Pacemaker

It started when I was 16. I was an only child, living with my mother and father. Every night I would wake up at 2:16 AM exactly. No dopiness, no tiredness, nothing. I would sit bolt upright, for a reason unknown to me, and I would listen. I would see nothing in the pitch black of my room, I would hear nothing in my silent house. For five minutes, until 2:21 AM, I would listen hard. At first, I heard generally; five minutes of being totally alert, totally unable to switch off, hearing not a single sound. Then, as quickly as the alertness came, it faded, and I'd fall fast asleep.

This went on for a few weeks, every night, the same. I didn't think much of it. I wasn't scared very easily; this was more puzzling than anything else. Around a month or so into the awakenings, I heard the first sound. It was so close to being inaudible, I almost thought I imagined it. A soft footfall outside my door, on the stairs leading up to my attic room.

The next night, another step taken, yet still incredibly quiet, as if on tiptoes. Still, I was more puzzled than scared, but it was starting to become a little strange. This progressed, night after night, the footsteps growing louder and louder, closer and closer up the 12 stairs to my room.

On the fifth night, I tried to get out of my bed to investigate during the awakening. But I couldn't move. It didn't feel like paralysis; it felt like my body wasn't my own, as if I had no control; as if all I had was consciousness and no physical input. I started to become scared.

The next day I stayed off school "sick". I was beside myself with fear for that night. I finally fell asleep at around 2:00 AM.

And I woke up the next day, like nothing had ever happened. I had not awakened during my sleep. I felt more refreshed than I had been in weeks. I was beside myself with relief, and had a great day. The next night, again, I slept like a log. It was over.

The next month was probably the best of my life. I did well in all my classes, I got a girlfriend. I had good luck and generally, just had a good time.

It was after a particularly good Saturday spent with my girlfriend that I went to bed, the happiest guy alive. I couldn't wait for the next day.

I have never felt the same chills as I felt that night when I woke up at 2:16 AM, sitting bolt upright, unable to move, staring blindly into space, listening. Four minutes of complete silence passed; with every second, a stronger chill surged down my spine. With every second, another bead of cold sweat slipping down my neck.

At 2:20, with the loudest crash, I heard my door being ripped from its hinges and smashed against the far wall. Footsteps thudding towards me with unstoppable intent, louder than you can possibly imagine, closer and closer until they stopped dead. A cold rush of air washed over me, chilling me to the bone. My eyes, wide with terror, searching for anything, anything to focus on. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then suddenly, emblazoned in my vision in white, etched, print the words "I have arrived", along with the most horrible sound I have ever heard. If you have ever heard the screams of foxes in the night, imagine them at a much lower pitch... An inhuman, guttural scream, the scream of an agonized, tortured soul. I remember the exact sound to this very day.

Beyond that, there was nothing. I fell asleep at 2:21 AM, and woke up the next day too terrified to do anything. I sat hunched on my bed. All day. Unmoving. When night came, I was wide awake. I never wanted to sleep again. Time ticked by on the clock... 1:30... 1:45... 2:00... 2:10... 2:15... Then I blacked out. I don't remember anything that happened that night.

I awoke to find myself standing in my parents' room. Simply standing there, arms by my sides, relaxed. I had no idea how I got there, which in itself was slightly alarming, as I had never been prone to sleepwalking. But the disturbing thing was that I didn't feel odd. I didn't feel out of place, staring down blankly at the faces of my sleeping parents. I couldn't help but notice how vulnerable they looked.

Eventually I snapped out of my trance and went downstairs. I vaguely remember making breakfast. I ate food but tasted nothing. My senses seemed to be dulled, my head hazy. Despite the horror of the night before last, I did not feel scared... I didn't feel... well... anything. I went to school that day, concentrating on nothing, accepting a detention wordlessly, coasting along. Never once making an attempt to talk to anyone about anything. School ended and I walked home.

That night, my phone rang. I watched it. I remember just... just watching it ring out, no desire to answer, no desire to even check who it was. Presumably, it was my girlfriend, as she came round later that night. I was upstairs, just sitting on my bed, staring at the wall. She tried to talk to me, I didn't answer. She lay down and pulled me down with her. She hugged me, trying to coerce me to respond. But one thing really annoyed me, and I don't know why. She kept telling me I was really cold. Really, really fucking cold. Eventually, I turned over to look at her. At first she smiled as my eyes met hers; finally, a response. The smile quickly faded. I felt no love for this girl. I felt like I did not know her, and this must have been reflected in my eyes. Empty, devoid of caring. All I could see was her vulnerability, lying there next to me.

She fell asleep at about 1 AM. I just watched her like that, for a full hour. At 2 AM, I closed my eyes, not even a hint of anxiety. I counted those 16 minutes, second by second, and thereafter I remember nothing.

I woke up in a pool of blood as dawn broke. I looked to my right to see my girlfriend. Her chest had been ripped apart, her ribs hanging loose at either side. Unidentifiable organs spilling out. I felt nothing. I rose from my bed, covered in blood. I followed a trail of red, arterial blood out of my room, down my stairs, into my parents' room. My father's head lay bloodied and caved-in beside his still-oozing neck. A giant gash split his back in two. His right leg rammed down my mother's throat, her jaw unhinged and her legs and arms crumpled at impossible angles. I felt nothing.

I turned around and walked downstairs. I noticed a trail of blood left in my wake. You could smell it. Smell it seeping into the carpet, the cloying smell of iron pervading the house. Even through my numbed senses. I went and made myself breakfast. Another tasteless meal. In fact, it was getting worse. I could taste less than the day before. I went back upstairs and stared at the wall for hours, I think. By now I keep forgetting what happened... My mind just became cloudy and unaware of what was happening. Eventually, I just lay back down in the pool of blood, next to my eviscerated girlfriend.

I remember reading 2:16 on the alarm before I went to sleep that night. I remember waking up standing in front of the wall next to my parents' room. From the door frame to where I was standing at the wall, neat rows of blood-colored handprints. I couldn't see much, but looking down, I saw my hand smeared in red. My hearing was almost gone. My touch was so dull that I felt completely separate from the rest of the world. Trudging over to my parents' room, I should have been horrified. Not only because of the mangled corpses, but because of the fact that every wall, the floor and even the ceiling were covered in handprints, my handprints. Inked in my parents' coagulating blood.

The last thing I remember doing was going downstairs and clumsily searching through my drawers; finally finding a rusty old knife that had dropped behind the back of one drawer, then making my slow way upstairs. Then, nothing.

A neighbor eventually complained about the smell coming from our house. The police arrived shortly afterwards. I pity anyone who had to step into that house. Nearly a week's decay would have made the smell utterly overwhelming. They thought we were all dead at first. But, when I had been transported outside, upon closer inspection, I was still alive; somehow.

They had found me on the stairs with both legs and my left arm lying beside me, detached. There were no clean cuts, nothing surgical about the procedure. They could not explain how I had not died of shock or blood-loss, but as they discovered my only remaining limb grasping that blunt, rusty table knife, they knew what had done it.

I've been in the institution for two weeks now. I have never felt better. I feel... normal. I'm like any other person now. Any one of you. I could be living a normal life, feeling like this. Like every one of your existences. But I'm not. I'm writing this final little bit, waiting for an operation to save my digestive system. See, there's an unidentified metal object in there somewhere that has to come out. A little box-shaped thing. Well, I say unidentified... I only just remembered that my girlfriend had a pacemaker.

----

Credits

The Puppet

It was a marionette, I think. It had a big head, the face was made of wrinkly, flesh colored rubber. The eyes were gigantic, bulging white orbs with red pupils. The hair was black, made of some hard substance that didn’t mesh with the rubbery head. The teeth were gigantic, pure white and capable of moving up and down. The body and limbs were wooden, painted to resemble clothes, but the paint was faded, you could see the wood’s natural brown in some places. Each arm and leg was a different length, but the hands and feet were pretty detailed. It made a loud clattering sound whenever it moved.

That puppet... followed me. I don’t mean it got up and chased me. I mean it kept showing up in my life. My earliest memory of it is from my first birthday. I obviously don’t remember the full details of that day, but I remember my parents singing happy birthday and that puppet. I don’t know what it was there for; I just remember it scared me to death and I couldn’t stop crying. When I was able to talk, I asked my parents about it, and they said nothing like that had happened on my first birthday. They must not have thought lying about it would make things easier for me.

The next time I saw it, I was around three. I was exploring a room filled with old stuff my parents had stored away and I found a calendar, but I don’t remember the year. There was a photo for each month, but the only one I remember was October; that puppet was the image for it. I got scared and ran out of the room. I told my mom and tried to show her the calendar so that she’d know the puppet was real, but I couldn’t find it. The room had been very messy, and I had ran out of it so quickly I knocked over piles of stuff, I guess the calendar got buried.

I was six when it happened again. It was the middle of the night, I woke up from a nightmare I can’t remember the details of. I was too scared to go back to sleep, so I went into the living room and turned on the TV. An old black and white show on Nick at Nite was ending and when the commercials started, that puppet came on. It was dancing while loud music played. I screamed and started crying uncontrollably, but by the time my parents got downstairs, the puppet was gone.

I didn’t see the puppet again for a while after that, but I kept having nightmares about it. When I was 15, I decided to try to track it down, using the internet to try to find information about the calendar, the short, anything. No one had ever heard of it, but one day I got an instant message from someone I had never talked to before. Their screen name was a random mash-up of numbers and letters, but their avatar was a picture of the puppet. They IMed me, "Glad that you still remember me," then immediately signed off. They never contacted me or came online again.

