Remember That I Love You

I am terrible at picking out presents -especially for Valentine’s Day.

I glided through darkness. The glow of streetlights overhead lit my pathway over snow-covered lawns. My mind was made up. My mission was dire.

I had traveled this way before in the light of day and amid my dreams. It was finally time. As I approached my destination my heartbeat increased. It pumped precious blood to each freezing arm and leg. So many times I had imagined what this moment would be like. So many times I had calculated every motion in my head. It was as if this was just a dream and at any moment I could lift into the air and fly high over the many houses I passed.

My trek reached its end as I stood in front of the black-tinted bay window. I had reached my target location -house number 1312. I could tell by the blue siding, the large windows, and the elongated, white windowsill. Adrenaline flooded my being and my dream-like state intensified.

All of the unpleasantness of the cold vanished as I stepped closer to the window. I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered inside. The rest of the world tunneled and disappeared. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room before me. The brilliance of the moon helped me to perceive each structure of the room. Every piece of furniture had been covered in sleek plastic wrapping. Pictures hanging on the wall displayed an older couple in different tourist locations.

On the mantle above the fireplace sat a porcelain statue of the virgin Mary. I felt as though she looked straight into my soul -judging me on the act I was about to commit. It was as if, for a short moment, tears ran from her solid, silvery eyes.

The wind picked up which reminded me of the frigid air I endured. I took out a flat-head screwdriver and pry bar. After just a brief moment, I was sliding my body under the large pane of glass. I closed the window behind me with care.

The room was warm and inviting. Everything was spotless. The dirt and snow I had tracked in with my shoes stood out on the pure carpet. I wiped my feet and, after full inspection of the living room, gained the courage to roam further within the home.

Both the kitchen and the hallways sparkled with immaculate cleanliness. Depictions of Jesus and biblical scenes hung on every wall. I closed my eyes and exhaled. Trembling, I reached for the doorknob of the first room I encountered. It creaked but opened with ease. To my surprise the room was empty. Not a sole piece of furniture occupied the space. What was going on?

I knew the layout of this house, number 1312. I’d been inside more times than I could remember. Had they rearranged? I left the door open and continued on to the next. This door sat ajar, revealing a toilet and bathroom sink. The final room lay just ahead to the left.

My limbs were numb; not from the cold or frost bite but from my inconsolable nerves and the reality of what was about to take place. This doorknob was warmer than the rest. It seemed as though I had some extrasensory perception that informed me -this was him.

The darkness of the room engulfed me as I pushed the door inward. I could barely see my hand in front of my face. I cracked my knuckles and entered. My nervousness transformed into rage.

As I walked forward and pulled my arm back towards my ear, ready to strike, I remembered why I had come. My mind spiraled with images of this man’s face. I could see his smirk. I could hear his voice. This, the man that had caused my fiancée unbearable agony -the love of my life beaten by the hands of who lay before me.

So many times had my love’s beautiful face been bruised and scarred by the unforgiving fists of this brute. Vengeance blared its hideous voice in my head. Too many times I had let it pass after she assured me that everything was okay or that he had been drinking. But I no longer cared. I didn’t care if my actions would result in jail time. Nor did I care that this man was her father.

My fists proved unrelenting in their task. No matter how many times my throbbing knuckles hammered his face they continued to collide again and again. The room remained pitch black. I never got the satisfaction of seeing his bloodied face but the image in my head would have to suffice.

When I sensed a dense stickiness in my fingers and the smell of iron filled my nostrils I dismounted his lifeless body and stumbled towards the front door. I was quivering with every emotion a human could muster -everything except regret.

I am terrible at picking out presents -especially for Valentine’s Day.

This would be the perfect gift. My greatest yet. A chance to live without fear of being preyed upon. Never again will my love have to look at the man who had beaten and raped her. I wiped my hands on the hem of my black coat and opened the front door.

I shielded my face and made my way off of the porch. When my eyes had finally adapted to the outdoor light I recognized the neighbor’s house across the street. It was strangely similar to the one I had just exited. A large black window with an elongated windowsill sat within the blue siding of its walls. On the front of the house, above the doorway, bronze-toned numbers glistened with sickening clarity: 1312



—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Another One Night Stand

“Fuck me, you’re sexy as hell.”

I didn’t feel the need to respond, he sounded like a broken record. Constant repetition, points lost. Thinking of repetition, I got Big Scary lyrics stuck in my head while he did his thing.

“You see my love is no formal position, you say my love is just cold repetition re-done.”
Shit yes, I dig this song, but more than anything it was a distraction from his idea of foreplay.

--:--

My annoying as hell ringtone went off at 11pm earlier in the evening while taking a nap. I had planned on going out around midnight anyway, but a recent text showed cancelled plans.

His voice grating at me already, “Meet me at the bar. I finish up at midnight, but if you come a bit earlier I’ll whip you up a cocktail. Surely you can’t say no to free drinks, gorgeous.”

Two things, two fucking things he said which irked me. “Cocktail” and “gorgeous” - I don’t sit around drinking cosmos with my BFF’s chatting about men and jewellery. However, I agreed. I agreed because I was thirsty and hungry and empty. Dragging myself out of bed and into the shower, I turned the pressure up to it’s maximum and with it, the heat. Checking myself out in the mirror, I laughed at the red marks it left behind.

I arrived at the bar around half eleven. They were playing Gimme Shelter and all of the recycled furniture didn’t match. I sighed, of course it’s that kind of place. Points lost. Spotting his 6”3 brown apron adorned figure behind the bar, I walked over and set up camp on one of the bar stools.

“Hey lady” he said too confidently, winking at me. “Drink?”

“Sure. Rum.”

My face was like ice and he knew I didn’t want to be there, but I could sense he was turned on and this turned me on.

“Rum and coke? Or do you want that cocktail I promised?”

“Straight.”

He took his sweet fucking time pouring a couple nips of rum, that pissed me off. Gimme Shelter was over and now they were blasting some Chuck Berry song. I noticed a couple girls attempting to drunkenly swing dance while their partners sat sullen. I really didn’t want to be there. Rum now in sight, I thanked him and downed it. He immediately poured me another, winning himself points back for taking so long with the first.

Getting closer to half twelve, my face was warm from the rum but also from being fucked about: I don’t like to wait, more points lost. I was outside chain-smoking and thinking things through, did I want to take this guy home? Fuck it, I thought, I needed this. It had been a while, my whole body was screaming at me.

We decided to head to a bar close by which stayed open later than the others, we talked, for a while. Everything that came out of his mouth was absolute garbage, but this was show time. I giggled and smirked and complimented him. He lapped up everything I said, this was too easy. A mental note jotted, go for the dumb ones - but most importantly, he was tall, bullshit attractive, and stronger than me. Strong is a plus.

Time was up. “Want to head back to my place? I have some Bacardi lying around.”

He noticeably strangled his excitement and muttered, “Sure,” nonchalantly.

--:--

“You see my love is no formal position, you say my love is just cold repetition re-done.”

He was trying, hard, way too fucking hard. More points lost - but this was happening, maybe once the foreplay was over he could prove his worth. He flipped me on my stomach and I was starting to finally feel like the night had been worth something, that maybe he was worth something. Until he stopped, “I want to make you cum before I fuck you, baby.” He said with conviction.

Baby? What the fuck? All of the points lost, I was done. “How about you watch me use a toy?” I said while smirking.

He liked this idea, I knew he would. Reaching under my bed for the one thing that would actually do something for me, reaching under my bed for the resolution of the evening.

Climax.

Laying there soaked, breathing deeply, feeling relieved and back to my normal self, I decided to jump out of bed. As I got up slowly, I took a sip of my drink and while doing so admired his stupid fucking throat slit corpse.



