In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never met the man in her life.

That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist’s desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams. He also claims he has never seen that man in his waking life.

The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as THIS MAN.

From January 2006 until today, at least 2000 people have claimed they have seen this man in their dreams, in many cities all over the world: Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Delhi, Moskow etc.

At the moment there is no ascertained relation or common trait among the people that have dreamed of seeing this man. Moreover, no living man has ever been recognized as resembling the man of the portrait by the people who have seen this man in their dreams.

Please visit thisman.org for the full story.

DERPNOTE: This isn’t a creepypasta proper, obviously. I stumbled onto this website tonight and found it very intriguing and, of course, creepy. Particularly because I’m totally falling for the feeling that I’ve seen him before, too! Anyhow, I thought you guys might enjoy reading about & discussing this enough to make it worth posting.

It’s also breaking in our new tag: Based on a True Story. Suggested by a few people, this is where I’ll place things like this, as well as pastas based on real-life events like the Dylatov Pass Incident or Black-Eyed Kids.

The sound of footsteps was audible in the merchant’s square. People walked around buying food, supplies, and the occasional odd item. I was setting up my wares for the day-medicines for the sick and potions to cure pain. I loved helping the people of Florence. Everyone needs healing. No one should be sick. I sold little charms, trinkets for luck, fertility, good health, and many other human needs. I also sold little toys for children, for I felt sorry for them. Especially the poor, the orphans, and the homeless, who wandered the streets cold, hungry, and sad. I kept prices low, so that anyone could buy what they need. If the person could not pay, I would give them the item they needed, telling them to pay when they could. I sympathized with them. I knew how it felt to be in need, and it wasn’t fun.

My business practices, though, seem to anger the doctores and other merchants. “I was pulling customers away!” they would say. All I would tell them was “I am doing what I think is right, not what makes the most money. Please leave me to my work.” I knew it was dangerous to make enemies, but that was the way I thought.

Though if they had known how I made my potions from the beginning, I would have met my demise before I could become a threat.
You see, I practiced the art of magic, something that was forbidden. I never did anything to hurt people. I was always careful. No one needed to know my secrets, and I intended to take my secrets to the grave.

But, even the most careful person can make a mistake…

One night, when I was making a new potion for a child who was coughing up a red liquid, I saw a strange glow from the corner of my eye. I looked up to find one of my books glowing on my work space. The glowing book mystified me. None of my books had done something like this. I opened the book, which had opened to a particular page. It was a summoning spell. Something came over me that night, and I began the spell. I don’t remember what I did, though even if I could, I would not tell you. I remember a flash of light, and a strange, almost menacing laughter, then darkness.

I woke up the next morning on the ground, my head pounding. When I stood and saw what I did, I panicked. A pentacle was drawn on the ground. It looked like it was drawn in blood. In the middle was a circle with an X in the center, this was burned into the ground. I quickly covered the symbols with a rug that I had rolled up in a corner. The rug was big enough to cover the pentacle, and the strange symbol. Feeling that I was successful, I packed up my wares and went to the merchant’s square. Everything was going to be alright.

All day that day I felt uneasy. I could hear the strange laughter in the background of the market. I saw a shadow just out of the edge of my vision multiple times. I became worried. Did I awaken a spirit that night? I did not know. I tried to act natural, but I think that people began to suspect. I know people began to suspect. They were not stupid. They knew.

Near the end of the day a group of children came to my stand, asking for medicine to help their mother. I was out of medicine for the day, so I told them to stop by my home, that I would have the medicine there. “What could go wrong?” I thought, “I covered up the symbols, no one would know.”
At that point, the laughter started again, this time much louder. I waved it off, thinking nothing of it this time. Nothing will happen. Nothing at all.
That night the children arrived. I told them to wait in my living quarters, and went to get the potion. I had found the potion when I heard the screams. Dropping the potion, I rushed out to see what was wrong.

What I saw made me freeze with fear.

The room had been covered with bloody pentacles, in the center that same circle. The children looked at me, horror on their faces, for they knew what that meant. Before I could do anything, they started screaming again. I tried to hush them, but no matter what I did, they continued to scream. Guards had come soon after.

I do not remember what had happened after that. I do remember days upon days of being locked away in a dungeon, the strange laughter echoing off the brick walls, driving me insane. For what had seemed like years I sat in a corner, listening to the laugh, thinking about those children. Why did they not stop? Why did they not listen? THEY were why I was there, sitting in a dungeon. It was their entire fault!

By the time the guards came, all that was left of me was skin and bone. All I could do was rock back and forth, muttering about children and laughter. One of the guards must have hit me in the head, because the next thing I know, I am strapped to something, a crowd of people standing in front of me, shouting curses and profanities. I was in shock. How could they? When I had helped so many of them?!

The pain started then. It felt like my body was being torn in two. I started to scream, the pain was unbearable. I cursed them back, thoughts back-stabbing, wretched creatures! They would not help me! They hated me! I did nothing to them, and they hated me!

I felt pricks of pain go through my eyelids, then my mouth. I could no longer see, no longer scream. I felt liquid hit me. It burned. I hated them! HATED THEM! All of them! Especially the children. Oh, how they should suffer! If not for them, I would not have been caught! It was their entire fault!
I heard something in my mind. The laughter. Darkness suddenly filled the back of my mind. Behind my closed eyes, I saw tentacles of pure darkness. They wrapped themselves around my mind. The laughter became a voice. A horrible voice.

“Do you hate them so much?”
“Yes.” I said.
“You wish to make them suffer?”
“YES!”
“Then our deal is done.”
The pain subsided. My vision cleared. It was dark, but I could see. I tried to blink, but could not. I felt something, but not happiness, sadness, or even surprise.

I felt anger.

They were still there. Laughing, playing. They will suffer. All of them. But the children will suffer more.
Oh, how they will.
They will…

Credit To – Nighthawk

 “I couldn’t exist in a world devoid of marvels…
even if they frighten me to consider them.”
-       Catlin R. Kiernan

12:09 a.m.

There’s got to be something wrong with me. Seriously, I’m twenty two years old and still afraid of the dark.  I’m not a little kid anymore, but I can’t work up the courage to just turn off the lights and go to sleep. Okay, let me explain how I came to this. One minute I was enjoying myself, writing a paper on Paleolithic cave paintings for my art history class, and then without warning I imagined that there was something spooky waiting for me in the hallway of my apartment, effectively   trapping myself in my own bedroom. You see, I did more than just creep myself out, because with me, fear has a tendency to spiral out of control into levels of mind boggling stupidity.

At first I just ignored it, going on with my work in the hopes that the feeling of being stalked would go away on its own. It didn’t, and I was starting to worry that some shrieking terror was about to burst through the door, so I had to double check to make sure that it was securely locked. After that I couldn’t concentrate on getting my paper written, as every other minute I’d have to look away from my monitor to see if the door was still closed. “This is getting retarded,” I said out loud to no one in particular, “it’s just my imagination fucking with me.” Which is honestly the truth here. I know that if I were to open that door and look into the hall, nothing would happen. One single action and “poof,” sanity becomes restored. The problem of course is the actual opening part. That’s always when the anxiety reaches its high point.

This bullshit started about thirty minutes ago, just before midnight, and it doesn’t look like it’s about to let up anytime soon. So yeah, I’m stuck in my bedroom for what seems like the hundredth time, alone with my computer and thoughts of strange boogeymen. Actually, this whole thing got me wondering where these irrational, paranoid delusions first started. That’s an interesting story actually, and it happened long before anyone could call me crazy.

There’s Something in the Basement.

This story happened in the spring of 1998 in the old house on Erie Street that my parents were renting (Erie as in “Lake Erie,” but yeah, weird coincidence right?) I was six years old at the time, so I was at a point in my life where sleeping with a night-light was still considered normal. I think that we had only been living there for a few weeks, it’s kind of hard to remember for sure exactly, but I do remember the first time my dad took me and my brother to check out the basement. Now the house itself was well over a hundred years old, and in a previous lifetime it served as a train station. The basement as it turned out, was used as a temporary jail cell where the town sheriff would keep the criminals he caught trying to catch a ride out to Chicago, and in the time between then and when my family moved in, no one had thought to updated the basement.

Basically, it was dungeon. The walls were made out of carved rocks or something, with certain areas bricked over from where ground water had been leaking through. Also the whole place was coated in layers of spider webs and dead insects. That’s not even the creepiest part. In the way back around a narrow corner was a heavy door labeled, “Milker Room,” whatever that meant. In any case my dad couldn’t get it open, even with a crowbar. The hinges were so rusted and caked in calcium that nothing short of a jackhammer was going to get through it.

