for the princess, explaining what had happened. I never got a reply, but the notes were always gone and there was always a wildflower in its place. Eventually, my parents found out that I was going into the woods and I got in big trouble. I was never able to go back. That was ten years ago. I visited my parents last week, who still live in the house I grew up in. I decided to visit Lily’s house, which had been vacant since her parents moved out, shortly after she went missing. That house brought back so many memories. Then I remembered the SSS.

I hopped the fence, just like old times. It didn’t take me long to remember the way to the SSS. It was just as I remembered it. The table and chairs were still there. So was the mattress and the blankets. But they didn’t look right. There was something under the blankets. Naturally, I was curious and lifted them up. I’ll never forget what I saw. It was a skull. It was bashed in, almost destroyed, but I knew immediately whose it was.

It was small, child sized. It was Lily’s.

I called the police. They came and searched the forest. They found evidence of someone living in the forest, cans of vegetables and beans and beer bottles. They also found pictures. Dozens and dozens of faded pictures. Pictures of me and Lily playing. Pictures of Lily, lying naked on the mattress. Pictures of Lily with her head bashed in.

I can’t sleep anymore, all I can see when I close my eyes is her. All I can think about is what she must’ve gone through. What I could’ve gone through. The police can’t figure out how he got Lily. They can’t find him either. He’s out there still, and I’m scared.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

My Fiancée's Vacation Days

So, a few days ago my fiancée went on a cruise with some of her friends from high school. They’ve been planning this for years, and she has been saving up money from her job to be able to afford it for quite some time now. She left a few days before the cruise to get on a plane for the Florida Keys, and I’ve had the apartment to myself since then. We live in a one bedroom and one and a half bathroom apartment, so it’s nothing very special, but its home.

Since she left, however, I’ve been experiencing things. Really terrifying, shitty things. At first, I tried to shrug it all off, but it’s built too much. I can’t just mentally write it off anymore. I need to talk about it cause I think something awful is happening to me, and its not just coincidences. It’s something evil.

The first thing that happened was the recurring nightmare. It happened the night before she got on the boat. It was getting late, and after calling her and talking to her for an hour before, I was exhausted. I went to sleep expecting a rather ordinary, if not quitter than usual, night. But instead, I got the nightmare.

It starts with me sitting on the couch, watching a news report. It took me a moment to understand what I was watching, but I quickly realized what the footage onscreen was. It was a burning hulk of a ship in the ocean, devastated by a massive explosion. I watch it sink into the ocean, and then I realize that it’s her ship I’m watching sink. The news report states no survivors. The first night, this is where I woke up.

I turned on a light next to my bed to look at the picture of me and my fiancée to try and cool my nerves. It was a picture of when I proposed to her, it was at the same bar we met at. I got the bartender in on it and everything. He brought us two glasses of wine and the ring was at the bottom of hers. I got on one knee and asked her to marry me, and she said yes. I held her close and the bartender took a picture of us smiling together to commemorate the moment. It was the happiest memory of my life. When I looked at the picture though, she was gone. The only thing next to me was empty space.

At that point, I freaked out for a moment, but I figured I must have been still dreaming, so I went back to sleep. The daytime was normal. I would never hear from my fiancée, since she was in the water now and couldn’t access her cellular plan, so I would spend my days watching TV or hanging out with my friends.
Before I would go to bed, I would look at the picture and it would be fine. Then I would have the nightmare, and wake up, and look at the picture, and she would be gone. After the first few nights, I started waking up not out of fear from the dream, but reflex. And I would instinctively look at the picture and see she wouldn’t be there.

After a week of this, I got annoyed and honestly a bit scared. I decided to break my promised silence with her and sent her an email, asking how the trip was going. I had told her before she left I wouldn’t contact her on the trip, so she could have fun, but I couldn’t shake the bad feeling. So I lied and said I missed her more than expected and wanted to hear from her. She responded after a few hours, and she was fine. She even sent a few pictures of the cruise. At that time, my deepest fears were dismissed, and I felt foolish for worrying about her.

That calm was short lived though. When I went to bed that night, I looked at her picture, and she was gone. Normally, she wouldn’t disappear until after I went to sleep. For a few hours, I was too shaken to sleep, but I eventually fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion. Then, I had the dream again, with the news cast and the sinking ship. Before I woke up this time though, there was a knock at the door of my apartment in the dream. When I woke up and looked at her picture, something new was in it. Near one of the booths in the background of the picture stood a thin, grey figure, with barred teeth and twisted limbs, and piercing red eyes that looked directly into mine. I threw the picture in a panic, and I decided not to look at it again until she got back.

I started avoiding sleeping as much as I could, stayed out late with my buddies, actively avoided watching the news, anything to take my mind off the dream and the picture. I had even hidden the picture away in my dresser so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at it. Every night though, the knocking at the door would get louder, and louder. It would be more panicked, more violent, until I began to fear the door would fly off its hinges in the dream.

Then came the worst night. Last night. The night before she would get home. Her ship had gotten to shore just fine, I had searched every source I could to make sure of it. I couldn’t contact her on her cell though. Or any of her friends. I could call or text anyone else, but not them. I was terrified. I avoided sleeping that night, drank coffee, watched movies and even took caffeine pills to stay awake. But I eventually would crash at around 5 AM, despite my best efforts on the contrary. And the dream was different this time.

This time, in the dream, the TV was off, and my apartment was dark, and I just stared forward into the blackness. It was an unearthly quiet until I heard two calm, ominous knocks on the door. I got up, and walked carefully to the door in the pitch dark and dead silence, and looked through the peephole, and there was the creature, teeth chattering, red eyes staring into mine, and it said something.

“I’ll be home soon”

I woke up screaming. I didn’t sleep after that, and it wasn’t until the first rays of sun came over the horizon that I got the nerve to sit up in bed. When I looked to my left, I saw it. The picture was on my nightstand again.

My fiancée gets back from vacation today, and I couldn’t be more afraid, because in the picture that morning, the monster was holding me, just like she in the original picture, and it was grinning from ear to ear with dirty, bloody teeth.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

I Only Did It For Her

I stay hidden, out of sight, merging with the shadows, looming in dark corners. She feels my presence, though she denies it for that false sense of comforting security.

I watch her. I take care of her. I sit by her bed all night because I know she feels lonely. She looks so beautiful when she’s sleeping. One night, I took a photograph of her when the worry on her face was replaced by calmness and peace. I left it for her to find so she would see herself the way I saw her, so she would see how beautiful she truly was. Uniformed men came and searched the house with guns, so I never did it again. I didn’t want her to find me, not yet. One day we would be together, but I couldn’t let her see me until she was ready.

There was a man who came to visit her every Friday and Saturday night. He would put his arm around her and they would laugh together, but sometimes his voice was loud and intimidating. He would leave and slam the door behind him, and she would cry herself to sleep. It devastated me.

One day, after he hurt her again, I decided I’d had enough. Some of the shingles on the roof had come loose. It was easy to ‘accidentally’ let one slide off and hit him right on the head. She ran outside screaming but I know that deep inside she was laughing. After all, I did it for her. She made me angry. All I ever did was try to make he happy, but still she cried herself to sleep. It was like I wasn’t good enough for her.

One night, I slipped downstairs, nothing but a shadow, and crept to her bed where she lay sleeping, unsuspecting of what was to come. This part was easy; I’d done it many times before. Still, I was nervous. No one had ever been as special as her. My hands were trembling when they wrapped around her thin, pale neck. Her eyes opened wide, but she couldn’t scream. I was holding her too tight. I never wanted to let her go. After all, I was only doing this for her. Her arms flailed, nails scraping against my skin. Her legs thrashed and her back arched. My heart was racing at our first moments of physical contact. She was more beautiful that I ever could have imagined. She gasped, and from her eyes I saw all the sadness, hurt and tears leave her body. I only did it for her.