—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Whisper Words of Wisdom

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one - Bruce Lee

You can't hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have - Zig Ziglar

To achieve it, you have to KNOW it in your HEAD and BELIEVE it in your HEART - L Schmitt

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide - Napolean Bonaparte

What is worse than being blind? Having sight but no vision - Helen Keller

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said - Peter F. Drucker

To repeat what others have said, requires education. To challenge it, requires brains - Mary P. Poole

Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late - Lee Iacocca

Leadership is the ability to decide what is to be done and then get others to do it - D. Eisenhower

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed - Ralph Waldo Emerson

You have to go through the storm before you reach the rainbow - Kailee O

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after low pricing is forgotten - Lean M. Cautillo

If ethics are poor at the top, that behaviour is copied down through the organization - Robert Noyce

What's the use of running if you are not on the right road - German proverb

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see - Arthur Schopenhauer

If your mind is open, you will never face closed doors - Larissa Belcher

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him - George Bernard Shaw

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much - Helen Keller

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost - Robert H. Schuller

An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to - Laurence J. Peter

Business is like a car; it will not run by itself except downhill - Unknown

Courage is not a lack of fear, but the ability to act while facing fear - Unknown

Even when opportunity knocks, a man still has to get up off his seat and open the door- Unknown

It is better to lose a hard fought battle, than avoid a battle because it is too hard to fight - A. Fount

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself - Leo Tolstoy

People with goals succeed because they know where they're going - Earl Nightingale

Go as far as you can see, and when you get there you will see farther - Orison S. Marden

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor - Brian Tracy

Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great - Mark Twain

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress - Mahatma Gandhi

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants - Isaac Newton

Management that wants to change an institution must first show it loves that institution - John Tusa

If you climbed one step, it means you can climb the rest - Praveen Kuma

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors - T.H. Huxley

Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was - Robert Louis Stevenson

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do - Moliere

People just don't land on mountaintops...they had to climb - Trevor Stienburg

If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it - Marcus Aurelius

Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time - Arnold H. Glasow

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable - Lucius A. Seneca

The achievement of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual - Unknown

The flame that burns inside to succeed is only as hot as the pain in your muscles - Kyle Emery

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least - Johann W. Goethe

The right man is the one who seizes the moment - Johann W. Goethe

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen - Unknown

Those who forget where they came from, tend to get lost where they are going - Billy Jeffries

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much - Donald Rumsfeld

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future - Unknown

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today - Abraham Lincoln

I'll go anywhere as long as it's forward - David Livingstone

Without struggle, there is no progress - Frederick Douglas

Example is leadership - Albert Schweitzer

The Boy With His Drawings

 

My husband has been in a persistent vegetative state known as a “coma”, for three years without any sign of recovery. I have done everything from the modern medicine to alternative medicine practices, but nothing gives a positive a result. I keep visiting him every day after work. Being closer to him makes me feel he’s still alive.

One day, there was a new patient in the room next to my husbands. Out of courtesy, I talked to his mother about her boy’s condition and made other small talk too. His name is Timmy. He was ten years old. He looked like he loved drawing a lot. I said hi to him, and he replied with faint smile.

The day after, after the usual one way conversation with my husband, I visited Timmy’s room. His mother wasn’t there at the time. We talked for a moment, while he was busy with his drawings. At first I didn’t pay attention. But then I saw that he was drawing a guy wearing safari shirt and kneecap long white pants, standing beside a boy on top of a bed. It’s funny because that was the exact clothes my husband wore when he had the accident that lead to his coma.

The next day, I went to his room again. Timmy was drawing the same man with the same outfit, but now with a woman, she was wearing the same outfit I had on yesterday. The man wrote on the window inside the drawing, “I love you”. I was in tears and I asked him if I could have the drawing. “Sure”, he smiled.

When I arrived the next day, Timmy had already been discharged. So I returned to my husband’s room a bit disappointed, then I saw a piece of paper beside his bed. I noticed immediately that it was Timmy’s drawing. It was the same man again, drawn in the same style. But the background was filled with black. He looked like he was running away from something. I got cold shiver from the picture, and decided to throw it in the trash.

That night, the news hit me like lightning. My husband had died. Grief took over me and I started to take care of my husband’s funeral. The next day, the funeral was held at the local cemetery. Everybody came, and to my surprise even the boy and his mother were there. After the funeral, I went over to them to say thank you. Timmy handed me another piece of paper with a drawing on it.

It was a drawing of me in the clothes I was wearing yesterday, with a black background.

—

Credits to: chenliyong

Necrosleep

Cold Case File – Necrosleep.net – 4/18/2023

The following account is the only surviving evidence supporting the existence of Necrosleep.net. The blog data was downloaded by a concerned reader just before it vanished from the internet in 2014. The data was not recovered until 9 years passed. These are the final moments of Reed Murdock, written in his own words.

***

My Disconnected Life

Blog author: Reed Murdock

October 16th, 2014

Hey guys, so I’ve decided to start a blog about my new life. Most of you reading this are probably my friends and acquaintances, but for the rest of you I’ll expose a little bit about myself. My name’s Reed, I just moved out of my stupid parents’ basement (thank God) and now I’m pursuing my own life where no one can push me around anymore. Technically I’m the one who ditched the place, but they all but kicked me out beforehand. Nobody gives a damn about a “crackhead” like me, not even my parents. Not that I care.

Anyways, I’m doing my own thing now. I had to give up a few luxuries, my Mom’s hellacious cooking not worthy of being called a luxury. I’d much rather live off discount ramen noodles anyways. Sometimes I’ll even have corn on the side when I’m feeling extra fancy.

Speaking of fancy, I’ll admit my apartment is anything but. It’s the cheapest one I could find, in fact. I find the saying “you get what you pay for” to be especially true when I’m trying to sleep to the lulling sound of what I can only guess is some old lady getting mugged in the dark alleyway next door. My ghetto sanctuary consists of one living room, a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a closet. The walls are practically made of cardboard and the carpet is stained with God knows what, but it’s good enough for me.

Living with me is my poor excuse for a cat named Twig. She’s one of those weird hairless breeds, and in turn, a real conversation piece. I’m often asked why the cat’s turned inside out, or if she was the victim of some perverse taxidermy project gone wrong.

As shoddy as my life seems, living on the cheap has its benefits. My cost of living is next to nothing, so I can make enough money to survive by doing odd jobs on the internet without ever leaving the house. I spend half of the month writing bogus reviews for products I’ve never used and filling out surveys on political issues I know nothing about, then spend the other half surfing the web and watching pirated reruns of The X-Files. I don’t even have to pay for internet service thanks to my neighbors’ complete failure to secure their Wi-Fi hotspot. I bet their data overages are through the roof now. Oh well, not my problem.

I’ll be updating this blog every day or two if I’m up to anything interesting. Thanks for reading this boring crap, hopefully my life will get a little more exciting in the days to come.

-Reed

October 18th, 2014

I’ve decided to do something unusual. It’s 3AM and I intend to stay up all night, caffeinated beverages at my side. Why am I doing this, you ask? Because I’m permanently switching to a nocturnal sleep schedule. In other words, I’ll be sleeping during the day instead of the night. I have a number of good reasons for doing this:

1. There’s less people out at night, so leaving the building won’t be such a dreaded thing.

2. Sunlight gives you cancer, right?

3. Screw social norms.

4. The internet speed seems to increase substantially after midnight.

5. It’s a free country, I don’t even need reasons.

Also, I ran into this cool forum called Nocturnal Underground. Naturally, it’s full of sun-loathing recluses and cynical misanthropes like me. How perfect. I registered straight away and found the forum-dwellers to be very welcoming. It’s not the most famous of internet destinations, more of a tight-knit hole in the wall for a very obscure subculture.