During the daylight hours, I didn’t worry about the basement or the cryptic Milker Room, I just avoided going down there. But at night I couldn’t help thinking about it, and invariably I’d end up hiding under my sheets until I could eventually fall asleep. Of course, I wasn’t always able to fall asleep. Sometimes the voices would keep me wide eyed and alert. And when I say “voices,” I mean what I thought constituted the sound of a man’s muffled speech coming from the cellar. To me it sounded like someone under the floor boards was mumbling incoherently.  The reality here of course was that sounds were bouncing around the air vents in such a way as to trick my little kid brain into thinking that there really was someone down there, trapped behind that huge immovable door, trying to get out in order to… I’m not sure exactly. Perhaps I thought he wanted to eat me I guess. Who knows, I was six remember? It doesn’t matter what I thought this made up man wanted, all I knew at the time was that it was bad. And it got worse when my older brother Joshua keep telling me that he knew what was really in the basement. He was a sadistic asshole, and he thought it was just so damn funny to tell me that a monster with a woman’s face and a body covered in tufts of fur was trying to escape from the Milker Room. Let me repeat that: A woman’s face, and a body covered in tufts of fur. It was weeks before I could sleep a full night without yelling for my parents to rush to my room.

Let’s move forward a few years. When I was nine, my parents had decided to move to a better house for commuting reasons. I was helping my dad move some boxes out of the basement, and at this point the place had been cleaned up a great deal and being three years older, I didn’t find the basement all that scary. Until I found myself alone down there while my dad ran off to talk to my mom about something. At first I was fine, but then out of nowhere I started to hear this weird tapping noise. I remember looking around for what was causing it, more annoyed than frightened, when I looked around the corner towards the Milker Room.
It started getting louder, and it was coming from behind the huge black door. I didn’t move for what felt like hours, petrified, when all of a sudden I heard a crashing bang come from where the tapping used to be. I shrieked and started running back towards the stairs, nearly knocking over my dad in process. When he asked me what was wrong I told him about the noises coming from the Milker Room. He laughed. I swear he laughed and told me to follow him.

Going around the corner, my dad walked right towards the Milker Room door, opened it, flicked on the lights, and showed me the loudest water softener in world. He told me that he had it installed two years ago because he was sick of drinking rust flavored water, and the Milker Room was the best place in the house to put it. How’d he get it open in the first place? Well, a lot of hardware stores sell solvents designed specifically for rust and calcium.  I had nothing to be afraid of, never really did, but to this day I can remember with perfect clarity that one single moment of pure terror, where I was absolutely sure that something terrible lurked behind a few inches of wood and shadows.

12: 42 a.m.

So the point of that story was to remind myself that there’s nothing evil waiting for me outside of my bedroom. I don’t think it worked. I tried to open it about a minute ago to use the bathroom, but the second I placed my hand around the doorknob my heart started racing like I had just pounded six shots of espresso.  Images of a writhing mass of rot and flies filled my mind, or a black hound waiting to pounce from the darkness. I’m freaking out a little inside, because not only do I have a feeling that there’s something out there, but also the sense that whatever it is, it knows that I’m scared. I keep telling myself that it’s all in my head, that I’m just projecting my fears onto the environment. But it’s not working, which is a shame, because I know firsthand how frightening one’s own imagination can be. So here’s what I’m going to do: First, I’m going to pee in the beer bottle I found in my trashcan, and second: I’m going to write down another story, one where I had to go toe-to-toe with my own nocturnal demons.

Sleep Paralysis.

About four years ago I was trapped in a state of almost near total depression. I had just graduated from high school, but my grades where so low that my choices for college were very much limited to the “first place that accepts me,” category. Add to this that I was unemployed, my best friend had already left the state, and my parents were in the process of getting a divorce. In hindsight, I handled the whole situation in an extremely immature way by smoking a ridiculous amount of weed and barricading myself into my room to play video games all damn day. In other words, I was starting to turn into a complete loser.

Now, some schools of thought suggest that nightmares serve as a subconscious mechanism to resolve perceived stressors. If this is true, then I was lucky that things hadn’t started to get strange earlier.

One night after a long hard day of bong hits and masturbation, I fell asleep just as I always had. Except this time I woke up right in the middle of things. And by that I mean my brain woke up while the rest of me kept right on sleeping. I would later discover that this phenomenon was called “sleep paralysis,” which occurs when a person wakes up during the middle of the R.E.M. cycle and cannot move his or her limbs due to the sympathetic nervous system having shut down muscle control, in order to keep the person from hurting themselves while they dream. The experience is known to cause feelings of being choked or a sense of panic, and is often accompanied by hypnogogic hallucinations. Needless to say, I didn’t like it one damn bit.

I couldn’t open my eyes, I couldn’t move my arms, and I started to feel a sort of presence enter my room. I wanted to scream but couldn’t and the entity was surrounding me, observing me, judging me. I didn’t know what it was, but somehow the thought got into my head that it wanted to hurt me. I struggled to break free, yelling at myself internally to wake up before it got any closer, but I couldn’t move so much as a finger. Then I felt a pressure, or tightness on my chest, like the life was being crushed out of me by something huge and angry. If someone were to try to read my thoughts at this point, all they would hear would be the sounds of a wild animal backed into a corner: Vicious and scared, border lining madness.

Right when I thought that I was about to die, I heard myself scream, “WAKE UP!” Whether from inside or out I don’t know, but suddenly I bolted upright in bed, feeling very dazed and tired. I looked around my room, looking for whatever it was that was trying to kill me, but everything seemed fine, so I decided to get a glass of water. Almost immediately after getting out from beneath the covers, I started to hear a very deep, almost painful moan coming from the hallway outside of my bedroom, followed by a thud and footsteps. At this point I was more angry than scared, so I grabbed a baseball bat and moved towards the door. I didn’t rush out into the hall immediately, because by now it was slamming itself against my door, trying to get in, all the while its moans sounding more and more like it was in a state of constant agony. Eventually I heard it start to shuffle away, so fast as lightening I threw open the door a rushed into the hall. That’s when I saw it.

It was very, very tall. So tall that it had to crouch a little to avoid the ceiling. Also it was thin, more bone than flesh. It didn’t have arms, or skin, or even a face really. I suppose that the best description here would be that it was an elongated skeleton wearing a straitjacket made of bacon. Whatever it was, it had turned around and was beginning to shuffle towards me, so I ran forward swinging my bat like a madman until it had stopped moving, gurgling in a puddle of its own blood.

I woke up the next morning around dawn, lying face down on the hallway carpet next to my bat. Apparently I had dreamed the whole encounter, and now there was a hole in the wall from where my bat had punched out a chunk. I haven’t had a case of sleep paralysis since, nor did I ever witness the bacon monster again, but it just goes to show what sort of nightmares my own brain is able to conjure.

1: 38 a.m.

Well that clearly didn’t help. No, I’m not worried about the bacon demon hiding out there (I already stomped his bitch ass into the ground), but I’m still unable to just open the door. I can’t sleep if I think there’s something out there. I can’t force myself to stay awake until sunrise either. I really don’t have a clue here.

Shit, I just pulled a neck muscle from turning my head to fast. I thought I saw something moving in the corner of my eye. It was just a shoe. An unmoving, unlaced, dirty whore of a shoe. Okay, enough screwing around, I just found a hammer. Wish I had a shotgun, but I guess a hammer will have to do. I’m going try opening the door again, I’ll be back in a minute.

1: 39 a.m.

Nope, not going to happen. I started sweating before I could even touch the handle. I tried, I really tried, but it was too much. Even worse, now I’m hearing noises coming from outside of my window. Good thing the blinds are closed. I wish my roommate would just come back. He works a late shift, so he usually doesn’t get home until around five in the morning. Wait, hold on, that’s only like another three and a half hours or so. Yeah, I’ll just wait from him to get off work and then I can finally put this nonsense behind me. Then again, It’s not such a great idea to have too much faith in your friends. Especially when they know just how easily you can be startled. Like my friend Stephanie, who decided to tell me one of her own horror stories just as I was about to head home for the night.

The Union Street Cemetery

The Union Street Cemetery is the oldest graveyard in town. It’s also the shitiest. Over the years a combination of vandalism, poor upkeep, and harsh weather have made the headstones virtually unreadable, and the surrounding patches of grass that haven’t been overrun by weeds are a sickly yellow color, similar to bile. The cemetery itself sits squarely on top of a slight hill, and despite the fact that it’s been there for ages, most people in town don’t even know where it is, if they even know that it exists at all. This might have something to do with the fact that the entire area surrounding the Union Street Cemetery has been unofficially designated as the town ghetto. In other words, the houses in that area are made homes by the lower income families. My friend Stephanie was one of them for a while.

When Stephanie was in her early twenties, she led the glorious life of a single mother working as many hours as possible as a diner waitress, and in order to survive she had to move herself and her four year old son into a house on Union Street with two roommates. Or maybe she wasn’t single at this point, I’m a little fuzzy on the details here, but I do know that she lived in one of the Union Street houses with her son.

