CREEPYPASTA.COM – Scary Paranormal Stories & Short Horror Microfiction

I’ve had some people ask that I set up a page with recommendations for scary books, movies, video games, etc – but since I’d surely leave out some quality stuff if I compiled the list completely on my own, I figured that the best way to do this would be via discussion post!

So please, this month, tell us about your favorite creepy video games! Zombies, general paranormal, horror, murder mysteries, psychological thrillers – if you can conceivably consider it a “creepy” game, feel free to recommend it and please do tell us why you chose that game in particular!

As people suggest their favorites, I’ll turn this OP into a master list of the community’s favorite spooky video games (with links to download or buy said games if possible, so if you’re recommending an indie or fanmade game that can’t be easily found on Amazon, please leave a link to its official website/download page to make things easier for me, thanks).

Thanks for the help, and have fun!

–

THE BIG MASTERLIST OF CREEPY VIDEO GAMES

PC Games:
.flow
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Blade of Darkness
Call of Cthulu
Clive Barker’s Undying
Cry of Fear
Imscared
OFF
LIMBO [Special Edition | Steam]
Nightmare House 2
Pathologic
Penumbra Collection
Revenge of the Sunfish
Sanitarium
Scratches
SCP: Containment Breach
Slender: The Eight Pages
Slender: The Arrival
Slendytubbies
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series
System Shock series
The Binding of Isaac
The Crooked Man
The Graveyard
The Path
The Stone of Anamara
When They Cry
Which
White Day
Yume Nikki

Flash/Browser Games:
Exmortis
The House 1
The House 2

Multi-Console:
Alan Wake
Alice: Madness Returns
Bioshock series
Clock Tower series
Condemned series
Dead Rising series
Dead Space series
Deception series
Doom 3
Echo Night series
Fallout series
Fatal Frame series
F.E.A.R. series
Metro 2033
Ninja Gaiden series
Resident Evil series
Silent Hill series
Splatterhouse
The Darkness
The Suffering
The Walking Dead

Nintendo 64:
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Shadow Man
Killer Instinct
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil

Nintendo GameCube:
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

Nintendo Wii:
Calling
Cursed Mountain
JU-ON: The Grudge

Nintendo DS:
9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors
Dementium: The Ward
Dementium II

Nintendo 3DS:
Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward

PlayStation One:
LSD Dream Emulator (The link goes to a ROM, but be aware that it’s only legal to download and use if you already own the game. If that doesn’t apply to you, the game is also available to download and purchase via Japanese PSN)
Hellnight (can’t find a ROM for this, sorry)
Martian Gothic
Tecmo’s Deception

PlayStation 2:
Haunting Ground
Kuon
Siren

Playstation 3:
Heavy Rain
Siren Blood Curse

Xbox 360:
LIMBO

MMORPG:
Dead Frontier
Requiem: Memento Mori
The Secret World

Not Yet Released:
The Evil Within

YMMV Creepy Nominations (anything prefaced with “not really a creepy game, but…”):
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Portal 2

NOTES:

• Our referral code is included in any Amazon links. If you purchase any of these games via those links, thanks!
• This list is still being compiled as people leave more comments with suggestions.
• If you know of a reputable seller/download site for a game that doesn’t have a link of that type yet, feel free to comment and let me know.

FROM NOW ON, IF YOU IGNORE THE FAQ AND ASK ME FOR ANY SPECIAL TREATMENT, YOU FORFEIT YOUR SUBMISSION.

Did I get your attention? Good. For the sake of the main page, the rest of this post is under the ‘read more’ button – however, that does not mean that you can claim ignorance. If you’re considering submitting, make sure that you read this post.

The girl who pushed open the shop door was too young for the cane she leaned on. I examined her from under the brim of my dark baker’s boy cap.

I sat in my tall swivel chair behind the counter, feet kicked up next to the register. Two knitting needles clicked in my lap, the motion so mechanical I never looked down. They manipulated the strand of yarn into a nearly-completed scarf. The little ball danced on the ground as I pulled from it.

“Morning,” I said.

The girl flashed me a smile. “Good morning.” She was polite, and didn’t stare or even give a second glance to my eye patch, partially hidden under the brim of my cap. Since I had turned, I had never felt bad about taking what I needed, but this girl seemed oddly bright, naïve even. What a waste. I couldn’t wait any longer, though.

My good eye never left her as she limped through the store. It wasn’t hard – the shop was more of a nook than anything, and the bright and airy front windows did nothing to make the shelves seem less crowded. They were looming and solid, full of open-front cubbies that displayed neatly stacked skeins of yarn. I had sorted them by weight and by color, careful to tuck all the loose ends away.

I glanced down for a moment to finish off the scarf, looping it around my neck once it was free from the needles. When I surveyed my shop again, I saw that the girl had knocked a skein to the ground. She perused a nearby cubby, unaware. Spots danced in front of my eye. For a moment I expected to feel the accelerated pounding of my heart, as well. But then I remembered.

“You dropped one,” I said, my voice stiff.

“What was that?”

I gestured toward the rogue skein. “You dropped one.”

“Oh,” the girl said, smiling, and replaced the yarn. She had to stoop down awkwardly, keeping her weight off her bad leg. Only once everything was back in order did I breathe deeply, feeling the passageways in my mind open back up like undammed rivers.

I adjusted my baker’s boy cap. “How long have you been knitting?” I asked, leaning my elbows on the counter.

“Ever since I got hurt,” she thumped her cane to emphasize her bad leg. “I couldn’t walk at all for a while, and I needed to keep busy.”

“What happened?”

“Car accident,” she said simply. Her eyes met mine and I felt the emptiness under my eye patch.

“We have a knitting group here sometimes,” I offered, struggling to keep the pushiness out of my voice. It crept in anyway. “We could use some new members.”

“I’m all set, thanks though.”

“You don’t even have to come,” I said with a charming smile. “Just sign up and you get a free skein of yarn. All I need is your name and an email address.” I could see her resolve breaking. “Preferably one you use, but hey, I’m not picky.”

“Fine, but only because I need this,” she held up a skein of expensive alpaca yarn and smiled again.

“Sign up sheet’s in the back.” I slid out of my tall chair before she could change her mind.

I led her into the only other room in the shop – my windowless office that was no larger than a breadbox. The florescent light flickered slightly. The desk was small and shoved into the corner, covered in neat stacks of paper. The faint smell of cleaning product hung in the air, and not a single mote of dust could be found. I produced the signup sheet from one of the perfect stacks of paper.

“This is cozy,” the girl said as she filled out her name and email.

“It’s really a supply closet.” I closed the door and stood behind her. The cane leaned against my desk. I unwound the scarf from my neck and gripped an end in each hand.

“Sorry about this,” I said flatly, and looped the scarf around her neck, pulling it tight and cutting off her windpipe. She struggled, but her bad leg gave out and we both fell to the floor, crashing against the closed door on the way down. Her hands clawed at mine, but she grew weaker and was still after a few minutes. I loosened the scarf from her neck and wrapped it back around mine. That was easier than last time.

The girl slumped forward, her hair spilled into her now-puffy face. I pushed her onto her back and yanked my eye patch down around my neck, exposing my raw, empty eye socket.

Mechanically, I pulled the girl’s right eyelids wide open with one hand, and with the other I scooped my fingers under her eye, popping it out with a sickening squelch. I didn’t flinch. Once upon a time I might have, but not now. Tendons popped as I freed it completely from the dead girl’s distorted face. Careful not to drop it, I pressed the organ into my own waiting eye socket, squeezing my lids shut over the foreign object.

Warmth slowly radiated out from the new eye back into my face and head as my body adapted. I blinked rapidly, but my sight didn’t return immediately so I repositioned the eye patch once again.

I walked out the front door of the shop, not bothering to lock up. I wouldn’t be back here. Dismayed, I saw that the girl had left shallow scratch marks running up both of my forearms. Those would need to be replaced too, then. Just when I thought I was done for a while.

I adjusted the baker’s boy cap, pulling it lower over my eyes to block out the beams of sun that flickered between the low square buildings that populated the outskirts of the city. My legs were new enough that I walked normally, without the shuffling that usually plagued others like me. I was grateful to still look human. The warmth in my new eye grew more intense. I whistled as I walked down the sidewalk, eventually pulling off the eye patch and dropping it into the gutter, my eyesight restored.

Back at the shop, I knew the girl would be stirring now.

Credit To – Lucia Costello

The rain pattered on the single-hung window,
As I lay awake on my satin bed sheets;
Sleep had no desire to stay,
So I wait, observing
Darkness.

The downpour roared as the storm grew heavier,
Throwing more diversion towards peace;
Temporary madness overwhelmed my emotions
Resulting in aggravated moans produced
From my chap lips.

“Sleep,” a voice whispered;
Its warm dampness and rancid odor
Struck my face like a bullet.
Instantly, I jolted from my mattress,
Engulfed in terror and sweat;
“Whose voice chills my heart?” I asked the entity,
Determined to discover its motive for
Entering my home.
The reply I receive is nothing more
Than a deafening silence.

I relaxed back into my false slumber,
Wary of the blackness around me;
My chest pounded a frenzied opus,
Its beat matched the tempo of the storm’s chaotic
Monsoon.
As quietness amplified,
My pulse grew louder;
Goosebumps tickled my spine;
Vibrations, which originated from both
Fear and the ice air, took over
My arms and legs.

“Sleep,” a voice whispered;
Have I gone mad?
Am I asleep, constructing horrific
Visuals for my brain to suffer through?
No soul is before my eyes,
Yet, its presence mocks me.
“Reveal yourself!” I cried.
“Torture me like a warrior and display
Your disgusting face!”

“As you wish,” the tormenter states.
I brace myself, ready to meet
My foe.

“All we asked for was a simple favor,
To make it easier on your spirit.
Bear in mind that
You have created a path that
Avoids a swift, merciful demise.”
At that second, my mind was dreadfully obsessed by
The idea of a ‘we’.

Shadowy arms penetrated the fibers of the bed;
One arm turned to two,
Two turned to five,
Five to ten,
Ten to thirteen.
The phenomenon grasped every
Movable limb I possessed,
Shackling me to the bed like a starved prisoner.
I fought back in hopeless effort,
Freedom kilometers away from possibility;
Within me, fright ignited to a level which
No human has ever experienced.

The shower thickened to a hurricane,
Engraving broad cracks into the window’s glass;
Earth began to sway and shake
From rain’s intensity.
The wind, once soft as cotton, now
Howling a violent hymn to the world.

Men with flesh the color of shadows
Faded onto the floorboards around me;
Their colorless eyes focused on mine
While they approached.
“Stand back!” I shout. “Stand—,”
Another hand crawls out and presses itself
Against my mouth;
The skin tastes of smoke,
As does its smell.

There is no escape.
There is no alternative.
There is no choice but to accept my failure.