We all seem to share a general appreciation for societal disconnect, which is cool, because I really thought I was the only wackjob who can’t stand dealing with normal people. After all, it’s these normal people who are telling me I don’t have the right to smoke whatever substances I damn well please, as if it’s their business.

I’ll let you all know how this whole nocturnal thing works for me. Peace out.

-Reed

October 21st, 2014

I’m adjusting very well to my new lifestyle. I can already tell this is the way I should’ve been living all along. The internet is a far more interesting place during the night.

Everything has been fairly normal lately, except for one thing.

Yesternight, I received a mysterious private message on Nocturnal Underground. Here’s the message copied and pasted for your reading pleasure:

—-

To: Reedman07

From: Revelation666

Subject: Necrosleep.net

Congratulations Reedman07. You’ve been invited to an invitation-only website that will change your life forever. Discover what society doesn’t want you to know at Necrosleep.net

Use your exclusive invitation code to enter: DCLXVI

Find out what you’ve been missing your entire life.

Necrosleep.net

—-

Sounds like a total scam, but it piqued my interest. I couldn’t resist going to the site just to see what the hell it was.

So I went there, and arrived at a completely empty black page. I noticed the text cursor blinking in the center, indicating that I could type there. I presumed that this was where I was supposed to type the invitation code, and I presumed correctly.

When the home page loaded, I immediately noticed that all of the text was in Russian besides the title header, which simply said “Necrosleep.net” in English. My web browser automatically detected that the site was Russian and offered to translate it for me, so of course I clicked yes.

Now, this site was clearly on the shady side. Whoever designed it was certainly not well versed in web design, as the site had more in common with a notepad document than a good webpage. The background was black, the white text was written in the oh-so-generic Courier font, and under the title header was a row of red hyperlinks labeled as follows: Main, Purchase, Secret, and Credit. Here’s an excerpt from the main page:

—-

Welcome to Necrosleep.net

This website is invitation-only. Selected visitors have exclusive access to our special product that will change your life forever.

Necrosleep is a product that safely negates the biological necessity of sleep, thanks to our miraculous secret formula. With one pill a day, you will never feel the need to sleep again.

Try it for yourself by clicking the purchase link. If Necrosleep doesn’t change your life, we will offer you a complete refund.

Your astonishment is guaranteed.

—-

What a bold claim these people are making. There’s no way this stuff actually works, otherwise everyone would be taking it. Obviously I was skeptical, and still am, but I clicked around the site a bit more just out of curiosity. I clicked the “Secret” hyperlink, which took me to another page. Here’s the text from said page:

—-

Necrosleep is comprised of special and rare ingredients, which we cannot disclose in order to ensure that our formula stays in private hands. In order to keep our product available, it can only be distributed through alternative means on an exclusive basis.

The active ingredient in Necrosleep has been sought after for years by doctors and scientists intending to displace sleep with wakefulness. Only we have managed to do what others could not, as permitted by the will of our master.

We can assure you with full confidence that our product will change your life, and you will never feel need to sleep again.

Feel free to indulge in our secret.

—-

Alternative means? More like black market. Whatever’s going on here doesn’t appear to be… legal, exactly. Not that I care about the law, I just get untrustworthy vibes from this site.

Anyways, I continued on and clicked the “Credit” hyperlink. My heart skipped a little when I was confronted with honestly the most uncanny photo of a living person I’ve ever seen. It was an old black and white photo of a tall man in a doctor’s coat. If he wasn’t standing upright, I’d say the guy was dead, but my guess is that he was just cadaverously unhealthy, and probably blind from the looks of his pale, lifeless eyes. Not a trace of emotion could be found in his face.

There was a small bit text below the photo, which read as follows:

—-

Credit for the pioneering of Necrosleep goes to the brilliant Dr. Hail A. Stan, proxy of our master, and founder of the Ukrainian Institute of Occult Medicine. His work lives on.

—-

Proxy of our master? Occult medicine? Maybe I’ve watched too many horror movies, but this isn’t your typical snake oil sales pitch. Maybe they’re part of some deranged religious group or something? I admit I was slightly creeped out, but more fascinated. I clicked the “Purchase” hyperlink, out of mere curiosity once again.

Turns out each pill costs some absurd amount of Russian currency, which I found was equal to about 130 US dollars per pill. Ridiculous! Not that I would buy them even if I could. I immediately left the site.

At this point I’m guessing it’s probably a lousy foreign credit card scam, or some weird cult initiative. Either way it made my day more interesting than it normally would’ve been.

-Reed

October 22nd, 2014

I posted a thread on Nocturnal Underground about the mystery user who sent me the strange PM. I found myself wanting to know more about this whole Necrosleep.net thing, so as a part of my investigation I sought to find out who the user was. Here’s a transcript of the forum thread:

—-

Reedman07: Hey guys, I hope I’m not disrupting the order of things by posting this in the Trolling and Harassment section, I didn’t know where else to put it. I figured this incident of mine might qualify as a spam case if other people are getting the same advertisement message I am. Basically the other day I got a PM from a user I’ve never seen before called Revelation666, and the message was an advertisement for some supplement. Has anyone seen this user on the forums before? I sure haven’t. If you have any information that’d be great.

Cosmic_Trashbin: I don’t recognize the username, he must be fairly new or just inactive. What were the exact contents of the message? We could probably get an admin to ban him for advertising.

Reedman07: Here’s a screencap of the message. [Message.jpg]

Cosmic_Trashbin: Strange. Did you actually go to the website? I hope not, it’s probably infested with viruses. Lol

B3457w4rf4r3: Just tried going there, it’s just a black screen. The invite code didn’t work either, it just gave me a popup box that said invalid IP.

Reedman07: Of course I went there. I couldn’t resist.

Thuglyfe4lyfe: Doesn’t work for me either. Invalid IP.

Cosmic_Trashbin: If it only works for Reedman07 maybe it’s bound to his IP somehow. Can you get some screenshots of the site? You’ve sparked my interest.

Reedman07: Here you are. The page was initially in Russian so I had my browser translate it. [Main.jpg] [Purchase.jpg] [Secret.jpg] [Credit.jpg]

B3457w4rf4r3: Looks shady as hell.

Cosmic_Trashbin: Wow. Don’t even mess with it, you’re asking for trouble just by clicking the link. You’re probably being keylogged as we speak.

B3457w4rf4r3: Not to mention the product they’re selling is probably laced with cyanide.

Cosmic_Trashbin: If he’s stupid enough to buy it, well, the gene pool is better off without him anyways.

B3457w4rf4r3: Never trust a Russian.

Thuglyfe4lyfe: I’m Russian and I find that offensive.

B3457w4rf4r3: You just said you were Asian last week, make up your mind.

Reedman07: I leave this thread for 5 minutes and chaos ensues. Everybody calm the [expletive] down. Of course I’m not going to mess with it, these supposed miracle pills are $130 each anyways. Who do you think I am, Johnny Cash?

Thuglyfe4lyfe: Just because his name was Johnny Cash doesn’t mean he was rich or had lots of cash or whatever.

B3457w4rf4r3: Of course he was rich you dumb[expletive], he’s Johnny [expletive] Cash.

Cosmic_Trashbin: Who’s bright idea was it to equip this forum with a profanity filter anyways? It’s [expletive] stupid.

Reedman07: Before this thread deteriorates any further, let me just say I’ve put tape over my webcam just in case something slipped past my antivirus, but it’s probably just a credit card scam or something. I’ll do some research on it tomorrow, the sun’s been up for three hours and I’m running low on energy drinks.