The uniformed men searched the house again. I didn’t let them find me though. I knew they would take her away from me. I couldn’t let that happen, not now that we were finally together. I held her close until they left.

After all, I only did it for her.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Tape It Back Together

Mom, Dad,
When you two separated
She was torn apart
She prayed everyday
She wished during every birthday
She loved Disney for that happy ending
She believed in dreams
Of holding Mommy's hands
And holding Daddy's hands
At the same time
She waited
Day after day
Week after week
Months to years
Until that child faded
But this adult remembers
She became I
And I fear
And I swear
To never make the same mistakes
To never create an image
Of a happy family
And tear it apart
If I could
I would
Tape it back together
I know
It's all
She ever wanted

(Poem by Yuumei)

Her

Stop. No, don’t look. It just encourages them.

You know who I’m talking about. Them. More specifically, her. Keep those eyes focused here, don’t look. Don’t even glance. Use your peripherals, because I know you see her. Just at the very edge of your vision?

Glance to the left side of the monitor, but don’t glance beyond it. There, your peripherals should have picked up a bit more. You saw her in the corner, didn’t you? You saw her black hair billowing across her pale face, the loose nightgown she wears over her emaciated frame. She’s been there for a while, just waiting. That’s how they spend their time. The spirits of the damned. The ones unfit for heaven, yet avoiding hell. The ones who walk the Earth with their sins on their shoulders. They live in constant, insurmountable, indescribable pain. The story goes that when St. Peter takes pity on a soul who has committed a grave sin, like murder, rape, torture, cannibalism, or worse, he punishes that soul and sends them back to our plane, to exist among the living until they’ve successfully repented for their sins. But first, he rips out their eyes, so that they can covet nought. Then he tears their jawbone from their skull, so that they cannot speak evils.

No, don’t look. She has moved closer, but that is only her curiosity. She can’t actually see you, not as you could see her. She sees in outlines, in blurs and motions. Her empty sockets let her see a person’s soul, yet it is useless to her. She lives not on the person, but on the body. Her spirit hungers for communion of the flesh, but she is eternally denied. Only the Savior can be a proper conduit of communion, to satisfy her cravings. She has tried, though. She has tried often in the past.

She certainly has taken an interest in you, hasn’t she? You see, she feeds on the living. She, like many before her, found humans to alleviate her ailments. She starves for communion, but humans like yourself can work as a…placebo, of sorts. She’ll try to get you to turn, to see into the voids which take residence over where her eyes used to be. She’ll pull you in, hypnotizing you with the dark, hollow sockets. She’ll close in even more, excitedly exhaling on your supple skin. She’ll jab her rotted teeth into your slender neck and lap the blood with her flopping tongue. I’ll scrape in with my fangs and scoop out your flesh like ice cream. I’ll yelp with glee at the warmth of your innards as I slash into your fatty abdomen. I’ll pull the bones from their sinew and suck the marrow out like a candied filling. I’ll jab my bony fingers into your eyes and take them for my own. I’ll rip your jawbone from your skull and use it as my own. I’ll become whole again, with your help.

But it’ll only work–

–if you look.

Last Hope

As I write, my life is dwindling to nothing, but I need to share what I know. You ever read those stupid ritual pastas? The ones where if you light a candle and sacrifice a toddler at 12:02am then your soul will be torn away but you’ll live forever? This is kind of like that, but less pathetic – less unreal.

It was midnight, and I’d stumbled in after a drunken night on the town. The stairs had presented a challenge, and by the time I’d desperately reached my bathroom, I was throwing up all over the place. Groggy and made tearful by my own state, I lifted my head, examining myself in the mirror and wiping away flecks of vomit. The light was off, but I could still see; had I not been so drunk, maybe that would’ve told me that something was wrong? I don’t think it matters, in any case. I think I’d still be dying even if I had run. There, in the mirror, was my shower. I’m dirt poor (only just graduated from university), so it was a filthy cubicle rather than a bath. And I noticed this mat – this thick black streak laying over the plug hole. I crept closer, still drunk, and pulled it.

A handful of dark brown hair came away in my hand, strewn with reddish brown blood. From the plughole, an eye stared up at me.

I fled, drunkenness forgotten, and hid in my bed, covers over my face and weeping bitter tears, as silent as I could manage. I heard something moving in the corridor and began to pray, but no god heard. My door creaked open, and I heard something crawl in, limbs clicking like some horrible insect. It grunted and snuffled to itself, and occasionally, just occasionally, it laughed in a high, mad, cold voice I can only compare to a hyena. I almost went mad that night, just waiting for it to get me – for it to rip me limb from limb and end it all. But, apparently, it likes to play with its food.

After I finally rose the next day, there was no trace that anything had been there on the carpet. I put it down to drunken hallucinations and moved on. But I kept seeing that eye – that hair. Hearing the laughter, the awful snuffling noise, like something devouring rotten meat. A week later, I broke out into painful sores – like measles, or chickenpox.

Now I’m bedridden. My eyes are sunken, my hair is falling out, and my skin is a mass of blotched and broken sores. But that’s not the worst thing. I can hear it getting closer, limbs clicking, laughing as it comes to get me. And it keeps… It keeps whispering quietly to itself, maybe to me. Sometimes I can hear what it says; sometimes just barely audibly, sometimes as though it’s right next to me. It’s advice.

That’s why I’m writing this. It keeps telling me that if someone else reads this, if someone else knows what has happened, it’ll leave me alone and find them. Find you.

I’m sorry.

Credited to bez00mny.

How Big Is Your Bed?

My mattress is narrow, single sized with room for only myself. I used to have a lovely queen sized bed but that was before.

How big is your bed?

She asked me while we shared a bench and waited for the bus. I thought she might be soliciting me at first, but then she went on. Trapped by unwritten social conventions, I had to stay put and listen. Her eyes were bloodshot and the bags under them could have passed for bruises. It was clear she hadn’t slept for quite some time.

She told me that we get used to luxury far too quickly. We take for granted the electric lights, the sturdy walls and security systems of our houses. The plush couches, the big, wide beds. Human beings have only lived like this for a very short amount of time. We forget that things weren’t always like this, that the world wasn’t always ours alone.

There are stories of monsters out there in the dark, crawling on the fringes of our well-lit civilization. They want what we have. They have always wanted what we have and now we have so much. They knock on our flimsy doors and ask permission to come inside, to have a taste of what we gorge ourselves on.

Permission must be given for them to enter but not all invitations are verbal. For example, she said, when I approached this bench you moved to one side. A silent invitation to sit down. You made room and that is an invitation.

How big is your bed? How much empty space is there? Enough for someone else to get in beside you? Do you roll over to one side in the middle of the night, do you think? Do you make room, a silent invitation?

—
Credits to: daydalia

Listening In

For such a turning point in my life, the night I acquired a certain item is cemented in my mind only because of how mundane it was. I didn’t chance upon a dusty tome buried amidst a pile of mouldering books in a university library nor did I chance upon a madman with a basket of trinkets in a Bangladeshi backstreet. I was sat in my underwear, lit only by a dull blue glow from my computer monitor, browsing eBay for nothing in particular.