When I was 20, I was walking by a store that sold old toys and dolls, and in the front window, I saw the puppet. I went inside, and asked the clerk if he knew anything about that puppet’s history, when it was made, where it was from, anything. He didn’t, said the puppet had just been sold to the store a few days ago, I could have it for $6. I wasn’t sure what to do, it still scared me, but having proof that it really existed seemed like a good idea. I bought the puppet, and took it home.

For a while, I felt better. I viewed the puppet as a childhood fear I had overcome as an adult and even started to believe the explanations my parents had given me for the past appearances of it (I saw it somewhere else as a baby, imagined the calendar, dreamed the TV short, and someone online who had one played a trick on me).

I kept the puppet, but as I moved on in my life, I pretty much forgot about it. I finished college, got married, and my wife should be giving birth in a few weeks. I was cleaning up a room for when the baby comes, and found the puppet, dusty and abandoned. I didn’t want my kid seeing it when he was little, so I picked it up, and decided I might as well wipe the dust off before moving it to another place. When I dusted it, I noticed a faded inscription on the back: "This is what he'll look like." Before I could figure out what this meant, I heard my wife starting to cry. I rushed to her, she looked more upset than I had ever seen her. Sobbing, she told me that the doctor had just called.

There was a problem with the baby...

---

Credits

The Family Portrait

Recently at the art gallery I work at, they had a new exhibition for local artists. It was the usual sort of thing; substandard paintings that only got a shoo-in because they were from the local community, paintings of local people and places and so forth. It was my job to decide which paintings got put on display, which entailed me sorting through around a hundred of these awful excuses for art. There was one, though, that really caught my attention. Unlike the others, it was not of a local scene or a local person; it was of a family. A father in a suit sitting in a chair, his dutiful wife behind him and his young son and daughter at his feet.

By the looks of their clothes, they were from the 19th century, typically dressed for a middle class family of that period. Two things struck me about the painting; firstly the attention to detail and the quality of the artwork was impeccable (almost photogenic), and secondly was the shiver it sent down my spine. The people in the portrait had this eerie, gaunt look to them, and expressions that were so blank they looked almost dead. The painting had no artists name attached to it, and Molly from reception had said that she couldn’t recall anybody sending it in. I decided then that instead of putting the painting on display I would take it home with me; after all it had no name attached to it so nobody was going to miss it were they?

I got home and decided that I was going to hang it in my study, and after hanging it, spent the rest of the night filing paperwork. Every so often I would find my eyes drawn to the painting. I felt the strangest, and most uncomfortable, sensation. I felt like the family in the painting were somehow judging me; like I could feel their eyes boring into me from the painting. What’s worse is that because they were staring at the painter (and therefore anybody who looked at the painting) their eyes seemed to follow me around the room. After a while I couldn’t take it anymore, I turned the painting against the wall and vowed that, no matter how interesting it was, I would return it to the gallery the next day. I got a hold of myself though, I had been working quite late and was very tired, and decided that I would sleep on it. I began to finish off the last of my filing at my desk. This was a bad idea; my eyes were heavy and before I knew it I had fallen asleep right there in the study.

That night my dreams were filled with visions of the painting. Over and over again, all I dreamed about was that family staring at me from behind the canvas, drilling into my soul with their blank, visionless stares. With every dream they seemed to get more and more intense, until after a while their eyes were wide and they were giving me looks of such intense hatred that I thought they were about to kill me. After a while, I snapped into awareness to find myself face to face with the painting, except this time instead of blank expressions I was faced with a hellish vision that will haunt me until I die. Their faces were twisted into looks of absolute malice. Their gaunt waxen skin was drawn taught across their pointed cheekbones, their lips peeled back across blackened gums to reveal gnarled yellow teeth bared in a bestial snarl. The less that was said about their bloodshot, protruding eyes the better. I screamed and fell off my chair, stumbling out the room, unable to turn and look back at the painting. I ran across the hallway and dived into my bed, burying my head under the covers.

The next morning when I woke up, I was still terrified. I rationalized it to myself though; you were overtired and you had a night terror, the room was dark and both the shadows and your mind were trying to play tricks on you. I went about my usual routine unperturbed, comforted by the rational logic of my mind. I was about to go to work when I realized I had forgotten about the papers in the study. I opened the door to grab the papers but as soon as I set foot in the room, my heart froze and my blood ran cold. The painting was still turned against the wall.

Not only that, but my desk had not even been facing the painting to begin with; it was facing the window.

---

Credits

I Now Live In A One Story House

There were two rules we had to follow, when we were living on the second floor of the old apartment building. First, lock your door at night, and second, be very careful at the top of the stairs. These were natural rules, since despite the front door being locked, you had to be really sure of two full floors of neighbors to leave the door unlocked, especially during the night. As I understood it, the management of the house used to be really strict about the locked doors thing, and had put up signs all over the place telling people to lock their doors. I heard from the man next door that they sometimes even went around at night and rattled all the doors, making sure that they were all locked, but of course they completely denied being so invasive as that. I had never heard them at it, but I had been known to sleep perfectly content through an earthquake, so that was no indication. As for the stairs, it was just a simple reminder; they were steep and slightly tricky stairs, and I heard there had even been a couple of deaths from falling down them. It was good to remind people. Nothing wrong with that.

Besides, my sister and I were happy there. Leanne had been fortunate enough to get the room directly across from mine, and we were old enough to actually enjoy each others' company, despite the traditional feud that comes between an older brother and his younger sister. To tell the truth, the feud still existed, but had become more of a cheerful rivalry than anything else. We were happy. Just... happy.

Things weren't perfect, granted. We were in an area that had constant thunderstorms, and the power was as often out as it was functional. My room had a continuous smell of strong soap, and although that isn't at all the worst thing it could smell of, it was a bit tiresome after a while. Leanne's room developed a troublesome lock, and half the time the bolt would click out the moment someone pulled at it. We wanted to move out, sure, but we also wanted to wait until we could each be sure that the other could, too. If only we had known, if only there had been even the slightest flicker of menace, but there was none. There were no cold spots, no abnormal shivers when passing over a certain area, no strange noises but for the occasional rattling of the knobs in the night. Nothing. Not until that night.

I awoke in the middle of it simply out of thirst. I first tried my sink, obviously, but the power was out, so the pump wasn't running. Annoying, but the landlords kept a tank full at the top of the stairs, exactly for this purpose. Really, I should have thought to fill up my own jug whenever there was a storm warning, but however many times I had thought of it, I never quite managed to go through with it.

I went out to the landing, torch in hand. Halfway to the tank at the top of the stairs, I tried to click it on and found that it was dead, but that mattered little. There was ambient light, and lightning frequently flashed through the skylights with which the architect had a love affair when designing the building. I got to the tank, and began filling my bottle, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed movement halfway down the staircase. As I looked, there was nothing, though it was that kind of nothing that happens when you're staring at the object you're looking for, that sense of it being right in front of you, if only you could see it.

Then, by the flash of the lightning, I saw what was really there.

It was crawling. It had to, as it had no legs that I could see. It was like a torso, cut off right above the hips, reaching out with both hands and pulling itself up the stairs one slow, painful step at a time. Black tatters ...shrouded it, I suppose, because clothed wouldn't fit right on that thing. It was shrouded in the black tatters, and where they failed to cover, blank space showed, not black, and definitely not white, but rather a simple absence that I still cannot think of without my stomach rising in protest. This space was not empty, as the vacuum beyond our planet is, but rather it was less than empty; it was hungry, it sucked in, it was the opposite all that was material and physical.

Then, the lightning flash faded, but I could still somehow perceive its shape, continuing up the stairs. Even as I turned to run, another flash lit the room, and as though it had sensed my intent to flee, it lifted its head, and –

I'm sorry, but I cannot, I will never set to word neither spoken nor written my full description of its... face, for lack of a better word. It was simply all that a face should not be, and since this time, there has been no sight so horrible, so fearsome, so terrifying, that has impressed itself upon me in the least, for how could it compare? That is the one... triumph, I suppose, that I bring from that night, out of all its horror: I shall never again be cowed by the sight of evil, for the worst done by man is but the palest reflection of the visage that faced me then.

I ran. What else could I do? I ran to my room, as fast as I could, and began fumbling with my keys, all the while becoming aware of a faint, slithery drag-thump, drag-thump coming from the stairway. How far up had it been? Halfway? Two-thirds? How many steps did it have left?

Finally, I forced my key into the lock, yanked the door open, dove in, locked it again, and collapsed, the adrenaline suddenly gone. I had no time for introspection, however, as I suddenly realized that I could still hear the thing, now up on the landing! It was still crawling; I could hear the hand-over-hand slither of it as it came straight to my door. The handle moved! It rattled for a moment, then went still. Even as I started to let myself relax, I heard the door of the next room over rattle, but it too was locked. I heard it go down to the end of the hallway, rattling each door in turn, testing the locks. I sat, and prayed that none of the other tenants had left their door unlocked, leaving themselves open to that terror.

Then, as it had come back and was almost across the hall from me again, I thought: Leanne. Please, no...

Its slithering movement was clearly across from me. I listened, hoping, praying for a rattle.

The lock clicked, and the door creaked.

I couldn't help it. I grabbed the useless flashlight as a club and threw open the door. At the same time, there was a clatter and an all-too-familiar scream from the direction of the staircase. I ran towards it, other tenants opening their doors and peering out, working torches lighting the hallway. There was yet some glimmer of hope in me, some faint wish that if I got there fast enough, she would be alright.