“Don’t give up,” a gentle, mysterious sound emits.
“You can survive the odds.”
My conscience created a doubt toward the request,
Then trust overran doubt.
I’ll never know why, but somehow I
Believed in its promise.
I wriggled,
I struggled,
I thrashed about with Herculean will;
Suddenly, the vice enclosing my jaws
Broke into fragments of stone.
The men of shadows drew back in fear,
Fainting away as they reversed.

No longer able to support the weather’s aggression,
The pane shattered to shards,
The framework splintered into oblivion.
Water splashed a wicked tone as it
Dove through the window sized opening.

In an attempt I forced so much that it
Wired my teeth shut,
And shed blood from my gums;
I ripped several flesh-made cuffs to rock.
The remaining gripped me tighter,
Desperately holding me down.
The adrenaline that coursed through me
Barely managed to fracture their embrace.
My left arm sprung loose,
Then my right arm followed suit;
Soon, my legs were liberated, signaling
Total unbound control.
The shadowmen gazed in disbelief;
“How?” one uttered. “This isn’t possible.
Not even the devil has such strength.”
In unison, all of the shadowmen asked…

“What are you?”

I shot out of my bed in a fit of panic,
Inhaling summer’s air with deep gasps.
Was my suffering just a nightmare?
I turned my attention to the right, and saw
A mild drizzle patter on my unblemished windowpane.

Great relief washed over me.
My head comfortably collided with pillows’ surface;
Inscribed on the ceiling, a message appeared,
Supplying me with joy.

“You are free.”

Credit To – HonestyAndCapacity

How ironic, Cnaeus thought to himself as the glowing horizon signaled the start of the new day. The trees his men had cut down to expand the protective walls of the Roman fort he commanded had led to the release of a horde of bloodthirsty monsters. And those monsters had come in force that very night and spread death and destruction to the village that lay outside the walls of his fort. He was standing in one of the fort’s four watchtowers and was looking down on the smoldering ruins of what the day before had been a thriving market town. As the day grew lighter he could more clearly see the numerous dead—men, women and children. They had died alongside their livestock. All had been torn to pieces, and the whole scene resembled an abattoir more than the village it had been the day before.
Cnaeus then turned his attention to the fort. Like most Roman forts of the day in Britannia, it could hold up to 800 men, but the current garrison only numbered around one hundred men. The rest were off campaigning against the tribes to the west. One hundred against twenty of those creatures. Based on what he’d seen that night, he didn’t have nearly enough men to hold them off. The creatures had no need to take on the fort while there was an entire village to ravage, but it was gone and the only living humans were now within the walls of the fort.
The fort was of the typical design of its day. It was rectangular and surrounded by a wide ditch. A rampart was built with the earth from the ditch together with heavy stones. On top of that the Romans had erected a defensive barrier of timber posts. That was why they had cut down the oaks in the first place. There were four stone gateways affording access to the fort on each side. The watchtower Cnaeus was standing in reach a height of 30 feet, as did the other three. One at each corner. Roman architecture and design dictated that two main streets crossed the fort.
Most of the buildings within it were wooden structures including the barracks, stables, granaries and the hospital. His own headquarters was made of stone and employed that great Roman invention—concrete. Even so, if the monsters—Night Stalkers Belenos had called them—got over the walls, his headquarters would provide scant protection. And he had no doubt they would be back when night fell.
The night just ended had been complete chaos; a mix of terror, blood, shouts, and fire. The Roman farmer who had been holding the head of one of the monsters had been quick to react when things went to hell outside the gates of the fort. Pointing to the legionaries who had been sparring in the courtyard he called on them to follow him. Approximately twenty men had done so, closely followed by Belenos. They had rushed out the main gate, and that was the last Cnaeus had seen of them. He himself had ordered a centurion to make sure the other three gates were closed, while he tried to manage the orderly entry into the fort of the panicked villagers at the main gate. That any had made it through the gate before he ordered it shut was likely due to the farmer and his little band of legionaries who had rushed to battle the monsters.
When he thought he could wait no longer, he had ordered the final gate shut and bolted leaving anyone outside the walls of the fort to his or her fate. He had then rushed to the gate tower to see what was happening outside the walls. It was a vision out of a wine-induced nightmare. Terrible man-sized creatures with wide black bodies, beady red eyes, membranous, transparent wings, and insect-like mouths full of razor sharp teeth were marauding through the village slashing and biting and ripping as they went. Villagers unlucky enough to get caught outside the walls didn’t stand a chance, and were torn apart and eaten alive screaming their final breaths. Their cows, horses and pigs were no better off, and the sounds of the dying filled his ears while fire started to consume the hovels of the townsfolk.
Cnaeus had looked for the small troop of his men who had run into the melee but he could not see them through the smoke and carnage. He thought of their brave, but futile actions, and grimly thought that he now had even fewer men to hold the fort come nightfall. He found himself hoping that Belenos had escaped. And that surprised him.
Bassa couldn’t move his legs in the first few moments after he gained consciousness. That didn’t stop him from throwing up as the stench of blood, shit and charred flesh filled his nostrils. He was lying on his stomach and used his hand to wipe his eyes. Looking at his hand he realized he had wiped blood from his eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was his or not. His vision restored, he lifted his head and looked down at his legs to see why he couldn’t move them. With relief he saw it was only a dead, half-eaten horse that had pinned his legs. Otherwise his legs were fine. With a little bit of effort he was able to shove it off and get awkwardly to his feet.
As he stood up he slowly got his bearings. He was on the edge of the village, the fort being less than a couple of hundred yards behind him. He was surrounded by body parts—animal and human alike—that were in various states of trauma. Like the half eaten horse that had fallen on his legs. The sun was just coming up over the horizon, giving Bassa enough light to survey the utter devastation which had been delivered upon the village and its inhabitants the night before. Not a single building was untouched, and not a living thing moved.
He couldn’t see any of the men who had followed him out of the fort the night before and tried to remember exactly what had happened. It hadn’t taken him long to realize how lucky he’d been in his first encounter with one of the monsters. He’d taken that one by surprise as it was eating his neighbor. This time they were ready and he and his fellow solders quickly found themselves fighting for their lives. Several of the creatures had herded them away from the fort, and taken down two of his men in the process.
Bassa rallied the remaining men and formed them into a defensive circle. Had they thought to bring shields they might have been able to hold on, but they only had their swords. And then Bassa learned what the monsters’ wings were for. While they weren’t strong enough for sustained flight, the wings could get them off the ground for brief spurts, and that was enough for two of them to get behind the men and into the middle of the defensive circle. After that it was a blur of swinging swords, snapping jaws, ripping flesh and cries of pain coming at him from every direction at once.
The last thing he remembered before waking up pinned by the half-eaten horse was the squishing sound his sword made as he shoved it into the gaping maw of one of the attacking monsters. Looking to his right he saw the now dead creature with his sword buried in its mouth up to the hilt. Next to it was another dead monster which had hacked to death. There was no sign that any of his fellow Romans had survived. Just a collection of shredded body parts, bits of uniforms, broken weapons and blood. Saddened to think that he was the only survivor of the fight, he headed back to the front gate of the fort.

Cnaeus had Bassa brought to him immediately upon learning that the farmer had somehow survived the massacre outside of the fort. Bassa made sure he washed the blood and pieces of flesh off himself before reporting to Cnaeus. He was welcomed to Cnaeus’ office with a mug of watered wine which he drank gratefully.
“So twenty of my best men and you were only able to kill two of the monsters? I admire your bravery, but that level of casualties is not sustainable for the fight to come. I only have eighty men I have left. If you killed two there are still eighteen of those things ready to return this evening.” Cnaeus said.
“Had we shields and enough men to form the testudo we might have killed more of them, but they are fierce creatures and they move like lightning!” was Bassa’s response. The testudo—or turtle—was a Roman battlefield formation. “They’ll get over the walls easily enough after dark.”
“Then here is what we need to do…” And Cnaeus proceeded to explain his plan to Bassa.
It was a good plan. It should have worked. As ferocious as the monsters were, they hadn’t shown much signs of intelligence. They were simple but murderously efficient killing machines. Based on Bassa’s experience from the previous night, trying to hold them off at the walls would likely prove futile. They’d simply fly over, and the men on the walls would suddenly find themselves being attacked from behind. Truth be told, Cnaeus didn’t have enough men to defend the entire perimeter even if he had wanted to.
So instead Cnaeus had his men bring all the remaining livestock to the center of the fort where the two axis roads met. There he had the pigs, sheep and cattle tied to stakes driven into the earth. In all there were about twenty-five animals, and Cnaeus hoped they would make a tempting target for the Night Stalkers. Around the staked animals his men dug a ditch three feet wide and three feet deep. Into the ditch they poured all of the pitch they could get their hands on. Normally used to pave and caulk, it was tremendously flammable.
Once this work was completed, Cnaeus divided his troops into 10 contuberniums, which was the smallest organized unit of soldiers in the Roman Army and was composed of eight legionaries. He directed them spread out in the barracks and other buildings surrounding the animals. The surviving townspeople would need to hide themselves and hope for the best. No one was getting out alive if the plan went awry. The key was to get the Night Stalkers to attack the livestock, after which the Romans would light the pitch creating a wall of fire around them. While Cnaeus assumed they could simply fly over the wall of fire to escape, he hoped that in their initial confusion they would make good targets for the attacking Romans throwing spears and shooting arrows at them from the other side of the firewall.
And it might have worked if the Night Stalkers had done what Cnaeus expected them to do.

Night had fallen several hours earlier. Bassa first realized that things weren’t going as planned when the man crouching next to him gave a startled cry and flew backwards. Bassa turned in time to see a Night Stalker bite off the soldier’s head with a snap of its jaws. The other men around him reacted quickly, but not quickly enough. Two more men were dead or dying before Bassa and the remaining four soldiers got out of the barracks they had been waiting in.
Outside it was chaos. Rather than go for the staked animals the Night Stalkers had attacked the Roman soldiers where they lay in ambush. The men who survived the initial attack were now fighting for their lives against savage attacks from all sides. Bassa saw Cnaeus desperately fending off one of the Night Stalkers, using his shield to keep the monster at bay while desperately trying to slash it with his sword. He sprinted over, jumped on the creature’s back and sank his sword into its head. The monster shook its back like a wet dog and sent Bassa flying. He landed hard on his back and briefly feared he might black out. Shaking his head he got to his feet and saw the Night Stalker he’d stabbed staggering away from Cnaeus.
“Follow me!” shouted Cnaeus as he ran towards the center circle where the animals were staked, and as yet unmolested by the Night Stalkers. Those men who were still able, including Bassa, ran after him, leaping over the ditch they had dug and filled with flammable pitch. Cnaeus had grabbed a torch from somewhere and, as the last survivor leapt over the ditch, he lit the pitch. It caught fire quickly, and within seconds the men were surrounded by a wall of fire six feet high. In the distance Bassa could see some of the townspeople running out the gates of the fort. Within the ring of fire the Romans now numbered only twenty-three men. The rest were dead or dying. Bassa saw three dead Night Stalkers, but that still left too many of them.
“This fire won’t hold them back very long!” Bassa shouted to Cnaeus. Cnaeus nodded grimly and clutched his sword tightly. He was turning to rally his remaining men when suddenly he heard shouts coming from outside the ring of fire. Cnaeus couldn’t believe his eyes! There were at least two hundred men rushing through the gates into the fort carrying axes and spears and various other weapons. And leading them was Belenos! He had rallied the local Britons to the battle! The Night Stalkers’ attention was still focused on the Romans inside the ring of fire making them easy targets for once. They were soon overwhelmed by the twenty men who attacked each one from behind and were hacked to pieces in a storm of axes and spears. Within minutes the one-sided battle was over, with hardly a casualty among the attackers. By now the fire was dying down and Cnaeus was able to cross back over to the other side. He walked over to where Belenos stood.
“We don’t like you Romans, but like those bastards even less.” Belenos said to him.
“Let’s go find their eggs and plant some oak trees.” was Cnaeus’ reply.