So the story as told by Stephanie, was that one night while her husband/ boyfriend/ roommates were all out of the house, Stephanie was in the kitchen trying to make some diner while her son played in the living room. Now her son Tyler (at least I think his name was Tyler) was being loud as usual, banging toy trucks into each other like little boys are known to do, so naturally Stephanie became worried when everything got quiet. When she walked into the living room to see if Tyler was doing alright, she saw him looking out of the front window from in between the curtains and the glass pane. Keep in mind that their house was right across the street from the cemetery.

“Whatcha looking at Tyler?” She asked.
“They’re coming over.” He responded, still looking out of the window.
“Who’s coming over Tyler?”
“The people from across the street.” He said.

It was here that Stephanie looked out of the front window expecting to see actual people, but instead saw only gates to the graveyard. Now Stephanie isn’t some dumb bimbo from a cheesy zombie movie, she’s a real person, and like most people in real life she’s seen her fair share of horror films. She wasn’t going shrug this off as just another child saying strange things, she was going to get the hell out of there, which she did. Stephanie grabbed Tyler, an overnight bag, and spent the night at her mother’s house. She returned the next morning after whoever else lived there had told her that everything was fine, that the walls weren’t bleeding or anything else even remotely supernatural. Even still, Stephanie moved out of that house within a year.

She told me this story one night just before I was about to leave my ex-girlfriend’s house (Stephanie was a good friend of my ex’s, that was how I came to know her.) so I was more than a little nervous to walk home alone in the dark. Actually, it really wasn’t a big deal until her story ran through my head when I was about half way home, which got me wondering just where I was exactly in position to the Union Street Cemetery, so that I could plan my walk in order to avoid it. I remember thinking that I was pretty close to Union Street, so I stopped walking briefly to try and locate any notable landmarks. I was trying to look over a hill when it happened.

At the worst possible moment, the clouds parted enough so that some faint moon light outlined the silhouettes of several headstones resting on top of the hill. As it would turn out, I was facing the back side of the graveyard, standing so close that I could have thrown a rock over the fence without even trying. Of course I freaked out, I honestly didn’t realize just how close I was to the cemetery. It was just that dark. I turned and ran without looking back. I didn’t stop running until I had reached the highway.

2: 57 a.m.

I’m not going to get out of this room tonight. I just can’t do it. There’s something terrible out there. Not just in the hall, but also outside my window, staring from behind the blinds, waiting for me to let it in. I’ve been griping the handle of my hammer so hard for so long that I know every grove in the carved wood better than I know my own face.

The light bulb of my desk lamp blew out about fifteen minutes ago, so now the only source of light is what little comes from this screen. I’m starting to think that it’s already gotten in here. Yes, yes it is. It’s definitely in here, maybe it’s always been in here, with me. I can’t face the darkness, that’s how it gets you. It only becomes real if you look at it, if even for just a moment. It will flicker to life, like a movie reel that skips a frame. There for a heartbeat, and then gone. But that’s all it wants, all it’s ever wanted. It will blink into existence for only a fraction of a second, but the damage will last forever. Where do you think these stories come from? They’re just the fallout of what I’m trying to forget: Something that doesn’t want to be forgotten.

I’m not going to let it get to me again. It only becomes real if you look at it, so I won’t. I’ll just keep my eyes on the screen, and I’ll try to ignore the shapes moving around the edges of my vision. I’ll be fine as long as I’m looking at the screen, because it only becomes real if you look at it. It’s only real when it looks back.

Credit To – Stephan D. Harris

The floor was vibrating.  The walls shook, pathetically trying to withstand the shifting below the foundations of the apartment complex.  The television fell over, coughing up shards of glass in it’s last breath.  I cursed all the money wasted, calculating the price of the setback in my head.  Outside my window lay a contrasting scene of a magnificent Sun shining over the city.

Inside my home, though, I was miles away from it.  I was tossed back and forth, without an end in sight.  I had likened my situation to being a reluctant passenger upon Charon’s ferry, riding the tumultuous rivers of Hell straight to it’s depths.

I could see the televised warning in my head as I stumbled.  They had warned of a minor earthquake, but they didn’t say it would be after the one that would cause the building to collapse upon me.  I had never experienced an earthquake before, and anxiety’s overtly heavy breathing became a schizophrenia I couldn’t get rid of.

Attempting to keep my balance, I began to make my way to the doorway to my apartment bedroom.  A particularly strong tremor pushed me back.  Trying to steady myself, I stepped upon a long piece of broken television screen.

I didn’t have the strength to stay on one foot.  The shard that entered through my heel was too painful.  The bloodied floor didn’t stop shaking.  The earthquake was too powerful for me.

I began to limp a step, trying to put as little weight as possible on my injured foot.  My timing was off.  Then I fell.

I opened my eyes.  I was laying face down on a carpet that was stained with my blood, and it had now browned into a gross reminder of my accident.  At least it wasn’t a large pool of blood that would I couldn’t remove.  There was an indentation in my temple, a pocketed wound that dug deep past all the caked blood.  I could feel a scabby layer of blood over the part of my face below the wound, and picked it off.  After testing them, I found my wounds yielded no pain, so I rolled over and sat up.

The lights were off.  A digital clock that had survived displayed nothing.  My cellphone was on the floor in the kitchen, the screen in pieces from being knocked off the counter onto the tile.

And the curtains were closed.  Strange, as I usually always have the curtains open.  I tried to recall the details of what had happened.  Had the curtains been open?  Seemingly insignificant, though.   I decided to find out how bad the damage was.  After a preliminary glance, I saw the outlines of a trashed apartment.  Almost everything that could have been broken wasn’t just broken, it was destroyed.  The side table my head fell upon had a corner painted in a dark red.  All meaningless items now, though I wondered if they had ever been anything more.

I pulled the shard out of my foot fluidly.  Perhaps the nerves had been killed.  I stood up, walking over into the kitchen to wash the blood off my face completely.  Turning the faucet had no effect, and I began to wonder just how bad the earthquake had been.  The  multiple stories of the apartment complex had survived, but what about elsewhere?

How many buildings were brought to their knees?  How many were now homeless?  In the ensuing days, would we have food or drinking water?  How would the local common man get by now that his workplace was destroyed?

Who was dead now?  I could see the casualties in my mind: people crushed by their homes, impaled by the metallic odds and ends that supported the growth of skyscrapers, and then the ones it hadn’t killed, the ones lying under a pile of debris, hoping the suffocation would be quick.

The curiosity that lay behind the door leading out of my apartment distracted me, and I quickly forgot each and every death I had just contemplated.  I walked to the door, and opened it.  My peripherals caught the blandly painted black 8 on my door, and then I was greeted with more darkness.  I stepped out, looking down the hallway.

The ceiling had collapsed, blockading any conventional exit I might’ve been able to take.  I was furthest from the elevator, with neighbors to the left and across the hall.  I took a look at the my neighbor’s door, seeing a blandly-styled 5.  I wondered about it.  Was this always number 5?  Where was the logic in this numbering system?  I couldn’t keep my focus upon it, though, and  walked up and knocked upon it.

No answer.  Another knock, harder this time.  Seconds passed.

Am I all alone?

I heard the lock turn, and the door opened slowly.  A boy appeared.  He seemed to be about 12 years old, rather young to be in an apartment alone during an earthquake.  He quickly stepped out, closing the door behind him.

“Hello.”  He said, looking up at me.  I stayed silent, looking back, though not quite sure why.  He was an average looking child, black hair and an unassuming visage.  I felt a subliminal urge, a desire to remember if I had every seen him around before.

“Hello. Are you alright?”  I asked finally, eventually dismissing the question.

“Yes. Are you?”  He asked in a peculiar way, looking to the wound in my temple.

“Uh, yes, it seems so,”  I said, perturbed by the strange vibes this child was putting off.  ”Do you have a cellphone, or anything we can use to get help?”

“No. There will be no way for us to get help,”  He said in a certain way.

“Hm, that is unfortunate. Since my cell phone was broken, it seems we’re cut off. Where’s your Dad?”

“I don’t know. He’s been gone for a really long time. I wish he could be here.”

“Oh, I see. I’m sure he’s fine, you know. He’s probably on his way here now, to check up on you. Perhaps he’s downstairs right now, and all we have to do is find a way there. Is there a fire escape or a building next to the windows in your apartment?”

“There’s no way out.”  A cold reply, especially for one so young.

“Hm. Mine is a straight drop down as well. And it seems a few floors above us have consolidated themselves here,”  I said, walking towards the mountain of debris.  There wasn’t a single gap, and it extended well past the floor of the next level.  I turned back, and the boy stood there, looking at me.  ”What’s your name?”  I asked.

“Victor. Or Timothy, that’s my middle name.”

“Timothy. I really like that name. Well, since we aren’t getting anywhere from being out here, how about we go back in my apartment? We can look out the window and see if we can’t get an idea of the situation.”  He nodded, and I walked up to the my apartment, ignoring a vague feeling of strangeness upon glancing at the painfully bland 12 painted upon the door.