The music in my ears fluctuated again, the soulful notes of Toxic by Britney Spears being ebbed away, replaced by a strange yet familiar concoction of static and oppressive silence. I rolled my eyes and removed my headphones, tapping them against my palm while muttering half-formed sentences expressing my distain for ever purchasing them. After a few minutes of tapping refused to exorcise the demons in my earpieces, I began to browse for a replacement. I then, on that most unassuming of nights, stumbled upon a posting that would have irrevocable implications for me.

“Wireless Headphones. Unwanted present, only used once. Bought as a gift for my nephew. Only used once, given back to me “Because of the talking in them” Guaranteed good condition, no point letting them go to waste because of an overactive imagination”.

The auction seemed like an amazing deal, only an hour or so left, a fraction of the retail price, paid delivery. I placed a bid and took myself to bed, trusting the late hour to protect me from having my new trinket stolen from me. As it happened, I was right and they arrived a few days later.

That was when things began to happen. As I connected them to my pc, I could feel a strange heaviness to the air, like the charge in the air before a thunderstorm. I dismissed it easily enough; I thought it was simply a symptom of the muggy summer air.

An hour or so later, permitting the things to accrue a decent amount of charge, I placed them on my head, and flicked the power switch. I was surprised to find, however, that there was no background static. There was a deep silence. Childish as the notion seemed at the time, it felt just like the silence of a tomb. There was also the hint of another sound, the raspy hiss of a whisper on the edge of hearing. I cast it from my mind and tested the sound quality by playing a classical piece, the finale to swan lake. To my eternal shame I felt a flutter of relief as the beautiful notes of Tchaikovsky’s ballet cut through the silence. After a few minutes, however, I was pulled away from the reports I was busying myself with as I heard a familiar buzz of static in my ear, only now with a disturbing new sound mixed in.

Voices. Maybe hundreds, all talking at once in a hoarse, drawn out whisper. Some were too fast to comprehend, others too slow. Some were in different languages, some in long-dead tongues of syllables unpronounceable. I broke out in a sweat, eyes wide. I was the subject of these voices, the understandable ones at least. They spoke of my choice of music, the cut of my new clothes, the reports strewn across my desk. One voice cut through the throng however, a dirty sounding diseased rasp. It said only one thing, but it was enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck rise and my heart pound. It said, merely;

“It’s noticed us,”

I threw the headphones from my head and tore from the room. As I did, I heard a burst of oppressive, heavy noise burst from the headphones, a terrifying mix of an air-raid siren and the static screech of an unturned radio.

It was at this point I decided I needed to be out of the house. I bolted down the stairs, leaping the last few. As I fought with the tangle of keys that resided on the small table by my living room door, I heard another sound, or more accurately a lack of it. An oppressive, murky silence had overtook the whole house. Behind me I heard a rising hum as the TV turned itself on, bathing the room in shifting shadows. From the static on the screen the head and shoulders of a man resolved. With a sickening sound of papers and flesh tearing an arm burst forth, implanting a shifting grey and white hand upon the ground with a curiously wet smack. Then the other came through with an equally sickening herald. The figure then began to flail itself forward and back, battering its head against the inside of the screen until it burst through with a sound akin a coconut being hit by a truck. Thus freed, it’s upper half flopped pathetically onto the floor, pulling the remainder of its body through with a series of motions and sounds that made me sick to my stomach.

I felt my legs fail beneath me, slumping to the ground, my car keys pointed forward in a parody of a defensive stance. It came towards me, walking on its hands and feet until I could feel it next to my face, a horrid smelling mist the odour of old books and rotting flesh lurching into my nostrils in a ragged wheeze. I tensed up, waiting to feel jaws on my throat, hands around my neck, anything, but none came. Through trembling lips I managed to force a single question to the strange creature.
“W…Why are you here,” I stammered. I could feel it smiling.

“You heard us,” it said, in a voice full of malice and pain “You listened to us, you’re our toy now,” It laughed, a hollow, empty sound. “Lucky you,” And then, I was alone. I felt the presence go, the oppressive sounds of static and dull silence stripped away leaving the usual night sounds in its wake.
I don’t know how long I lay there, staring at nothing, before sleep overtook me. When next awoke I took the headphones and gave them to a charity shop. A symbolic gesture, for now those terrible spectres visit me nightly, that horrible shifting man their herald, getting their fun from seeing my human fear.

But that brings us to the real reason I’m telling this story. Be careful when you stare into a screen of static, or hear what a rational man would assume to be interference of your headphones, or even when you’re in complete silence. Be careful not to listen to closely, for strange and terrible things lurk in that maelstrom of black and white.

And once they find you, you will never, ever be free.

By: Obnoxious Brit.

Kids Have Always Loved This Place

The little girl had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, at the end of the long row of apple trees. She wore a faded red dress, and looked about the same age as Susan. There weren’t many people in the orchard today; it was cloudy and chilly, and this was the first other kid Susan had seen all afternoon. Mommy was at the other end of the row of trees, picking busily, so Susan went to the girl.

In just a few minutes, they were skipping along together, becoming friends almost instantly, in that way seven-year-old girls do…the little girl’s name was Kristen, and she told Susan she stayed at the orchard all the time.

"There are lots of us here, actually", she said. "Kids have always loved this place…"

Susan was puzzled. “Other kids, you mean? Here?”

"Come on, I’ll show you!"

They raced out of the trees, to a long, low shed. No-one was around at all, and in the gloomy afternoon light, Susan began to feel uneasy. Mommy was out of sight…

"Down here…see?" Susan peered down where Kristen pointed. It was a dark stairway, leading to a cellar under the shed. "I can’t see anyth—she turned to Kristen but the girl was nowhere to be seen. She crept forward, just to the cellar’s doorway, trying to see in…..in the dim light, she could just make out—-was that Kristen? But how…?

It was Kristen, or what had once been Kristen—a skeletal arm protruded from a faded red sleeve, and skeletal legs splayed beneath her skirt…and beyond that, was that another skeleton? And another, all in faded, young girls’ clothing?

Susan couldn’t make herself move away. She needed to go tell Mommy, but she felt paralyzed…

A hand fell on her shoulder, and another clamped over her mouth. “Found yourself some friends, did you?”

Then both hands were around her neck, squeezing, squeezing….”You can join ‘em now…. kids have always loved this place…”

—
Credits to: Queenofscots

My Girlfriend's New Friend

My girlfriend has a new friend.

Raquel doesn’t have many friends, not that it bothers her. We both value quality over quantity, but I’m happy that she’s made a new friend. His name is David. I’ll admit, sometimes when she talks about him, I get jealous. But jealously is an awful trait so I push it away and just try and be happy for her. They seem to get on really well.

According to Raquel, David is really clever. According to Raquel, David is really talented. According to Raquel, David is very thoughtful and profound. She tells me they talk about God and the Devil for hours. I try not to get jealous. As an atheist I’ve always found it hard to join in on her deep talks about God and religion.

I met David last week. He seemed nice enough. He seemed okay. But there was something…something about him. I can’t put my finger on it…okay, okay, I can. There’s nothing wrong with him. It’s me. I’m jealous. David doesn’t really seem like Raquel’s type, but, I guess attraction can grow over time…

But what am I saying. Raquel would never cheat on me. But would she leave me for another man? After all the things we’ve been through? I’m not sure. No. Of course she wouldn’t.

Raquel told me, David shares her morbid obsession with serial killers and psychopaths. Raquel said they're going to an abandoned mental hospital together to explore. I told her I didn’t want her to go. She got upset. They didn’t go. I read her text messages to David. She told him I wouldn’t let her go. She told him I was being an asshole. She told him I had anger issues. I didn’t read anymore, I didn’t have to.