But no.

There, at the bottom, crumpled like a broken toy, the marks of hands fast fading from her ankles, was Leanne.

---

Credits

Daddy, Are You Awake?

We're a small family of four: the two of us and two kids -- four and three years old. My daughter is the older one and for the last year has had nightmares off and on. Some mornings I'll wake up with her wedged firmly in between my wife and I, which is fine. We've all been there. I have no problem with it.

What I do have a problem with is when she walks in twenty minutes after we've turned the lights off and the house is dark, just to stand next to the bed on my side and stare at me. I get the sensation that I'm not alone and wake up with a dark little silhouette right next to my face. Although at times it sends me into a slight panic or at least, leaves me with slight chills (not very manly or dad-like I'll admit), I'll break the silence. "Yes, sweetie?" She'll usually ask me if I'm awake and tell me she had bad dreams. I'll let her climb into bed with us at that point and that's the end of it.

Well, last night, the same thing happened. I got the uneasy feeling I wasn't alone, my eyelids opened and there she was again -- a dark little silhouette mere inches from my face.

"What is it, sweetie?" I asked.

No response. Just silence. Then it clicked that both my kids were staying with my in-laws for the night.

I no longer wonder why my daughter wants to sleep in our bed. I was able to reach up and flip on the light, but of course there was no one there. However, I looked down the hallway and into my daughter's room and the silhouette is standing in the door way and hasn't moved for the last hour.

I think it's waiting for my daughter to come home.

---

Credits

It's Locked

About ten years ago I was recently divorced and living alone in a one bedroom apartment. The place was clean and the rent was decent. One of those places that had a doorman, I felt safe here. I was alone and loving it, focused on my career and not on my clingy ex husband. Things were finally looking up for me.

At the time I was working pretty late at the office and would often stumble into my apartment sleep deprived in the early hours of the morning and wake up by 6:30, 7ish to start the day. I started noticing that in the morning my door would be unlocked sometimes, I usually dismissed this as my sleep dead brain thinking that the bed looked more appealing than locking the door. Another thing that I noticed since moving in was that I seemed to misplace things more than I used to, little things like a hairbrush or nail polish, that sort of thing. It wasn’t really that big of a deal, just enough to be a slight annoyance in my day.

The longer I lived there the more frequently I seemed to forget to lock the door, at first it was every once in a while then it seemed like an almost daily occurrence. More things went missing, things like pictures, shaving razors and most disturbingly, my underwear. This went on for long enough that I started to get a little paranoid. I started to take the time at night to make sure the door was locked, I got into a habit of every night after I locked the door to turn the handle three times and say to myself “It’s locked, it’s locked, it’s locked.” Time after time I would wake up and the door would be unlocked. One time I even tried staying up all night to watch the door, but I ended up falling asleep in my chair.

I decided that my mind was not reliable enough to stay up all night so I invested in a video camera. I went all out and bought the fanciest camera that I could get my hands on. So one night I set the camera up facing the door. I hid the camera under a pile of towels on the floor. I locked the door and went to bed.

When I woke up, my apartment looked normal. Nothing missing that I could see. I decided to check the tape. I fast forwarded through hours of footage, not seeing anything. I was just about to give up when I noticed the handle of the door jitter. Then it slowly crept open. A figure slid through the half opened door. And walked towards the camera. It paused. Looked around as if it was listening for something. Then walked forward into direct view of the camera. I paused the camera, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck started to rise. I was staring directly into the face of the maintenance man of the building. I could see those big thick glasses and curly hair. I had no doubt who it was. I played the tape a little more. He looked comfortable as he walked around the apartment. Then he turned and walked towards my bedroom and out of the view of the camera.

I didn’t know what to do, sobbing I called the police. I tried to explain over the phone but couldn’t. Soon enough two officers arrived at my doorstep. I told them everything and showed them the tape. I remember seeing the blood drain from their faces. They promised me that I was safe, and that they where going to get this guy.

I needed to lay down, but didn’t want to be alone. One of the officers offered to stand outside my apartment door as I took a nap. As I was laying in bed unable to sleep but to drained to move, something kept nagging at me. I laid there for a few minutes tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable or rest. My mind was racing. Then a realisation slowly washed over me and chilled me to the bone. We watched the tape, and saw the man enter my home…but we never saw him leave. I froze , then started shaking. I needed to get to the front door. I sat up and looked around the room. I couldn’t see anyone. I swung my legs over the side of the bed cautiously, my feet hit the cold wood floor and I felt warm breath on my ankles. I raced out of my apartment as fast as I could and to the safety of the police officer. He called for backup. They found the man under my bed, clutching a knife and a Polaroid camera.

To this day I cannot sleep alone.

----

Credits

She Found Her Way Into My Home...

Please, I don't know what to do. I've tried to tell my wife about this, but she's a science teacher and thanks to my history of practical jokes, she thinks I'm just kidding.

There is something stalking me. I don't know what it wants, but almost every night since I started seeing it, it has terrorized me. It doesn't touch me, it doesn't communicate in any sort of way, it just fills me with horror. If what I seem to ramble, please forgive me... I haven't slept in several days.

We live in the second floor of a duplex with stairs down the back of the house to the basement where the laundry machines are. There's a door at the bottom of the stairs before the door to the basement that looks out onto our back porch and into the back yard. Six days ago, I was going down to the basement to bring up some laundry and I glanced out the door as I passed. There was a figure standing at the far edge of our yard. Her back was to me, and she was just standing there, looking into the woods beyond our yard. She was dressed in nothing but a light gown. It had lots of flowing material coming off of it that was whipping around in the air slowly. The whole scene creeped me out instantly, but I thought she might be a friend of our downstairs neighbor, so I continued to the basement. When I came back up, she wasn't there.

The next night, I went down again, and as I passed the back door, I looked outside. The woman was back. She was exactly like she was the night before, facing away, not moving. The hair on my arms and neck stood up straight when I saw her. I was even more creeped out when I realized she was in the same clothes as the night before. That's when I did something I shouldn't have... I opened the back door. Leaning out, I called to her to see if she was okay. She didn't respond. She didn't make any sort of indcation that she'd heard me. It was freezing cold, so I shut the door and locked it. Coming back upstairs afterward, I looked out the window and she was gone again.

Later that same night, I was in the bedroom, getting ready to go to sleep. Everything was dark, because my wife had gone to bed before me. Our bedroom looks out over the backyard, and my side of the bed faces the windows, so I have to go past them to get in. As I was doing so, I suddenly got that same deep dread feeling in my stomach that I had gotten the first time I saw the figure in the backyard. Something compelled me to hesitate by the windows. My hands were shaking as I pulled the curtain back a bit and peeked through the shades into the backyard. It was a clear night, so the backyard wasn't shrouded in darkness. The woman was standing in the middle of the backyard, no longer at the edge of the woods, facing the house with her head tilted up to look directly at the window I was peeking from. I jerked away instantly, afraid she had seen me. Her face was covered in shadow and hair, but I saw her chin and nose. A sharp nose and a thin chin. Gray. Her skin looks gray, I think. Her hair is black and long. I was so scared, I jumped into bed and covered myself with the covers.

The next day, I played outside in the snow with my four year old daughter. She wanted me to pull her on her sled in the backyard, but just the thought of going back there made me scared again, so I talked her into digging holes in the snow in the front yard. That night, things went from bad to worse. Somehow, I had managed to forget about the woman. Then, in the middle of the night, my daughter started crying. Our bedroom is just across the hall from hers. I thought she might need to use the bathroom or just be having a bad dream, so I went into her room to see if she was okay. She was uncovered, curled into a ball on her mattress. I pulled her covers over her and that's when she whispered to me.

"Daddy, there's someone in my closet."

Instant goosebumps. I turned my head slowly toward the closet door at the end of her bed. Normally, the closet is shut, but now it was open. The woman was standing in my daughter's closet. Not even when it was clear that I saw her did she move or make a sound, just stood there and looked at me through the cracked-open door. My blood ran cold when I saw her.

"Get up," I told my daughter, "Get in my arms, quickly. QUICKLY." she scrambled up and hugged me tightly and I walked backward out of the room, watching the closet the entire time. In my mind I imagined her throwing the closet door open and running at us, arms outstretched. I just hugged my daughter and walked backward into my room. The woman never appeared in the doorway. I heard no movement from my daughter's room. I tucked her into my bed and stood there watching the doorway to her bedroom. I did not go back in, I just stood there and watched and listened. When I finally got the courage to climb into bed, I didn't sleep.

Sunday, I told my wife everything. I told her about the first time I saw this woman, I told her about calling out to her and seeing her from the window. I told her that she had appeared in our daughter's closet. She told me it wasn't funny, that it was my fault for our daughter's bad dreams and that I shouldn't encourage her to be afraid of her closet.

Sunday night, my daughter called to me from her room again. Call me a coward, but I couldn't go back into that room. I called her quietly to come get in our bed, but she cried and said she was scared. I wanted to go and get her, but I was scared too. I told her to pull her blankets up and cover herself. Just cover yourself, honey, and you'll be okay. I prayed that it was true. I lay there, peeking over the sleeping form of my wife and out into the hallway at the closed door of my daughter's room and just kept praying. I heard her cry a while longer, then she went quiet and I hoped that she was asleep.

Monday, I piled toys in front of the door to her closet. By that time, there was no doubt in my mind that this was some sort of ghost or apparition, but I piled things in front of the closet anyway. Like a pile of toys could stop a ghost.