Victor came in, and I closed the door.  I told him to watch out for the shattered pieces of glass and suggested he have a seat on the couch.  The stains in the carpet caught my eye, and I mindlessly wondered how I could have bled such a large pool of blood.  I doubted it would ever go away.  A piece of me was now a part of this room, until this apartment complex died.

I walked to the window, and pulled the curtains back.  I felt a twinge of pain between my eyes, inside my head, as I gazed upon a sheet of bruised and lacerated flesh that had taken the place of my window.  I stared at it.

It was a meaty slab, a sewn-together product of multiple skinned torture victims.  It smelled of decay, and I could see a rainbow of necrosis coloring pieces.  Different skin tones, wounds, and shapes combined with the inexperience of the one who did the sewing created a completely disgusting canvas suitable for me to vomit on.

It was all stomach acid, and burned my throat as I tried coughing every bit of it up.  When I finished, I got up, looking at Tim.  He looked at me, questioningly.  Had he not seen it?  I looked back, and the curtains were closed again, bile dripping down the window sill and onto the floor.

“It was nothing.”  I said, and went to sit down in a recliner.

All was quiet again.  I could hear nothing at all.  If sound existed, you would never have been able to tell.  When you’re so close to both the airport and the highway, you find moments like these blessings.

I quickly forgot the window of skin, the experience eventually settling within my subconscious as something that didn’t exist.  I never acknowledged the window again.

The time passed.  I’m not sure what I thought of the entire time.  I remember thinking about what it would be like to have someone close to you die.  A friend, a relative, a teacher, a coworker.  Someone you’ve spent years with.  A parent.  What was it like for him in his last moments?  When the gunman held the barrel of the pistol up to his head and told him he would die, what did he think about?  How did the empty flesh feel after the torturer had ripped it off of him?  I wondered, and then dismissed it.  I had never known what it was like to lose someone and it was irrelevant.

I would pick the flesh around my fingertips.  Sometimes they were small pieces, and other times big pieces that covered whole parts of the nail.  The bigger pieces were painful, but they were always more satisfying.  The blood made it difficult to grip the pieces, and soon each hand’s index finger and thumb smelled strongly of copper.

Tim sat there.  We didn’t talk much.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been there.  With no way to keep time, I just sat there.  I felt another tingling inside my head, in the same place.  Then a strange thought hit me: when was the last time I ate?  When was the last time I was hungry?  I tried to remember.  Was it before the earthquake hit?  What time had it been when it did hit?  Had I ever felt hunger or thirst since I passed out?  I felt an urgent panic shooting up into my veins, an anxiety I couldn’t control, a fear I knew I couldn’t bear to face.

“Are you hungry?”  I asked Victor nervously.  Surely his input could console me.

“No?”  He said strangely, like it would be odd to be hungry.

And just as soon as it had come, it left.  I became distracted, my thought devolving from a realization of something very wrong, to a level-headed contemplation, until finally I forgot about why I would need to be hungry in the first place.

I went to the fridge, and looked down at my phone and the surrounding bits of broken screen.  Except there was blood.  I looked at it, the answer deduced but not understood.  I lifted my right foot up.  I had been walking around slowly embedding glass into my foot.  It was stained red.  Perhaps my head injury damaged a part of my brain that registered pain.

I opened the fridge door, and found it empty.  It seems I had forgotten to buy groceries.  I walked back to the living room.

The pain of knowing I wasn’t doing anything began to set in.  What do you do when you wonder what to do?

I waited.  How long?  I had no way to know.

Restlessness finally came for me.  I needed to get out.

I went into my bedroom and began kicking the wall.  It gave easily.  I carved a sizable passage into my neighbor’s home, taking a few steps in and taking a look around.  It looked like I was in their kitchen, based off the same model as mine.  I turned back and called Tim’s name out, then went through.

And he was standing there, already in their apartment, looking at me.

But it was my apartment.

A chemical, I don’t know what kind, began to cauterize a piece of my brain, the same part that had been in pain.  A massive headache slammed the area between my eyes.  I yelled.  Fell to the floor.  Time changed.  I didn’t think I perceived it any longer.  In fact, I instinctively knew time didn’t exist in this place.

Whatever this place was.

“Victor…”  I called out as I got up, attempting to rub the pain that never fully left away.  I looked up.

His face was removed.  He no longer had any hair, no eyes, nose, mouth, ears, jawline.  His head was a carelessly-shaped square-like thing attached to a child’s shoulders and body.  He walked toward me, causing me to back up.  He continued to walk, not toward me any more but toward the counter, somehow perceiving the outside world.

I stared at him as he picked up a knife, twisting his amorphous head toward me, then shoving the knife into the middle of his face, pulling towards both sides, creating a jagged line that bled black and red.  And then he started talking from the wound.

It was a scratchy, primordial voice that spoke, like a creature physically learning how to speak, and yet mentally knowing an entire language.  The voice cracked every few seconds, fluids flooding out the aperture this thing was using to speak.  This voice, the thing invading my head, this thing before me, was something beyond normal, something that existed with such a dark foreboding it filled me with a primal fear, a fear that transgressed the physical world.  I have known of this thing before, somewhere, and it knew of me.  It was back for me.

“Whaaaaattt. Is. Ittt?”  The thing said.  It waited, staring at me in a way that wasn’t possible.

The noise that emitted tore into my ear drums, it disturbed my mind to a point that I could feel mental illness plaguing me.  I could feel it slowly crawling up my brain stem with long, ragged claws.  It was as if someone had controls on what I perceived, and they started to play the question over and over, speeding it up, increasing the volume, echoing it inside of itself, over and over.  It hurt in a way that is indescribable, a way that my being felt like it was being consumed.

I lifted my hands up, preparing to yield anything and everything I could to the thing, when I saw my fingers: they were picked, gnawed, and in most places infected.  Each nail had been removed, and the finger tip was nothing more than a swollen, bulb-shaped piece of me covered in vessels of a deep red and pus of a sickly quality.

I took a breath and then I felt a little different.  My head changed.  My perception changed.  I could feel something firing through my brain, it felt hot, it was fire firing through my brain, something was wrong what was happening to me?

I got sick I could feel the fire in my stomach rise up and it came out my mouth over the floor but it looked like there were bits of flesh bits of flesh, bits of my fingers had I eaten my fingers? how did they get that way

I was horrified I ran back back into my apartment that I was already in through a hole in the wall that was in both sides of my apartment that led me into my apartment.  through the hole how many holes can fit into a single apartment? was it even my apartment anymore was it even an apartment apartments don’t usually have holes

It was dark how I could see everything perfectly as I ran through my bedroom.  I think I slept here once, somewhere else. It was pitch black, but I could see everything perfectly how could one see in the dark so well?  how long have i seen into the dark? how long have i been in the dark how long

tim was there in the window room he was hungry so he ate the window, i can hear in my head, i hear how much he wants to eat my skin as well oh no that does not sounds good because i have a lot of skin

i ran out i ran into the door trying to open it how did these work? unlock it

in the hallway, so dark, windowless pits.

open the door, close the door.

he hung from above a rope around his neck

he swayed.

the tv played his voice exactly like him the black and white snow mixed and yet not mixed it just went on and i can still hear it somewhat like a song stuck in my head on repeat forever eternal eternal eternity.

he used his blood to paint the will of the gods it was a numbers repeated over and over and over and over over every inch of every wall

8-5-12-12_12-21-19-20-19_4_25-14-21

and then i was gone

for ever

–
Epilogue

PAGE 9

F.P.D.
NON-HOMICIDE DEATH REPORT
DATE: 7-15-20
TIME:  14:15
INVESTIGATING OFFICER:  OFFICER STRNAD
INCIDENT:  Accidental Death
LOCATION OF INCIDENT:  6135 N. Styx Ave.

The deceased’s name was Victor Alzwell, aged 19.  Subject was found approximately fifteen minutes after the earthquake of July Fifteenth, Two Thousand Twenty.  The vic was discovered dead by his landlord.  When interviewed, the landlord says he checked on Mr. Alzwell when he did not respond to requests to affirm his health.  Mr. Alzwell was found on the floor, a deep wound in the right temple.  An ambulance was dispatched, and Mr. Alzwell was officially pronounced dead once they arrived.  The coroner determined the cause of death was brain trauma, which occurred during the earthquake.  Mr. Alzwell lost his balance, falling and smashing his skull against a corner of a small table.

Mr. Alzwell’s previous criminal history includes one single juvenile phencyclidine(PCP) charge.  While officially expunged, I remember this kid specifically coming down to the station, as I was given his father, Timothy Alzwell’s homicide case.  Timothy Alzwell was kidnapped, tortured, skinned and executed with a handgun.  A copy of the entire case file went missing around the same time we brought him in to break the news, when he was fifteen years old.  He learned every detail.