Instead I messaged David from Raquel’s phone, pretending to be her. I told him that I had changed my mind, and told him the trip to the abandoned mental hospital was back on. I said I’d meet him there.

When I got there, I could see David sat in his car. He was looking around anxiously. Something felt off. The brick I had brought with me sat on the passenger seat next to me. I held it in my hand, ready. He spotted the car and started walking towards it. I was wearing a black hoodie. He couldn’t see my face.

When he got to the car he froze. He realized it wasn’t Raquel. It was me. I hit him over the head with the brick. It knocked him out automatically but I hit him again just to be sure. I dragged him back to his car. His head was bleeding, thick red blood like jam seeped out into his slightly greasy hair. Luckily it didn’t get on the pavement.

I opened the drivers side of his car, sat him in, upright. Put his hands on the steering wheel, for a laugh. That’s when I noticed it. In the back seats of his car. Rope. Masking tape. A knife. A change of clothes. I left the brick in his car. It was a nice addition to his collection.

I went back home. I apologized to Raquel for not letting her go. She forgave me.

The next day she said she hadn’t heard from David. She said he wouldn’t reply to her texts. She said it was stupid he was ignoring her all because she didn’t go last night. She decided to stop trying to contact him.

I talk about God and the Devil a lot more with Raquel now. We talk about the line between good and evil. We talk about people who worship the Devil whist thinking it is God. I’ve realized I do believe in God, in some sense of the word.

And I believe God and the Devil are just two horns on the same goat.

-Update-

So I’m pretty shocked at how big the story got. The more comments I read, the more I realized I needed to go check if David was alive or not. I was getting paranoid, I was getting anxious, and that wouldn’t do.

I managed to delete the messages from Raquel’s phone. She has one of those old phones where the messages stay in a diffrent folder, so you don’t see the last message you sent. It’s an old phone. I should really buy her a new one. Anyway, I’m assuming she hasn’t read them. I think she would have freaked if she did.

Last night, around 10pm, told Raquel I was going to a friend’s house for a couple of hours. I wore my black hoodie and gloves, just in case David was still there. I got to the abandoned mental hospital. His car was still there. I was almost relieved until I saw them. Two people, looking into his car, they looked…concerned.

I walked up to the car, hiding the bread knife I brought in my pocket. I brought it because it was long. I just hoped it was sharp enough. Then the woman said something along the lines of, "Oh my god…Hi, uh, we think this man might be dead! Have you got a phone? We need to call…" In a very high pitched, annoying, voice. I think she was scared. I pulled out the knife and stabbed her, and grabbed her male friend by the arm just as he went to run. He didn’t even try to help her. But then he was skinny and pretty weak. I stabbed him too and dragged them both into David’s car. It was still unlocked.

Once they we’re in the back next to the brick, my old friend, I threw in the knife too. I went back to my car and grabbed the gasoline and matches that I brought from the trunk. I went back to David’s car and set it on fire. I think the girl was still alive in the back. I can’t be sure. But she’s not anymore.

Anyway, I’m back home now. You’re all probably going to tell me I made another mistake, left some evidence, I don’t know. I feel surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

Just felt like something I had to do. And now I have to buy a new bread knife.

—
Credits to: sssleep

Old Friends

I hadn’t seen Codie in almost ten years. Out of my small group of friends in high school he had done the best since graduating. He got a job out west with some tech company then got married and had kids. I was eager to meet him again. It gets lonely in the little hick town we grew up in. The stuff that had once been entertaining to me now felt dull and tired without the ole’ gang.

People give you weird looks when you hang out up town on a Friday night. That’s the realm of the young and naïve. A thirty year old gets labeled a “creep” real easy in this town. I don’t care though. We had our own place to hang out back in the day, and I still go down there once in a while just for the hell of it.

I saw Codie walking down the trail lined with tall grass and paved with rocks and broken glass. He smiled and I felt the companionship I hadn’t fully experienced in years. Married life must have been good to him, because he had gained about 20 pounds. But his wide toothy smile set under thick glasses hadn’t changed one bit. He called out, “Jerry! Man, it’s good to see ya!” It felt good to hear someone call out my name. I actually fought back tears.

When he stopped in front of me he reached out his hand and said, “Really? We’re going out there, huh?”

He wasn’t annoyed, just a little surprised. He had suggested on the phone going somewhere to eat. I think he said something about steaks and drinks, but I was too excited about having at least half the old gang together to go down to the “Slash” again.

We said all the things old friends say when they haven’t seen each other in a while. Admittedly I was a little embarrassed. I hadn’t done much since graduation except float from one shitty minimum wage job to another. I hadn’t even had a legitimate girlfriend in probably eight years. I don’t care, though. I don’t begrudge my friends for doing something with their lives. In fact, I was proud of Codie.

I led him down the trail and into the shroud of trees that cover the Slash. The Slash has both a calming effect, and strangely, a sense of foreboding when you enter. Maybe I invest too much emotionally in our old stomping grounds, but I always felt some strange duality of emotion when we hit the trail and descended the steep sides of this place. I looked back to gauge the mood of Codie and was pleased to see him smiling back at me.

"So, have you talked to Brian or Eric, lately?" asked Codie.

It grew dark quickly because the Slash was thick with vegetation. I pondered the question for a short moment then turned and said, “Nope. I was surprised to hear from you.”

We kept descending the steep grade toward the place we used to convene our immature gatherings during our high school years. I heard the dirt slip from under Codie’s feet and turned just in time to see him reach out and steady himself with the trunk of a young tree.

The Slash is unique, I think. Maybe not, but I bet the terrain is rare. I had heard that it had once undergone extensive strip mining long before my home town was more than a row of houses next to a railroad. The fact that it was a natural valley carved by a shallow creek over the centuries had only aggravated the human excavation. This land on the edge of my boring hick town was virtually useless. I have come to the conclusion that the best way to save nature from the slow creep of suburbs, shopping malls, and convenience stores is to strip mine the place. Because if you’ve come across the jagged scars of land that has undergone such treatment then you know that decades later it will be uninhabitable by the human constructions built by contractors.

"I had kept in touch with Eric for a while, but I don’t know what he’s been up to for the last couple of years. He doesn’t have a Facebook page," said Codie.

"Oh, he’s still around. The last time I saw him was after he got divorced. I haven’t heard from him the last few years, but he always kept his feelings to himself," I said.

The bottom of the Slash was close, and I could hear the lazy flow of the creek. When I hopped onto the mossy ground next to the water I looked up the way we had come and could see the obsidian colored veins that men had dug out of the earth so long ago it was almost like a mythic story. Other than the coal and dirt we were enveloped in gloomy trees and thick tussles of briar and bush. The sun was still in the sky somewhere, but you wouldn’t know it from here.

"Have you seen Brian? I haven’t heard from him either," said Codie.

"He quit college and got a job at the tire factory," I said as I stared down the bed of the valley toward the area where our little hangout still existed.

"Is he still seeing that girl he was dating? The bartender?" asked Codie.

"The last I heard, but it’s been a while. Man, it’s good to see you again Codie. It gets lonely around here without you guys."

Codie looked slightly embarrassed at my revelation, but he smiled and said, “I know. I got my family and I hang out with guys from work, but it’s not the same.” Codie took in the Slash in an extended glance. “I forgot how deep this place was. Is our place still there? I know the city was talking about demolishing it when I left.”

I started to walk and Codie followed. “It’s still there. After you guys moved on, kids started getting out of control. Really pissed me off because I always thought of that place as special.”