Cosmic_Trashbin: I’ll contact one of the admins about this. Spam isn’t tolerated here. I ought to see if they’re willing to uninstall the profanity filter plugin as well.

—-

I got a message later on from HGWishingWells (one of the admins) saying that the user Revelation666 doesn’t exist in the database, and that the only way I could’ve received the message is if the mail client was bypassed somehow. In other words, somebody hacked the system just to send me a spam message. What the hell.

-Reed

October 23rd, 2014

I finally got around to Googling Necrosleep. The results were mostly irrelevant YouTube channels and defunct ’90s screamo bands from the looks of it, but I noticed among the garbage results a link to a post on FastMD.com. The preview said “Does anyone know if this Necrosleep stuff actually works?” So I clicked on it, only to be directed to a page stating “The post you’re looking for has been deleted and no longer exists.” I should have known. Nothing can ever be easy and predictable.

I returned to the results, and had to scan over several pages of them before finally running into an old gaming forum thread where the website Necrosleep.net was mentioned. This time the post hadn’t been deleted. In the middle of a conversation about maximizing crop production in some medieval strategy game, one of the users claimed to have taken Necrosleep in order to tend to his virtual farm 24 hours a day.

Needless to say, the other forum patrons were highly skeptical. The guy posted a link to Necrosleep.net in an attempt to back up his claim, ultimately failing to convince them because—you guessed it—the site was bound to his IP address. He also had the same invitation code as me (DCLXVI) leading me to believe it’s just a formality intended to make you feel special. But that doesn’t explain why and how my IP—and apparently someone else’s—got singled out.

The bragger then claimed that there was irrefutable proof of his ceaseless wakefulness in his in-game score. In relation to the length of time his account has existed, his score was excessively high. So high, in fact, that it would be impossible for him to attain so high a score in so short a time frame, unless he was playing the game for at least 21 hours a day, which leaves practically no time for sleeping.

Despite all that, they attributed his accomplishment to an automatic bot program that operated the game for him during the night. Since cheating in this way is against the game rules, his account was promptly banned, according to the moderator at the end of the thread. Sure enough, in little red letters below his forum avatar were the words “Banned for bot abuse, 8/12/2006.”

I couldn’t find any more relevant results for Necrosleep or Necrosleep.net other than what I’ve just told you about. Looks like these online dope dealers are pretty stealth. I’m just dying to know what their real motives might be, ‘cause I could think of a million better ways to steal someone’s credit card number or peddle quack remedies. It could be a prank, but evidently this has been going on since 2006 at least. Perhaps some jokes just never die.

-Reed

October 25th, 2014

I got another PM from Revelation666. Am I the only one who gets creeped out by that name? Knowing what I know now, it makes me uneasy to think about the great lengths this user went to contact me specifically. For some reason, they stealthily bypassed the system just to send me these messages and make me this “offer.” Here is the message I just received:

—-

To: Reedman07

From: Revelation666

Subject: Necrosleep.net/backdoor

Congratulations Reedman07. You’ve been selected to receive a free 30 day trial of Necrosleep. Claim your exclusive reward at Necrosleep.net/backdoor

Find out what you’ve been missing your entire life, risk free.

Necrosleep.net/backdoor

—-

Once again my curiosity got the best of me. Bracing myself for whatever scam was coming my way, I clicked the link. I was taken to a page asking for my address, nothing more. I thought about it carefully, knowing full well that these people likely have malicious intentions. But if I entered my post office box, what’s the worst that could happen? Worst case scenario they send me some junk mail or some faulty pills. The point is that I’ll finally know what they want from me.

I entered the address.

-Reed

October 28th, 2014

I decided to go back to the thread I posted on Nocturnal Underground and let people know what’s up. Sure enough, their reactions were amusing:

—-

Reedman07: Well guys, it happened again. Look at the attachment. [Message2.jpg]

Cosmic_Trashbin: Don’t tell me you clicked on this one too.

Reedman07: I did. Then it asked me for my address. But don’t worry I only entered my PO box.

Cosmic_Trashbin: Are you out of your [expletive] mind?!

Reedman07: I take it you couldn’t persuade the admins to disable the profanity filter.

Cosmic_Trashbin: No [expletive] Sherlock. Apparently they get a huge kick out of watching us quarrel over it.

Reedman07: I wouldn’t be surprised if HGWishingWells sent me these weird messages just to stir up some controversy around here.

HGWishingWells: Neither would I… ;)

Cosmic_Trashbin: The mystery has been solved. Everybody go home.

HGWishingWells: In all seriousness I had nothing to do with this. I swear on my great grandmother’s life!

Reedman07: Swearing on the life of a dead person isn’t exactly the most convincing way to plead.

Cosmic_Trashbin: I think the joke’s gone far enough. HG, did you do it or not?

HGWishingWells: I really didn’t do it. The admins and I were genuinely perplexed when we saw where the message came from. Or should I say, where the message DIDN’T come from. It was certainly not from any registered user on the inside.

B3457w4rf4r3: If they actually send you the pills are you going to take them? You couldn’t pay me a million bucks to try that [expletive].

Cosmic_Trashbin: I can personally guarantee you that stuff is too good to be true. Nothing can make you stay awake forever.

HGWishingWells: I agree with Cosmic. Don’t take this any further.

Reedman07: Even if they do send me the pills and it’s not just junk mail, I’m not going to take it unless I find some more information on it. Do you really think I’m that stupid? Chill out guys. I probably won’t update this thread anymore, so follow my blog if you want to know what’s up with me. The link’s on my profile.

—-

Well, we pretty much ruled out the possibility that it’s a prank by the admins. I don’t think HGWishingWells would carry on a prank this long, nor would he lie so blatantly. And even if one of the other admins were to prank me, I can’t imagine they would do it with some Russian supplement pitch. It’s just all too strange.

-Reed

October 30th, 2014

Last night, I had a buddy of mine deliver the mail to my doorstep in exchange for some coding work on his Flash site. I’ll do just about anything to avoid leaving the building. But that’s not the point; the point is that I received an envelope with no return address. Yet I immediately knew who it was from.

The envelope was old. Very old, like it’s been sitting in a dusty attic for decades. I opened the stained envelope only to find a smaller manila envelope inside, also rather old-looking. Inscribed on the small envelope was the word “Necrosleep” and a word of advice on storing the packet in a cool, dark place for maximum potency. The words appeared to have been stamped onto the envelope rather than printed.

I opened the small envelope, and sure enough, there were 30 black pills inside, more crude than what you might get from your local pharmacy. Now before you all start freaking out, I’m NOT going to take these. At least not until I can dig up some more reliable information on it.

Now I know that these Russian dope dealers weren’t just trying to send me junk mail. The question is, why would they send me the pills if they don’t actually work? Surely they must want my money, which they wouldn’t get after a failed 30 day trial. What if they’re trying to kill me? I never did have a good feeling about any of this. But the curiosity is killing me.

-Reed

October 31st, 2014

It just occurred to me that I completely overlooked something. I never researched Dr. Hail A. Stan, the guy who apparently had something to do with Necrosleep. So I did a quick Google search and found—much to my surprise—that he had is own article on Wikipedia.

The article states that Dr. Stan was a Ukrainian scientist and physician who claimed to have been directly involved in the experiments portrayed in a 1940 motion picture which documents Soviet research into the resuscitation of clinically dead organisms. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

—-

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms

The motion picture “Experiments in the Revival of Organisms” depicts various disturbing medical experiments conducted on canines, one of which involves keeping a dog’s decapitated head alive with a primitive autojector machine that supplied it with oxygenated blood.