Monday night, my daughter did not cry, but I didn't sleep. I lay there, looking at the ceiling, tense. Around 2:00, I heard her bedroom door creak open and I knew something was wrong. She must be scared, I thought, so I called to her like before, "Just come to me and you can sleep in our bed, Sweety." But she didn't come. I peeked over my my wife.

The woman was standing there in the doorway to my daughter's room. Her arms hung at her sides, her shoulders slouched down. Her gown was dirty, like it hadn't been washed in years, and hung off her likes torn rags. I wasn't breathing, I wasn't blinking, I just looked at her and she looked at me and I thought this is it, I'm going to die. She never moved, never made a sound. I whispered, "Please, go away. Please, leave me alone. Please, I'm sorry." I couldn't look away. If I look away, she will get closer. I was sure of it. If I close my eyes, when I open them, she'll be standing over me, looking at me. At some point, she was gone. It's like I fell asleep with my eyes open. I don't remember her disappearing, just that I was looking at the doorway, and she wasn't there anymore.

Last night, I lay awake, waiting. I asked my wife to shut our bedroom door because the night light in the hallway was keeping me awake. It was stupid. I don't know what I was thinking. Like clockwork, I heard my daughter's bedroom door creak open. I held my breath. Then I heard the floorboards in the hallway creaking and I started shaking uncontrollably. I heard our bedroom door open, and I knew she was standing there, in the doorway, not moving, just looking at me. I didn't look. I couldn't. I did what had I told my daughter to do and pulled the covers over my head.

I am a complete mess. A zombie at work. I don't want to go home anymore. I think I see the woman in other places. A glance while driving and I think she's sitting in the passenger seat of the truck behind me, or standing down the street asI drive off. Just sitting here at my desk, someone passes by behind me and I jump. I'm afraid that if I turn around, she'll be there, waiting for me to look at her. And what if I saw her face? I don't want to see it. I don't want to see her anymore, but I don't know what to do. The only hope I feel is that, for unrelated reasons, my wife is talking about moving. But our lease isn't up until May. I don't know if I can hold out that long.



-----

Credits

P/S: This is sort of an ongoing thing on Reddit. Go here to see the comments for more updates

Children's Playground

This story is 100% true, although I was only 8 years old at the time, I can recollect every chilling detail.

I'd moved to a new town, this was a much nicer, cleaner, quieter town than the one I'd lived at before. Not the sort of town you'd expect to have... things wrong with it.

There was a very big public park right in the centre, it housed rows upon rows of swings, slides infested with snake-like tunnels that weaved in and around the playground - providing a maze for children to lose themselves in their games. There was even a functioning merry-go round which seemed to always be slightly turning, inviting the children to hitch a ride on it's platform of twirls.

I have to emphasize on the fact that it was a quiet, peaceful town. The kind of town where kids could leave the house on their own and take the short journey to the park. I had been given strict instructions by my parents that I should come home the second it started turning dark. My life was wonderful, or so it seemed.

It was a Friday. I knew the day because I remember coming home with a big smile on my face as I knew I had the luxury of non-stop playing for the next two whole days. I did what I always did, I chucked my school bag on my bed and was ordered to change into other clothes. In a matter of minutes I was ready to descend onto the world of fun. Nothing could stop me.

The tunnels were my favourite, it was so easy to get lost in them which made great fun for playing hide and seek with my only 2 friends, Billy and Tom. They were both in my class and we - like many 8-year-olds - loved any game that filled us with pure adrenaline. We were going to play Murder. I don't expect anyone to know this game, we made it up. The rules were very similar to hide and seek, except when the one seeking found you, they had to 'murder' you. (Pretend obviously).

It was nearing winter as I remember being slightly cold as I wormed my way around in the tunnels, furiously trying to find a perfect hiding spot. Billy was the seeker. Tom had hidden behind the merry-go round. I was alone.

It must have been maybe 10minutes (Which for an 8-year-old felt like a year) when I decided to do what all kids do when they get bored - Give up. "I give up!" I shouted, my voice echoing through the tunnels. "I'm in the tunnels! I give up!" I heard sudden shuffling from one end of the tunnel. Now I don't know why. But I froze still. I didn't call out again, I just... waited. Something wasn't right. Billy would always say something before coming in after someone in the tunnel. He'd always congratulate them on being the last to be found, or for cheating by hiding in the endless maze of tunnels. As I stood frozen, the shuffling grew louder. I could tell it was starting to get dark outside as the tunnels slowly began to lose any light in them, slowly but surely dropping into darkness. I began to slowly shuffle backwards, the shuffling ahead of me grew louder, as if someone or something way too big for the tunnel was trying to navigate around. "Come out, it's time to go home now" A very creepy voice echoed through the tunnels. It sounded like when a grown man talks to small children, talking slightly higher pitched. This was definitely wrong. I probably would have come out if the voice was outside. But it wasn't. It was inside the tunnels. Why would an adult crawl inside?

As I was shuffling further and further back, the face of an old man appeared in the darkness ahead of me. Patches of hair on his head and a definite look of someone who hadn't showered in the last week. I couldn't see what he was wearing but I knew it was tattered old clothes. He had a sharp scraggly beard which was peppered with dirt. The second we made eye contact he just smiled at me. Revealing his filthy, unbrushed teeth which had blotches of brown and black covering them entirely. I panicked, turned around and began shuffling on all fours as fast as I could, The shuffling behind me growing louder and quicker.

He was chasing me.

I sped through the maze for what felt like an eternity, I only stopped when my legs refused to move anymore. I'd taken so many twists and turns that even I was completely lost. "I don't want to hurt you, I just want to talk" the voice echoed through the tunnels, I could tell he was nearby. I pressed my body against the bottom of the small, narrow tunnel and listened. He continued to make soft cooing noises, begging me to come out and present myself to him. I lay in that tunnel for hours. No exaggeration. Even after I heard him curse to himself and angrily force his way out of the tunnel I continued to wait. Thoughts raced my mind of me coming out the tunnel only to be met by that same smile that once greeted me.

In the darkness of the tunnel I could make out blue flashing lights on the outside, I heard frantic voices calling three names repeatedly. "Billy?! Tom?! Michael?!" When I heard my name my heart slowly began to calm. My parents had come. I easily shuffled out of the tunnels, guided by the wet dirt scrapings along the walls of the tunnel, the way the man must have gone. Outside I was greeted by several police cars, lights flashing. There were groups of adults with concerned looks on the faces. I recognised two of them. My parents. "Mom! Dad!" I wailed, crying as I ran towards them. They began crying and ran towards me, lifting me off the ground and hugging me so tightly it felt as though I was being slowly crushed.

Billy and Tom were taken that evening. They were later found hidden in a nearby skip. Mutilated. They had been brutally massacred, their skulls had been caved in with a large iron bar and their bodies had deep cuts everywhere, large pieces of glass found buried in their backs.

What chills me to the fucking bone is that the wet dirt I saw in the tunnels wasn't entirely dirt. It was Billy and Tom's blood. After slaughtering my two best friends and making eye contact with me in that tunnel, he just... Smiled. He had won the game...

----

Credits

Mason

It was a dark and rainy day in February when I was hit by a small red pick up. February 15th. I was told I flew 15 feet before landing smack on my head. Apparently the driver was drunk and didn't see me crossing.

I don't remember that day at all.

Four weeks I slept, in a coma that many feared I would never come out of. I was placed in a ward of children and teens with major bodily harm or disease. My roommate was a boy named Mason. I never did find out his last name. For the time in which I slept, he found out bits and pieces of me from my various visitors. My favourite colour, what music I liked, and other random things.

The day I woke up, I was showered with love and attention from my family and it took me almost an hour to realise the presence of the boy laying in the bed beside me. He flashed me a lopsided grin and quietly went back to the book he was reading.

Eventually I was left in peace and after about 20 minutes of mental debate, I spoke up and asked him his name. His voice was smooth and low and never failed to make me shudder. We spent the rest of the evening playing 20 questions and becoming familiar with each other.

Eventually, my doctor would break our quality time and give me the low down on my injuries and what the healing process would be like. He told me that when I was hit, not only did I give myself a nasty concussion, but my legs were also broken in my oh so gracefully landing.

They said I had a 60% chance of ever walking again.

We became close instantaneously. The nurses would laugh and say we already looked like an old married couple bundled up in bed watching whatever soap opera happened to be on television. Mason would just flash me his trademark grin while I blushed and buried my face in his chest.

We both had our good days and bad ones, Mason and I. On a particularly tough day of treatment for him, we both lay together with him trembling in my arms. I'll never forget the feeling of his soft hiccups or the knot at the pit of my stomach. I finally got up my courage and asked him the million dollar question.

He had Hodgkin's disease. I don't think either of us slept that night.

While my legs were transitioned from casts to braces, Mason's chemotherapy began. However, without fail, when I'd come back frustrated or in tears over a difficult session of therapy, he'd be there to comfort me with soothing words and reruns of I Love Lucy.

Over the weeks, the chemo began to take it's toll. His brown curls thinned to almost nothing, dark circles took permanent residence under his eyes, and his skin turned as pale as snow. As my legs grew stronger, the day I was released no longer seemed like something to look forward to.

The day we decided to shave his hair was the day I broke down. I told him I would do anything; give blood, bone marrow, anything to make him get better faster, but he just shot me his smile that instantly made me melt and wiped my tears away.

60%. Mason had a sixty percent chance of beating his demons. Same as me.