Psychiatric testing revealed deep mental illness.  He was given a foster home, received psychiatric care, and seemed to be getting better until the PCP charge.  Afterwards, he continued counseling, began drug treatment, and was finally pronounced stable.  He was given help in finding a job and then left his foster home to move to the apartment complex in which he was found.

This kid was one of the good ones.  His was the only death reported during the earthquake, and he didn’t deserve it.

Notes of interest:

Test results show Mr. Alzwell had an extremely high level of N-dimethyltryptamine(DMT) in his system, in addition to traces of PCP.

Upon investigation, it was discovered Mr. Alzwell’s pineal gland reacted in a uniquely adverse way to the brain trauma, and began releasing massive amounts of DMT.  It was also discovered that the brain trauma was not instantly fatal, and he lived anywhere from five to fifteen minutes after receiving the wound.

Somehow, despite not being in a conscious state of mind, Mr. Alzwell ripped enough skin from his fingers to write a series of numbers down in his own blood.  We’re not sure what exactly what they mean.  We had one result using a simple alpha-numeric conversion code, but it didn’t make any sense.

SIGNED: OFFICER T. STRNAD

END OF REPORT
CASE:  CLOSED
Credit To –  Lichtjunger

It was 9:30 P.M on a Sunday night and I had only just left work. There was a mountain of paperwork sat at my desk that had to be completed for Monday morning, but I knew that it couldn’t be done. I’d already given up my entire weekend, so it was difficult to find the energy to worry. I had grown bored of my job now anyway, so I didn’t really care what my boss said; I just needed a beer. I wandered out of the office doors, through the car park and made my way down the darkened road. Then like that, I was free. I was 21 now and had reached the age when I believed I knew everything. I had long grown used to living on my own and doing what I pleased, so I assumed I’d eventually just find a new job and be fine. My only regret that night was making the walk home.

Seeing as there is only two ways to reach my flat and one of them is a longer trek than the other, I could see no reason for taking the ‘scenic’ route; so I set off along my usual path. The journey home usually consisted of trudging down a miserable, lifeless road in which various holes had seemed to swallow up parts of the ground; and it was the same old walk for a little while, well, until I noticed a cut-off. It was a street that I had clearly passed every day on my way home, but I had only just noticed now. Feeling slightly confused, I decided to wander over to take a better look and hopefully refresh my mind. Smiths Avenue it was called. With it being a small, homely street, I expected it to be somewhat pleasant; but it wasn’t. It was surrounded by rotting monoliths and huge trees, making it look centuries old. At the very bottom, there was an abandoned ice cream truck that had been absorbed by the plants, while next to it was a pitch black tunnel. There was no light coming from anywhere in the street, just a silver glow from the moon to guide my eyes. I didn’t feel scared, nor did I feel the need to run away; but the street seemed very familiar and that made me feel slightly uneasy.

I was about to turn and get back to walking home when I realised how I knew the street. Eight years ago, I had a friend named Eddie Burscough. We used to play in the same street that I was now looking at, but it looked a lot different when I was a child. Back then I lived with my mum and dad, a happy life as I recall; but I lost them at a young age and seemed to block out a lot of memories. Maybe that’s why I forgot about Eddie and the street? I wasn’t sure, but I knew that I had to go and take a look around.

Straight away, my mind was flooded with memories – mostly of looking out the window and seeing Eddie playing out. I remembered kicking a football around all day, eating ice cream in the summer, riding our bikes in the sun with no worries at all; but my strongest memories were that of the tunnel. Even back then, in the light of my mind, the tunnel was just as dark as it looked to me now. So with our childish minds, we took the opportunity to create a game. ‘The Tunnel Run’ we called it. The game was simple: we each took turns to run down the tunnel and see who could make it the farthest without getting scared and turning back. There was one catch though… neither of us knew how far it went. If I remember rightly, neither of us ever made it all the way to the very end either. Not long after I lost my parents, I was placed with a foster family and I never saw Eddie ever again. Judging by the condition of the street now, it’s safe to say that he doesn’t live here any more.

I made my way to the tunnel at the far end of the street and stood on the edge of darkness. I felt the urge to try the tunnel run; for old times sake. I took my phone out and dimly lit a foot or so in front of me as I made my way inside; I walked this time. There was nothing but silence with me in that tunnel and I think that’s what compelled me to keep moving forward. I carried on walking until I got so far inside I couldn’t see anything at either end; but I wasn’t scared. It seemed peaceful.

After walking for what seemed like twenty minutes or so, I was stopped in my tracks when I could see a dim red light at the far end of the tunnel. I had to reach it. Was this the end that I had never reached? That Eddie had never reached? I had to find out. I kept on walking and walking until the light slowly came into focus and looked a lot brighter. At this point, I could make out something standing next to it, shuffling about and breathing. Then the smell of smoke hit me and my body tightened; I stopped walking. I then began to step backwards so I could leave, so I could make a run for it. When out of nowhere I heard someone mumble “Beat you to it”. It was Eddie. It had to be him, I could just tell. I moved towards him and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was definitely him, but he looked different. Not just older, but scarier. His features seemed twisted and a wry smile sat upon his face. He was stood next to a huge metal door, almost like a bouncer at a night club. He stared for a moment, winked at me and muttered “Come inside”.

I needed to talk to him and he clearly needed to talk to me too; so I followed him through the metal door. My stomach was turning, this all seemed like a dream. Once I was inside, my vision blurred for a moment. When it came back into focus, I was sure that my eyes were deceiving me. We were in my bedroom from when I was a young boy. It wasn’t a place made to seem like my old room; it was my exact room. The smell, the warmth, the memories all filled my being. I smiled. That’s when Eddie turned to look at me “Do you remember what your childhood was like?” Though confused, I replied “Well I remember some of it. It was good”

“Was it?”

“From what I can remember, it really was. Playing in the summer, ice cream, footba-”

“So you remember everything being fine do you, everything was perfect?” Eddie snarled

“What do you mean? I remember what I remember. It wasn’t all good, no. I remember my parents dying and going to a foster home – never seeing you again, you just disappeared. Before all of that though, I had a great childhood. My teenage years were great too, even my foster family were nice people”

“Did you forget what your mum and dad were like? They were fiends, disgusting people, they used to beat you up and down; kick you, punch you, put cigarettes out on your arm. Did you forget all of that?”

I realised that I had. I had completely forgotten. Everything came back to me at that point, all at once like huge wave. All of the pain that my parents had put me through emerged from the darkness; and I knew then, exactly why I blocked out my childhood.

“How did they die?” Eddie said

I mumbled “I, I can’t remember”

“What do you remember? Take a look at this, it may look familiar”

My old bedroom suddenly changed and I was in another bedroom. I could tell that it was in the same house but it was completely charred; burnt to a crisp. I remembered that bedroom, it was very familiar, but for some reason I didn’t know why.

“That’s my bedroom” Eddie said “I remember, one night after we had taken our usual beatings, you came into my room and whispered to me that we needed to do something. We needed to get out of here. A moment before you left, you threw a box of matches on my bed and told me to set fire to my bedroom; you said that we could make it look like an accident. I was young and naive, so I agreed to do it. You told me that if I did it correctly we could leave and be happy with another family; but you left me. You ran out of the house and left me screaming in my bedroom. The fire spread so fast, I didn’t know what to do; I just called out my brother’s name but nobody came. You didn’t just leave our parents to die in that fire. You left me”

I could see the pain and sadness in his eyes as he told me the whole story. My little brother didn’t seem so scary anymore. I placed my head in my hands and cried more than ever. I just couldn’t believe it, I remembered everything. My abusive parents, my younger brother – the only good part of my childhood – all dead, because of me. I blocked everything out from my younger life but kept hold of the good memories. I got a new family, inherited every penny from my old life and changed my name to start fresh, nobody knowing what I had done – the authorities called it an accident. I lifted my head up with tears streaming down my face to apologise but he was already gone. At that moment I wanted to die.

I had tried to bury my past and move on but it didn’t work. It was bound to find me sooner or later. I didn’t deserve to start a new life; Eddie would never get to. I looked around at the empty room to see if he was anywhere to be seen, but he wasn’t. It was just me and my tears. I stepped forward and opened the huge metal door; then with a rush of light I was right back at the top of Smiths Avenue. I glanced down the street and it looked exactly the same as it did back in my childhood. Except for one house at the end which was completely burnt. I turned away and left that street, I don’t think I’ll ever go back there again; but I remember everything now and I will never forgive myself. I just wish I could speak to my baby brother again.

