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Arrogance



Estimated reading time — 7 minutes

One by one the gravel rocks were kicked up off the road. He was half, maybe three quarters of a mile from the house. He felt something fall out of his pocket, but he didn’t care. All that he cared about was getting away. Away from that… thing. It was hopeless though, and he knew this. No matter what happened it would get him.

He’s always hated this town. James Vonn, an investigative journalist from a small town in Georgia, hates people that believe in paranormal entities. And this town is full of them. Every story you here in this town is about ghosts, demons, or other nonsense. And he has to pretend that he believes in it, or else he wouldn’t have a job writing articles about the town. After all, pretending isn’t so much of a big deal when it pays the bills.

Jim sat in his office, looking out his open window as all the bright orange and yellow leaves fall from the trees, smelling that autumn air, and listening to the slight breeze shake the smaller trees. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was 7:03, meaning he forgot his daily coffee, which smells of milk and honey, and has a few too many sugar packets in it. Knowing that this might totally mess up the rest of his predictably terrible day, he got up to get it late, but was stopped by a sudden voice.

“Jim,” he heard Mr. O’Connell, his boss, call next to his office, “there’s been another disappearance of two teenagers near the old abandoned manor up town. Police aren’t going to show up until they’re finished searching through the city, so you better leave quick, or else you won’t have a chance with the first perspective. Everybody around here believes it was a ghost kidnapping. If you want a good paycheck this week, I’d go up to that manor and snoop around a little bit. Write about what you see.”

James doesn’t mind Mr. O’Connell, he doesn’t treat him bad, and he’s not a believer of everything he hears, like James. He does give all of the dangerous stories to James, though, maybe because he can write a great article, or maybe because everyone else will be too scared to do it. Whatever the reason, Jim doesn’t care. All of this paranormal mumbo jumbo doesn’t hesitate him a bit.

As he left the office, he felt a cold chill run through his body. He shrugged this off, putting blame on the fall wind. He opened up his car, and sat down on the soft leather seats. He just bought this car within the month, so the soft seats still surprise him, every time he gets in. He turned the radio to the classic station, and tapped the beat to all the symphonies on the wheel, as he made the 2 hour long drive through the woods.

He finally found the manor, which was about half a mile from a paved road. The half mile dirt road was very bumpy, and his inhaler flew out of his pocket during his drive on the road. He then saw a car parked at the end of the road, and realized he was at the manor.

The old manor was a horrifying display of architecture. There were turns and twists all along the outside of the rooms, there were doors to the outside 30 feet in the air, and perhaps most terrifying of all, every single window of the house was broken. Jim has never once felt like something was this wrong. While he doesn’t believe in the idea of entities and ghosts, something was most definitely wrong with this house.

He was about to go into his car and leave, but then he smelled something. Something that made his face clench and his stomach clench tighter. If he could describe it in one word, it would be evil.

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But James didn’t want superstition to overcome him, so he decided to go through with the story. The front door was locked, unsurprisingly, so he climbed through the crater that was once a window. The smell was even stronger in here. He raised his shirt over his nose, but to no avail.

The inside of the house was even worse than the outside. The old, weakened wood creaked and cracked with each step. The dust in the air made every breath harder and harder, especially because of his asthma. Good thing he brought his inhaler. He made his way into what he figured was the living room, and took a look around. He saw a piece of paper laying on the old broken coffee table. The words were written in permanent marker, and stretched across the whole page. Get Out. The paper looked very old, like the note was written several years ago. Those awful words told him everything he thought of this place was true. But pride is a terrible thing, and Jim’s pride always got its way. Jim was always told that someday his arrogance would be the death of him, but, ironically, he was too arrogant to listen.
He knew that something was wrong, but once again, he vowed to never let superstition get the best of him.

He made his way through the living room, which was the biggest living room he’s ever seen. There were lanterns on the wall, so he didn’t need to use his flashlight. The living room was full of furniture, but it was all decomposed or broken. The chairs looked recently broken, but Jim couldn’t tell whether it was from prolonged use or bugs and animals. He pulled out his phone and checked to see whether he had service or not, and he didn’t. He kept his phone out anyway to video record all of his findings.