On May 12, I was officially released from room 104. I would walk with a limp most likely for the rest of my life. Every other day I would visit Mason. Each time I would leave we would take a picture together. Over the months I could compare our first picture and our most recent one and see how much he was deteriorating. It was heartbreaking.

August 17 was the first time I lost him. Overnight a high fever had broken out and his heart stopped for 4 1/2 minutes. Those were the worst minutes of my life. I sat outside his room in an uncomfortable plastic chair watching the nurses I knew all too well scrambling back and forth attempting to save his fragile life.

I didn't leave his side until he squeezed my hand, winked, and told me to go home and take a shower.

After that, I vowed I would never let him leave me alone again.

I guess the odds weren't in Mason's favour for by the time Thanksgiving came around, he was almost a skeleton. But I didn't care.

He confided in me that night, accepting the fact that his time was almost up and promising to wait for me on the other side. I begged him not to go, but he just lightly shook his head and rubbed soft circles into my back. He wasn't going to survive to see Christmas.

That was two months ago.

No longer being able to bear to see him hooked up to all sorts of machines, we decided to steal away in the night together. I bundled him up and we drove away in my mother's car until we arrived at an old cabin my family would stay in during the holidays. Mason and I couldn't be any happier. I don't care that I'm on the news every night, or that every cop in the county is looking for me.

All I care about is being with Mason forever.

Even if his flesh is crawling with maggots and beginning to peel off his bones. Even if the smell off his rotting cadaver never fades from my skin. His lips are still warm at night and he often whispers sweet secrets into my ear before we sleep. No one, not the police, doctors, or anyone else can ever separate us. I'm ready for them when they come.

I made sure to bring the sharpest scalpel I could find when we left the hospital.

But until then, I'll lay in Mason's arms, or at least what I think were once his strong appendages, and we'll talk all night until he takes me away.

We'll be together forever.

---
Credits

It Hurts A Bit...

I don’t really remember what happened before it all went dark. I think I was in the car? All I can remember was the loud noise, some screech of metal on metal and then nothing. I woke up in this beeping place. I’m not sure where I am because I can’t seem to open my eyes. Silly, isn’t it? I can definitely feel the blanket on top of me and the beep-beep-beep beside me but I can’t open my eyes or talk or move.

People come to poke at me every now and then and I always try to talk to them.

“Can someone tell me what’s happened to my eyes? I can’t open them.” I try to say but my vocal cords don’t seem to want to cooperate so I guess I’ll just wait. These people seem to know what they’re doing, they poke in the same places every time, sometimes with their fingers, sometimes with a sharp-thing-with-no-name. They don’t say much, these people. Just come, poke, sigh and go.

Someone opened my eye today and held a flashlight over it. It hurt and I couldn’t tell them to stop but just the movement of my eye felt amazing. Did you know that if you don’t open your eyes for a long time they can stick to your eyelids? I didn’t. Do now. It didn’t hurt though, it just felt good when it unstuck.

Someone’s been holding my hand and reading me stories. They’re seven chapters into Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets now. I’d tell them that I’ve already read them but I can’t. They hold my hand sometimes and just sit with me so it’s just me, them and the beep-beep-beep. I think it’s my mum.

She was crying today. I wanted to make her happy and not sad but something’s definitely wrong with my arms because I couldn’t hug her better. I’ll have to tell her when I can that I wanted to help.

Some people came into the room while mom was crying, said that “she should leave”, that “she shouldn’t be here for this” but I didn’t recognise the voice and I didn’t want mom to go. I was scared. She cried louder, said “No, he’s still there.” And I wanted to shout “Of course I am, where would I have gone?” and everyone left.

Mom came back a bit later, sniffing. She sat down and started crying a bit louder, and louder, until she was almost screaming. And then she hit me, right in the face. I couldn’t tell what I’d done wrong but she hit me again and again and again and I couldn’t say sorry or cry or stop her, only sit there until the men came and took her away. Two of the men stayed though and they were mumbling and I couldn’t make out what they were saying until I caught the word “coma.”

I wanted to scream, shake, jump up and slap him in the mouth.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say “stop.” Couldn’t say “please, I’m here, I can hear you please don’t do this.” Nothing. I could only sit there while they poked me with a sharp-thing-with-no-name that must be a needle. The beep-beep-beep turned into a beep-beep and I felt myself get tired. I wanted to ask what they were doing. What they thought it would help to slow the beeping down but I couldn’t.

I was screaming at the top of my lungs but I wasn’t moving. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to fade away, I need to hug mom, tell her everything’s okay, tell her I’m here and I’m fine. But I don’t think I’ll get the chance now.

Beep.

Beep.

.

----

Credits

Holes

I've always wanted to share this experience with someone who could relate, and since the therapist I saw as a result of this happening couldn't, maybe r/nosleep can.

When I was about 7-8 years old I lived with my grandparents in South Carolina. They had this big house that used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad and I used to love discovering all the cool passageways that ran all over the place. When I wasn't doing that, my grandfather took me fishing and hunting while my grandmother would teach me how to sew and cook. Kind of girly things for a little boy to be doing, but those skills definitely helped out in the long run.

My folks were military, so rather than drag me around and traumatize me with multiple moves they had me stay at my grandparents'. My room sat at essentially the middle of the house. It was surrounded on all sides by thick walls which used to house passageways but had since been sealed off. I hung up pictures and cool things befitting an eight year old's room. I loved the house, but it started to feel a little off after a while.

I noticed that my things kept disappearing. Nothing incredibly valuable, just trivial things like my toothbrushes and combs. No, they never reappeared at some random place, and I would never see them again. My grandparents spent a fortune on my various grooming products, I imagine. It was just my stuff though, which left me and my family in confusion. They used to joke that a ghost must have taken a liking to me.

They were kidding of course, but I started to get really freaked out over this notion. I started paying attention to very minor noises and details, and whenever something odd DID present itself it would creep me out to the extreme. I remember drying a favorite shirt of mine, only to come back five minutes later to find the dryer door open and my shirt gone. My things would be moved. Pictures of me that were on the walls would go missing. Most importantly, these little holes started appearing in the walls around the house.

They first showed up in my room, then they just popped up all over the house. The kitchen, the bathrooms, the living room. Everywhere except the master bedroom, where my grandparents slept. This really creeped me out, so one night I decided I was going to sleep in their room. I slept in a pretty comfy sleeping bag on the floor, and for the first time in awhile I felt pretty safe.

Two AM rolls around and I wake up to this weird tapping sound. It's almost as if someone was hammering something a little ways off. It was the middle of the country and people are often awake doing random things at all hours, so I started to write it off. The moment I started to shrug it off, I happened to look at the far wall, directly facing me. Just in time to see a jagged piece of wall fall out, leaving another tiny hole. I yelled and woke my grandparents. They were genuinely upset for me, so we packed up a few things and left for a weekend.

When we got back, the first thing I noticed is that almost everything in the house that had anything to do with me was either gone or damaged. My room was now host to at least thirty different holes, all in varying shapes and sizes. I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was go to bed. Me and my grandparents stood in my room and demanded whatever was in the house to leave me alone.

There was no great relief, there was no angry outburst, there was no ghostly laughter. Just silence and me feeling scared and a little silly. I decided to be brave and stay in my room that night.

I awoke around 12 AM to a thump, the kind I usually attribute to my family moving around knocking into a wall. I started drifting back off, only to hear another thump. Then another.

Eventually these grew pretty rhythmic. I was scared out of my mind. I bolted upright and started scanning around my room. I grabbed the flashlight that I had grown to keep on my nightstand and started shining it everywhere. The floor, the walls, the holes. The thumping stopped, but I kept looking around frantically. Eventually my beam caught something shiny and I fixated on it. As soon as I realized what it was, I screamed and started crying like a little girl for my parents. It was a human eye.

My grandparents came in and saw this, an unblinking human eye staring out at the room. The police were called and came immediately. They opened the sealed portions of the house and searched every passageway they could find. Eventually they came to the section behind my far wall, where the eye was located. I wasn't privy to the information when I was that young, but when I got older my grandparents told me what it was.

The police came upon this tiny room, only big enough to hold one person comfortably if only barely. They were first greeted by what they described as a thick layer of garbage and waste. Most of this "garbage" was my things that had gone missing. My combs, my toothbrushes, my socks, my shoes, my washcloths. My favorite shirt. At the wall, surrounded by pictures of me, was a man. He was completely naked, the only thing keeping him upright was a belt around his neck looped over a nearby low rafter. The cause of death was autoerotic asphyxiation. He had died staring at me, pleasuring himself, surrounded by his sick fascination with me.

I don't think there's any getting over it. I can't stand the dark now, and now when I go to sleep...all I can think about are holes.

----

Credits

Doppelganger

I could feel him inside my head, burning, consuming, devouring. He crept through my entire body, dictating all that I did. It was like being constantly buried in sand up to your neck, unable to move your limbs without further entrenching yourself. For ten years, I felt as if I was always suffocating.

I watched him for what seemed like an eternity, living my life in my house with my wife, and each day I thought to myself that I had to get rid of this imposter, this doppelganger that seized me from within and kept me from myself. I had to be rid of the being that had snatched my very existence from my grasp.

I tried to reason with him more than once. I begged, I cried, I pleaded. I implored him to release me, but to no avail. He had no intention of relinquishing control of my body. I'm not sure he even realized that the battered man in his dreams was the person he had usurped.

Soon I resorted to a more violent attitude - I would shout at him in his sleep, attack him, trying to frighten him into giving up. If he was scared enough, I thought, he might abandon his efforts.

I had no luck for a very long time.