Credit: Jacob Newell

It had started in the farthest corner of my apartment; first as only the slightest hint of coppery red, before oozing from the ceiling and down the wall. I stumbled towards it, tripping over a laundry hamper and knocking it to the floor. It was funny looking, really. Against the yellowing wall paper, it looked almost like a rookie’s graffiti, still fresh and drying. I lifted a hand to touch it, but thought better. Up this close, the stench was overwhelming like when the sink clogs and you pull out the stopper to find an enormous glob of hair. A smell mixed between bile and ammonia, a nauseous wave swept over me attempting to pull up last week’s dinner. In a panic, I ran to the window and was alarmed when it wouldn’t open. Furiously, I scrambled to unlatch the lock and rattled it up for the first time in years. As I swallowed the tastiest air I’ve ever had, I could only think, At least I know where the smell is coming from now.

One month ago had been a party for me. I’d gotten home early from my job mopping floors at a hospital and had even had time to pick up a pizza on the way back. Now, I don’t live in the best of areas, I’ll admit; and whenever I pull into the unpainted parking space of my building, I always get that feeling that something bad might happen that day. The apartment’s at least two hundred years old and it shows. From the chipped red bricks to the way it tilts slightly towards the top, “The Queen”, gives a sense of both unreliability and experience. And I’m sure it’s experienced a lot.

I push though the front glass door, complete with a head-sized hole, and begin the solemn march to the eighth floor and my room – number 48. I say solemn march because that’s what it is; I don’t want to see or talk to anyone here and that’s best done by staring at the floor as I walk, my face suitable blank. The first person I come across seems to have the same idea. He’s wearing cheap plaid over a greasy t-shirt and doesn’t even look my way as he slips into number 9: The Queen’s nightly brothel, if I’m not mistaken. The Queen’s a classy place.

I cross up the stairs past a room that has smelled heavily of curry since I moved here, the same screaming rock music playing like a theme song. The door is open and I see a huddle of kids shooting up heroin or cocaine or maybe even bleach mixed with water. Who cares? I certainly don’t. The walls up here are covered with what could either be mud or human excrement and I try my best to guide the bulky pizza box up the stairs without touching anything.

I see old man Taylor wobbling up the steps ahead of me. He’s got his veteran’s cap on again and he’s humming some sort of oldie under his breath. I feel bad for him, I really do. It’s hard to watch as his arms shake each time he releases the railing to climb up another step; his legs moving slowly with arthritis. Luckily, I’m on my floor now so I won’t have to wait thirty minutes before getting to my room.

“You having a pardy t’night, boy?” His voice is raspy from smoking and muddled from time. I turn to have a look at him, hooking the box under my arm.

“Every night’s a party,” I remark, failing to come up with anything better, “Why, what are you doing tonight?”

“Not’ing, I just want to say hello. No one says hello an’more.”

I smile to him and nod, thinking about how cold the pizza must be getting. He smiles back, a toothless thing before returning to his journey upward as I jingle the keys into my door’s lock. Inside, I smile when I see the pile of DVD’s on the coffee table, the humming fridge with various appointments and magnets stuck to it and the window overlooking the sleeping town. I’d survived another day.

I throw the pizza down on the side of my mildew streaked couch and turn on the TV. The television is older than Christ and doesn’t have cable but none of that matters. I put in my favorite television series, “That 70’s Show”, and begin the party with my best and only friends.

* * *

My parents came for a visit three weeks later. The first thing they said when they walked in wasn’t about how messy the room was; it wasn’t about how I hadn’t called them since last Christmas or how they thought I could do better than this dump. They complained about the smell.

I blushed and pointed at the sink full to the brim with soap water and old dishes, but they were sure that wasn’t it. “It smells like something died in here”, they said. I fought back the urge to reply, “Ya, my hopes and dreams”. Honestly, I couldn’t smell anything. Needless to say, they didn’t stay long and I was alone again.

That night, lying in bed, I began yearning for the past. I vividly lived through my childhood for what must have been the eighth time. I saw all the mistakes I had made and all the chances I never took. I saw her again. Standing by the pool, waiting for me; but I’d never show up. I had told myself it was because I hadn’t wanted to get my hair wet at the time. Now, it felt like self-sabotage and I investigated every what-if scenario that could have happened if I’d gone.

There was a sudden crash above my bed as if a television or even a small bookcase had been kicked over. I was jolted out of my self-pity and back into reality. The crash was followed by a much smaller thump that was somehow more rattling than the first. That old man lived above me of course; he might have fallen over for all I knew. And yet, I did nothing. It all went downhill from there.

* * *

The next night I was haunted by what was the unmistakable sound of dripping. It was hard to hear, impossible during the day, but at night, when everything was quiet, that excruciating sound would begin. Like the ticking of a clock, getting louder and louder, never missing a beat. I envisioned a puddle of blackness being filled by an unnatural cloud; within, my loved ones were drowning. I would turn to my static strewn friends, but still the dripping continued, taking bits of sanity with every drop.

And the smell; that horrible yellow smell, like a portal into hell had been opened. I was reminded of when I found my parakeet trapped behind the couch as a child; its rotting flesh and fecal fumes leaping off its carcass. I had cried for my parents then as I did now. But what could they do? I was enveloped in this travesty and I had shut them out of my life.

Desperately, I searched my prison for the source of this evil. I pushed through all the toxins under the sink, scattered the mothballs under my bed, and checked the vents for dead creatures. That’s when I found something odd. It seemed as if the source was coming through the vents themselves and not from my room at all. Immediately I bought a roll of duct tape and sealed off every vent I could find with three layers of tape. Gradually, the air began to clear and I could finally begin to think rationally again. To finish the job, I sprayed air freshener into every corner of every room, and that’s when I noticed the spot.

A single, crimson red drip was gathering in the very corner by the window. Building in size like a blister, I watched as the bubble popped and streaked five inches down the wall. Several other red stalactites appeared and grew in size before following it’s comrade down towards the floor. It was bizarre; they began to take the shape of an upside down tree, its branches a glaring sea of blood. I felt dinner begin to rise up my throat and I hurriedly shoved the window open, gasping for breath.

I was even more shocked by what I saw below. There was a group of at least ten men in bulky, yellow hazmat clothing exiting two white vans and running into the apartment. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I pulled my head back inside to look at the growing red mark as it began to reach and soak into the carpet floor. I jumped back in surprise before the spot could reach my toes and headed for the door. Already I could hear the men as they charged up the stairs past my door, towards – my heart skipped a beat – old man Taylor’s apartment.

I slammed open the door and waived down an approaching hazmat man. I could tell he was out of breath without even seeing his face.

“Please, exit the building, sir,” he gasped.

He didn’t wait for me to reply and so I did the only thing I could – I walked down the stairs with everyone else into the cold night air; on the eve of winter.

* * *

Old man Taylor had been found dead, I was told later. It turned out he’d hung himself over a month ago; and there he had stayed, like clothes in a closet or beef on a meat hook. No one had even noticed he was gone. His family never called him, nor he them; he didn’t have any friends to speak of because he’d never speak a word to anyone. By all accounts of the few who knew him, he was a lonely man because he never took the time to be anything else; either he felt he was too busy or he just didn’t care. And he died that way.

After a month of hanging there, his head had separated from his body. The crash was the body hitting the ground and the following thump – the rest of him. Everything inside him had flooded out and dyed the white carpet around him red before soaking through the floor to repeat the pattern in my room. The only reason he was noticed missing was from the smell and a missing payment for his rent.

I look back on this and realize with horror that we really weren’t so different. I had shut myself off from the world into a cold loneliness I’m sure Taylor was very familiar with up until the bitter end. I’ve started going out more as a result. I’ve shut off the television and sold all my DVDs. I even called her again. I almost didn’t, at first. But during the past month, I’ve learned that life is too short and sanity too fragile to lock myself in my room anymore. In the search for change, I’ve put away my noose for good.

- Based on a true story -

Credit To: A.R. Scroggins

A thousand miles away, there is an attic. No one knows about the attic, for a very good reason. If you were to stand outside the building the attic is in, you’d be hard pressed to find the courage to enter the crumbling, ragged building. Outside, on a plaque that’s been torn at and faded by wind and water, is the origin of the reason no one enters. “Quiet Acres Mental Institution,” it reads. Many of the letters are gone. If you were to walk inside the creaking, boarded up door, you’d be met with darkness. A single candle lights by an unseen hand, and the wind blows the door closed behind you. At least, you hope it’s the wind. Looking around you, you see a rickety spiral staircase. A thousand cobwebs. A mirror that you think you see a flash of a face in. But you pass it off as nothing. Just a trick of the light. Or so you hope. You take the candle with you as you go up the staircase that creaks under your weight.

Up, up, up you go. You hold the candle before you as the wind howls at the windows and screams to be let in. Cold drafts threaten to extinguish the flame, but you keep going. Creak, creak, creak go the stairs. Let me in! Let me in! Cries the wind. You feel something cold and almost cloth like brush your hand. You gasp and pull away from whatever it is. Just a cobweb, you think before continuing. You hear someone calling your name. You whip your head around, looking frantically. There it is again! A voice like a breath calls your name, coming closer and closer. You scream and run the first way your feet go-forward. Your name is called again, and you can hear the insanity as it laughs. You’re getting closer and closer to the attic. A door creaks, then falls down before you. The voice calls your name again, sounding but a few paces behind you. You vault over the door and run, run through the cobwebs.