After completely searching the living room, he found the scent getting worse and worse. He decided to find where the smell was coming from, and decided to go upstairs. Of the 14 steps leading up the staircase, three were broken. Jim took note of this just in case something happened. The rest were barely more durable, with strands of wood snapping with each step. Each step sounded hollow, like there was nothing underneath the stairs. The aroma up there was unbearable, almost as if dead bodies and waste filled the upstairs. He was wrong though, there was no waste.

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Three. Three dead bodies scattered around the room. He recognized two of them right away, they were the missing teenagers. The other one… he had no idea who that was, but he seemed at least a decade older. The bodies were mangled and were full of nothing but claw marks, bites, and pockets of ripped off skin. The smell and sight were so awful, that the vomit he threw up next to the bodies looked like a million bucks. He figured it was maybe a wild animal, or a pack of them, but deep down he knew it was something exponentially more terrifying.

James noticed something. One of them had their phone next to their body, as if it fell out of their hand or pocket. He picked it up and turned it on. No pass code. Good. Jim unlocked it and was welcomed by a picture of the two teenagers, smiling and happy, having no idea about the horrors that would soon be upon them. They were both boys who looked similar. They were probably brothers. It’s a shame. They had their whole lives ahead of them.

He looked at the recent messages on the phone, and found out a lot. The one who owned the phone–his name was Danny– was a 17 year old junior, who had a deep relationship with his brother, Clyde. Apparently Clyde had met some homeless person named Greg, who told him a fantastic story about a supposedly haunted manor. While Danny didn’t want to go, Clyde assured him over and over that nothing bad would happen, so they decided to take their car and drive up to the manor. The trip was planned for yesterday.

He then looked through the gallery of the phone. There were 3 videos, all of them he noticed were inside the house. He turned on the first video and saw Danny and Greg, dancing around the living room, laughing, and mocking the house. For example, you could hear Danny yell out, “Sorry Ghost, I didn’t mean to disturb you, please don’t beat me to death.” And then laugh out loud for several seconds. He knew that this video did not explain a thing, so he clicked on the next video.

The second video was frightening. The video started off with them standing where their motionless cadavers now lay. Their faces were much less happy and carefree. They were in complete disbelief. Danny was struggling with words, eventually sputtering out that they should leave. As they turned to go back down the stairs, all he could hear were screams, three of them from the video, one from him. As the video was ending, he saw a creature, and it was massive. It was walking on two legs, it looked around medium height, it was very hairy, its muscles were bulging and pulsating, as if they were about to pop out of the skin, and it had a blood curdling smile with several rows of fanged teeth.

Go. Get out. Right now. Don’t watch the last video, just get out. He ran down the stairs, phone in hand, and got his leg stuck in the missing step. As his leg fell through the step, the phone bounced out, and the video started playing. Screams were blaring out from the phone, and a loud growl. The video was only about fifteen seconds, and it ended with a bloody Danny yelling, “If you are in this house, get the h-” and then you could hear a thump, along with a body and phone smacking off the floor, somehow having the stop button being pressed on the way down. As the phone went to the ground, he could once again see the thing. This time it was attacking Clyde with one hand and biting, and strangling Greg with his other massive hand.

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He pried his leg out of the gaping hole, not caring that it was bruising and bleeding. He carefully walked down the rest of the stairs, and heard a low snarl. James froze, terrifyingly knowing what was happening. He heard the floor above his head pounding. He sprinted out of the stairway and made his way into the living room. He put his hand into his pocket and frantically searched for his keys. He realized they were in his car, and jumped through the window hole with surprising athleticism.

He bolted to his car and went to open the door. Locked. Just his luck. He tried the passenger door. Locked. The trunk. Locked. He tried the back door on the passenger side and heard a door blast open. Not the car door, the manor door. He saw the creature’s smile. James ran down the road and didn’t look back.

One by one the gravel rocks were kicked up off the road. He was half, maybe three quarters of a mile from the house. He felt something fall out of his pocket, but he didn’t care. All that he cared about was getting away. Away from that… thing. It was hopeless though, and he knew this. No matter what happened it would get him.

About 4 minutes into his run, he started struggling for air. An asthma attack! He quickly reached into his pocket. Nothing. His inhaler was the thing that fell out at the beginning. He started crying, knowing it was inevitable As he fell on the ground struggling for air and coughing, he saw a figure walk into his view. After about 30 seconds he could hear the growl. A minute after that he saw the smile.