After a long while, though, he started to get neurotic and paranoid. At this point, he was desperate to keep his stolen body. He would talk to my wife of nightmares, of the feeling that something was haunting him or trying to possess him. He spoke as if I was the problem. It didn't take me long to figure out that he was misdirecting her - that he was using my voice to speak lies.

I persisted in my tactics, trying to scare him. It worked by inches. Every time I saw him in the mirror, he looked more exhausted and less well-kept. The constant nightmares were taking a physical toll. I was weakening his grip.

He became so desperate, in fact, that he began googling things like "demonic possession" and "poltergeists", looking for help. It was almost sad - there's not a whole lot out there on how to rid yourself of the original tenant of a body.

Of course, he didn't find anything.

But I did.

I saw the things he read, and I began to get ideas.

Slowly, as I pushed against him, I felt him beginning to slip. He started to grow disorganised, paranoid. He quit my job and locked himself in my computer room, perching before a computer monitor as he searched desperately for help.

He ruined my life before I could get it back, spending months in that office with the blinds drawn. I think he was trying to discourage me, trying to convince me that the effort wasn't worth it. I had no more job, no more wife, no more money. But I didn't give up - I had spent too long trying.

I was gaining ground by miles now. I acquired control of my physical faculties once more. I could wiggle my fingers or toes for moments at a time. After practice, I could speak again, and eventually I learned to walk.

He couldn't keep me strangled.

This morning, I woke up to realize that he was gone. I had control again. I leapt to my feet and ran around the house in disbelief, tearing open the blinds and tossing things in the air, reveling in a sense of pure ecstasy. I ran a hot shower, enjoying the feeling of the water on my back. When I emerged, I took a moment to breathe the soap-scented air, amazed that I was finally free.

Still grinning, I wiped down the foggy mirror with a towel so I could shave, but stopped dead the moment the glass was clear.

"Please," my mouth was saying, over and over. "I just want my body back."

---

Credits

A Mother's Obsession

This is rather long, but considering it spans nearly three decades, that’s to be expected. Much of this I don’t remember, for obvious reasons, but over the years I’ve spoken with my mother and other family members about everything, and I’ve written their accounts down as accurately as anyone could. Apart from that, I’ve gotten copies of all the police reports, and have written this using information gleaned from them.

It all started, quite literally, the day I was born. I was in the nursery of the hospital, and my mom and grandparents were standing at the window. Being that I was born at a large hospital in a major city, there were seven or eight other babies there beside me. Next to my family, another woman was standing with a big smile on her face, not a creepy one, but the smile of someone who was genuinely happy at that particular moment. She was an average looking woman of maybe about 22, and had stringy blonde hair. My grandma said she looked like she hadn’t showered in days.

Regardless of her disheveled appearance, my grandmother greeted the woman. The woman replied cheerily, commenting that all the babies were so adorable. My mom asked the woman which baby belonged to her, but the woman gave her an awkward kind of half-glance and didn’t answer her. My mom just assumed the woman hadn’t heard her. They all continued observing me and the other babies, with my family making comments about how big of a baby I was. They eventually realized the woman was humming. The blonde lady eventually became aware herself that my family was hearing her, and she quickly apologized, explaining that she was just so excited that her “baby boy was finally here”.

Now that they were interacting again, my mom posed the same question she had earlier, asking the woman which child was hers. The woman replied slowly, in a sing-songy voice, “My…baby…boy…issssss…right there!” She finished the statement off with a burst of energy and pressed her fingers against the glass. “Isn’t he beautiful? I just love him so much.” My mom and grandparents tried to determine which baby she was pointing at.

“The one there, with the white blanket?” my grandpa asked her.

“Noooo! That baby isn’t even half as cute as my baby boy!” The woman was still talking in a playful, sing-songy kind of voice, if that makes sense. She didn’t seem threatening, or creepy, she just seemed like an especially affable new mother.

She kept her finger pressed to the window and brought her face up to it so her nose was just touching the glass.

“That’s my sweet, beautiful, amazing little baby boy, right…there!”

She still hadn’t given any other clues as to which baby she was pointing at, and it wasn’t immediately evident because the handful of babies were all mostly grouped together.

“Is he…right there?” my grandpa took another guess, pressing his own finger to the window. “With the Nike hat?”

The woman took a deep breath. She started giddily stamping her feet as if she were overcome with joy. She took her finger from the glass and started clapping her hands together.

“He’s so perfect!!! Isn’t he?! Isn’t he perfect?!”

My grandfather looked at my grandma and nodded his head once, and she took it to mean that she should go find a hospital employee. After she walked away, my grandpa turned back to the woman, who was still staring at the baby in the Nike hat, a look of pure joy on her face.

The baby in the Nike hat was me.

“Ma’am…” my grandpa said to her, but she didn’t reply.

When my grandpa told me the story (this part of which I’ve also heard from my mom separately, nearly verbatim), he said that when they realized she was all effusive over me, a newborn that wasn’t hers and didn’t have any relation to her, the woman didn’t seem delusional or confused, nor did she seem threatening or dangerous. She just seemed like a new mom, albeit an over-excited one.

“Ma’am.” he said again.

This time, the woman whipped her head around and the look of joy on her face was gone.

“What?” she said through clenched teeth. “He’s mine. And he’s beautiful. You don’t think he’s beautiful?”

My grandpa looked at her and simply said “I don’t think he’s yours.“

The woman started breathing heavily, and my mom has described her as looking angrier than she’s ever seen anyone before or since. My grandpa put his arm in front of my mom and guided her backward and behind him, making sure he was between her and the woman. Then, as quickly as she’d flipped from excited to enraged, she calmed down and a warm smile crawled across her face. She kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to the glass once again. And with that, she turned around and walked away.

Like 30 seconds after the woman left my grandma came back with a doctor, to whom my mom and grandpa explained what had just happened. The doctor apologized profusely, explaining that, for obvious reasons, they were very strict about who could get into the nursery, and that he had no idea how someone would get in there without authorization. A security guard was placed in the nursery until (and presumably after) I was taken home.

Now to where I can (however vaguely) recall for myself.

My mom and I went to a playground in the springtime when I was six years old, and had walked there since the weather was nice. After I’d played on the playground for a while and tired myself out, we began to head back home. About halfway between the playground and our house, two police cars pulled to a screeching halt. Two cops got out of the first car, and one out of the second, all with gun drawn. They yelled at my mom to get on the ground, and because I didn’t know what was going on, after she did, I got on my stomach on top of her back, begging them not to hurt her.

My mom was placed in handcuffs and put into the back of the second cop car while the police talked to me. I explained that the woman they’d detained was indeed my mother, and I assured them of that even after they asked me about twenty times. After more police showed up and talked to me, as well as my mom, we learned that a frantic woman had placed an anonymous call to police claiming that a woman with the exact description of my mother and her outfit that day had abducted “her son”, who had the exact description of me and what I was wearing that day. The call had been placed from a payphone outside the convenience store a few blocks from our house, and the police, after assuming the woman who called had hung up before identifying herself had done so in the heat of the moment, put out an Amber Alert.

When the police had finally determined that I was indeed my mother’s son, they apologized and dropped us back off at our house. Around that time I’d noticed my grandparents and mom getting into heated discussions, not necessarily arguments but just more vocally distressed. Specifically on the day that the fake kidnapping was reported, I remember hearing “it was her, you know it was her”, and other similar things. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were talking about, but they assured me everything was okay.

The following year, when I was in second grade, one of the office workers came to my classroom and asked the teacher to excuse me. When I left the room, I was escorted with the office worker and two other school employees to the office, where I was sat in the conference room. I remember sitting there for about a half hour with the woman who’d gotten me from my classroom, but she wouldn’t tell me what was going on. The door to the conference room had a glass pane from nearly top to bottom, so while I waited I watched as two police officers came in and talked to the other office employees.

Eventually, my mom walked in, and a few minutes after her arrived my grandparents. All three of them rushed in by me and began giving me hugs and asking if I was okay. Then, my mom, my grandparents, the two police officers, two of the three office employees, and the school principal came in and asked me if I’d been approached by anyone I didn’t know recently, to which I responded that I hadn’t. They told me, in no uncertain terms, that if anyone I didn’t know ever came up to me, to begin running and screaming for help until I get to somewhere safe. Apparently, as I learned years later, a woman had come in to the school claiming to be my aunt, and demanded that I be released into her care, as there was a family emergency and my mom and grandparents were unable to get me from school.

Due to protocol, the office workers obviously did not comply with what the woman was demanding. When one of the workers said they would call my home to get permission to release me (a ruse of course, she was going to and did call the police), the woman responded by saying, “That beautiful baby boy only has me. He only has me and you’re trying to keep him from me. I don’t know what that beautiful child ever did to you to deserve such horrible treatment. All he wants is me, and you’re keeping him from me. He’s such a beautiful perfect baby boy and you want to hurt him! Shame on you!” and hurried out of the school with tears running down her face.

After the incident at the school, I wasn’t allowed to walk home alone, and I was asked regularly if I was approached by any strangers, to which I could honestly say I hadn’t been. About a year after that, we began getting phone calls. They were your typical creepy calls, with someone just breathing on the other end of the line then hanging up. Some days we’d get thirty calls, others we’d get only one. Eventually, my grandpa had our number changed, but that only quelled the issue for about two weeks before the calls began again.