Your heart is pumping, beating so you think it’ll just burst out of your chest. you’ve reached the attic, but you don’t know that. Room 113, it reads on the ancient plaque. You open the unlocked door, and slam it behind you. “Hello,” A voice says. You whip around and scream a sound that you’ve never heard yourself make before-one of pure fear. On the ground before you is a young girl, not older than seven. She looks normal enough, but you can see the hot light of insanity in her eyes. She has a circle of candles and broken dolls around her. She laughs, a sound that chills you to the bone. “I’m crazy, if you’re wondering. Everyone says I am.” She rolls her head back and lets it loll there like a rag dolls. “You should leave. I have this urge to just wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze.” You start to back away. “Do you know why I’m the only one left here? I got lost. I got lost, and found myself here. I couldn’t unlock the door, and I starved.” She smiles sweetly. “Would you like to stay with me? We can be insane together!” You find the window behind you, and freeze as the little girl walks towards you slowly. “Or you can fall. Either way.”

Suddenly, she seems to fly towards you. Her face, as blank as a sheet over a ghost, has no eyes, no features. “Join me!” She hisses somehow. You wordlessly shake your head and take a final step backwards. The little girl laughs as you stumble and pitch backwards, as you fall down, down, down. You watch as the little girl smiles as you fall. As the candles fade into darkness. Then, you feel a terrible crunch and everything goes dark.

Next time someone enters the Quiet Acres Mental Institution, you call their name, haunt their minds, and never let them escape.

Credit To: Hannah

I’ve always had trouble sleeping at night. Noises have disturbed me my whole life. I found out years ago that I have hypersensitive hearing, picking up all sorts of background noises. They couldn’t fix it; only recommend the obvious techniques to mask the problem. Not that I hadn’t tried these already. Ear muffs, listening to music and even things like meditation. None of it worked. In fact it seemed to make it worse. It made her more desperate.

I hear her most nights. No one else can. Why does she only come to me? There’s always the dread of lying there each night in the dark silence, anticipating when she will come, and when I will hear her again. She usually likes to wait until I’m drifting to sleep, so that I jump back to my senses in fright to the sound of her there.

Most of the time it begins with a faint crying. She tells me that she “wants to make it end.” I know she’s getting closer to getting me and some nights I can even feel her cold breath in my ear. I can sense when she is lying close beside me in the darkness staring at me, and sometimes she whispers things like “It’s only me,” right into my ear. She’s toying with me, like a cat does to a helpless insect before killing it. The thing is, I could never see her, but it slowly felt like she was becoming more real.

The doctor later informed me that I suffer from schizophrenia. I have been taking medication for a long time but it wasn’t really working. It just made me feel more helpless. It was difficult for a girl as young as me to deal with this. At least now I could accept that she wasn’t real. It was all in my head and there was nothing real to be afraid of. That was until last night…

Last night her presence felt more real than ever. I could hear her whisper, feel the air on my neck and even smell her breath, it was all too realistic to handle. I got so scared that I fell back into my old habit of running through the darkness of the house into my mother’s bed to sleep beside her where I felt safe. Now that I was older, I knew she was hoping I had grown out of this phase, although I had only stopped doing it because it made her sad, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me anymore. She was all I had. If I had the choice I would be in there beside her every night without fail.

I knew my mother had been awoken by me, probably more saddened that I had reverted to old ways when she thought the medication had been helping me. But it wasn’t helping; I had just lied all this time to keep her happy and let her sleep in peace. I curled up in bed beside her and began to sob quietly. My mum looked uncomfortable from the noise I had made, and began stirring under the sheets so I whispered into her ear… “It’s only me.” She sat up abruptly, looking anxious. In the darkness I saw her reach over for her cell phone and begin to dial a number. I noticed on the screen that she was calling the doctor.

“The voices I used to hear,” she said. “They’re back…”

Credit To: Jack

Janie awoke with a start, jerking out of her nightmare back into reality. She looked about her room reassuring herself with its familiarity. The feel of the cotton sheets that she had washed till they were as soft as silk, the scratchy blanket her grandmother had given her for her eighth birthday, and the scent of smoke and lumber rising up from the basement. But as she settled back into her senses things began to seem a little off. Her sheets seemed a touch too rough, the blanket felt like a slightly different material, and the smell of the room was a little too sharp, almost mechanical.

She figured she was just a little rattled from the nightmare; it had been quite a doozy. She remembered being immersed in ice-cold water with a forest of wires coming in and out of her. There had been a cold mechanical eye hovering above her, suspended by a mechanical arm that hung from the ceiling, the blank red glare from its stare had bored into her eyes.

She decided that a hot glass of milk would fix her up, and send her right back to sleep. She ventured downstairs almost breaking her neck in the process. It seemed the stairs were just a bit shorter than her feet remembered; a misplaced step sent her tumbling down them. Luckily there was a landing to break her fall halfway down. Breathing heavily from the fall, and still shaken up by her nightmare she tip toed into the kitchen to get a glass of milk. But far from calming her down, the midnight beverage made things much worse.

The milk tasted funny, not like it had gone bad, but just off. The mug felt too rough in her hands, and the beeps of the microwave were a few pitches off. She hurriedly finished her drink, wanting desperately to go back to bed. Surely when she awoke she would be back in the world she knew. She went to return the milk to its shelf in the fridge. But as she reached out to grasp the handle, she saw in the reflection of the polished refrigerator door, the cold mechanical eye from her nightmare.

She screamed in fright, dropped the milk, and whipped around ready to confront the demonic machine, but nothing was there. She cursed herself for being so stupid, and got a rag to clean up the milk that had spilled from the container. As soon as it was mopped up she hurried back upstairs, wanting desperately to lose herself in her sheets.

She leaped back into her bed and hunkered down eager for this strange experience to be over. But as she laid there she felt something watching her, that mechanical eye from her dreams was haunting her waking thoughts. She decided to turn the lights on, she knew she was being silly but it would make her feel better. She flipped the switch on her bedside lamp, and looked about as light flooded the room.

Nothing was there, just as she ought to have known. There was no mechanical eye hiding in the corners. But something was odd, the light, a curly fluorescent bulb that normally threw off a brilliant white light, was a few shades too yellow. It was almost unnatural, and it cast everything in a sickly light. Janie knew something was wrong, but she had no idea what it was or how to fix it. She turned to lie back down hoping she could bury her problems in her dreams, but as she turned her eyes caught the picture on her bedside table.

It was from a Christmas several years ago. She was standing next to her brother, with their parents behind them, and her dog sitting at their feet. They were all wearing goofy Christmas sweaters, and shredded wrapping paper was strewn about the floor. They each had a grin as wide as the Mississippi plastered across their faces, but above each grin sat a pair of cold, dead, mechanical eyes.

Janie screamed, flailed, and crashed to her bedroom floor. She picked up the picture and hurled it into the back of her closet. Janie knew for certain now that something was wrong, something had been wrong since she had awoken, something was here.

It took Janie several minutes to calm down, and she dared not look into her closet where the picture lurked. As she collected her thoughts she started to realize more and more things were wrong. The grain of the wood floors ran the wrong way. Her walls were baby blue not robin’s egg. Hundreds of tiny details were wrong with her room. She had no idea how all of these things could have changed while she had slept.
It began to dawn on her, the only explanation for all the changes. she had never woken up. She was still asleep trapped in the most vivid dream she had ever had. So if she was asleep then the solution was simple. She just had to wake up. Janie tried pinching herself, hoping that small act would bring her back to blessed familiarity, but no such luck. She tried pinching harder, more vicious, but it seemed no amount of pinching would end the nightmare. She tried kicking the bedframe but she received nothing from it but several throbbing toes. She thought maybe a shower would do it.

She went to her to her shower and turned the faucet on. She turned the knob to its coldest setting, hoping the shock of the water would awaken her. She pulled down the end of the faucet and water began to shoot out of the showerhead. She undressed quickly, feeling goose bumps ripple across her body as cold droplets of water escaped the curtain and splashed her. She stepped into the shower dreading the cold shock, but praying it would wake her up. It didn’t. She stepped out and turned the knob all the way in the other direction, hoping hot water could accomplish what cold water could not. As she waited for the water to heat up the bathroom began to fill with steam. After several minutes she was sure the water was plenty hot enough, and its touch would rescue her from this nightmare. She stepped into the shower. The water burned, she wanted to scream out in pain, but she stayed as long as she could hoping enough pain would wake her up.