Credit To – LumaKing

Related:
Poisoned Oak
Poisoned Oak — The Sacred Grove

This is difficult, very difficult. I am not at all comfortable with this. I keep reminding myself why I’m doing it. These are not the typist’s words. The typist is not me, but my sister. I don’t know if she believes me, but she’s giving me the help I need, the help I’ve needed for a while now. She is transcribing what I’ve spoken to her with a trembling voice. I could not type it myself since I do not own a computer anymore. What has happened has tainted technology for me, presumably forever. I wanted this to be in the past. I wanted to lock it up in a box never to be reopened, but I have to visit that dark place now. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. I am managing in my life, not thriving, but managing. I have a small place where I keep the television on all the time. I like the sound. I sleep with on so that the noise will drown out the bumps and whispers that plague me now. It was a television that prompted me to do this, to tell this story. I was awake one night, as I am most nights, and I came across a television program called “Catfish.” I did not know what this show was about or what the title meant. I was horrified when I found out the premise of the program, people using fake photographs to meet romantic partners on social networking websites finally revealing the truth to those they had fooled. The deceit did not shock me nor did the anticipation of the reveal. I was so stunned that there were still so many people on the Internet who would search for a fake photograph to lure others into conversation and romantic relationships. This concerned me so much because it is exactly what I did and its what changed my life forever.

I will start from the beginning, the pertinent beginning. When my family first got the Internet my sister and I would stay up late during the summer and venture into chat rooms. This was before webcams and digital photography so people didn’t really ask for photos of their chatting partners. A description would suffice and it didn’t really matter what you would make up. Of course, I would create someone who I thought was the ideal beauty. Someone who was tall and thin who had long hair and a perfect smile. Needless to say in reality I did not fit this description. I have no deformities or abnormalities, but I’m not a dream girl by any means, just plain. I could be in a room with you for an hour and you may not notice. I’m that type of girl.

Usually, the Internet was reserved for weekends and holidays. I was part of the last generation whose entire youth did not revolve around the Internet I suppose. That all changed when I was a senior in high school. This was during Myspace’s glory day. Suddenly there was a way of communicating online that did not involve a chat room. Your whole existence could be laid out for all to see. Your likes, dislikes, education, hobbies, musical preferences and, yes, pictures, were right there in front of everyone. All the kids at my school had joined and talked about it often, but they rarely mentioned talking to each other on Myspace, but rather they would speak about all the new friends they had made through the site. This intrigued me. Could I be someone completely different on Myspace? Could I start from scratch? No one had to know the real me, or at least I could show them only the parts I wanted them to see. How terribly I wish that this silly idea had never come to fruition.

I filled out my Myspace with truthful and accurate information. I listed my favorite bands and movies, my birthdate and a short bio revealing that I liked swimming and watching horror movies. Everything I posted was true except for the photograph. I knew that if I posted my own photo I probably wouldn’t get much attention. I will admit, as stupid as it makes me feel, that is part of what I wanted, attention.

I wondered how to find my new face. Maybe I could scan a picture of a pretty girl from my school. No, then people from my area may recognize her. Being oblivious to the obvious I, at last, realized that the answer was right at my fingertips. Myspace had millions of users. I could just search for the Myspaces of girls my age and pick one whose photos I could steal. As naïve as it may sound I thought I was the first and only person to do this. I felt ashamed, but reconciled my guilt with the fact that I wasn’t hurting anyone, or so I thought. I decided to search for girls who lived far from me so as to not be found out by someone who may know the girl in reality. I live on the east coast so I picked California, a large state full of cute sun kissed girls.

I scanned through dozens of profiles passing on girls who were too this or not enough that. I don’t really know what I was looking for exactly. I did not have a clear picture of the girl I was looking for, although many of these girls were beautiful, none of them seemed quite right. I was growing tired in my search and wanted to take a break, but instead I decided to scroll through one last page of profiles.

I remember it clearly the photo, that photo. It was on the second to last row from the bottom of that last page I clicked on. I have tried to describe the girl pictured, but my descriptions always seem to fall short. You would not mistake her for a supermodel, but you would definitely look twice at her. The picture showed the girl from the knees up. She was youthful, but womanly. She wore a light blue sundress with thin straps that showed her lightly tanned shoulders and arms, which hung casually at her sides. Her light brown hair was put into a high ponytail with the long bangs tucked behind her ears. She wore no apparent makeup or jewelry. She had a close-mouthed smile and almond shaped sea green eyes. It was her eyes that interested me the most. I had always wished that I had green eyes instead of my chestnut brown ones that my sister would liken to roaches when teasing me. I do not remember anything else about what was shown in the photograph or the Myspace profile, I just remember the picture. I knew this was the picture I had been looking for. I quickly opened her Myspace, saved the lone picture that was posted and uploaded it to my own profile.

I was anxious to check Myspace the next day. It was Sunday, but I awoke shortly after sunrise and hurried online. I had about a dozen messages and at least twice as many friend requests, mostly from men. I accepted everyone without checking their pages; I was just so excited to have these people notice me, or who they thought I was. The messages were pretty obligatory, “Hi, how are you?” “What’s up?” A couple of them were more specific with questions and several mentioned how pretty “I” was. Of these messages one stood out. It was from a guy who I will call “Ken.” “What did the girl mushroom say to the boy mushroom?” His message asked. I responded back with “What?” As I waited for a reply I opened Ken’s Myspace. He was from my state, but a different town a few hours away. He attended the local college where he was studying political science. He wasn’t someone who, perhaps, would be considered great looking, but he had a friendly smile. I suppose “friendly” is the first word I would use to describe Ken.

I hoped that Ken would reply. I wanted him to break up the monotony of the one-word messages I was receiving. How disinterested I was in these men and how much I wanted to hear from Ken made me realize that more so than I wanted unfiltered attention I wanted someone to talk to. Finally, I got a response, “You’re a fungi ”

Over the next couple of weeks Ken and I sent messages back and forth. We told each other stories from our childhoods, shared movie reviews and discussed whatever happened to be on our minds. The more we talked the more I liked him. He never crossed the line between flirtatious and inappropriate. Sometimes, I would forget who he thought I really was. I would let myself believe that he liked me, the real me, but then he would mention something about that picture. He liked the hair, the smile, her legs…those eyes. Ken never brought up the fact that I only had one picture or had no Myspace friends who seemed to actually know me. I think, maybe, he just wanted to believe she was real. She could make him forget all the inconsistences and suspicions.

Ken brought up speaking on the phone after about a week of chatting. I was apprehensive about letting this guise go further than an online friendship, but I did want to speak to him, to hear his voice. I finally agreed and eventually Ken and I were spending hours on the phone with each other each week. Our online correspondence became less frequent, but he would still send me messages when he was at school telling me a joke or a story from his day. I didn’t pay attention to any of the other people I had on my page. I stopped accepting friend requests or responding to messages. I was satisfied with just talking to Ken.

On a certain day I was scanning my messages to see if Ken had sent me anything and noticed that I had a message from a girl named Melissa. This was very unexpected. I almost never got messages or friend requests from girls. The message was one line, “I think someone stole your pictures.” Followed by a link to a Myspace. The link opened to Sarah’s page, and I saw my new face staring back at me. The clothes were different. She now wore blue jeans and a light pink sweater, but had the same hairstyle and the same coy smile. The picture was odd. It looked as if someone had taken off the clothes in my picture and replaced them, like a paper doll. It was too convincing to be photo shopped. The stance, the direction of the camera, the angle, everything was the same, except for the clothes…and the eyes. The sea green that had struck me was instead a dark hazel. I don’t remember what I thought at the time, perhaps, just the lighting or digital enhancement software was to blame.

Sarah had several hundred friends and a mile long list of comments citing her beauty. She was listed as being from the Midwest, but her admirers came from all over. At first I was afraid that I had been found out, then I realized that if this is the real girl from the photograph I could possibly get more pictures to add to my page’s validity and hopefully keep Ken believing I was this girl. I checked her pictures, but she only had the one. I saved it and tried to post it to my page, but each attempt ended in an error message. I gave up, but bookmarked Sarah’s page.

As the weeks went on Ken and I grew closer. He had brought up meeting in person several times, each ending in an excuse on my part. In retrospect, my excuses didn’t hold much credit, but Ken always accepted them so we kept to our phone and Myspace conversations. As often as I would check my own page for Ken’s messages I would check Sarah’s page. New pictures were never uploaded and the latest comment was posted over a year before. I was curious about Sarah’s life. I wanted to know what this girl with the perfect face was doing. How was she living her life? Was she as happy as I would be if I were her?

As Ken and I grew closer I lived more in my fantasy life. I imagined the two of us together in reality, having those comfortable conversations in person. I would let myself day dream about the life we would have together, sharing an apartment, getting married, having children. As much as I lived for these fantasies and my talks with Ken I always ended up feeling guilty. I thought about this man who, possibly, loved this woman he hadn’t met. I wondered if he thought about us the same way I did, but his fantasies wouldn’t be riddled with my shame. I finally convinced myself that, perhaps, Ken did not really care about that picture. Maybe it didn’t matter as much as everything else about me that he liked. Could I actually come clean?

Each day I wrestled with these thoughts. They accompanied me during every task, growing more prominent when I would check Sarah’s Myspace page. Having checked it every day for months at this point it had become part of my routine, then, one day, it was gone. Only an error message appeared when I clicked on the link. I tried several times growing more and more anxious. I had not realized how attached to Sarah I had become. I believed she was the girl I would give anything to be. If I knew more about her, knew her, maybe I could start to possess some of whatever she had that was so captivating. Now she was gone, lost. Maybe she just made a new page, wanted to start fresh and get away from all the men that flooded her Myspace. I had convinced myself that was it.

I resolved to search for Sarah. I knew which state and town she was from and all of the other identification markers I needed. I filled them in and looked in dismay as more than a hundred pages of results were found. I went through page after page of 18 to 20 year old girls from her area. I tried all the zip codes for the city looking at a 25-mile radius, but page after page of disappointment was turning into fear. Somewhere between the 60th and 70th pages something caught my eye. The display picture appeared to be one taken by a school photographer, with that familiar yearbook pose. I clicked on the profile and, yes, there they were, those same sea green eyes that I found so fascinating in my picture of the girl. This wasn’t her face though. This face was that of a cornhusk blonde cherub. Her sincere smile revealed misaligned teeth and several acne patches marked her skin, but those eyes were there. What caused my heart to drop even more than seeing the eyes was what read above the photo, “R.I.P.”