The day after my 13th birthday, my mom and grandparents sat me down and said they had to tell me something. They explained that every year on my birthday, I would receive a card in the mail, it would come with no return address, but as the years went on, the messages inside the birthday cards became increasingly bizarre. By that point, my family felt that I was mature enough to know, and that I had a right to read the letters, which they had copied before they were given to the police. I won’t regale the letters in their entirety, but here are some highlights:

The very first letter, from my first birthday, was just a generic birthday card with the message “To the most beautiful baby boy in the entire world. Love, your real mommy.”

By the time I was six, they’d gotten a bit more direct. “My beautiful, perfect baby boy, I miss you and I love you so much, and I am so, SO angry that they’re keeping you away from me. I love you more than life itself, sweetheart. You are mine.”

I opened the letter I’d gotten the day prior, on my 13th birthday. Another basic birthday card, but by this point the messages were overtly threatening. “Have a wonderful birthday, my beautiful, perfect, amazing baby boy. They will regret keeping us apart. I know you want to be with me and I know I need to be with you. We are supposed to be together, I’m your REAl mother. I love you. I love you way more than the fakes you live with now. They will regret ever stealing you from me.” That letter too was taken to the police, but as per usual there wasn’t much to be done.

Around the time I turned 15 is when things got exponentially creepier. Police and emergency services were called to an apartment building in a very undesirable part of the town in which I live in relation to a tenant having had a heart attack. After they’d done their duties, a different tenant from another floor of the building asked one of the police officers to check on an apartment unit at the end of the hall, because there were awful smells coming from inside. The tenant said they’d complained to the landlord numerous times but nothing had been done as the landlord was largely indifferent to the goings-on of the building.

The officer went to the other floor and noted the smell, and knocked on the door of the one bedroom unit at the end of the hall. The tenant who had brought the smell to the officer’s attention said she’d never actually seen anyone going into or coming out of the unit, and therefore didn’t know if it was a male or female, a single person or a family, or if there were any pets. Deciding the smell was a potential indicator of an issue, the officer forcibly entered the apartment. I remember him telling me that he would’ve bet his own life that he was going to find a dead body in the apartment, but he didn’t.

Upon entering, he found piles of rotten food and other garbage everywhere. The smell seemed to have come from the multiple glasses of spoiled milk and half-eaten plates of eggs, moldy bread and rotten fruit, as well as any number of other pieces of trash that was strewn about the apartment. But that wasn’t nearly the most noteworthy thing about the apartment. What stood out the most was the pictures, the hundreds upon hundreds of pictures that were tacked, taped, and/or stapled to the wall.

I’ve seen photos taken of the scene, and it truly must have been a sight to behold in person. The pictures, which were from both traditional film as well as polaroid cameras, covered every wall in the apartment, in every room. Both sides of cabinet doors, both sides of closet and bedroom doors, even the ceilings throughout the unit were all covered in the pictures. The officer cleared the apartment, and once he knew he was alone, he looked around more closely. In the closet of the bedroom, a pile standing nearly to the overhead shelf, as well as piled on the shelf itself, were notebooks.

The notebooks were filled front and back, cover to cover, with what were essentially ramblings about a “beautiful baby boy” and how he was “going to be reunited” with the author someday. They eventually devolved into blatant threats such as “Everyone who keeps us apart will die. No one will be spared. We will show all of them, all of them who don’t understand us, and we will make them hurt the way they hurt us.” Investigators spent days removing and logging all of the photos off the walls and ceilings, and even longer transcribing all of the notebooks, which, based on infrequent labellings of dates went back to 1989. June 8th, 1989 specifically. My birthday.

They spoke to the landlord, who said he had never actually met the tenant that lived in the apartment at the end of the hall. The tenant had been living there for some time when he bought the building, and he received rent on time, so he saw no point in disturbing them. Original documents with the name and information of the tenant were destroyed in flooding after having been haphazardly kept in a storage unit in the basement of the building, and because the landlord got his rent money on time, he never bothered to have them fill out new copies.

Whilst trying to determine the identity of the tenant, they also worked on identifying the subject of the notebooks and pictures. They were able to put the pictures into a rough sequential order, and found that the main subject of the pictures has been so since birth. The tenant of the apartment had been taking pictures of me from afar since I was brought home from the hospital. Pictures of me playing with my mom and grandparents, playing at school, my yearbook pictures (which was how they eventually identified me, by going to all the schools in the area and eventually finding my middle school, where my sixth grade yearbook photo was recognized), pictures of me sleeping taken through my bedroom window, and all other manner of secretive photos taken of me at any and all junctures of my life.

We were notified, and my mom and grandparents went over the previous incidents that had occured over the years, but were still no closer to finding out who the woman was. After the apartment was discovered, years went by, and it wasn’t until I was 19 that anything else happened. I was at my girlfriend’s house, and we decided to go out for something to eat. Her car was parked in the driveway, and when we went outside, we found that all four of her tires had been gouged open. On the passenger’s side of the car was a message, keyed deeper than I’ve ever seen any scratches on a car.

STAY AWAY   HES MY BABY BOY    WHORE

The police were called, but they didn’t really have much to go on. My girlfriend and I weren’t very deep into the relationship, and the incident had understandably freaked her out, so for her safety and peace of mind, we decided to break up. Not long after we broke up, I received a letter in the mail.

“Thank you for getting rid of that nasty girl. You know I’m the only woman you need in your life, and that your REAL mother knows best. Now all you have to do if get rid of your fake mom and fake grandma and fake grandpa. I’m your REAL family. Your REAL mom. And you’re my REAL baby boy. Nothing will ever change that. I can’t wait until you come back to me.”

It was taken to the police all that, but of course, nothing was done.

The following year, in the middle of the night, our home security system went off. We got up to see what was going on, and the police showed up very soon after. At our back door, they found evidence of someone tampering with the lock, and in our neighbor’s backyard, where footsteps had led, a butcher knife. On the side of our house was written “FAKES” in red paint. We decided to move after that incident, and nothing else happened until my 21st birthday.

A six-year-old boy was kidnapped on the morning of June 8th, 2010. Around 11pm, reports of two bodies were called in, an adult female and a male child that was immediately identified as the missing boy. The location of the bodies was the backyard of the house we’d moved from about six months prior, and was called in by the husband of the couple that moved in after we left. Along with the bodies was an envelope with one picture from each year of my life up to that point and a letter. Police concluded that the woman had strangled the six-year-old to death and cut her own wrists, bleeding out in the backyard I’d grown up playing in.

The letter stated “This ugly little boy doesn’t even begin to compare to my beautiful baby. But he was close enough. They wouldn’t let me have my baby, and they made me hurt this one. When they moved they took my baby away from me for good. I looked but I couldn’t find them. The fakes. They are fakes and they stole the most beautiful, precious boy this world will ever have. I hope they’re happy. Happy they killed this ugly little boy. I give up. The world is a terrible place, keeping a mother from her boy. And nobody ever tried to help me get him back. I will see them all in hell.”

The boy she’d killed had brown hair and brown eyes like me, and police believed she cut his hair to match the photo of six-year-old me, and also dressed him in the same clothes I’d been wearing in the picture, which they believe she’d stolen from my house years and years earlier. The woman herself was a transient with no work legitimate history to speak of, and in the subsequent investigation, was found to be a prostitute and methamphetamine addict. My mom and grandparents, as well as the office workers present during the incident when I was in second grade, were shown photos of the woman, and said that there was a chance she was the woman they’d seen in the hospital and school, respectively, decades earlier, and accepted that the ravages of time and drug addiction could have altered her appearance considerably.

With this, we thought everything had met its end, albeit a gruesomely tragic one. I’m 28-years-old now, my mom and grandparents are living happy lives, as am I. I’m married, and have a great career. All of this crossed my mind from time to time, but for the most part I’d put it behind me. That is, until I received a letter in the mail last week.

“I tried accepting that the world would never let us be together. That they wanted you to stay with your fake family, and now with your whore. But I know thats not true baby. You’re my beautiful, perfect baby boy, and I know you better than anyone knows you, and I know you need to be with me. I see you every day living your fake life and I know it’s not what you really want. I know your whole life you’ve been told that those fakes are your family, and that they are who you should love, but they are WRONG. I am who you need to love. You are MY BOY. We will be together. No matter what. I promise. I promise I will never let you go. I love you.”

I took the letter to the police, but as always, there’s only so much they can do. Since I learned what was going on, that I was being stalked, I’ve often wondered why I was chosen by this woman to be the object of her bizarre affection. What I do know is that I need to protect my mom, grandma, grandpa, and wife.

I’ve been pursued by this woman since moments after I came into this world. I don’t think I’ll ever know why.


Credited to Nick Botic

Obsession

Do you ever get that feeling that you’re being watched? Well, I do all the time. I guess I’ve sort of always liked the edge of paranoia it gives me. That feeling has been getting worse and worse lately, though, and upon further investigation, I realized that the same white van circled around my neighborhood multiple times a day. I don’t know anyone in my neighborhood that owns a car like that, and so it’s a bit troubling. I’m worried for my son, especially being a young single mother. If anything ever happened to my baby, I’d ruthlessly hunt down and kill the person that did it. Galen’s only four years old; he has a life to live.

December 15th, 2011
Okay, so maybe I don’t like that feeling anymore. The van seems to be circling around the block at least a dozen times a day now, and it sort of slows down as it goes by my house. It’s really disconcerting. Should I call someone? Am I just being really paranoid, or is this something to be worried about? I just don’t know anymore. I don’t want anyone to think I’m just some paranoid freak.