Eventually when she could take no more she stepped out into her steam filled bathroom, her body was covered in angry red streaks from the scalding hot water. As she looked about her for her clothes she noticed the steam was sinking to the floor, as though it were unnaturally heavy. Janie began to worry, what if she could never wake up? She dried off and threw her clothes back on. As she went to leave she looked into the mirror, and behind her, hanging from its lifeless mechanical arm, was that cold mechanical eye.

Janie screamed and sprinted out of the bathroom, and down the stairs. She needed to wake up now, that thing was growing bolder, and it was coming for her. She didn’t know what else to try, what could possibly wake her up? As she thought she began to hear mechanical whirring and clicks from the hallways. She retreated to the center of the kitchen getting as far from the noises as she could. The noises grew louder and drew closer. She began to sob, praying to god that this whole thing would just end. She just wanted life to be normal again. An idea began to form in Janie’s mind. There was one thing that always woke you up from your dreams. Whenever you were about to fall to your death, you woke up. Whenever the psychotic murderer was about to catch you, you woke up. Janie just needed to die, and she would wake up, but she couldn’t let that thing be what killed her. She didn’t know how, or why, but she knew if it caught her she would never wake up.

The noises drew closer and Janie began to cry again, but her desperate plan filled her with a grim determination. She crept to the corner where she kept the knives. It was gruesome, but she knew what had to be done. She opened the cabinet and pulled out a small paring knife. It didn’t need to be large to get the job done, just sharp. The noises drew closer and increased in volume, filling Janie with dread. She began to draw the knife down her arms, opening large slits in the belly of her forearms. She watched as blood poured out across her arms and spilled onto the counter. She laughed as she watched, too mentally exhausted to care. She worried only about waking up. She looked up from her arms, feeling woozy, and in the doorway of the kitchen hung the cold mechanical eye. Janie screamed, she wasn’t awake yet; she wasn’t dying fast enough, her fear coursed through her filling her mangled limbs with strength. She grabbed a large butchers knife from its holder and slammed it into her own chest. She laughed manically as she watched her lifeblood pour out of her chest. It was a sickly unnatural shade of red. She looked up and saw the cold mechanical eye advancing towards her. She sobbed, and shrieked as that monster drew closer. She pulled the knife out and drove it home again. Blood came thundering from her chest. As it rushed out of her and pooled on the floor Janie collapsed, she lay on the ground, her vision fading, and she smiled in victory knowing she had beat that demonic machine. She was waking up.

Janie lay in a Plexiglas container, surrounded by ice water. A forest of wires and tubes led in and out of her body. Her body jerked spasmodically, she appeared to be fighting some invisible foe. The system watched as she struggled with her virtual reality. She was quickly becoming a very interesting subject. No one had ever noticed it was an illusion so quickly, and so many times in a row. This was her fastest time yet. Only thirty minutes and she had successfully terminated the sequence. Her mind had even managed to retain some images of the system itself. The system was impressed. In a few more trials the subject would be approved for cloning. Her genes could prove quite valuable for future science. The cold mechanical eye lowered itself to Janie’s container and began running diagnostics on the events of the last sequence. Hopefully she would improve again. Some subjects suffered too much psychological damage to continue testing. Such subjects were bad for science. Some may call Janie’s treatment torture that it was not proper science, but she was still alive, and that was more than you could say about many of her fellow subjects. The mechanical eye completed its diagnostic procedures, and reset the sequence.

Janie awoke with a start, jerking out of her nightmare back into reality.

Credit To: redbullreptar

Hello.

I have just escaped death, and from what I can tell I am one of three to do so at this point in time. I have had to re-live one year of my life in order to do so, thanks to The Teacher. You see, I was dying. I had a tumour in my brain, and had been living in a hospital for the last three weeks. Doctors had discovered that it had gotten too large to surgically remove without killing me or having severe brain damage, so I accepted dying without operation.

As I was lying there, I thought about how I was going to die, so I tried to make the best of the situation. I asked for a phone and tried to call my brother and parents over. I was going to make a will, even though I didn’t have much. They nurse said that she got a busy signal for both my parents number and my brother. Not thinking of who else I could call, I just lied there, thinking of my fate. Would I go to Hell or Heaven? Would I be re-encarnated? Would I just die? I couldn’t think of much else, so then I just was quiet, and went to sleep.

I woke up to find out that today was the estimated day I would die, so they asked if they should call my family again. I said yes, and so they did. When they nurse left, I suddenly got a flaming pain in my head, and I started to yell out in pain. As I was about to blackout, everything stopped. Even time. And then she showed up.

A woman that I had never met prior to this day was standing in front of me. I hadn’t seen her come in, nor did I hear her. She introduced herself as The Teacher, and asked me to follow her. I didn’t notice I wasn’t in the hospital before she asked. I also noticed I no longer had the pain in my head I had before. I immediately asked why, and she just stayed silent. She was pretty. She looked young, maybe in her early thirties, but she made me feel strange, like she was going to try to seduce me and kill me, like in one of the secret agent movies.

As we approached our destination, she slowly began to hunch over, and become more like a corpse, or even some form of gargoyle. She turned to me, and told me she was going to save my life, so long as I make my current one better. I agreed, not knowing that I was making a deal that I would regret.

I suddenly woke up in my house, exactly one year ago from today. I of course thought that I had sone sort of nightmare, that I had never had tumours, that I had never died. Then I saw her standing next to me.

She looked grotesque now, but still had some of the features of the lady she used to be. She looked like her face was smashed in, she was pale, she had multiple gunshots wounds, she was missing part of her right arm, she had tire tracks on her, she had a slit throat, but the part that made me feel scared was that she had a large bumb in her skull, meaning that she had my tumours.

“Thank you”, I said, “Did you really just heal me of my tumours?”

“Yes. In order to live, all you must do is make your life better. If you can do that, you may live.”, she responded in a raspy, gurgly version of her original voice.

I got out of bed and began my morning routine, and started my first day… by almost getting hit in the face by a baseball. I yelled at the kid who threw that, and scared him off. Then a pigeon crapped on me. The entire first day was filled with bad things happening to me and getting upset about them. How was I supposed to make my life better if everything makes it worse?

After about three weeks, I was mugged. I had about $300 in my wallet, not to mention credit cards and my ID card. I was shot in the foot during the process as well. I then saw her again. She had been showing up recently, and I don’t know why. I assumed that meant I was doing the right thing, but I couldn’t do anything after being mugged. So I just ignored her presence and left.

At the turn of the New Year, I was at a party with friends, friends that weren’t all the fond of being sober. We got drunk together and I passed out. When I came to, she was there, standing over me like a vulture, trying to find the best part to eat first. I asked why she was here, and she responded with, “Shape up, or I will kill you.” She didn’t come back for the next three months.

I tried to make my life better, but bad things just kept happening. My pet fish died, the power went out for over a week so I couldn’t get any work done, (nor could I watch my favorite TV shows for that matter) and I was mugged at least three more times. I don’t know why people think I’m such a good target for mugging. She showed up at my house after I got back from work, and she was on my bed. She looked angry, and she was holding a whip. I asked her to get off my bed so I could sleep. She got up and left, but not before lashing out with her whip on my back. I was knocked to the ground, and was in immense pain. She wasn’t seen again until August.

At that time, I was once again diagnosed with tumours in my brain. I asked if they could do surgery immediately, and they said that I didn’t have enough money. I then saw her standing behind the doctor, smiling deviously. When the doctor left, she said, “You didn’t make your life better. You have a month to prove to me you’re worth sparing.” Then she disappeared.

I was in shock. I was really going to die. I realized that my life was filled with hatred, laziness, greed and depression. I needed to fix my life before I ended it, so I immediately ran out of the doctor’s office to try to do things to redeem myself. I donated money to charity, I worked at a homeless shelter, I tried to get more work done at the office, and I swore off drinking for the month. However, when the tumours got too big, I wound up in the same situation as before. Lying in a hospital bed, one day left to live.

I once again felt the flaming pain in my head, and started to blackout once more, when she showed up once more. She asked if I felt like I had redeemed myself. I thought about it. I explained how I had volunteered at a homeless shelter, I got a promotion at work, and that I haven’t drank since she spoke to me. She asked again if she thought I had redeemed myself. I realized that I hadn’t. I had drank my last year to live away, yelled at people who were rude to me, and never really worked hard at anything.

“No.”, I said.

“That’s enough then.”, she responded. She left and I then blacked out. I woke up to find out that they had indeed found a way to remove my tumours, and that I would live to a ripe old age. I agreed to the surgery, and was healed enough to leave to hospital two days later. As I was about to leave, I asked if I could call my family. The nurse looked sad suddenly. The nurse said, “Didn’t you know? Your parents and brother died in a car crash trying to visit you. It was all over the news.”

She spared my life but killed the people I loved. As you read this, I may already be dead of depression fueled suicide. But who knows? Maybe my family could be shocked back to life, or something. I don’t know. I just hope The Teacher will save them too.

Credit To: Leo Holt, personal experience