I wanted to just get up and walk away from it all. My gut, my intuition, told me to leave it all behind, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk away from Ken. I knew that. Any strength that I had was usurped by my desire to have him. I suppose somewhere buried with that desire was also a curiosity. I wanted to know more about that girl whose eyes my picture shared.

The “about me” section listed the girl’s full name, date of birth and date of death. I will call her E.M. to protect her family’s privacy.

E.M. had died close to a year earlier, just before her 16th birthday. My eyes were burning badly from looking at the computer screen for so long. Tears began to roll from them. I can’t say whether they came from the eyestrain or something else that was gnawing me from the inside. Those eyes, they seemed to burn right through me.

The information categories on the page were scarcely filled out, but several photos were posted. They pictured scenes from a childhood, a little girl sitting on Santa’s lap, holding a miniature pumpkin, cradling a new baby, all with those eyes staring into the camera lens. I clicked back and read the “who I’d like to meet” section and read instructions to contact the local police with any information. Why would the police need information? What happened to this girl? I knew I didn’t’ have the kind of information they wanted. Anyway, if I were to tell them this strange tale I would have to come clean about my Myspace and the picture I used. I did not know what to do, but I knew I couldn’t let it end there. I began looking through the short friends list of the dead girl. As I clicked to go the last of two pages I noticed one of the friends’ names. I frantically clicked back. There was a girl with E.M.’s last name in its unusual spelling. Maybe this is a relative, a sister perhaps. Maybe she could and would give me the information I so desperately sought. I sent a message to her that I’m sure was riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. I just needed to know who this girl was and what had happened to her.

The next day I received a reply message from the woman with E.M.’s last name.

E.M. was my cousin. She was murdered about a year ago. Please contact the authorities if you have any information, our family would appreciate any help.

I could almost feel the sadness in those words. I could almost touch my own fear now. I messaged E.M.’s cousin back expressing my sympathy. I wasn’t feigning this concern, but in complete honesty I wanted to know what happened to her. I needed to know to sooth my own fears. What was I afraid of though? I was afraid of it all ending, of everything ending. It couldn’t end. I felt like everything was slipping away. I felt like Ken was slipping away. I couldn’t fathom losing him. I had to do something drastic.

I reconciled that some how, someway, I could convince Ken that the picture, that girl, didn’t matter. I was the person he wanted. This was the only solution. Going deeper into this dark unknown matter was not feasible. I called Ken right away, he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail agreeing to meet him on Saturday, two days away. Since I had called him so hastily I panicked and blurted out the first meeting spot that came to mind, a community lake. I didn’t think to take into account that it was mid winter and there would be no shelter from the cold. I thought about calling him back and changing the meeting place, but I was afraid that I would just chicken out and tell him I couldn’t make it since as soon as I hung up the phone I regretted making the call at all. Ken called me back a couple of hours later, the ringing made me jump from my seat as I was so focused on the computer screen waiting for a reply from E.M.’s cousin. I didn’t answer, but I could hear the exhilaration in his voice when I listened to the voicemail he had left. I didn’t know if he was excited to finally have one of our wonderful conversations in person, or maybe he was just eager to see that picture come to life.

I spent little time contemplating Ken’s motives compared to what I would have before I discovered those eyes on E.M. Instead, I spent the next two days and nights at home, forgoing school and sleep. I would pace my floor to relieve the aches in my back and neck that came from spending my time glued to the computer waiting for the Myspace replies I would receive from E.M.’s cousin. I spent much time crafting my messages, trying to mix in the right amount of concern and condolence with prying questions. I wanted to successfully build a rapport with the cousin. I wouldn’t get the information I needed without it.

I found out through E.M.’s cousin that she was shy and quiet and had few friends. She was teased for her weight, caused, in part by the beta-blockers she took for a heart ailment. Her parents were divorced and she rarely saw her father. She was an avid reader especially loving adventure novels. Her favorite author was Jon Krakauer. Her family thought this was odd since she spent most of her time in her room and didn’t seem to like the outdoors very much. The police had no leads to go on concerning her death. E.M. didn’t seem to have any friends and had never had a boyfriend that anyone knew of. Her untouched bag was found near her body and she was not sexually assaulted. There was no apparent motive, but the manner of her murder led police to believe it was not random, that she was specifically chosen. Why was she chosen, this simple little girl? I sent one last message to the cousin asking her to explain. My message was blatant and I hoped that our prior communications provided efficient sincerity and ease to warrant a reply.

My lack of sleep and interaction with others made these days melt together. I did not have a real sense of time and a barely a sense of place. The center of my existence became the Myspace inbox. I now know that the final message came on Saturday at approximately 9 o’clock in the morning. This message from E.M.’s cousin still makes my heart stop when I picture in in my mind’s eye. I don’t claim to have a photographic memory, but what is below is, I’m sure, that final message verbatim.

E.M. was found in the bathroom at a park not far from her house two days after leaving to go to school. There was no running water in the bathroom so no one really goes in there. Two teens went into the bathroom, probably to get high, and found her. They thought she had passed out. She was on the floor with her eyes closed. They tried to wake her up by shaking and screaming at her, but couldn’t. After calling 911 they continued to try to get her up. They lifted her eyelids. Her eyes were gone. There was no blood, no fingerprints, nothing. Police couldn’t find a real cause of death, just that her heart had stopped, but obviously they knew it was murder.

I read this message over and over, holding my breath each time. Her eyes were gone? How could someone’s eyes be gone? No blood? That’s not possible. Is this a lie? I knew it wasn’t. I’m not sure why I believed in E.M.’s cousin’s validity, but still, none of it made sense. Why was she there alone? Was she alone? I couldn’t send the cousin another message. I wasn’t concerned for her state of mind having to rehash the awful details of her family member’s death, but I was certain she had told me everything she could. As a testament to my own state of mind, instead of searching for help in reality, I dove back into the cyber world for answers. I had the information; I knew the name, date, place and enough other details to narrow down my search. I found news articles on E.M.’s death and read each one. A teenaged girl being mutilated in a park bathroom was not a story many papers would pass up. Most of the articles revealed nothing I hadn’t learned from the cousin, but at the end of one of those stories was a short paragraph. What I read left my head spinning and my stomach churning. The body of a yet identified young man was found less than one mile from the scene of E.M.’s murder. Police did not know if they were connected, but there was no apparent evidence that they had known each other and for the first time the article gave E.M.’s middle name as “Sarah.”

After vomiting mostly bile into my trash bin, I wiped my face on my unchanged shirt and continued searching the paper’s archives. There was only one further article that mentioned the young man. It said nothing more than the previous about his death, but it did mention his name. I found the man’s Myspace. It became apparent why it was assumed that he and E.M. did not know each other. He was catalogue perfect and why would a catalogue perfect young man be associated with a chubby, shy, 15-year-old girl? He was also from a neighboring state, possibly explaining why the local papers covered his death so little. I rifled through his page. There were no answers. I clicked around desperately looking for anything. He had one blog entry titled “school.” In it he explained his frustration with and dislike for academics, every subject except literature. He had recently gotten into Jon Krakauer, “Thanks to Sarah.” He wrote.

Was this the same Sarah with my picture? Was it E.M.? I remembered her cousin’s description of the girl who loved to read adventure novels. Was E.M., Sarah? The fragments began link together in my head. They were still fuzzy, but coming together nonetheless. The seconds masquerading as hours had reversed their roles. It was now 2:20 pm, 20 minutes past my scheduled meeting time with Ken. My legs got me down the stairs and out the front door despite their flaccidity. I only remember the constant red lights from the drive to the lake. I had driven there at least a dozen times in my mother’s blue car, but each stop light seemed like a fresh obstruction, put there just to hinder me.

The lake is too big to freeze in the winter, but the water is too frigid for fishing and air too cold for jogging its perimeter. I expected the parking lot to be vacant and was startled by the lone black four-door backed into one of the spots. I parked across from it and hurried out. I saw no signs of life, only the swaying of the bare trees in the heavy woods that surrounded the vast lake. Was I too late? What was I too late for? I had no fewer questions than I did before, just more avenues to get lost in, more places for that unknown horror to pounce out from. I stood at the lake’s edge, my face and hands numb. I had not thought to dress for the temperatures and wore only a long sleeved shirt and thin cotton pants. I stood at the water’s edge and stared into it. In this temperature it would not take long. I could just end it, be done with it all. I would never have to think about Ken, Sarah, E.M. or those eyes again. Most of all I could bring an end my shame.

My contemplation was broken by a sound behind me. This sound was quiet. Not a sound that would illicit a quick turn around and investigation, but rather the kind of noise that makes your breath halt and your legs turn to stone. It was familiar, but still unidentifiable. What was it? Dragging, yes it’s dragging. It was closer now and still moving. I had only two options, turn around and see or just walk, walk into that icy mud colored water. I don’t know why I made the choice I did, but in my mind I see myself turning around in slow motion, with all the color draining from my surroundings. There he was, Ken, standing there. His normally olive skin was white, his mouth gaped open and his eyes stared at me with bewilderment. I could feel the tears turn cold as soon as they left my eyes, freezing on my cheeks. I stared into his eyes, neither of us moving. Suddenly, a burst of dark blood leapt from his opened lips, splattering onto my front. I was so stunned that I stumbled back hitting the shore crashing water. The temperature robbed my lungs, but no more than Ken’s body falling on top of me did. We lay there in the water, me struggling to breath and Ken gurgling and convulsing. As I was pushed further down by Ken’s weight my eyes saw it. It was standing over us, the beauty replaced by unfathomable decay. The skin dripped with puss-likened liquid as the straw hair danced in the winds. Its eyes, those eyes, just vacant holes indicating the status of its soul. My hands gripped Ken’s wet coat as it neared me. I was crying, but my throat had tightened so much that no sound could escape. It was there right above me, the dreadful image eclipsed only by the odor from it mixing with the lake’s damp aroma. It was there so near that it was all I could see; this was it, then…black.

I woke up to my face burning so badly it felt like a match had been lit inside my sinuses. The familiar sense of confusion was much stronger. Voices were muffled and foreign. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Shhh.” I recognized my mother’s tone. Her words were unclear, but the shushing soothed me. I thought I was dreaming. My eyes were closed. I needed to open them to wake up. They won’t open. Why won’t they open? I believed I was saying this out loud, but instead I was screaming, a primal, instinctive scream.