Codie laughed. It was a warm, knowing laugh that reminded me of when we were young, stupid kids.

"They used to go in there and drink beer and smash the bottles everywhere. Then they’d leave idiotic graffiti all over the place."

Codie laughed again. “As I remember it, I had my first beer out there.”

"Yeah but, these kids didn’t respect the place. It wasn’t special to them, but luckily they’re gone now. No one comes out here much anymore and I’m glad."

The sides of the slash seemed to arch over us, choking out the sun of the late afternoon. It was cool down here. And quiet. As we neared a patch of beer cans and other random junk I stopped and sighed.

"There’s still a few that come out though. I wish I could catch them," I said, annoyance showing in my voice.

"What would you do if you caught them?" asked Codie.

I turned and laughed before shrugging my shoulders. Codie walked passed me. “We’re close,” he said then quickened his pace.

The floor of the Slash opened up, and coming out of the valley wall was a rectangular concrete thing with a loomin semi-circular hole like the gaping mouth of some Jurassic beast waiting to swallow up unsuspecting prey. I’m not sure what it was supposed to be. I had heard many stories. It was built by the power company or maybe here to redirect water during a storm. Once I’d heard it was built by a mining company who wanted to rip out the last precious bits of coal from the Slash but had been abandoned when they realized it wasn’t cost effective. Whatever it was, for as long as I had lived it had been a place for kids to explore. It had been abandoned by some company with a board of directors who couldn’t understand the value of this crumbling concrete husk decorated with protruding rebar and a carpet of moss. So, it’s mine now.

Here I had communed with Codie, Brian, and Eric. Here we had snuck away to drink beer and talk about our future lives. Here was one of the few places I had been truly happy. Codie stepped up to the mouth of the entrance. It was dark inside and a dank odor filled my nostrils. I reached into my pocket and pulled a small LED flashlight.

"This brings back memories," said Codie, admiring the mossy covered concrete.

I stood next to him and said, “I’ve been coming here ever since high school. I look after the place. I’ve even fixed it up a bit. I brought some lawn chairs and a put a coffee table next to the fire pit, but some kids tore it all up. I took care of that though.”

"How did you take care of it?" asked Codie.

"I came out and cleaned up again. It’s nice in there," I said then walked inside.

I turned on the flashlight and stood a few feet inside, looking back at Codie. His expression was stolid. After a long uncomfortable moment he walked forward. I was afraid he had changed his mind about the old place. I was always a bit insecure around my friends. I don’t have much else of value in my life.

I led him inside, it was a short tour. I pointed the light were I had painted over the obscene graffiti. I showed him were obnoxious kids had left beer cans, condoms and trash. Near the end there had even been needles. That had pissed me off the most. But I had cleaned it all up, because this place is special to me.

The fire pit was in a side room. The last rays of sunlight leaked in from a solitary window with rust stained steel bars. I took a seat in one of four lawn chairs and gestured to another. Codie took a seat beside me. He was quiet now. I stared at the pit lined with broken concrete from the surrounding structure. Beside that was a pile of sticks and newspaper I had gathered for a fire.

"What do you think?" I asked. My voice echoed slightly.

"It’s just like I remember it, except we used to sit on the ground."

"Do you miss it, Codie? I know you got a real life now. Kids and a wife and all that, but don’t you wish you could relive it every once in a while?"

He didn’t answer. Instead he said something that disturbed me. “I read that they found a girl’s body out here. She’d been strangled.”

It’s bad enough being called a creep by people you don’t care about, but I instantly knew what Codie was getting at. Didn’t he know me better? I suddenly realized I had come on a little too strong. My need for friendship had probably seemed desperate to him. But a guy like Codie, or for that matter Brian and Eric, well … they don’t understand. It was easy for them to go on after high school. Not me, I had lived in the past for more than ten years because I was a misfit.

"Yeah, I remember that. The cops asked me a bunch of obnoxious questions. That’s the problem with something like the Slash. Sometimes it attracts the wrong people. I wouldn’t care so much if people would appreciate it for what it is."

"Really? The cops came to you?" asked Codie.

"Someone said they saw me coming in here a lot. It’s true. I get bored with town. I come down here to forget about work and all the crap that goes with life. You want a beer?"

Codie seemed surprised. I turned on the flashlight and pointed the beam into the corner to reveal a Styrofoam cooler.

"You lugged that down here?" Codie seemed to regain his ease.

"Yep," I said, smiling. "When do you have to leave?"

"Well, I can have a beer maybe two, but then I got to head out. My parents don’t live around here anymore and I said I’d visit them as I was driving through."

I was saddened by this. “How far away are they?”

"They found a nice place down state from here. It’s about an hour drive," said Codie.

I turned out the flashlight then moved to the cooler. I reached in and grabbed two cans.

Returning I said, “Brian used to try and tell ghost stories, remember that?”

Codie popped open the can and took a long drink. It was dark inside and the light from the window was growing fainter. “They were pretty corny, but he really tried. Though that time we spent the night here he actually spooked me a little.”

"Yeah," I said. My voice was dreamy. I really do miss the good ole days.

I walked back to the cooler and reached behind it.

"What are you doing?" asked Codie.

"Getting something," I said.

I placed the can of beer on the concrete. My other hand pulsed as it gripped the stone. It was big and heavy and completely round. I brought it forth for Codie’s inspection.

Codie stared. When we had discovered it in the creek years ago, Eric had called it a dinosaur egg. It certainly looked like one, I guessed.

I returned and handed it Codie. It was dark, but I could see confusion on his face. His eyes blinked behind thick glasses. “Do you remember this?” I asked.

He took it in one hand then seconds later his face lit up with the joy of sentimental acknowledgement. “Wow! I forgot about this. Didn’t Eric take this home?”

"Yep," I said. "I asked him to bring it the last time I saw him out here."

"Did you guys come out here?"

"Yeah, that was a few years ago."

"And Eric gave it to you?"

I frowned a little. “Yeah. I think he wanted to cheer me up a little. I keep it out here now.”

Codie handed it back then chugged the last of his beer. “That felt good. One more?” he said.

"Sure," I said then went back to the cooler. It was time.

From behind me I heard Codie say, “I always wondered if that was the kind of rock that had quartz in it. I’ve seen pictures of rocks like that where they’ve cut them open and you can see purple minerals inside. I remember Brian wanted to bash it open with his dad’s sledgehammer, but Eric wouldn’t let him.”

"Yeah," I said. "We were goofy kids. I’m glad we didn’t smash it even if it does have quartz in it."

I pulled out another can of beer then handed it to Codie. He accepted it. He popped it open and I raised the heavy, egg-like stone over his head. I could smell the sweet aroma of the fermented hops as I struck him as hard as I could. I didn’t want him to suffer any more than he had to. He was my friend after all.

He yelled something unintelligible and angry. He crawled across the concrete and I raised the stone over my head again. He tried to get up, pulling at my jeans near the thigh. He fought it, just like Brian had. I came down with both hands around the stone determined to crack his skull. He sensed this and put his hand up trying to block my attack. This seemed to soften the blow and I felt bad for prolonging the pain, but I had to do this.

I’m not sure what he said, but I think he was cursing me. I backed up to give myself room and he followed on his knees in a desperate attempt to wrestle me to the ground. I charged forward and swung the stone at his forehead. He went down making a gulping sound in his throat as I felt the warmth of his blood splattered across my fingers. He lay on the floor and his body convulsed once then went still. Beside his body lay his glasses, the right lens having broken during the struggle.