The operations in the film were credited to Dr. Sergei Brukhonenko. However, Dr. Hail A. Stan incessantly claimed to be the one who really conducted the experiments and invented the autojector, and that they only credited Brukhonenko because Stan was sentenced to life in prison for illegally conducting gruesome experiments on humans. He believed that because he had consent from his test subjects (albeit through bribery) he had not committed an immoral crime.

The Lenin Prize was awarded to Brukhonenko for the autojector, while Stan remained in permanent imprisonment. It wasn’t until they discovered the lost footage of his morbid human experiments that they had him executed by lethal injection. His last words, spoken in an unidentified language, died with him.

Dr. Hail A. Stan was rumored to have pioneered a variety of cures for major conditions such as narcolepsy and epilepsy, although the results were not published in a scientific manner, and therefore the majority of his alleged accomplishments were unverifiable, and seemingly occult in nature. The number of people he apparently cured of various incurable afflictions between 1930 and 1940 was in the thousands. Attempts to replicate his documented remedies ultimately failed, leading most to believe he was practicing pseudoscience.

It is believed by some that Dr. Hail A. Stan has a following to this day, and that his miracle cures are still being practiced and peddled from Russia and Ukraine. Some claim to have received mysterious emails and offers pertaining to Dr. Hail A. Stan’s work; all investigations revealed no evidence to support these claims.

—-

I’ll admit, some of this stuff unnerves me. Morbid human experiments aren’t exactly pleasant things to think about. But it seems to me this guy was just doing what was necessary to advance his research. Maybe he really was on to something? Maybe his cures couldn’t be replicated because they were so advanced? I don’t really know. All I know is that I received one of these mysterious offers that supposedly don’t exist beyond hearsay.

Maybe there’s something to this. Maybe I really was selected to receive a gift too great for the masses. Maybe they were dead serious when they said this would change my life.

-Reed

November 1st, 2014

I’m holding the pill in my hand, ready to take it at a moment’s notice. I’ve been thinking hard about this. I know it’s not the safest thing to do, but I’m a risk-taker. If this turns out badly I don’t have much to live for anyways. Life is nothing without danger, and I want to know the motives of these people more than anything. I need to know what they want from me. I need to know what I’m missing.

There’s only one way to find out.

-Reed

November 3rd, 2014

I can’t believe it. It’s actually working. I haven’t slept in 3 days and I don’t even feel remotely tired. Holy hell! I’ve never felt so focused and stimulated in my life. I don’t know what’s in this stuff but it WORKS. I don’t know how long it’s going to work exactly, so I’m not getting my hopes up. But the claim is that I’ll never need to sleep again. Ever.

So far, so good.

-Reed

November 4th, 2014

Still works like a charm after 4 days. But lately the light has been really bothering me, so I duct taped a piece of cardboard over the window. I never liked that window anyways. At night I get this feeling that I’m being watched from outside, and it’s been making me anxious more than usual. It’s easy to think you’re seeing something uncanny out the window, until you realize it’s just your own reflection distorted by the cheap glass pane. Anyways, that issue has been resolved.

I also found something interesting when I was taking my nightly pill. Until recently, I failed to notice a symbol stamped on the inside of the small manila envelope. Yes, the inside. I know I’ve seen the symbol before, but I can’t remember where exactly. It’s a downward-pointing pentagram with what I think is a goat’s head inscribed within it. Maybe they just re-used an old envelope and turned it inside out or something.

-Reed

November 5th, 2014

Thanks to one of my followers for pointing out something I didn’t realize; the emblem inside the envelope was actually Satanic symbol… Yeah, needless to say I’m definitely not taking this crap anymore. This sort of thing really creeps me out. I’m done. I wish I would have read that message before I took it tonight, I’ll just quit tomorrow. I mean, it hasn’t harmed me thus far, and I feel great, so maybe I’m just being paranoid. It’s just a symbol, probably a printing mistake or something. But screw that. I’m not messing around with demonic affairs. No way in Hell.

-Reed

November 6th, 2014

Over the past week I’ve been taking one of these pills at exactly 10:00 PM each night. I planned on stopping the pills tonight, but around 10:30 I started getting this horrible headache, and it got progressively worse. I was thinking maybe it was just me adjusting to suddenly going off Necrosleep, so I waited another hour, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I took another pill.

I know I could quit if I wanted to, but I’m starting to think there’s no reason to. I mean, I don’t have to sleep anymore, I’ve been feeling energized, I should just man up and stop being irrational.

-Reed

November 9th, 2014

I’ve been making a killing with all this free time and newfound focus. I made five grand in a single day of trading virtual property; that’s not including my online poker proceeds over the last week which are through the goddamn roof. Suddenly I have this intuitive grasp of numbers that I never had before. I’ve been living my life in a daze until now… they were right. This really is changing my life.

-Reed

November 11th, 2014

Here’s a rather peculiar story for you guys. I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business, when I noticed a couple of gleaming eyes staring at me from the dark corner. I thought nothing of it, knowing it must’ve been Twig skulking about. Cats have reflective eyes, who else would it be? I looked away, and at that very same moment, I felt it. Twig’s wrinkly little self curling up next to me.

I looked back toward the corner, those beady eyes still fixed upon me with Twig clearly at my side. I blinked, and the eyes were gone. Man, my brain’s really trying to screw with me. It had to have been mental. Yet I remember it with such lucidity. Come to think of it, I should’ve known it wasn’t Twig from the start. Cat’s eyes don’t glow red.

Anyways, let’s hope it was just a freak brain malfunction. After all, what else could it possibly be?

-Reed

November 12th, 2014

I’m going to run out of food eventually. Obviously I COULD go to the store and restock myself, but… the thought scares me. The thought of leaving the safety of my apartment—the thought of social interaction—I now dread it more than I ever have. I never have preferred going out to staying in, but I’ve never dreaded it this much. I wasn’t always so terribly afraid.

None of my instant messenger friends have been online lately, and they stopped upvoting my blog posts. Who’s going to get my groceries? What if I have to go out there? I shouldn’t be panicking like this, honestly. I’m being stupid. Stop panicking you idiot. Stop panicking you idiot. Stop panicking you idiot.

-Reed

November 13th, 2014

My friend Jake came online. It was a temporary relief that lasted about as long as it took him to say “I’m not dropping off the food until you agree to get out of the house.” That was his offer, entailing that I leave the house and go clubbing with the guys in exchange for help. I declined out of pure fear.

He was worried for my health, apparently. I can’t blame him for thinking I’m becoming a feral hermit doomed to die alone in his pathetic slum, but he just doesn’t understand. Nobody understands me. At least I’m pretty sure I got enough food to last till Thanksgiving, if I stretch it.

-Reed

November 15th, 2014

I need to tell you all about another strange experience I had yesterday. I’ve been leaving my TV on lately so the silence doesn’t irritate me. That children’s show Bucko’s Garden was on, you know, the show we all watched as kids until we were mature enough to realize how mindless and nonsensical it was. Yeah, that show. It was playing in the background on my boxy old TV in the corner. Eventually it distracted me and I found myself zoning out into it for lack of better things to do.

It must’ve been a Thanksgiving episode, considering Bucko (a guy dressed like a deer with a human face) was in the kitchen preparing sweet potatoes and cranberries. This is about as intelligible as the show gets. Things got a bit weird when he decided to let the anthropomorphic cranberries go into his garden at the last minute, as if they were captive insects. The sweet potatoes weren’t so lucky.

Bucko sent his bird friends to retrieve a pumpkin pie from the pie tree, and his squirrel friends to collect gravy from the gravy cow, who coincidentally regurgitates mashed potatoes to boot. I told you this show was weird, but that’s not even the start.