They’re gone. Those eyes are gone; my eyes are gone, replaced by forever darkness. I was saved from the water, first by Ken as his dying body’s last warmth was given to me, or the warmth that I stole, which is how I describe it. The second person to save me was an out of man visiting the lake for sightseeing. I told the police about Ken, he wasn’t found, even after the lake was dragged. Maybe the lake scavengers got him, or maybe he’s still down there, still waiting for that girl. I will never see Ken again. I will never see anything again. The irony is that of all the things I miss seeing, I miss the face looking back to me from the mirror the most, my plain face. I write this, not to frighten the reader, but with hopes of stopping other people from turning away in disgust at their own reflections and looking for someone who they wish to be online. But, if you still want to find that perfect face to parade as your own, please, if you see a beautiful smiling girl looking straight through you with chestnut brown eyes, look away from those eyes. Those eyes are mine.

Credit To – Ju-Ju B.

Hello, my name’s Charlie Ipstien. Dorky, I know. But I’m better known as ‘Chips’ by my familiar. I ain’t a classy guy, a lowlife thug people call me. And I admit it. Can’t really blame myself though. It was where I was damn raised. Messed me up badly. I grew up in the slums, the absolute pits. The school I was taught in was complete and utter shit. The budget was around about the price of a taco. The teachers knew no better than us, and were nearly always pissed off. Let’s just say they had a different idea on ‘Punishments’, back then.
However, it wasn’t just them that caused us to be how we are today. It was a kid, who came to our school during April. You see, this was a cheap, cheap school, so the peasants around here could afford to ‘educate’ their child. So it’s no surpise to anyone that some shady characters got into the school. Like Larry. Although no-one actually called him that. That had a special name for him: Freak.
Larry had the average personality of a kid who just moved to school. Shy and quiet. But how he looked, well that was a whole new story. He had one of those conditions, I’d researched, um, let me see, ah yes: Hypertrichosis. Or as it’s better known ‘Werewolf Syndrome.’ Because who cares about being subtle. He had hazelnut brown hair all over his face, and his body. We found that out when Razor took his shirt off and started kicking him. People like us weren’t so used to the condition, so he was bullied badly.
We’d all call him freak, and ‘Werewolf Kid’ and usually taunt him with wolf howls all day. It weren’t ‘cos we didn’t like ‘em. ‘Cos deep down, we were scared of him. We’d never seen anyone like it, so that was our natural reply to it. You might call me sick, but I wasn’t doing the bullying so much, more just watching. I know, that’s no better but what would the teachers do anyhow? The gang would howl at him, and hit him all lesson long, while the teacher was usually shitfaced on the table.
The more I think about it, the more I feel bad. He was just trying to fit in, and we weren’t making that easy for him. But the others didn’t care, they never stopped having fun with him. Especially Razor. He seemed to take an instant dislike to him, and usually went way too far as we stood back. Razor wasn’t the most healthy-minded kid, as he lived in a house right next to druggies, the fumes getting through, most likely. Not many people knew Razor’s name, we think it was Robert Mayfield or something. But when some poor sucker named Jeff made fun of his name, Razor justified how he’d got that nickname. It was a natural decision to let him be in charge.
One of the incidents were Razor freaked out was P.E, and the teacher, being the lazy bastard he was, just gave us all a ball to bounce. We did the usual stuff, dodge ball, football, while Razor had two balls, and held them to his chest pretending they were his boobs. You know, the normal High School stuff. Then Larry came, presumably from the teachers office, his hair ruffled and messed up, and his eyes red from tears. Despite his large amount of hair, he was pretty weedy. There was a ball each, but since Razor had taken two, there wasn’t one for him.
“Um, could I have a ball, please?” He said, stuttering as usual.
Razor looked at him, then held one of the balls way over his head.
He pointed to the white ball above Larry and said, “Oh look guys! A full moon!” I had to admit, that was funny. We all laughed and Larry sighed.
“What, ain’t I funny enough for ya freak?” Razor said angrily, gaining closer to him.
“Just come back over here man, carry on with the game.” One of us called out.
“I’m not done with hairy and ugly over here.” He snarled back, as he carried on pacing towards Larry. “Well, what’s your problem, huh?”
Larry was walking back quickly, so Razor pelted one of the balls at him as hard as he could. It must have caught him of guard, because he slammed on the ground. The gym teacher just gave a grin through his cigar.
Razor got his second ball, and threw it even harder at him. Larry writhed on the floor in pain. Razor was freaking out, as usual.
“You want a ball, do you? YOU WANT A GODDAMN BALL?” He grabbed a ball of someone else and continued to pummel him, as Larry squirmed on the floor, his face twisted in pain.
“Leave it man, come on!” We all pleaded, this could get real ugly.
I wish, and I’m sure a lot of others wish, that we’d done more then. The display that happened through the next ten minutes or so was too disturbing even for us. Razor continued to pelt him until Larry was just breathing heavily, occasionally jolting with pain. I still regret not doing something to this day.
One day, as we were walking out of school, I saw Larry walk off to the right, where I was pretty sure just led to the woods. The woods were a creepy ass place. It was the birth ground of campfire stories, and many urban legends. Ghosts, bigfoot, some weird tall dude who stole kids. I quickly ran up to him, and he looked mildly surprised, as I guess he thought I was gonna beat him up.
“Please, just let me go…” He said immediately, trying to quicken his pace.
“Where to? The only place you can go is the woods. Where’s your mom or dad?” I asked. He slowed down, and sighed.
“I don’t have a house. The woods are my home. My mom died while I was on the way out.” He continued to walk on. I just stood there. Poor guy. Wait! ‘Stop feeling sorry for Larry!’ I convinced myself, and I ran back to the gang, way ahead now. Still, he had no home, and we weren’t making it easier for him.
The next day I told them about what he said, obviously instead of me talking to him, I was punching him, so they wouldn’t judge me. I was planning on maybe raising a bit of sympathy, but it raised more taunting, and the bullying just grew worse.
The story spread across the lunchroom like a germ, as I saw Larry look into his hands. He looked at me, shaking his head slowly. I felt kinda bad, and the next day, Larry had come up to me, while I was talking to my friends.
“Why, why’d you do it?” Larry asked, so pathetically I almost felt sympathy. The gang looked at me, waiting. I had to do something to please them.
I shoved him to the ground, his eyes wide with shock.
“Sorry Larry, nothing personal.” I joked. The gang laughed heartily, and I felt pretty good. Not for hurting Larry, but for being accepted a bit more.
But the day my childhood really got messed up was the day Larry left school. It was the Monday after a previous week of taunting and slightly more vicious attacks off Razor than usual. The story had mutated to a straight up insulting rumour, and I could tell Larry was losing it. I saw his occasional eye twitch, and his slight vibrations and he sat on his desk, clawing at the table. On Monday, he was walking through the gate, twitching like a mental patient. Razor met him at the gate, me and the gang behind him.
“Hey Larry, Look what I got for ya! Ahem..!” He began.
“St-, stop it.” He spat quietly. Razor was surprised, he wasn’t used to getting spoke back to.
“What, am I getting to ya?” He said in mock empathy.
“Shut up. Just shut up.” Larry countered. His eyebrows were slowly curling down, and the crowd gave an excited murmur. This was action!
“Really? You and what army?” Razor shouted, pushing Larry fiercely.
Larry, instead of backing away, just stumbled back a bit, and shook violently even more. He looked like he was in-between ‘not giving up’ and ‘not snapping.’
“You know what I think freak boy?” Razor said, nose to nose. “I think ya momma just killed herself when she saw what just popped out? Deserved it, if you ask me…”
It all happened so fast. Larry pounced on Razor, sending him to the floor, roaring as he did so. Razor gave a startled cry, shocked at this sudden outburst. We all stopped breathing, as time seemed to stop. We were all dumbfounded by this sudden outrage. Larry continued to beat him furiously, his arms so quick they were just a blur. Blood splattered to the ground by Razor’s head, as we just stood there in horror.
“Hey, let him go freak boy!”
Some kid tried to hold Larry back, and Larry reacted by punching him away with all his force. The kid fell back like a ragdoll. Larry spun his head back to Razor. I saw his eyes, and for the first time I’d seen him, he had a look I’d never seen before. The look of an animal…

******

That all happened in high School, as I said. Left me pretty devastated and disturbed. Took me a long while to get over it, still fully haven’t really. Sometimes the memory comes back, after trying so hard to forget it. I see Razor screaming in agony, as Larry continued to claw and punch him. The teachers had apprehended Larry a couple of minutes later, they held him back with all their strength, as he writhed like a fish caught in a net. He was taken to children’s juvenile centre. We never heard from him again, and the teacher would nervously change the subject when he was mentioned. Razor hardly spoke after that, He was never the cocky airhead I’d known him to be. Larry had left him with some serious scars, mentally and physically.
I’d just finished remembering all that suppressed trauma when I got a phone call. I picked it up, and Razors voice was on the other line. The audio was shaky, as if he was holding it with a broken hand.
“Hey, hey Chips.” He said un-confidently.
“Hey Razor man!” I said happily. I hadn’t heard from him in months. “How you been?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain…” I could hear the paranoid tone of his voice. “So, hey, I was wondering, if maybe you’d like to…”
There was a long pause. I could have sworn I heard some very high pitched sounds, like whining…
…pleading.
“Yo Razor, you there?”
I heard a low grunt from the other end, a forceful grunt. Deeper than Razors voice by a long shot.
“Okay, 0kay! Sorry man, um, line went dead. Um, so, I was wondering if you wanna get a couple of beers?”
“Sure man, tonight?”
“Yeh, yes tonight. JTK bar at 8:00. See, see you there…”
I swore I heard another grunt, and the line went dead. The phone call had, unnerved me at the least, but he’d went kinda coo-coo after the whole ‘you know what’ incident.
I was walking towards the JTK bar and it was already dark. The gnarled trees from the upcoming forest were bent and twisted, like a spinal cord. The clouds devoured the sky like smoke. Hell, probably is smoke from all the damn chemicals from the factory around here: SIREN INDRUSTIES. Damn bastards, as if this place didn’t smell bad enough.
To get the JTK bar you had to go through the woods, the one were Larry had lived. I wasn’t so scared of it now, you just have to walk through a straight path, and it’ll lead you right to town. Still, the place gave me the creeps. All the legends, and especially knowing now that Larry lived here.
I walked into the entrance of the woods, and jerked slightly. I looked down at my feet, I’d stepped into a big footprint. Not just big, huge. And right by them were smaller footprints. I carried on walking until the smaller ones just suddenly, stopped. No evidence of them turning around or nothing. Weird.
I carried on, the huge trees towering above me, watching me almost in anticipation. Like they knew they were about to get a show. The cold air stung my skin. The owl gave the occasional hoot, and the moon rose above the smoke. Classic cliché horror movie moment. I chucked, but they weren’t real. None of them were.
Snap.
I turned to the sound with a jolt, and there was just 2 particularly large and menacing trees, and some over-grown, swamp green bushes. Instead of the smell of piss and bark, here it smelled even worse. It smelt like raw meat, that’d been left here to cook and rot for a million years. Probably a dead skunk, but I couldn’t get over how bad it was. The odour filled my lungs, as I coughed and spat. I squinted my eyes to see what was behind there. All I could make out was a huge lump. Probably a tent, or a den some kids had made. Probably cooking some bad meat, or cooking something else. I heard slight whimpers, so quiet they could be missed. I wanted to see what was behind there, overlooking the entire meeting with Razor.
I began to try walking through the bushes, and the thick bristles made it tough. Ivy scraped my leg, like they were warning me to leave but I got through them. The smell was stronger now…
There was a narrow gap, and with a squeeze, I got past the tightly packed trees. I looked to where I had seen the shape…
The smell was strongest as it had ever been.
I gasped.
I saw Razor, beaten, bloodied and broken. His face was terrified, agonized, but somehow, self-accepting. His clothes were torn with three long marks. His body was dangling like a puppet. Around his neck was a gigantic fist, squeezing the life out him. The fist was brown, and hairy. The arm followed to the body of an enraged figure, a figure I knew all too well.
Larry.
But this was nothing like the Larry I’d known. The Larry I’d known was small and weak, but this one was built like a bear! He had fists the size of wrecking balls, his body like a tank. His biceps were like giant pumpkins, and just looking as hard as steel. His fur had never been too rough, but his fur looked like it had been dragged to hell and back. When he was a child, you had been able to see his human features, however now he barely looked human at all. His face was angry, but calm. But underneath the miles of fur, his eyes were bloodshot and yellow. His teeth had been filed to a point, and they were stained with red. He had a particular look, I look I’d tried my damned hardest to forget.
The look of an animal.
“P, please….,” Razor said so, so quietly.
Larry raised one hand up to Razor’s head, and gave a sharp twist. A sickening sound followed, a sound like a plate being smashed. Razor fell to the ground lifelessly.
The puppets strings had been cut.
I gagged. My feet were glued to the floor, as the rest of me shook widely. Larry turned to me, his face partly hidden by the shadows. He gave a sick grin, like an animal that had cornered its prey.
“Sorry, Chips.” He, it growled, a voice so deep it sounded it would hurt to talk.
He took a pace towards me, his fist rose to me. He lifted me, his sharp nails, claws digging into my hip. His grip was so tight. I must have weighed nothing to him. I was now face to face with this monster I had once known to a child, a lost child, with no-one to love him, tormented to insanity. He spoke again.
“Nothing personal.”
I heard the plate smashing sound again, and it all went dark.