December 21st, 2011
He parks his van outside the house every day now, for at least fifteen minutes. I know it’s a he because he got out of that van today and looked through our mail as I watched through the window. He knows my name, now. Angela Evans. What can he do with my name, anyways? It’s just a name, and after all, what’s in a name?

December 25th, 2011
Doesn’t this guy have a damn family? He’s been outside of our house most of this Christmas Day. Seriously, we’re not that interesting of people. The guy needs to leave, and I’m going to call the cops if he’s there when I wake up tomorrow. I’m not dealing with this.

December 26th, 2011
I called the police today. They said they’d dispatch someone over right away, but it’s been four hours, and the only cars I see are my own and that damn van. I’m getting pushed over the edge here. Is it a stalker or someone like that? Is he obsessed with me?

January 1st, 2012
Today he pulled up a lawn chair and started watching us from the curb. He was wearing shades, but I could still see that potbelly of his and the handlebar mustache crouched upon his face. I sulked away from the door, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing my face.

January 15th, 2012
I was restless last night, and got out of bed in my nightgown and walked around our small house, my bony arms crossed. I ran my sweaty hand through my hair, pacing through the kitchen and out into the sunroom. I looked out the dark window, squinting to see the woods outside.

The man stood there, still as a plank, wide grin plastered across his face. His thick eyebrows and horn rimmed glasses stared back at me with malicious intent. I screamed, body frozen in fear. Minutes passed as we stared at each other. Finally, I broke the spell and ran away, curling up next to my son in his room.

January 31st, 2012
We went grocery shopping today, my son and I. The white van was not parked outside, so we decided to go. Less than two minutes into the drive, I slammed on the brakes, realizing that I had somehow forgotten to lock the door. I raced back into the house, grabbing my son and locking the door behind us. I checked everywhere, searching the house from top to bottom as I made sure that the stalker wasn’t inside. He wasn’t. My heart continued beating quickly, but we left again, making sure to lock the door behind me.

February 1st, 2012
I did*’t check the crawlspace. I did*’t check the crawlspace when I searched the house. I jumped out of bed at 2am this morning and ran down the flight of stairs that leads to the basement and opened up the insulated compartment that led to the musty crawlspace. I hesitated for a moment before slithering in.
I was greeted warmly by the crunching of rat skulls below my feet. I flashed the small flashlight I had brought with me and looked around. I sighed with relief as I realized no one was there. I crawled out, going straight back to my room and falling asleep.

February 12nd, 2012
I was taking a shower today when I heard the door open slightly to the bathroom. I turned off the shower quickly, grabbing a towel and searching the house. No one could be seen. I chastised myself for being so paranoid, walking back into the bathroom. I turned the shower back on and took my towel off. As I was just about to step back into the shower, I noticed a handprint high on the mirror. It was too high for my son to reach, and it was much too big to be my hand. I let out a small whimper from my lungs and trudged back into the shower, soap dripping from my hair. I tried to put the thought out of my mind, blaming it on my paranoia. It could’ve been my own handprint, just smudged to look better, right?

But I know that isn’t the truth.

February 20th, 2012
I stared into the reflecting black glass door, eyeing up my figure. I have insecurity problems, all right? I put my hands on my stomach and pulled up my shirt, staring at my slender belly. I looked down, giggling as I stuck my finger into my shallow belly button. I looked up back into the reflecting glass and my smile disappeared.

He was standing behind me. He was standing behind me. He was standing behind me and he was smiling.

I froze in terror, turning slightly towards the stalker. But when my head reached the spot where his body was, he had vanished.

February 21st, 2012
The doorbell rang today. I checked up on my son, and upon seeing the familiar bundle under the blankets, I went to go see who it was. It was a little girl selling Girl Scout Cookies. I smiled at her as I opened my front door.

She gave me her pitch, telling me all about the sorts of cookies she sold. I kindly refused her offers, though, as I was still worried about my weight. She looked at me and asked,
“Well, would your husband want some?”

“I don’t have a husband,” I responded to her kindly.

Her brow furrowed. She lifted a finger up, pointing to a certain white van down on the street.

“Then who is that getting into the van with your son?”

---

By Madelyn

Her Obsession

Here I am, all alone. Without my sister, without my best friend in the world. I'm now being interrogated as though I murdered my sister and her friends. Because the statutes of limitations on murder don't exist, I could be facing the death penalty for keeping something to use as evidence for my campaign to save others from a similar fate. As I sit here, I think about what happened and how it all started.

"Come on! The new show is starting; it's going to be exciting!" She begged me to watch it with her, but it wasn't something I'd be caught dead watching. It'd be boring for a grown male to be watching it, and that's exactly what I told her when I turned back towards my research and fixed my glasses. When I think about it now, this is probably the moment when I lost her.

Over the weeks she had become obsessed with that disgustingly colorful show; it seemed to me that it was good that she had found something to keep her happy while I'm locked away in my library. She had been making friends and even had weekly slumber parties with them, and that seemed like a good thing, which is why I never questioned it when they started to borrow my books on the subject. "Turning an interest into an educational experience, how wonderful!" I thought.

"How wonderful" indeed. While I had my eyes fixated on text and paper, she had her mind set on something sinister. I think about it now and I regret ever having taken the job I had been contracted to do at the time. If I had free time, I would have noticed the changes that my sister had been going through. I had no way of knowing what I know now, but I don't think I would have believed it back then either way.

"Brother, can I borrow a couple of books and some tools?" She approached me with her dark plan in mind, she never told me the truth, she simply claimed that they had a science project for school and they were going to be doing more reading after finishing the project.

It had been so long since the show had taken hold of her mind that I just attributed her messy appearance to the probability that she had been up late with her friends during their weekly slumber parties discussing the show, or preforming one of those pretend rituals of theirs based upon their fantasies. It all seemed so harmless and I never believed that any of the things she claimed could have been real; it just wasn't logical. There was no evidence. The occult and other such things are make-believe; it's all just the building-blocks for good scary stories. That's what I told myself, and that's what I believed.

Before I go any further, I should explain some of the things that escaped my gaze because of my foolishness. I was not present to witness or have known any of this information firsthand, but I learned it when I discovered my sister's plan.

During the first sleepover, they had begun that first ritual of theirs, something had infected them; something lodged itself into their minds and created the disease that eventually led them to come up with the plan and act upon it. Whether it was merely a placebo effect causing them to believe they had gone insane and were being made to do it or if something really did take hold and steer them towards it; I will leave it up to you readers to decide. They slowly descended into the darkness and became obsessive over the things that they read about, practicing what they could get away with in secret. I can only thank the heavens that they hadn't plagued their parents with worry by cutting themselves. They were beyond treatment, and it would have probably been worse if their obsessive behaviors had been discovered.

I remember that last day as if it were yesterday; the sky was dark and the heavens wept because they knew of the tragedy that was unfolding before their eyes, but there was nothing that could be done to stop it. It was nearly dinner time, and I thought it odd that my sister and her friends had been out so late, perhaps they had decided to take their sleepover to one of the other girls' houses, so I got on the phone and called their families, but none of them had seen any of the girls.

They were probably just out talking about their show, and unaware of the time, and they'd be back sooner or later. "I'll just let them have their fun, they'll come in when they get hungry," I supposed to myself. I went back to work and ended up falling asleep at my desk for the third night in a row. When I awoke, I looked at the clock and began searching for the girls. In a panic, I called the parents of the other girls to organize a search party, and we went looking for them.

The floor of the clubhouse and the ground around it was running crimson as the rain began to thin out and wash the blood away, mutilated and severed limbs lying on the floor next to the corpses that they had once belonged to. I and the other members of the search-party gazed in horror at the mess, when all of a sudden one of them groaned. She was still alive, when she finished explaining to us what happened and why they did this to themselves, she smiled and lifted one of her ruined limbs, not completely severed, but badly damaged. She probably lost consciousness when she was working on it. She seemed to be admiring the work she had done on it: "I did good, and it looks pretty, doesn't it? Don't you think we look more human now?" The light in her eyes dimmed as she faded away.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I was hoping it would all turn out to be a nightmare until I felt the unmistakable and all too real stabbing pain from seeing my sister’s lifeless corpse. “Honey Blossom! No!!” I wailed and completely lost what remained of my composure, I could feel the shattered pieces of my heart clawing at my chest as I held her close and collecting my tools into the case that they belonged to as the authorities were summoned to take the bodies.



***

Epilogue

So, you might be wondering why I'm in trouble. After discovering the bodies, I picked my sister's body up and took her into the house to clean her up. I didn't want to remember her as the terrible, dark creature she had become in the end, I wanted to remember her as she was. My beautiful sister, my beautiful, best friend in the world, sister. I washed her body of the blood and cleaned out her coat to undo the mess she had allowed it to become as she planned her mutilation.

When I moved to washing the limb that she hadn't successfully severed, most likely because she faded away before doing much to it, I noticed that she didn't take the time to cut it up. Again, she probably hadn't had the time, she most likely just wanted it off, and that's exactly what happened as I was carefully washing it.

The joint she had been severing from loosened and then popped out of place, the limb was now free from her body. I sat there examining the hoof, something about it made me remember how much she loved me, and so I took it into my lab and put it in a plastic bag before I placed it in my cold storage where I keep the other articles I need preserved for my research. I then went to lay by my sister's body to wait for the guards to come and take her corpse away, I lay there for nearly an hour as the puddle of tears on the floor slowly grew as the grief and pain started to take its toll on me.

I lost my sister that day, and I vowed to Celestia that I would make sure that human related media got banned from schools and public reach. She was obsessed with humans, and now I can't stand them.

----

Written by Moria Fox