I took a few breaths to calm myself down before I wiped off the “dinosaur egg” with Codie’s shirt. Then I sat down and opened my beer. The Slash was dark as the sun had moved off toward the western horizon. It was quiet again except for the trickle of water over mossy rocks.

This had always been a special place for me, but without someone to share it with it isn’t the same. I brought ‘em all back to me to share the nostalgia of a time gone by. I’m not crazy. I know I’m not. But I do realize the selfishness of my actions. I do have empathy for their families who probably won’t give up looking for them. But I’m weak and sad and lonely.

I closed my eyes and took a drink of beer, letting it fill my throat and soothe my nerves. No one comes down to the Slash any more, and that’s fine by me. No one appreciates it like I do. I think I’ll make a fire and spend the night out here tonight. Nothing going on in town anyway. I’ve got my friends with me; Brian, Eric, and now Codie. They dwell with me here in a special place under the ground less than ten feet from the creek.

I’ll bury Codie with Brian and Eric after I drink this beer. Not the skulls though. I’ll keep them behind the cooler under the spot I carved out of the concrete. I keep them close to me and away from the kids who didn’t appreciate this place. Them, the bad ones like that whore I strangled, I cast out farther into the greenness of the Slash so their bodies can nourish this place. It’s the only thing they’re good for anyway.

—
Credits to: Nightwatch_SRB

Stranger Danger

I’ve always been a firm believer of teaching children about safety.

Every night after her ABC’s we go over the dangers in the world around her.

I quietly remind her of things like, not to cross the road on her own, not to touch the hot stove, not to stand too close to heaters and not to talk to strangers.

But I make it especially clear, she is never to play games like hide and seek with adults she doesn’t know.

After all, that’s how I found her in the first place.

—
Credits to: Karma4urthoughts

Seaweed

My grandmother grew up in the slums of Prohibition-era Chicago. Her family lived in a small house near the harbor, and one of her earliest memories was of a particularly hot summer when, seeking respite from the heat, she and her sister discovered a seldom-used section of boardwalk near an abandoned warehouse.

Every night for several weeks, the two girls would make their way down to the docks and sit together on the edge of the pier as the sun went down. My grandmother vividly, and for a time fondly, recalled the feel of the seaweed between her toes as she and her sister dangled their feet into the murky water.

It wasn’t until years later that she returned to the pier and found that the warehouse had been demolished. Curious, she made an inquiry with the Department of Planning and Development. Apparently, the warehouse had been owned for a time by the Mob, who was using it as a base of operations for a local prostitution racket. It had only been uncovered when an associate began ‘disposing’ of rival hookers by fitting them with concrete shoes and dumping them into the harbor. Investigating officers had recovered nearly two dozen bodies from the waters of a secluded pier nearby.

How had the bodies been discovered? A passing fisherman spotted some of the victims’ hair floating near the surface of the water, like seaweed.

—
Credits to: September Derleth

Well Water

We began feeling sick after the rains abated, and the backyard remained a slick muddy mess where the grass hadn’t grown back, and the foundation for our new in-ground pool filled to the height of my shins even though the concrete hadn’t yet been poured. Dad wanted us to accept that the illness was a cold we all happened to contract around the same time. I believed him, at first. Then my older brother reached a point where he’d vomit nearly every hour, and couldn’t even keep water in his system. No cold could make you do that, I thought.

When Mom started puking all the time, too, Dad called in a doctor. She suspected we all suffered from arsenic poisoning. That something contaminated our water supply. Her suggestion didn’t make a lot of sense — we’d lived at the house for years without a problem before — but we were in no condition to disagree.

We were brought to the hospital at the doctor’s insistence, but they didn’t find any arsenic in our systems. We didn’t even have a vitamin deficiency, or any of the usual poisoning symptoms. No viruses that they could spot; no bacterial infections; nothing.

Maybe the hospital air did us some good, because we had recovered in less than a week. We were a little thinner than before, obviously, but otherwise healthy. They discharged us by the weekend.

Back home, Mom forbade us from drinking tap water. We didn’t protest. Even though Dad had our well tested not long after we returned, and the results showed no arsenic or mercury or anything.

I was still skittish despite the test’s findings. I wouldn’t dare drink the water from our faucets. I wouldn’t even wash myself in our house if I could avoid it. I’d opt instead for the mildewed, stall-less group showers in the school gym in the morning; failing that, I’d clean as much of myself as I could at any free sink in a bathroom.

The rest of my family contracted the sickness again within two weeks of our hospitalization. The vomiting intensified. They started to lose track of the time or the date, and seemed confused if I engaged them in conversation. None of this happened to me. I remained relatively healthy, albeit less clean than I’d have liked.

The water had to be the culprit. Nobody believed me. But I knew it had to be the water.

One evening, I stood in the backyard to escape for a little while the retching sounds that had overtaken the house’s usual quiet. I planned to call an ambulance for my family later that night if they didn’t show any improvement. It was the right move, but it felt futile nonetheless. The hospital would find nothing medically wrong with them; they’d recover in a few days; they’d return home to repeat the cycle. Who knew how many times they could endure that? Probably no more than a few, if I could barely stand it even once. If my family were to survive, I had to figure out what was the matter.

But I didn’t have a clue. I was as baffled as the doctors — if not more. So I waited in the yard, collecting my thoughts in the relative quiet of the outdoors, where the sound of someone’s disgorging stomach wouldn’t scatter them. Thick mud choked what scant vegetation grew from the land around me, and only the balding pines at the edge of our yard showed any sign of vitality. Brown water hung stagnant in the basin of the unfinished pool. Winged insects skirted its surface, their faint wakes quickly fading.

I felt the entire yard was diseased, and I imagined that my lungs drew in tendrils of miasma with each breath. I couldn’t stand being there. It didn’t clear my thoughts; it simply replaced them with a different kind of nausea. I decided I’d take a walk in the woods. Anywhere would have been better than where I was.

When I came near enough to take a closer look at the pines, they seemed even less healthy than I’d first thought. They seemed blighted, their branches drying and collapsing from the bottom up. They weren’t alone — none of the plants I saw seemed in good health. Tiny saplings bent over themselves, rotting in their middles. Old oaks stood as barren as telephone poles, their broken limbs amassed at their feet. Out of morbid curiosity, I followed the decay where it seemed most heavily concentrated, and wended my way through the woods along a path of dying plants.

Before long, I reached a clearing in the trees. Nothing grew there except for a brittle grass that crunched and snapped like glass beneath my steps. Near the clearing’s edge, I spotted a small, triangular structure that resembled a poorly-tended doghouse. I went over to it. The structure turned out not to be a doghouse, but rather, a stone well. A wooden roof, now in a state of collapse, camped over it. A rather enterprising weed curled around its side, borrowing what little support the disintegrating wood could offer.

I looked around for a bucket, but found none. Then I realized that the well had been lidded. Dense wooden slabs boarded the well, although they, too, had decomposed heavily. They sagged in the middle beneath the steady pressure of a large stone. At first I figured the stone had been placed there to keep the slabs in place, but then I thought that the cover must have been quite weighty enough back in its day to stay in position of its own accord. With such an odd setup as this, the well only became more intriguing the longer I considered it.

After scrutinizing it for a while, I thought I saw some kind of markings on the stone. Did it carry an inscription? I couldn’t read it from my angle; for that matter, I couldn’t tell whether the markings were English words, or even Latin characters. I walked around the well, leaning in for a better view. I steadied myself against the ruined boards. They felt slimy against my bare palms.

They were also far more slippery than they appeared.