Credit To – YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE USERNAME! (Thanks to tytiger10 and Joshua Standlee!)

This is the first entry in the Modern Monsters series.

A laptop computer was found in the city sewers on Monday, April 22nd of 2013, after screams were heard echoing from below. As far as authorities could tell, there was no owner. All picture files on the hard drive were corrupted, and forensics failed to reconstruct all but one of them. The reconstructed photo partially revealed a terrified man in his late teens or early twenties, and some sort of face behind him.
Analysts have disputed whether or not that actually is another face, or simply image noise created as a result of the reconstruction of the photo. Apart from the single image, all that remained on the laptop was a cryptic word file left open, unsaved. Some see this as the suicide note of a deranged lunatic. Others see it as a prank. All that is known for sure is that over the past three months, there have been over twenty disappearances, all leaving no trace.

**********

I just hope I can finish this. I need to tell it. I can’t NOT tell it. But I don’t have time to finish it. And that’s what’s horrifying. Because, if I don’t tell, then it might get the rest. I HAVE to. I’m on very limited time, but I’m gonna be as detailed as possible. So it doesn’t get the rest. Please bear with me, please listen to me.

I guess it all started three months ago, when we found that secret room. The room in the sewers with the little trap door under the rug. When that happened, everything went wrong. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I have to tell the full truth. Or else it will get the rest.

I’m nineteen years old. Me and my three best friends have always been fond of the sewers. We would go down there and explore, at first using rope, then chalk signs, then nothing at all as we learned every twist, turn, and passage to the point where we could find our way around in pitch darkness, something we’ve had to do on at least three occasions when our flashlights died.

Now, what’s strange, is that we never found the room. It was when James asked to join us that the room was discovered. James was more of an acquaintance than a friend, but we often found him hanging out with us. We never told him about our excursions to the sewers; most people thought of that as strange. We had known James for probably six months before he overheard us speaking about the sewers.

Of course, he wanted to know what we were talking about. So we told him, about how we went down into the sewers every now and again to explore. He, of course, wanted to join our next expedition. We said it was fine, and we went early the next Saturday.

James wasn’t very good with darkness. We found that out the hard way. Or maybe it was the darkness coupled with claustrophobia. I don’t know. But, once we got into the deeper levels of darkness, where the daylight ceased to exist, and the tunnels became black, he began to hyperventilate.

At first, it was almost unnoticeable. His breathing got quicker, and he moved closer to me. Then, without warning, he began to breathe wildly, and he dropped his flashlight. It hit the ground and went out, and just like that, he was sprinting, sprinting and screaming for help, down the dark tunnels.

We chased after him. Following his screams, we started to lose all of our sense of direction. We went deeper than we thought possible. We thought we knew these tunnels. But there was one small niche, that we had never noticed before, that led into an even older series of tunnels. We had to crawl on our stomachs to get through it, and it opened into a tunnel not much bigger than that. We had to crouch down to the point of being on our hands and knees to traverse it.

It’s in those same sewers that I’m sitting now, with hundreds of white Christmas lights strung up around me, and stretching down the tunnel. These won’t last forever. The battery I’m running them off of can only keep them lit for a few hours. But they keep me comfortable, and serve as a warning. The thing can’t stand to be in light. It’s coming for me, I know it. But the lights will go out before it can get to me, so I’ll know.

I’m hiding here because this is the last place it will expect me to go. It’s looking for me. But it wouldn’t think that I would go into its sewers, its very back yard. I know that it will find me, and soon. But I just hope that this will prolong the inevitable. Long enough for me to get my story out. I’ve got my phone programmed to dial 911 in two hours. And I’ve got a camera, with night vision, ready to record when it shows up. So the cops will know, to stop it.

I just hope they can.

We eventually tracked down James, and he was sitting outside a big rusty door. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. Somehow we convinced ourselves to open it and oh my god I just wish we hadnt this crap would have NEVER HAPPENED IF NOT FOR THAT STUPID DOOR OH MY GOD IM GONNA DIE AND

I have to stop. Panicking won’t do anything to help me. I’m past help. Have I told you our names? There was me- Curt, and then James, Alan, Josh and Chris.

Writing down facts help me calm down. Just bear with me. I’m almost there.

We went in the door. That was a mistake. In the room, was an ancient chair, and a threadbare rug. Not much else, except a table full of disturbing instruments. And a calendar. The calendar was old and faded, and a dark yellow, but I could just barely make out dates in the faded ink.

The calendar was dated for 1903. Over a hundred years prior.

The table had what looked like torture tools set on it. I recognized a thumbscrew. Josh cut himself on some kind of twisted knife-hook-thing. Hammers and nails. I shudder thinking of what some of the other instruments were used for. There was what looked like the remains of a skeleton on another table in the corner of the room.

A rectangular table with Metal rings at each corner, and decayed ropes through those metal rings. I felt sick.

We decided then that we needed to get out, but Alan tripped over the rug and kicked it to the side. There was a trap door under it. Again, curiosity got the best of us, and we opened it, against James’s protests. It was pitch black down there. An old ladder led down, but that was it. We shined our lights in, and there were several things that might have once been human remains, but were now nearly dust.

At this point, something came over James. He climbed down the ladder into the hole, against our protests. After a moment, his light flickered and then died. Nothing but silence from down below. We were just beginning to panic when he casually walked into view.

He smiled up at us.

His eyes were just empty bleeding sockets.

We all just stood there in stunned silence, and then our lights wavered and flickered out. Mine flickered back on for a split second, and we saw some THING standing behind him. I don’t know what it was. Yes I do.

It was IT. The thing that’s been hunting me and my friends.

It looked very angry. It looked horrifying. It was dead blue skin and decomposing face. I could see its skull through its cheeks. It looked female. It had long decayed hair, and a bony frame. What looked like slashes in its dead cheeks, and gashes around its empty sockets. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I think, that if I would have seen it for more than a split nanosecond, I would have gone insane. Gone insane or dropped dead.

The light lasted for a fraction of a second, a fraction of a second that has haunted me every minute of every day since then, and then everything was dark and James was screaming. I ran. Everyone else ran too, but I was the first. We scattered. Floundering in the dark, in the unknown. I don’t know how long I was down there. It felt like centuries.

Eventually, I made it to the surface. It was pitch dark in the dead of night. I remembered that we had gone in during the early morning hours.

I went home. It was four o’clock in the morning. All I remember is turning every light in the house on, blasting Looney Tunes on the TV, and then passing out.

The next day, I found out that only Alan and Chris had made it out the previous night. We went to the police and they organized a manhunt. Twenty people went into the sewers that night. Me, Alan, and Chris were not among them. We vowed to never step foot in those tunnels again. The manhunt never found that room.

We never told them about it. We agreed to tell them that we had found a section of sewer that we hadn’t explored before, and gotten separated and lost.

The search was unsuccessful. After a week, the police were forced to call it off. And the rest is history. Over the next several months, everyone who went into those sewers has disappeared, without a trace. Alan, Chris, gone. I’m the only one le

Oh fuck I think a light just went out. The darkness is coming, and I think I can see her or it whatever the fuck it is shit

Im the only one left you cant go into the sewers. They need to find the room and SHUT THE TRAPDOOR and SHUT THE OTHER DOOR so it cant get out

oh god the lights are going out oh shit oh fuck fuck look for my camera and shut the doors PLEASE YOU HAVE TO 54der6ugybioijmn5d46yubi

**********

Police found a dropped camera deep within the sewage tunnels. No one has spoken about what footage is on the camera, and all to see the footage have committed suicide soon thereafter. Police are currently working with city records to conduct a coordinated search of the sewer system to find the location spoken of in the file….