I didn’t realize something was off until Bucko pulled out a knife—a full fledged razor-sharp knife that you wouldn’t expect to see in such a benign show. With the other hand he opened the oven, and pulled it out. Not a ham, not a turkey.

A roasted human fetus.

Mother of God.

I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing. How on Earth could this be allowed on television? Were my eyes deceiving me? I don’t know, but I turned it off as soon as he started cutting into it. The gore was too much, even for me.

I’m still having a hard time believing what my own eyes clearly saw. I couldn’t have been dreaming, I haven’t had so much as a nap in 15 days. I just… I don’t even know. Maybe something’s wrong with me. I’ve been forgetting my PC login password, even after I changed it to something else and wrote it down I forgot where I wrote it down where I wrote it forgot it down. I can’t even think properly right now.

-Reed

November 18th, 2014

I’m not going lie. I’m scared out of my mind right now.

I walked into the bathroom, planning to take my first shower in weeks. I never imagined I’d open the door and see anything more than my own reflection in the mirror.

Instead, I saw it. Standing behind me. Staring. Completely motionless. I froze and panicked more than I ever have in my entire life I swear. You don’t know true fear. You don’t even have a clue. I can still see it, engraved in my mind. The face. It was… demonic.

It was gone as soon as it came.

I’d say I was just imagining things, but it felt all too real. I’m not going into that bathroom ever again. I’ll just go in the kitchen sink or something. I can’t handle this. I wonder if these pills are screwing with my head. I need to stop. I need to stop now. I don’t even feel safe in my own apartment anymore. I feel like the shadows are watching me.

-Reed

November 20th, 2014

I tried to stop the pills again, but I had a change of heart at the last minute. Something told me not to, like a voice in my head. I just feel like it would be wrong and somehow my life would fall apart if I stopped. I don’t think this is normal, the way I’m living, but I can’t imagine it any other way. I can’t imagine stepping out into the light, or even the moonlight for that matter.

All of my instant messenger contacts have been offline since Jake talked to me last, and I don’t know if my food will last another week. Twig’s getting pretty skinny since I’ve been eating her cat food to stretch my supplies a bit, but she’ll be okay as long as someone comes online by Thanksgiving. Speaking of which, nobody invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner, not even my family. But that’s okay, I hate my parents anyways. Screw them.

-Reed

November 22nd, 2014

I’ve been hearing more voices inside my head. Horrible voices. It’s really scaring me and I don’t know what to do. Is it some sort of side effect or something? I can’t hear myself think sometimes, like I’m losing control over my own thoughts. And these thoughts I have are so dark… it’s not like me to think that way. I would never hurt anyone, I’m not like that.

I tried going to Necrosleep.net again just to see if there’s something I missed about side effects, and it said the domain is no longer in use. The site was shut down.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m terrified of myself.

-Reed

November 24th, 2014

Knock knock. I yelled through the drafty door, asking who it was. It was my “friends” Jake and Douglas. Apparently they wanted to help me after seeing my blog posts of distress. But sure enough, it was only under the condition that I open the door and come out. Very suspicious.

How do I really know I can trust them? I know I’ve trusted them for years, but what if they were just earning my trust so they could pull something more sinister later on? What if they give me drugged food? What if they stab me when I open the door? It just occurred to me that I have no real proof that I can trust them; I can’t even trust myself anymore. I don’t even know who I am. Maybe my whole life I’ve been a sadistic freak and didn’t even know it. Maybe my true self is just now coming out. Maybe everyone is evil.

-Reed

November 25th, 2014

The voices won’t stop. I used to think they were malevolent, but now I’m not so sure. Sometimes it feels like they’re trying to liberate me. They want me to listen to them desperately. They show me things, horrible things, and yet these things don’t seem horrible to me anymore. I’m numb. I don’t feel anything.

But I know there’s one thing I can do to make me feel again. Part of me says it’s terribly wrong. But the voices tell me otherwise.

The voices are my friends now.

The demons are my friends.

-Reed

November 26th, 2014

Twig is in heaven now. I had to do it. I had to know what it tasted like. It was satisfying, but I need more. I thought I’d never leave this room again, but I don’t have a choice anymore. I need more of it. The face is getting angry. The voices are getting angry. My head hurts so bad. I need more. It hurts so much. I need more. They’re hurting me. I need to feed them more. They need more. I need more. I have to make it stop. I need more I NEED MORE.

MAKE IT STOP.

-Reed

***

Police Report Pt. 1 – Thanksgiving – 11/27/2014

Victim: Paul Murdock

Aggressor: Reed Murdock

Police arrived on the scene after a frantic 911 call from Margaret Murdock (confirmed to be the aggressor’s mother). The victim, Paul Murdock (the aggressor’s father) was found in the process of being mauled and cannibalized by the aggressor, Reed Murdock, whose face and mouth was covered in blood and brain matter.

Reed was shot dead after refusing to stop eating his own father, whose skull was torn open entirely. Drug use is suspected to be involved.

***

Police Report Pt. 2 – 11/29/2014

Reed Murdock’s residence was inspected thoroughly by investigators. A hairless, headless, and disemboweled cat carcass was found on the kitchen counter. The cat’s blood and bodily fluids were spilled throughout the house, while the head was found crushed, brain completely removed and nowhere to be found.

The apartment was clearly inhabited by an utterly insane individual, given the foul and uncleanly nature of the place. An old TV rested in the corner, turned on, displaying only static and white noise. It had no antenna.

A suspicious packet of unidentified pills was recovered. The resident’s computer and other personal effects were confiscated and await further analysis.

***

Autopsy Report – 12/4/2014

Subject: Reed Murdock

The contents of Reed Murdock’s digestive tract was a disturbing mixture of human tissue, mostly brain matter and cerebrospinal fluid. Examination of his own brain, however, was even more disturbing and perplexing.

His brain was clearly and visibly deteriorating; the brain tissue was black and red rather than the usual pinkish gray, and riddled with holes throughout. Closer examination revealed thousands small black parasites to be consuming the brain. This was undoubtedly the cause of the man’s insidious psychosis.

Testing on the parasites was inconclusive, as they didn’t match any known species. Further testing is required.

The unknown pills recovered from Murdock’s apartment have been tested and confirmed to contain a vile plethora of uncommon substances, including obscure, highly addictive euphoric drugs, human hormones, and parasitic eggs, presumably meant to remain dormant in a cool place until introduced into the body, allowing them to hatch and eventually invade the brain. It is unclear how he acquired the pills and where they came from, although whoever concocted them surely had malicious intent.

***

Police Report Pt. 3 – 12/6/2014

Two friends of Reed Murdock—Jake Fairfax and Douglas Lopez—were questioned at the police station. Immediately they referred to his online blog, where he allegedly recorded his path to eventual insanity. It was found that the blog mysteriously disappeared off the face of the internet for reasons unknown.

They were aware of the unknown pills Reed was taking, claiming they originated from the website Necrosleep.net.

Investigators later confirmed the website does not exist.




—

Written by Lemniscate64

Schools in Rural China Suck

So I teach English at a high-school in Zhongwei, Ning Xia, China. I lived in Shanghai as a kid (expat family) so Ive seen all the big cities and all the tourist spots. So I jumped at the chance to move somewhere off the beaten track. Zhongwei is an ancient city, its history goes back to the Tang dynasty and was founded on the old Silk Road and more recently has had some serious development because of the mineral wealth of the surrounding lands.