He’s getting closer now, and no car is coming down this road.

Credit To – Dylan Clay

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23 thoughts on “Arrogance”

  1. The story in itself had potential. Could have been amazing if not for the occasional grammatical errors. I also couldn’t help but notice that the author continuously switched the main character’s name from ‘James’ to ‘Jim’

  2. This could’ve been rated a lot higher and I mean 7.5 – 9 if it was proof-red and if you maybe did a second or third draft until you felt it was up to standard. Despite that, I felt it was scary and enjoyable to read, so good job. :)

  3. This story was good, but not great. The cliche that is the protagonist being a skeptic of the paranormal, only to have a paranormal encounter later on in the story is a little played out. Also, what about the character is even supposed to pertain to arrogance? Other than that, I enjoyed this story.

  4. I don’t know if you were writing a story just for the hell of it or what but this completely missed the mark. If you really did try, then I apologise, because this is going to be long and harsh.

    First of all, and as already mentioned in other comments, the tense was inconsistent. Mistakes like this can make or break a piece of writing. It’s not a hard error to find, and it’s not a hard error to fix, but it is a deal-breaker for a lot of readers.

    Another inconsistency that really got on my nerves was the protagonist’s name. Call him Jim or call him James. Don’t call him both.

    There’s no transition between the first and second paragraph and I had to stop and make sense of the scene change. You don’t want to confuse your reader like that, especially so early in the story. I think the first paragraph should have been deleted. Yes, it raised the question ‘What’s coming after him?’. You want your reader to ask questions because they’ll keep reading to discover the answer. But it didn’t work in this case. It could have been approached better.

    Most of your sentences are constructed the same way which gets pretty boring pretty quickly. There’s a lot of ‘He did this. He did that. James thought this.’ There’s some few-word sentences, which I like, but they didn’t set off the blandness of the other sentences. You should try doing more showing and less telling.

    There’s also a lot of grammar and syntax errors which are really distracting. For example, sometimes your modifiers weren’t used correctly which can lead confusing your reader — the number one thing you want to avoid doing.

    There’s a lot of repetition. Repetition is exhausting to read. At one point, you ended a sentence with ‘each step.’ and then started the next sentence with ‘Each step’.

    I didn’t find it creepy at all, I mean how are broken windows terrifying? You see them on just about every abandoned house.

    You did a good job of foreshadowing his asthma, but a) it hardly played a part. He’d have been coughing and puffing after running for four minutes anyway, and b) (as already stated in other comments) first it fell out of his pocket in the car, and then it fell out as he was running. Simple mistakes like this are lazy writing.

    A lot of words were used incorrectly and a lot of your description fell flat, for example, ‘… and pockets of ripped off skin.’ I have no idea what image you’re trying to convey here, but the image I get is that these people have holes in them which are filled with shredded skin.

    There were a lot of things that weren’t realistic. Why would a teenager’s phone, which he had been using, be off unless the battery had died? How could you gather the name and age of someone through messages to/from their brother on their own phone? And I don’t think that anyone but Danny would be using Danny’s phone. And a piece of paper saying ‘Get out.’? I’ve seen that before a dozen times, and it’s not scary (especially to a non-believer), unless you see invisible hands writing the note in blood or something. How did he lock the car if his keys were in it? How do you kick up gravel tiny stone by tiny stone?

    I have to disagree with some of these other comments as well because I can’t even say this story had potential. A creepy house? A monster? It wasn’t inventive.

    Again, I’m sorry that this is so long, but I’m tired of seeing stories on here that are badly written and badly told. It’s insulting. I’ve come on here to be entertained, but I’m given something that someone has whipped up in ten minutes without thinking about it or proofreading it.

    If you want to have another go at a creepy pasta, I suggest reading published horror anthologies and reading up about creative writing because telling a decent story isn’t as easy as people seem to think. You should also proofread, read the story aloud, and let someone else read it once you’re done to pick up simple errors that can be very detrimental if missed. You can make a story go from 3/10 to 6/10 with some good editing, and from 6/10 to 9/10 with some knowledge about story telling.