**********

Detective Alexander Sherridan sits down in front of the television. He had requested a copy of the tape that has so disturbed anyone who has watched it, and now he has it. He feels apprehension building. Should he watch this? Some think it is cursed. However, Sherridan is not a superstitions man. He puts the tape in and presses play. A young man comes on the screen, the same from the picture. He is screaming, while behind him the lights are rapidly going out, moving in sequence towards him. What he is screaming is mostly incoherent, and what Sherridan is able to make out is simply more of the same of what he said in the word document– “close the doors.”
Suddenly the last lights flash out spectacularly, and there is a small glimpse of the laptop before the camera goes dark. What ensues are some of the most horrifying screams that Sherridan has ever heard, but he only barely registers these. He refuses to believe what he thinks he saw. To be sure, he rewinds the video, and plays it again. And again. And again.
Finally, he pauses it and goes forward frame by frame, until he sees the image he feared. Just as the lights flash for the final time, there is a woman grabbing the young man. Except he is not sure that she is a woman. It has no eyes. They look like they were gouged out at some point. There are slashes in her face, or what is left of its face. It is mostly decayed bone, with some skin stretching over it. The teeth are worn nubs. Sherridan averts his eyes. He can’t look at this thing anymore.
He notices at that moment, in the background, stand other things. People that have disappeared. All decaying. All with no eyes. They seem to be looking directly at him, accusingly almost. He tells himself that that is impossible, as they have no eyes. Then he notices motion.
The woman holding the young man pulls her face in some caricature of a smile. Then, she begins digging her fingers into his face. He begins screaming, as she literally rips his eyes out of his head. Sherridan runs forward and presses the power button on the TV. Nothing happens. The woman/thing continues to rip the eyes out of the man’s head, and Sherridan begins screaming with him, as he feels his sanity begin to slip. He rips the plug to the TV out of the wall.
Nothing happens. He retches as the thing pulls the remains of the eyes out, and begins pressing them into her own sockets. He turns and runs full force towards the wooden baseball bat mounted on the wall. He grabs it. He intends to destroy the TV. As he runs back towards the television, the he raises the bat. Just as he’s about to swing and destroy the screen, the thing winks at him with its new eyes.
Whatever vestiges of sanity that are left in Alexander Sherridan shatter at that moment. He drops the bat and stumbles backward into the next room. All he knows is that that thing knows where he is and how to get to him. And he knows that he doesn’t want that to happen.
As he presses the barrel of his police issue Glock into his temple, he vaguely recalls some urban legend or quote or something he’d heard somewhere about how if someone dies a violent death, their spirit stays there, angry, forever. “Fuck that,” he says out loud, before squeezing the trigger.
On the television screen, all that is seen is a terrified young man in a bright flash of light. Nothing more.

Credit To – Matt M.

Alleyways are always filled with doors, many of which never seem to lead anywhere. Once in a while, you may find a door that seems completely out of place and out of time. These old wooden doors look like they could be centuries old and have very delicate and ornate designs carved into them. These are the One Way Doors.

Now one day, you might find yourself down an alley, staring at one of these mysterious doors, overcome with curiosity.You approach the door and test the copper doorknob, surprised to find that the door has been left open. You swing the door open slowly, finding that it’s extremely dark. Despite it being rather bright in the alley, you’re unable to see anything past the doorway. Still bugged by the possibilities of what lies behind the door, you go against your better judgment and step into the pitch darkness.

You blink a few times, allowing your eyes to adjust to the brightness, and you realize that you’re standing back in the alley, facing the door. You try the doorknob again, except that this time, it’s locked. The last thing you remember doing is going through this old wooden door, except now, you’re standing back out in the alley. You shrug it off as some memory lapse or déjà vu moment, and seeing as the door was now locked, you decide to head home.

As you turn around, you see a man heading towards the door, clearly just as curious about the door as you were. “Don’t bother, bro. It’s locked,” you tell him. He doesn’t mind you and keeps walking towards the door, going straight through you.

“Wait, what the fuck?!”

You stare wide-eyed as the man continues to make his way towards the door. “How did he -?! Is that guy a ghost?! Unless, I’m the -”

The man reaches for the doorknob and opens the door. He pokes his head into the darkness before fully stepping though the doorway.

As the man steps into the room, his foot doesn’t find any ground. He falls 30 feet down to the bottom of the pit inside the room. He dies the instant he hits the pile of dead bodies at the bottom of the pit; his body lies neatly next to yours.

Credit To – Andrew Kim

It was always a treat for the three Levine children when they got to visit Gran’s house. Gran’s house was big, with plenty of rooms for hide-and-seek, and a pond in the garden filled with fish and frogs. For the Levines, who crammed together in a four-bedroom apartment, Gran’s house was a fairytale castle. It was also a veritable treasure-trove of toys; bags of shiny marbles, ebony dominoes stacked neatly in their boxes, striped hoola-hoops and skipping-ropes, boxes of coloured chalk that the children could use to draw on the flagstones around the pond, teddy-bears in all shapes and sizes, and a plethora of dolls with curly hair and frilly dresses.
Then there was the box.
Some days it was in the front room, proudly displayed on the mantel above the fireplace, other days it was in the dining room, hiding among myriad framed photographs, and other days still it was upstairs in Gran’s bedroom. Sometimes it wasn’t on display at all but just sitting on the floor or halfway up the stairs.
The youngest child, Vivian, once asked, “Why do you always move the box, Gran?”
Something dark flitted across Gran’s face like a storm-cloud blocking out the sun. “I don’t. That box has a mind of its own.”
“You mean it moves by itself?” This wasn’t incomprehensible to a six-year-old.
“The box does what it feels like and I don’t interfere,” Gran said.
Vivian’s sisters were more interested in the dolls. They’d spend hours brushing their hair or rearranging their clothes, but nothing peaked Vivian’s curiosity like that box. She was never allowed to touch it, no matter where it moved itself to. Every time they went round, Vivian would look at the box and wonder. What was its secret? Why wasn’t she allowed to touch it?
Years passed and visits to Gran’s house became less and less frequent. The girls were growing up; they had their own lives to live. When Vivian was twenty-two she moved to the heart of London and that was the last she saw of Gran for a while. She’d stopped thinking about the box a long time ago.

Until Gran died.

The wake was held in Gran’s house – it was the only one big enough to fit everyone in. Gran had made a lot of friends in her lifetime.
Vivian felt a sharp pang in her chest when she stepped over the threshold. It had been years since she’d been in this house yet everything looked the same. Older, perhaps, more faded, but still igniting the potent memories of childhood.
Everyone wanted to offer platitudes and condolences but all Vivian wanted was some time alone. It would probably be the last time she was in the house she’d loved as a child, and she wanted to indulge in a memory-lane trip. While the guests congregated at the buffet table, Vivian quietly slipped upstairs. Everything was as she remembered it, the carpet patterned in various purples, the off-white wallpaper and the paintings of Gran’s old dogs that lined each and every wall.
Somehow she found herself in Gran’s bedroom. The shelves on the walls were still lined with glassy-eyed dolls but their curls were limp now, covered with a grey film of dust. And on the dressing table, surrounded by pots of powder and lipstick tubes, was the box.
Vivian froze when she saw it. All her childhood curiosity came flooding back. Gran’s mysterious box that no one had ever been allowed to touch. Looking at it now, Vivian didn’t even know it had fascinated her. It was a plain wooden box, thirteen by six inches, the brass catch fastened by a padlock. It was nothing pretty, nothing special but Vivian could swear it was calling to her. It wasn’t a voice as such, more like a tugging sensation as if invisible hands were trying to pull her towards it.
She took a tentative step forwards and picked up the box. Suddenly she felt six years old again, breaking Gran’s most stringent rule. She half-expected Gran to come into the room and start scolding her. But Gran wasn’t here anymore.
Vivian made up her mind there and then. She was taking the box. She slipped it into her handbag and didn’t think about it again until she got home.
It was ten o’clock by the time Vivian arrived back in London. Her flat was located above a butcher’s on the corner. She hated walking past the butcher’s during the day when all the slabs of meat were on display, sitting in pools of blood. At least at night the windows were dark, the meat stored away.
Up in the flat, Vivian took the box from her handbag and placed it on the freestanding bookshelf by the side of her bed. She didn’t plan to keep it there permanently but she was too tired to find a proper home for it now. Kicking off her shoes she flopped into bed. Sleep crept over her in minutes.
Vivian dreamed she was standing in a field, waist-deep in grass. There was nothing around her but green, an endless countryside. The sun was setting; it looked like spilled blood on the horizon. Dread prickled up her spine. There was something wrong with this place. She couldn’t see it but she could feel it, some bone-deep sense of self-preservation that kicked in when danger was close.
She started to run. Somehow she had to get out of this field. She hadn’t run more than a few metres when a hand broke through the ground, scrabbling blindly at her ankles. It was grey-skinned, the yellow finger-nails gnarled and broken. Vivian screamed and kicked the hand away but another punched through the earth. It caught her foot and she pitched forward onto the ground. More decaying hands broke through the ground, fumbling over her body, pinning her down. She fought and kicked and writhed but the hands were too strong. A pair closed round her throat. Vivian tried to scream but she couldn’t even breathe.

She snapped awake, clutching at her throat, gasping. Her lungs ached as if something really had been trying to choke the life out of her.
Gran’s box was sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Vivian frowned. She was sure she had left it on the bookshelf. Gran had told her the box had a mind of its own but that seemed like such nonsense to Vivian now. Besides, that had just been some story for Gran to tell the children. She hadn’t actually believed it…had she?
By the time the sun was up, Vivian felt thoroughly silly for allowing a dream to frighten her so much. Dreams were nothing but the workings of the unconscious mind. True, she hadn’t had a nightmare in years but on the night following her Gran’s funeral, she was hardly going to be dreaming about rainbows and candy-canes. And she must have moved the box to her nightstand without realising it. It was the only explanation.
Still, Vivian felt a twinge of unease when night fell. The shadows shifting through her flat seemed more menacing now, as if grey-skinned hands might burst forth at any second. Her nightstand was empty now except for the lamp; she’d moved the box into the kitchen. It didn’t look quite right there either.
The nightmares were worse this time. Instead of grasping hands, whole skeletons climbed out of the lonely field, their eyes empty and blind but all turned in Vivian’s direction. The air was heavy with the stench of blood and meat. The skeletons opened their mouths to speak but all Vivian could hear was creaking bone.
This was a dream. She had to wake up
Vivian lurched awake gasping. The blood stench still clung to her nostrils, so strong she could taste it. It was like someone had slaughtered a pig in her flat and she could smell everything spilling out of its body.

Take me back

The sibilant hiss slithered through her mind. Vivian bit back a scream. Gran’s box was sitting on the nightstand, angled towards her. The wood-whorls looked like eyes glaring out at her.
This time Vivian knew she wasn’t imagining things. She had left that box in the kitchen. There was no way it could have got in here unless…what if Gran had been right? What if the box did have a mind of its own? All those years Vivian had visited Gran’s house and been forbidden to touch the box. What if Gran had a good reason for keeping it away from people?
The next morning Vivian took the box and threw it in the bin. It was silly to be frightened by a piece of wood but every time she looked at it, she got the feeling there was something sinister luring just at the corner of her vision. She was never fast enough to see it but it was there, a presence.
She hoped that with the box out of the house that would be the last nightmare she’d have, but that third night they were worse than ever.
It was raining in the lonely field, fat red blood-drops falling from black clouds. The creaking sound of skeletons trying to talk scraped against Vivian’s ears. In the distance she could see a house and she started running towards it. As she drew nearer she recognised the front door with the lion’s head knocker, and the flowers overflowing from their window-boxes. It was Gran’s house.

Take me back

The voice lashed the air, deeper and angrier than it had been the night before.

Take me back to my house

Vivian gasped and clutched her chest. It felt like something had just hit her with a baseball bat. She fell to her knees as her lungs constricted. There was a dead weight on her chest, like something was slowly suffocating her.
When she opened her eyes Gran’s box was sitting on her chest. Vivian screamed and threw the box across the room. The lid rattled as it hit the floor and that terrible voice came spilling out.