Anyway you aren’t here for a history lesson. So Ive been teaching here for just under a year now. I teach Gao 2 (final year before uni). One thing I’m not used to is the huge classes. The biggest is 92 students cramped into a room that barely fits 60 (“normal class size”). The fucked up thing is they separate them into classes based on their skill level. Basically the brightest ones get a small class of 44, then we have the middle of the road classes, kids move around these every semester, going up or down based on their performance but with 4 classes of around 60 students each they are all pretty much the same.

Then you have the low class of 92 of the “stupids” as the head master calls them behind their back. When ever a kid gets moved from to or from of the top or bottom classes they make a big deal of it in assembly in front of the whole school (upwards of 1000 students). Its fucking heart breaking to see the kids faces when they get moved in to the lower class, no one stops the stadium full of their peers from laughing and talking while the headmaster reads out their report card in front of them all, the teachers join in. OFC everyone claps when a kid gets moved up.

In the time I’ve been here we have had 8 suicides. Most of them were just faceless. Chinese schools are not great at developing individuality. One kid in the high class stayed in my mind. Really bright, really hard worker and that is a whole different ballgame in China. He had asked me for some extra English lessons weeks before it happened. He had always been the best of the best and he was becoming just one of the best. I wish now that I had said yes but at the time I was just to busy (still am but now I’m teaching extra classes in my lunch breaks) and so was he. All the students are fucking hard workers and TBH the difference between the top and the bottom classes is absolutely nothing.

Anyway, after 6 months I had started getting to know one or two of the kids by face if not by name. When you teach more than 600 kids a week it can be hard. There was one kid that really got to me. I was diagnosed as Dyspraxic when I was young (you can thank spellcheck that this is legible) so when I saw the signs in a kid in the bottom class I was fairly sure I could help. I took it to the head of English (my boss) and he didn’t quite understand. I told him about the problems the kid was having and suggested some stuff that helped me in the past. He just brushed it off saying the kid was just dumb so I went online and found some literature on the subject to show him.

He looked very concerned after reading the translation I wrote and just responded that “We can notice him” (his english is atrocious). So, happy that I did a good thing, I went back to preparing lessons. I looked for the kid in class next time I had them, hoping to see him with a laptop (the school just bought a bunch of laptops for the teachers and we had hundreds lying about) but I didn’t see him. Next week was the same. I went back to my boss and asked him about the child. He told me that the kid had been moved. I assumed he meant to a special school.

Life went back to normal, I had a spring in my step at helping overcome a students difficulties (that I lost 2 months later when a kid in the bottom class killed herself by throwing herself off the top of one of the school buildings). The worst thing was that I could not remember her face or anything about her, students here spend most of their time head in books. One of the girls friends had taken the loss about as hard as anyone would take the practically ignored suicide of a classmate, so I tried to talk to her but got nothing. I talked to her friends but all I could gather was that her parents moved often for business so she lived at school. Her grades were slipping badly, she was disrupting class and I think she was getting drunk before school (not uncommon among the older students and teachers). I went to my boss to bring it up, she lived on campus so if she was getting drunk it was certain other kids were as well. I told him that I thought the kid needed help and he responded that he would look into it. I looked out for her in class the next week but didn’t see her. I went back to my boss and asked him if everything was alright. I’ll never forget what he said next “she has been dealt with”. That was all he would or could give me. At first I wasn’t sure what he meant and I’m not even sure he was. There were no other schools for miles, some of our kids had a 3 hour drive into school. We were the end, we occasionally took in “troublesome” kids from the high-school in the main town but the only way kids left our school is if their parents moved away.

In china the students stay in their classroom and the teachers come to them so I never took register or even counted them as it would take most of the lesson. After then I made a point of trying to remember each of the kids I taught. I never had to do any marking; that was handled by other teachers, so I never had a good idea of who was in my classes (I was the only person in the city who had ever spoken english outside of the classroom so my time was precious to the school). In classes of that size we would always have sick kids or kids who were absent but looking at the lowest class of students I recalled the first few months with them, cramped into a freezing room with 2 or 3 kids to a desk. I looked at the class, all staring at me intently and noticed something I hadn’t before. Several of the desks were one to a child. This was the norm for most of my classes where there was enough desks for each child but the bottom class had always been so crowded.

I was teaching the passed tense to that group for the umpteenth time when I decided to do a headcount. 75. 75 students. Down from the 92 I had at the start of the year. We had had 2 suicides in that class and 7 had moved up but 92 to 75 was strange. The school had just recovered from flu season so I put it down to that. I continued my headcount for each class. The top group had gone up by 5 since the start of the year. The troubled kid in their group still was with us at that point and we had only had 2 students move down, both of which I can happily say are settled into their new class and doing better without the pressure. That brought us to a total of 47. I confirmed the number with a headcount. The top group didn’t take many sick days. I kept a log of each class and how many students in each. The middle group had lost some students to moving up or down to the “special” groups. But each class was more or less the same as when they had began. The only difference was in the bottom group. I asked off hand to the head master what happened if we needed to expel someone (we never did, you cant imagine how tame kids are here). We were literally the only school around so we couldn’t. We got other schools undesirables.

Schools in China get funded based on how many students they have but more importantly, how well they do at their end of year exams. We were the run off school for the province yet we had one of the best pass rates. One of the main reasons I took the job was because of the great pay, better than anywhere else in the province. Well I have kept up the head counts for the bottom class (everyone else’s stayed the same). We are going into exam time now and even though we have had 8 new students join us we are down to 67. I ask the other teachers but they just say the students moved if they reply with anything at all. Ive been to the police here, but they do nothing.

Sitting here in my office, looking out across the mountainous reaches I think I may have solved it. Every day at 5am truckloads of people go out to work in the mines that make this little town so wealthy. At 8pm they come back. After counting the kids in the class of “stupids” I cant bring myself to count the trucks for fear of seeing a familiar face.



—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Motherhood is Joy and Pain in Equal Measure

They say that immediately after you give birth, you forget about the pain.

I’d always thought that must be a cliché, but as her tiny hand wrapped around my index finger, I did; I forgot. And not just the pain. Everything that had been worrying me throughout the pregnancy- the fear of being a single mother, the panic about whether I’d know how to care for her, the gnawing anxiety about how I’d support us both- all of it went away in that moment.

Another thing that they say is that all babies are beautiful. This is a little less true. Looking through the eyes of love definitely helps matters, but objectively speaking, my little pixie couldn’t have been honestly described as ‘beautiful’ that first day.

Her face bore that ‘scrunched’ look, the result of a (lengthy!) natural birth, and her hair was so sparse and fine that she bordered on bald. There was a vivid red mark down the right side of her face (that midwife needed to trim her nails!) and I could already see that she had her father’s slightly weak chin.

But her eyes. They were beautiful. I named her Violet Elizabeth for the colour of them, just like Elizabeth Taylor’s; so inky and unusual in hue that they could never really be described with an adjective as plain as ‘blue.’

She slept in my arms that first night, a warm, milk-scented weight, until drowsiness overtook me. I just couldn’t bear to put her down.

Those first few days were blissful. I know a lot of new mothers say they feel exhausted, tearful or a bit uncertain, but I guess I was one of the lucky ones- everything just seemed to come naturally. The nappy changes, the night feeds, none of it fazed me.

When the Health Visitor popped in, she laughed. “Like a duck to water,” she said, as she observed a feed and change of clothing.

A steady stream of visitors ensured that I had little time to feel lonely or overwhelmed, and as little Violet neared the 2 month mark, she was blossoming into the sort chubby cheeked cherub you see on greetings cards and calendars. Her hair thickened to a dark golden cloud around her face, the scratch on her cheek had long since faded, and when she smiled, she charmed everyone.