I misjudged my angle, and my hands slid out from under me. My chest thudded against the boards, and I heard a wet, arthritic pop as the aging wood gave way. I felt myself toppling forward, downward. The illegible stone splashed far below me, invisible in the inky black of the well. I scrabbled for a hold on something — anything — but the well’s damp inner walls afforded no grip.

My feet caught the lip of the well, and my ankles strained to support a weight they were never meant to carry. I tried to remain calm, and devise a means of escaping my precarious situation. I couldn’t move too sharply, as I relied solely on my unsteady balance, and whatever protuberances my shoelaces might lasso if I fell any further.

The blood rushed to my head, and my vision swam. Down below, the snapped wood jutted from the darkness like a shipwreck. As my eyes began to adapt, I could detect liquid motions throwing back the reflection of the light above. I couldn’t tell how deep it was, but it didn’t matter — I couldn’t bank on surviving if I fell in.

Between the masts of broken wood, I glimpsed a disturbance in the water. It began to grow round and smooth. Something was surfacing. An indistinct gray mass bobbed into sight and floated on the water. It seemed devoid of features.

Until it flipped under its own weight, and revealed its bloated face.

It had eyes, a mouth, and a nose, but all of them had swollen horribly, and seemed more humanoid than human. Its pallid skin stretched and shone, tight from the years of fluid it had absorbed. Wispy silver hair trailed like lily roots from its scalp into the dark water. Its arms hung limp at its sides. It wore no clothing.

I had never seen a dead body before, but somehow I knew that no corpse could surpass the revulsion this one instilled in me.

Then it moved.

Righting itself in one slow, rigid motion, it stood in the center of the well. Water ran from its body. Its head lolled, as if its neck could not carry the burden of its waterlogged skull. Its viscid, sopping eyelids peeled back, showing two dark, liquid spheres.

They stared at me. Into me. Or perhaps past me. I held my breath, hoping it was blind, or at least that it hadn’t noticed me.

At the thought, the thing’s jaw fell open, and a sticky, rasping noise escaped. A cold, putrid wind swept past my face, and I retched. The air had grown noxious. My aching legs screamed for oxygen.

It was too much. I lost control of myself. My arms began to flail, and I lost my tenuous hold on the well. I tumbled forward, banging my head against the stone wall. More out of reflex than volition, I stuck out my arms and legs. Suspended like a starfish above the yammering creature, I could see it reaching toward me. Mercifully, some distance still separated us.

So as not to drop myself into the thing’s outstretched hands, I carefully guided one foot up the well’s wall. Then I did the same with the other. My palms followed them. I would not chance more than half an inch with each motion. The creature seemed to recognize my intent. It let out a foul cry, and as it subsided, I watched the fallen boards begin rotting at a swift rate. I heard the sounds of small pebbles falling into the water. When one struck me on the back of the head, I realized that the well itself was decomposing around me.

I doubled my pace. Soon my fingertips felt the mouth of the well, and I hoisted myself up, too frightened to look behind me. As I hurled myself onto the anemic grass, the wooden roof above the well collapsed, crashing into the basin with a sound like falling trees. Had I taken any longer, I thought, that sodden hole would have been my coffin.

Exhausted and nauseated, I staggered back to my house. I felt filthy, but I wouldn’t dare shower. All I could think to do was to call the police. I wouldn’t tell them my full story — they’d never believe me. But I had, without a doubt, discovered a corpse. Surely it was worth alerting them to it. I told my parents what I told the police after placing the call. They were too fatigued and sickly to do anything to comfort me.

Over the next couple of days, I brought the police to the well, and watched them extract a gray, bloated corpse from its depths with a pulley. The body seemed thoroughly inanimate. They couldn’t identify it, as its face was too deformed to match any of their missing persons files.

The coroner’s office disclosed some pretty troubling findings. Apparently, the body had died long before it was deposited in the well, as its skin had been preserved through some chemical process. Some routine analysis revealed high concentrations of arsenic in the corpse’s skin. Apparently, embalming bodies in arsenic solutions used to be a common practice long ago. As such, the coroner suspected that the body was from the Civil War era. Perhaps, he suggested, the was where the arsenic poisoning came from?

I started to wonder whether I had hallucinated my encounter. Nobody else had seen what I did. And a level of disconnection from reality is not uncommon in cases of arsenic poisoning.

But how had the body ended up in the well? Furthermore, why had somebody sealed it inside? And what had been the purpose of the marked stone? Neither the coroner nor the police had answers for me. Then again, maybe I wasn’t asking valid, lucid questions.

They interred the body in the local cemetery at the outskirts of our city. Its headstone remained blank. For a corpse that old, that far past identifying, they could not have done anything more.

For many years thereafter, the burial marked the end of my story.

Recently, though, I returned to my hometown to indulge a pang of nostalgia. Although I have no family left in the area, I paid it a visit to retrace the routes of my childhood. I saw the old house, under new ownership for several decades. The pool remained pristine. The lawn grew lush and green; the trees flaunted a verdant canopy. No evidence remained of the damage the plagued corpse had wrought, except for the images I held my memories.

When I returned to the site of the decaying well, however, I was startled to notice that it rested at a lower elevation than the old house. A gradual downhill gradient ran from my former home to the well. No contaminant could have traveled upward via the natural forces of gravity and runoff.

And when I went to the city’s outskirts to inspect the blank headstone, I found that nothing grew around it. Not even weeds. The earth in its vicinity remained brown and bare. I walked away in a daze, watching my steps to keep myself upright.

As I stared at the ground, I spotted a path of arid dirt snaking from the grave toward town.

—
Credits to: Lex Joy

Misunderstanding

My mom thinks I’m cutting myself.

Mom freaked out when she saw the cuts on my arms last month. She thought I was hurting myself.

My stepfather was too much of a prick to tell her the truth. He stood in the corner, arms crossed, watching as she gripped me by the shoulders and tried to literally shake some sense into me.

Even as she bawled her eyes out, holding me close to her and begging me not to hurt myself any more, the man kept his stupid ass mouth shut. He shot me this threatening look so I’d do the same.

Mom set up an emergency counseling session. After a few weeks, when she saw that no new cuts had appeared, she wholeheartedly thanked the therapist for saving my life.

Meanwhile, her husband did what he always does: he played dumb.

She’ll be so disappointed in me tomorrow morning, when she finds her claw marks all over me again.

It’d be so much easier if we tied her up on the full moon.

Carrier

We’ve all seen the ads. Phone this number and fill out a few forms to become a human guinea pig. Experiments performed for the greater good or whatever. They make you sign all sorts waivers and such for insurance reasons. Always about money, but I guess that’s why I’m here; To get paid for voluntary medical bullshit. It’s worth it though.

First is a full check up, blood, urine, x-rays, vision, dental, and everything else. Next is various shots of a clear liquid for the next couple of weeks followed by some the worst food I’ve ever eaten. They never tell me what the experiment is for and any questions I ask fall on deaf ears, so I assume they want accurate results instead of having placebo effects.

3 months in they tell me that things would be changing. I would be meeting the other volunteers to have a group discussion. We all sit down in a circle of chairs, taking turns talking about our experiences over the last couple of months. At the end of the meeting the doctors come in to tell us about the last phase.

They tell us what they’ve done to us. We were given experimental drugs to see if they work, and to test them we’re being sent to West Africa. Those who are severely infected will be left to die, but those who survive would be allowed to come back home.

Silently infecting others and weeding out the weak, while collecting a big paycheck.

I survived. Like I said, it’s worth it.