Take me baaaaaaack

Gran’s house had been in the nightmare. That was where the box wanted to be.
Vivian grabbed her car-keys. She didn’t want to touch the box and wrapped it in an old towel. As soon as she was in her car, the smell of blood and meat filled the air. Vivian opened all the windows but it didn’t make any difference. Gran’s house was three hours away from London but Vivian made it there in less than two, violating every speeding law known to mankind.
Gran’s house stood dark and empty, the windows like sad eyes. When Vivian lifted the box from the backseat, it seemed to tremble in her hands. Like it knew it was coming home.
Vivian didn’t have a key and the box wouldn’t fit through the letter-box, but she couldn’t explain that to it. So she did the only thing she could think of – she threw the box through the window. Amid the noise of shattering glass she thought she heard a deeply satisfied sigh as the box thudded on the carpet.
Vivian got in her car and drove away. She didn’t look back.

It was years before she was in the area again. Despite everything she couldn’t resist walking past Gran’s house again. The flower-boxes and the lion’s head knocker were gone. The door had been painted red. Vivian’s steps slowed as she tried to peer through the window.
On a coffee table in the living room was the box. It didn’t have a face but Vivian sensed that it was deeply content. It was back where it belonged.
Vivian never visited Gran’s house again.

Credit To – Bella Higgin

I tried not to notice it. I pretended it wasn’t there. I wore long sleeve shirts, and I never looked down. If I didn’t think about it, I hoped, it would cease to exist.

But I couldn’t forget it. At night my arm would throb in bed like the stain in the Scottish play. Spots don’t come out.

Wednesday I decided to actually look at my arm for the first time a little over two weeks and, upon close inspection, any thought of a future as a non amputee ended. The thick black circle I had been trying to pretend wasn’t there just was, was actually completely there, in a very present kind of way. Inches below the center of my bicep, it was the size of a Krispy Kreme donut with same sort of strange shine to it. A slightly raised appearance almost suggested it was swelling inside. The edges were rounded, not erratic like the pictures melanomas I had found on that evening’s increasingly ragged image searches. But what else would it be?

I didn’t want to call my doctor. I didn’t even have a doctor. Just a clinic, where I saw a rotating cast of semi qualified residents who toiled for low wages, solved mundane problems and lost sleep. I didn’t want to make an appointment there and have to talk to somebody.

I didn’t want to see what someone’s face looks like when I’m being told I’m going to die.

Hopelessness has limits, so I finally called to make an appointment. The scheduler asked me why i needed to see the doctor and, in a moment of horrified honesty, I mumbled that I had a growth on my left arm. Like a black donut. Giant.

She interrupted me- “Which arm? Left or right?”

“Left.”

“Please hold.”

The line went to something classical. Cellos and violas and a feeling of disconnect.

“Still there?”

“Still here.”

“Look, the doctor has a recommendation for you. A specialist for things like this.”

The oncologist’s office was right on the edge of a bus line, on the edge of gentrification. The elevators in the lobby had cones in front of them and signs suggesting they were no longer working. The lights flickered, making it feel like a stop motion movie. I took the stairs to the 3rd floor.

The waiting room was crowded, with barely enough seats for everyone, and the temperature was insane. High 50s? I thought I saw someones breath.

I looked at my phone mindlessly while waiting to get called back. I thought I would have had issuance forms to fill out, so I hadn’t brought a book, but I wasn’t given anything. I just said who I was and they told me to sit down. I didn’t sign a thing.

My arm kept spasming. I was in long sleeves to cover it up, which was awful. The Fourth of July was only two days away.

Everyone else, I realized, was wearing long sleeves too. I told myself they had simply dressed appropriately. The place was arctic, after all. They all knew that. Except the girl behind me, at the desk, she said it was her first visit…

I looked over at her, trying not to be noticed. She was wearing a cardigan.

My name got called. I stood and followed the nurse to the examining room.

It was standard white, with the scale and the table and the biohazard trash. There was a mirror and a window behind me. My arm was pulsing, like a second heart.

The nurse barely spoke to me, just told me to sit on the table and the doctor would be in soon. She was starting to walk out and she hadn’t asked any questions. I asked if she wanted to see my arm.

She looked– repulsed. “No. The doctor wil look at that,” and she hurried out, into the room almost directly across the hall.

She didn’t close the door completely shut behind her. I could see her walk into the room across from mine in the reflection of my room’s mirror. In the other room was the girl in the cardigan. Except she had taken it off.

I couldn’t see everything in the room, but I could see scraps of image, the nurse walking back and forth, the girl’s shoulders. Her arm. And the growth on her left arm.

It was like mine. The same size, the same deep black almost purple color, that jelly like seeming consistency. I could feel it throbbing like mine.

I heard footsteps down the hall, watched as a lab coat slid into her room. I expected to hear that low HPPA murmur as soon as he stepped in but, no. Nothing. I heard her start to talk and then in the mirror I saw a knife.

It was bright and shiny and he moved so fast before she could even cry out. I saw the knife go up and down and up and down and a sprinkler turned on for a moment, a dizzy spray of bright scarlet that splashed out in clear, brilliant streams.

And the black thing on her arm opened. An eye was there. Red vein laced, pupils dilated, fluttering back and firth like a seizure patient.

The blood stopped and the blackness returned over the eye, like a lid closing for sleep. I heard the harsh sound of old pipes as a faucet was turned on.

I rushed to the door and pulled it closed. I couldn’t bear to look my arm. It felt like it was trying to run away underneath my sleeve. I grabbed the biohazrd trash can and pressed it against the door, then the examining table.

Someone outside pushed, confirming my hope the door opened inward instead of out. The doorknob rattled; noise mingled with panicked cursing.

It was the third floor, but looking out I could see a dumpster nearly directly under me. I tried the window. The door started slowly opening behind me. The window raised. And I was gone.

The dumpster was full of red bio bags, lumpy, and horrifying. The alley smelled like rot. I climbed out and ran without looking back. I remembered my myths.

I caught a bus 3 blocks away and rode it blankly for almost an hour. I got off in a neighborhood I didn’t know and almost immediately pulled up my sleeve. The growth twitched and flexed. Bright white glimmered and then a strange pink forked thing appeared, moving up and down. And I realized: I didn’t have an eye.

I had a mouth.

And it was hungry.

Credit To – O.H. Manchester

“Donate Blood. Save Lives. We Pay High.”

On any other day, I wouldn’t give much concern about this sign, but today was especially bad. All I sold today were a handful of packs of cigars. I haven’t had anything to eat all day. It was getting late, and helping save a life should make me feel a bit better.

The sign pointed into a 3-story hospital. The facade of the building was faded, probably a decade old. The interior was well-lit, and nothing seemed unusual about this place. The receptionist seemed glad to see me, and I felt a sense of hospitality, so I entered.

The receptionist, Heather, asked what I was looking for. “I’m looking to donate blood. The sign said you pay high?” I asked, quite excited.

“Yes, sir. 100 dollars a pint. I feel you’re interested. What’s your name, sir?”

“Jose. Jose Mendoza.”

“We’ll be done in under half an hour. Come this way, sir. We’ll get you prepped.” She said as she started walking down the hallway. Happy for a chance of easy money, I followed.

The hallway was empty, but for a late night shift in a small town like this, I guess this was the usual. The walls were painted with a faded shade of red, which was quite appropriate for a procedure like this. Empty rooms lined the hallway left and right, which pointed to a blood bank at the end of the corridor. Large swinging doors closed the room off from non-employees.

Heather led me up a staircase into the 2nd floor. It was like a carbon copy of the 1st, save for the blood bank exchanged for a blood testing room. Again, no sign of human life. We walked through the swinging doors into the blood testing room.

“Jose, this is Dr. Noah and Dr. Williams. They will guide you through the blood donation procedure. You’ll be safe. Take care.” Heather left, not before making an eerie half-smile. I was just thankful to see a bit of legitimacy to this hospital. These doctors seemed to be veterans in the business.

“Mr. Mendoza. Please sit. This won’t take long. We promise.” Dr. Noah said. The man had straight, flowing hair extending to his neck, with a deep, reassuring voice.

“So…Mr. Noah. You need my blood type, medical history, anything? I think I’m a Type C.” I was clueless about these things, not like I was ever able to afford to go to a hospital.

“Oh, don’t worry sir. We’ll figure these things out later. Right now we want you to relax. Feel at home.” Dr. Williams said. She put her arm over Dr. Noah’s shoulder. The two must have been long time co-workers, since they were pretty comfortable with each other.

I took my seat on the blood testing area, which had a left and right hand armrest attached to it. Next to me, on the table, was the biggest syringe I’ve ever seen. Good Lord, I could have fainted right there and then.

Ms. Williams seemed to trace where my eyes gazed at, as she tried to calm me down.

“Sir, don’t be afraid. This would feel like nothing more than a pinch of the skin. Here, put on this blindfold. It should help.”

She wrapped a black piece of cloth around my eyes, snugly fit at the back of my head. Suddenly, all my other senses started to kick in. The smell of iron seemed to be stronger now. This room must have had thousands of donations in the past.

My fingers could feel the dents and scratches on the metal armrests – signs of struggle. This is going to be painful. The touch of cold metal didn’t make me feel any better either.

“Mr. Mendoza, we shall procure the rest of the tools needed for your procedure. In the meantime, sit back and relax. We won’t be out for long.” Ms. Williams said. The two walked out of the room.

A sense of eeriness started to befall upon me. I have no idea how this procedure should go. No personal information was asked from me either. Those half smiles, giggles, signs of excitement, are making me think twice of my decision to enter. But the thought of pocketing 100 dollars and eating a nice Big Mac always counter my doubts.

Wait, did I hear crying?

The entrance door to the area creaked heavily. My ears focus hard. A child, male, seemed to be bawling as he walked in the room.

“Who’s there? What’s happening, kid?” I say, as dread and worry washes over me.

“I..I…I’m thirsty. I think I’m dying.” The child’s voice, was dry, raspy, almost like an elderly man.

“Wha…wha…why don’t you go to any of the doctors?” My fear grew ever higher.

“They can’t help me, only you can.” He was pleading, tugging at my jeans.

“What do you want, kid? Get this blindfold off me, and I can help you.” Not only was I keen on helping this kid, but also on getting out of this eerie place.

“Okay, sir. You promise to help me?”, joy finally accompanied his childish voice. He skipped behind me to remove the knot on my blindfold.

“I promise. What do you want anyway?”

Right before he could answer, the blindfold fell out of my eyes. The 2 doctors walked in. One was holding handcuffs, and the other with dozens of syringes. Then the child whispered into my ear:

“A pint of blood, ice cold, freshly drained. You can give me that, right?”

The monster behind me sneered. The shock froze me on my seat. Paralyzed in fear, the syringes pierced deep, up until every ounce of blood was drained from my body.

The last thing I heard was the monster slurping his delicious drink of blood.

Credit To – Brian Tan