  5. this story was about a lonely inhaler, not some silly ghost or werewolf thing. Nope; just a sad inhaler, tired of being neglected and turned homicidal…

  6. What pisses me off about this story is that it came so close to being a good story, but tripped over itself with cliches, bad grammar, and awkward descriptions. So much potential just to be wasted on a forgettable monster and a crappy “spooky” house. I’m sorry for being harsh, but I really got my hopes up on this one. Also, this is supposed to be in the small town he lives in, yet it’s a 2 hour drive to the house? Also he lost his inhaler in the car, yet the story goes to great lengths to draw attention to something falling out of his pocket while he’s running? All the windows in the house are broken? I should have trusted the 5/10 rating and passed this one over.

  7. The story was a little inconsistent and repetitive at times. For example, you mentioned at one point that he dropped his inhaler in the car, then said it fell while he was running. It also seemed like you kept switching tenses, from past to present and back. You might want to consider reading your story over multiple times to check for consistency and grammar errors and such. I’m sure there are other things you can improve, but I’m not very knowledgable about those things, so I won’t offer advice that might be unhelpful or detrimental to your writing. However, you should look for as much advice as possible from many people, both on this site and otherwise. I enjoyed reading this pasta, it was a good effort.

    1. Yes, switching tenses, but also switching perspectives. First it was a third person, then it was a first person, and there’s even a couple of second-person (from the reader’s perspective!) paragraphs… who are we? Are we looking at it as a story like a journal entry? Are we experiencing it happening to us as the reader? Or is it a story that was told from person to person and now just getting to us? It starts off like an awesome reflection of the day, which is an effective story telling technique, and I like how the first and almost-last paragraphs are the same, kind of ties it all together. But there should be more of a physical break between the ‘it all started when’ paragraph and the end of the end-of-day-summary at the beginning.

      Overall, potential to be a decent pasta.

      Would tentatively nibble if recooked.

  8. This had potential. A few things made me laugh tho and that pulled me out of the story. The old manor is in the same city as James, but it takes two hours to get there? Should have been a mention about the horrible traffic. Then there’s the sentence about the smell being “evil”. I appreciate what youre trying to do there but that was just funny. It didnt work, and it pulled me from the story. It was kinda funny that the manor had lit lanterns so no flashlight was needed, but you just skipped over it without mention like it was normal. Why would all the lanterns be lit in an abandoned manor? And I remember james losing the inhaler in the car, but then he lost it again later? Huh? The end of the message where Danny tries to yell a warning into his phone was just silly. Nobody would do that, especially in such a ridiculous way. I also couldn’t help but laugh when seeing these two consecutive sentences: “it was massive” followed by “it looked around medium height” Lol. Massively medium? A good story, some silly elements, but lots of potential. Your writing is nice but you have to clean up the illogical elements and general silly mistakes. 6/10. Practice will make you better. Keep reading and writing.

  9. I think the “evil” the author was talking about was the smell of actual decay, not evil itself. That’s what I got from it anyway…this is in response to chill sauce. Phone wouldn’t let me reply on his post.

  10. 4/10
    There were not so many grammatical errors so as to scare off a sensible reader, but enough to be irritating. At least one or two per paragraph. Mostly, the errors consisted of large words being misused and lacking appropriate adjectives or pronouns.
    Overall, this story was written as though the author was trying very very hard to make it sound as dramatic and suspenseful as possible. Unfortunately, this author doesn’t seem to be very experienced in writing this particular genre. There were numerous occasions where more “dramatic” scenes simply made me roll my eyes.
    Practice makes perfect, maybe enlist the help of a teacher to proof read your work.

  11. His inhaler flew out of his pocket while driving down the road? How does that even happen? Meanwhile an ok story, just pretty random and the descriptions were strange. Like wtf was up with the house, and who cares if the leather seats are soft? Needs proofreading and a little more thought put into it. Keep writing.

  12. Nice pasta, but too straightforward, no mistery, just an old abandoned manor with a monster inside. Littered with grammar mistakes filling parts of the story. Proofreading might be a wise thing to do. Some part of the story is just not very logical, and how can a vomit looked like million bucks, is just beyond me. I can see that you’re trying to make it scary for the reader, but it turns out not being scary at all, it happens, because some things are scary for you, but not to other people. Stop describing a place to smell like it’s evil, it just doesn’t work. Evil is not something that you can smell.
    I’d give it a 5/10.

  13. It was okay I suppose, but it feels like there were a lot of things that were just needlessly repeated and poorly explained.. don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the story, just felt as though it could have done with a few more read throughs and corrections.

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