—

Credits to: MyShadowHuntsMe

Room 1C

I lived in unit 1B in an apartment building. It was on the second floor, at the end of a hallway that leads to the other units, and I had the whole thing to myself. And for a while, it was pretty good. Quiet building, decent rent, no problems with the landlords or other tenants. But a couple of months ago, the unit right above me–1C–started to get noisy.

It sounded like a little kid playing and stuff, running around and all that. But the weird thing is, it only happened at night, around 11pm or later. I ignored it for as long as I could, but I have to get up early for work, so eventually I had to say something. One night when the kid was really loud, probably around midnight, I went upstairs and stood at 1C’s door. Yup, he was definitely in there, running around and playing or something.

I knocked on the door, and right away, the kid stopped running. I guess it was one of those times when kids get caught doing something bad, they freeze up and play dumb. I actually smiled when I thought that, and I wasn’t mad or anything… but no one answered the door. So I knocked again, and said, “Hey, could you please keep it down? I can’t sleep.”

No one answered. But the kid had stopped running, so whatever, I went back to my flat. As I left, I could have sworn I heard something… it was like a giggle, but combined with a series of rapid, low-pitched clicks. I ignored it and went to sleep.

But a few days later, the kid was back at it. All hours of the night he was running up and down, making a Hell of a racket. I didn’t want to go and knock on the door again, so the next morning, I went to the management office in town. They gave me the paperwork to file a noise complaint, and I filled it out then and there. But as I handed it back to the lady at the front desk, she took one look at it, and said, “Umm… 1C is vacant.” I asked her what unit was above 1B, and she said 1C. And I was sure that was where the noise was coming from, but she checked her records, and sure enough, 1C was vacant. In fact, she still had the keys in a little set of cubbyholes behind her desk.

There were a couple of other people in the office, and they started to look at me like I was crazy. I didn’t want to create a scene, so I left and did my best to ignore the kid, or whatever it was, for the next couple of days.

But one night I woke up, and not because the kid was making noise. Something wet was dripping onto my face. I got up and turned the lights on, and saw that the ceiling right above my bed was leaking water… really dusty, dirty water. I called management’s emergency number and they sent a repairman over right away.

And I was pretty pissed off. My bed was soaked and filthy, I couldn’t get back to sleep, and I had work in a couple of hours. So when the repairman came over, I went with him up to 1C. He had the keys, so we didn’t have a problem getting in.

There was about an inch of dust everywhere, and the moment we went in, it started to fly all over the place. I felt it coating my lips and the inside of my mouth and nose when I breathed. And it was pretty chilly, even though it was the middle of spring and probably seventy degrees outside. So me and the repairman pulled our shirts over our noses and headed through the living room and into the bedroom, which was right above my bedroom. There was a trail of water leading from the attached bathroom, and when we followed it, we saw that a faucet was on and the sink had overflowed.

I looked back in the living room. My footprints were there, and the repairman’s, but that was it. We shut off the faucet and since the repairman didn’t seem too interested in talking to me, I let him vacuum up the water and fix the floor by himself. But I had to know what was going on. Had someone broken in? There’s a drainpipe right next to the window in the bedroom, and it faces an alley, so I opened the blinds to check it out.

But the window was locked from the inside, and it wasn’t broken or anything. The only weird thing about it was that there was a single, dusty handprint on the inside pane, but the moment I breathed on it, it vanished. It was getting pretty early by then, so I headed out to get whatever sleep I could. I didn’t see anything else in the unit, but I’m pretty sure I heard something clicking as I left. Maybe it was the floor.

I think something happened to the repairman, because we had a couple of issues in the building and management had to hire a contractor to fix them. He didn’t come back until a while later, and even then he was coughing and wheezing all over the place. But things were quiet on my end, and I didn’t have any more problems with 1C, not until a week or so after the water incident.

It was really loud that night. Like, really loud. It was like the kid was jumping up and down and stomping around. There was that weird giggling noise too, mixed with those low pitched clicks. I still have no idea what they were. Anyway, I had just about enough of it, so I stormed up to 1C and started to bang on the door. I shouted at whoever was in there to shut the fuck up and let me get some sleep, and that was when someone told me to calm down.

I must have woken up half the hallway, because they were all sticking their heads out of the doors and staring at me. I asked them if they heard anything, and they said no, 1C was vacant. I asked them if they were making any noise, and I must have cursed again, because they told me to go back to sleep or they were going to call the cops. I didn’t really have a choice, so I did what they said.

The next morning, I went to management to thank them for dealing with all of my complaints. I apologized for the night before and promised that it wouldn’t happen again, and then I gave them a box of donuts. The lady went to go and give it to the rest of the workers, and when they were picking out which ones they wanted, I reached over the desk and grabbed the keys to room 1C. I chatted with them for a few minutes and then headed to work.

I got a flashlight on my way home, and a surgical mask for the dust. I’m not sure what I meant to do, but that night, when I heard the little motherfucker stomping around again, I went up the stairs, put my mask on, unlocked room 1C, and went in. I left the door open to get in some light from the hall, but the entry to the suite is a tight turn, so it didn’t do me much good. And when I went into the living room, it slammed shut behind me anyway.

It was really dusty in there. And really dark, I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing without my flashlight. And the weird thing is, even though the windows were in the living room were closed, there was a lot of air moving around, it was making the dust fly all over the place. Even with my flashlight I couldn’t see very far, because of all the dust. But I kept going. There was nothing in the living room, nothing in the closet, nothing in the kitchen. So I went to the bedroom.

The moment I stepped in, it got freezing cold. I could see my breath in the air, and the dust was still going nuts… but I went in a little further to take a look around. My flashlight died out–and that was weird, since I got the batteries that day–so I tried to turn on the lights. But of course the electricity had been shut off. The only light was from the streetlights through the gaps around the blinds.

I was having a tough time breathing. It was because of the surgical mask, so I took it off, but it was so dusty that it didn’t make a difference one way or the other. And I was getting really, really cold, and nothing was there, so I decided to go. I turned around, and that was when I a lot of dust gather in the air in front of me. It wasn’t like when it was just floating, it was definitely collecting in the shape of something. But I couldn’t see and I couldn’t breathe, so I stepped aside to get some of the street light on it.

It was a face. A kid’s face. It smiled for a minute, making that weird clicking sound, and then it started to float toward me. I tried to scream, but the dust got in my mouth, so I held my breath and shoved the kid–I definitely shoved something solid away–and I ran the fuck out of the bedroom and toward the door. But it was locked, and my key didn’t work–and I heard footsteps behind me, light footsteps, and a kid giggling. When it got close, I kicked out as hard as I could, and then I managed to break the door down and get back into the hallway.

That got everyone out, and they were all looking at me like I was a freak. But I talked to an old lady about it later, and she said that when they saw how pale I was, and how hard I was struggling to breathe, they knew that something was wrong. I couldn’t talk, I was coughing so much, so I just pointed at the door.

A couple of big guys went in to check it out. They didn’t need flashlights, the lights worked just fine when they turned them on. They told me they saw footprints in the dust. Most of them were mine, but some of them were a lot smaller. And one of them said that just next to the door, there was a heavier layer of dust, and it was in the shape of a little kid.

I got an apartment down the street the next day. Management agreed to give me my security deposit back if they could rent 1B by the next month, so there were a bunch of people looking at it while I was moving my stuff out. One of them asked me if the other tenants were quiet, if there were any noisy kids or anything. I just said no. And he ended up taking the place.

I saw him at a bar yesterday. I asked him if it was still a quiet building, and he said yeah, for the most part. But some nights he hears something from the unit above him. I said, what, is it a little kid being loud or something? He said no. It’s a little kid crying.


—

Credits to: Alex Ross