Our guests would cluck and coo over her, waving toys in front of her or putting on silly voices. “She’s adooorable!” they’d say, and I’d brace myself for the inevitable, “Come on, beautiful, come and have a cuddle with Uncle/Auntie ———-!”

I know, it’s ridiculous, but she’s my baby, my little pixie. And I love holding her, smelling that special baby-smell from atop her head, feeling her little tummy move in and out with each breath. She’s my baby. I hate letting other people hold her, I worry in case they somehow hurt her or won’t give her back to me. New-mother paranoia, I know, but I really hate it.

So I found reasons to avoid it. It’s time for her feed or her nap, or I think maybe she needs changing. It’s getting late, maybe you should leave?

"She’ll turn into one of those clingy children," my mum warned, when I barely restrained myself from snatching Violet back from her arms, or hovered over the crib as she slept. I just smiled to myself. It didn’t matter. She’d know how much she was loved and wanted, and that’s the most important thing. Clingy be damned!

So for the most part motherhood has been good to me. Obviously, it hasn’t all been plain sailing- she gave me quite a fright a few weeks ago, and we ended up at A and E for a few hours of our Saturday night. It’d happened very suddenly. One minute my little pixie was lying on her playmat, gurgling away at the neon pink star that was her favourite item from the garish assortment of ‘stimulating’ items hanging from the mobile above her head, and the next, she started screaming like she was in pain.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. She’d never done anything like that before. She cried sometimes, of course, she was only a few months old, but never like this! I picked her up and tried to soothe her, but she only cried more loudly, barely pausing to take breaths between heart-wrenching wails. My insides twisted in panic, my mouth went dry and for a second I think I stopped breathing as my body responded instinctively to the pain of my little one.

I tried everything. Feeding, changing, walking around, singing, toys….nothing made a difference. Still she screamed. And now she was starting to feel really hot. With her still in my arms, I went up into the nursery and fetched the baby thermometer. Her temperature was sky high, so I took her straight to the car and drove down to the hospital, heart fluttering all the way as I tried to concentrate on the road through the sounds of her screaming.

When we got into the car park, she stopped screaming. Just stopped completely. She was breathing shallowly, and when I leant over to get her out of the baby carrier, she didn’t look at me. Those big, purple pools seemed focused on something very far away. I ran into the hospital and gabbled to the receptionist about what had happened. They fetched a doctor straight away, a short, bespectacled man with an air of reassurance.

He examined Violet quickly and methodically: pulse, temperature, reaction to light. I stood by the side of the bed, trembling as he did his job. This man, this stranger, was of more help to my baby than I was. What kind of mother didn’t know what to do when her baby was sick? Was I a bad mother?

"Well," he said, finally, "Violet does have a temperature, but it’s really nothing to worry about. Probably just a seasonal cold, it can be quite distressing for a little one the first time they are unwell, and obviously quite upsetting for mum, too."

The breath I had unwittingly been holding throughout his brisk examination came out in a ‘whoosh!’ “You’re sure she’s ok?” I asked, my voice small and breathy. “She’s fine,” he assured me with a smile, “No need to worry. Now, if the symptoms reoccur, you can treat them with ordinary over-the-counter medicines. They have a baby-safe version of Calpol now, and that should do just fine. Obviously if her temperature spikes again, you should bring her back in, but I’m sure there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

After he said his goodbyes, I went and just sat in the waiting room for about ten minutes, holding Violet close. I was still shaking, replaying the events of the evening over and over in my mind like a bad movie stuck on a loop.

Sitting under the glare of fluorescents, the smell of disinfectant clogging my nostrils and the noise of assorted drunks demanding treatment for self-inflicted ailments jangling my nerve endings, I clung to her little body and tried to remain calm. I was afraid to go home, afraid that the awful screams would start again, that my baby would be in pain. “He said she was fine,” I whispered to myself, pressing my lips to her forehead, breathing in the scent of baby shampoo and milk, “He said she was fine. She’s fine.” After a little while, I felt calm enough to drive us both back home.

Violet still wasn’t quite herself. She kept staring blankly at nothing in particular, was reluctant to have her feed, and although she wasn’t registering a particularly high temperature, she still felt warm. That night I sat awake with her for hours, holding her in my arms, talking softly to her. She was a little snuffly for the first few hours, not her normal deep, smooth breaths, but at least she wasn’t screaming anymore. She wasn’t in pain. I made a mental note to buy some baby Calpol in the morning.

So, yes, not all plain sailing. But within a few days she’d stopped making that strange snuffling sound and her temperature was down. Relieved, I carried on with my routine. Washing, ironing, changes, bath time, nap time, feeding.

A few friends called round, but I sent them away. After the scare I’d had, the last thing I wanted was to have to hand her over to the world and his wife for cuddles. I held her close, sang to her and played with her, enjoying the time alone. Those big, purple eyes gazed up into mine, trustingly, and I smiled as I stroked her curls away from her face.

Of course, when my mum called round yesterday, there was no saying no to her. “Violet, grandma’s here!” I sang, showing my mum through into the kitchen. Violet was in her high chair next to the worktop. I put the kettle on and asked if mum wanted tea or coffee. She didn’t answer. “Mum?” I repeated, “I said, tea or coffee? I’ve got some of those biscuits you like, as well, if you’re not still on that silly diet…?” “Um, I’ll have tea, please, darling,” she said, seeming flustered. “Everything alright, mum?” “Y-yes, yes, fine. And how are you? Is….is everything…fine with you?” “Yes, we’re doing great, aren’t we, Violet?” I gently tweaked a chubby cheek and pulled a funny face at her. Mum nodded, frowning. I looked at her for a second. She seemed distracted. Well, I’d wait. I knew better than to push her when something was wrong. She’d tell me in her own time.

I busied myself boiling the kettle, cups and teaspoons clattering. “After mummy and grandma have their tea, it’ll be time for your drink, won’t it, pixie?” I said, kissing Violet on top of her head.

My mum was unusually quiet that afternoon, she put it down to a migraine, so I handed Violet to her and went to fetch some ibuprofen. “Five minutes,” I joked, “that’s all you get, you know I get all jealous when someone else has a cuddle!” When I came back we did a trade, the tablets for my little pixie. She went home not long after.

This evening, I had just settled down on the sofa to watch CBeebies, Violet in my arms, freshly bathed and powdered; when the doorbell rang. I groaned and stood up. “Sorry, Violet, looks like we might miss Peppa Pig this evening,” I smiled down at her.

When I opened the door, my mum was there, accompanied by two men I’d didn’t know. The three of them are standing in my kitchen right now. One of them has just been sick in the sink, the acidic smell is making my stomach churn. The other, tall, with beady eyes, is looking at me, hardly blinking.

My mum is standing behind him, frantically apologising. “I’m sorry, love, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know what to do…” I cling to Violet, frightened. “What’s going on?” I ask, sweat beading on my forehead. “You need to come with us, madam,” says beady-eyes. “What are you talking about? Has something happened? Oh, god….Mum, has something happened to dad?!” My mum stares at me with watery eyes. “Look at Violet, darling.” “Wha-” “Just- look at her, please, darling.”

I look down at the bundle in my arms. Dark golden curls, huge violet eyes, her father’s nose. I hold her close, press my lips to her cold forehead and breathe the scent of decay barely masked by talcum powder. Collapsing to my knees on the kitchen floor, my body shakes with the force of the sobs I’m trying to choke back. The world fades to grey around me, and my breasts ache, heavy with the milk that Violet doesn’t need anymore- hasn’t needed for the past few weeks.

I know I should have called an ambulance when her snuffles became rasps and her lips edged with a faint blue tinge. I know, I should have called someone.

But I just couldn’t bear to let her go.



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Credits to: photofreecreepypasta