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Laughter



Estimated reading time — 8 minutes

You wake up startled, gasping for air, as you recover from a nightmare. It’s the same nightmare that has been repeating itself for weeks now. Every night, you helplessly watch as the same damn scene unfolds right before your eyes. There are children running around in a playground, as a little girl climbs across the monkey bars. You get that nauseating feeling that something is about to happen, but you don’t know what. You try yelling for the girl to warn her, but the only thing that escapes from your throat is air. Now that you realize it’s too late, you attempt to block your eyes as the girl falls, causing a sickening crack to ring throughout your head. You look helplessly at her limp body, along with the rest of the kids who were laughing just a few minutes ago. That’s when you wake up in a cold sweat, realizing that it was just the same nightmare again. You haven’t gotten any used to it by now, and you don’t think you ever will.
Still in your sleepy daze, you look towards the bright green digital numbers staring back at you. It’s now 1:30 in the morning, same as last time. At this point, you have given up all hope of going back to sleep, and you head downstairs to get a glass of water. You realize that you have work in the morning. About a week ago, you started helping tear down an old school that hasn’t been used since the 60’s. Strangly enough, that’s when the nightmare started.
“Great,” you say between sips, “How am I going to function properly with only four hours of sleep?”
Later that morning, you arrive at the school. Obvious signs of age were shown throughout the building, such as rusting pipes, plants growing up the walls, chipping paint, and the fine sheet of dust that coated every surface within the area.
“What the hell happened to this place?” You say as you walk through the front doors.
“Mess isn’t it?” Said Mike, standing at the top of a step ladder. He seemed to be taking down some of the ceiling. The echoes of drills and nail guns rang throughout the building, with the occasional whirr of a power saw.
“So, uh, what do I got to do today?” You ask.
“Well,” said Mike, not sparing any attention from his work, “You can start by tearing up the floor boards in the gymnasium. After that, we’re gonna need your help in dismantling the chalkboards in the classrooms.”
You nod, and with that he hands you a hammer and a pry bar. As you enter the gym, the sounds of the door opening and slamming shut reverberated around the walls. It’s silent. From here, all the noises of power tools couldn’t be heard. It’s a big school, and you’re on a completely opposite wing than them. You find a corner in the gym, where you decided you will start, and you begin the challenging task of prying and ripping up wooden boards.
About halfway in, you notice something odd. It felt as though you were being watched, as if someone’s glare was drilling into your skin. In an attempt to uplift the uneasy feeling you call out,
“Yeah, Mike?”
No answer. Of course, you expected that there wouldn’t be an answer, but you had hoped that there was a reason for that feeling. You quickly shake it off and continue working. Since you started working here, nothing has ever seemed out of place, or weird. You came to the conclusion that it was just the silence that made you feel uneasy, so you decide to start listening to music while you work. But then, like before, you got that feeling that someone was watching you. Even your music didn’t seem right. It sounded as if there was this faint background noise mixed in with the singing, but you couldn’t put your finger on it.
You hastily rip one headphone out of your ear to see if someone was trying to call you or something. You find out that the background noise was laughter, and it definitely wasn’t coming from the headphones.
“Hello?” You call out as you shove the headphones into your pant pocket, “Who’s there?”
The laughter quickly fainted, as if a group of giggling children ran further into the recesses of the building.
“There’s kids in here?” You say to yourself. You pull the pry bar out from underneath a board of wood you were about to tear, and set it on the floor.
“Hello? Mike?” You call out once again. You make your out of the gym, and walk down the flight of stairs directly outside the double doors. At the bottom of the stairs, you find yourself near what looks to be a lunchroom. This was definitely not the way you came from when Mike led you into the gym, but you kept going. You first checked the lunchroom to see if the kids were hiding in there, but all there was was an open space, and some folded up lunch tables. Again, you hear the laughter coming from down the hall.
You leave the room, and walk towards the giggling, but as you seemed to get closer, it started to fade away again. When you turn the corner, you realized that you reached a dead end, with a classroom door standing at the end. The door was blue, matching the linoleum tiles decorating the floor, and rusted. You walked up to it and shook the handle, only to find out that it was locked.
“What the hell? Where’d they go?” As you spoke a hand grabbed your shoulder, causing you to jump. You turn around, and see Mike with a questioning look on his face.
“Fucking Christ, man, you scared me.” You say to him.
“Yeah I could see that,” Said Mike, “What are you doing down here? Did you finish the gym? Good, cause we need-“
“No, I didn’t finish. Hey, uh, did someone bring their kids here, or something?”
“Not as far as I know, but you need to finish tearing up the floors soon, we need some help with the electrical stuff.”
You nod, and followed him back. After you had finally untangled your headphones and started your music again, you proceeded to finish the gym’s floor. But not two minutes after you started working, you heard those goddamn kids again. This time, it seemed as though their laughing was mocking you. You figured that they will just run away again, and the laughing will stop, so you decided to continue with what you were doing, and ignored it. But it never went away. As a matter of fact, it seemed to grow louder, and more irritating at that.
“What?!” You scream at the kids, but laughing persisted. This time, you threw down your pry bar, because at this point, you didn’t feel like playing games. Instead of walking towards the noises, you ran, hoping to catch them. With each step you took, the lockers that lined the hallway shook and rattled in response. Your footsteps echoed down the stairs, as you continued chasing the kids. At this point you had no idea where you were in the building, or where you were going, but the only thing that mattered to you was following the giggling, and catching them.
As you ran, you noticed that building started to seem cleaner, and more vibrant. The paint wasn’t chipping, and the lockers were nowhere near rusted. Hell, it looked like everything had just received a new coat of paint.
“I thought they were tearing it down, not renovating it.” You thought to yourself. You kept on running, until you came by the lunchroom. You figured that you had just ran in a circle, but that theory was soon shot down when you noticed that in the lunchroom, the tables were set up, and the floors were clean. The trashcans and tables seemed to be coated with crumbs and spilled strawberry milk in some spots. This didn’t make sense, seeing how not two seconds ago, the tables were folded up, and everything seemed to be coated in dust. You stop and glare at everything, thoroughly confused, until the laughing pulled you from your thoughts. Once you started running again, the laughter stopped. No, it didn’t die down like the joke got old, everyone simultaneously stopped, as if they had all just got hit by train, halting all the noise pouring from their mouths. Along with the laughter, your footsteps stop, as you try to take in your surroundings, so that you can figure out where you were.
That’s when one small chuckle came from within the bathroom to your right. You smile, thinking,
“Oh, I’ve got them now,” as you walk into the bathroom. Unlike the rest of the area, the bathroom wasn’t nice and clean, it was a complete mess. The hinges on the stall doors and the faucets where terribly rusted, and many tiles were either cracked, or gone completely. One stall door was even hanging on only one hinge, causing it to slant awkwardly. You checked every stall, hoping to confront one of those little bastards, but no one was in there.
“What the hell?” You say out loud. You swore that you had heard a chuckle come from this exact area, how can there not be kids in here? You turn towards the faucet, and twisted the knob. You figured that if you splash your face a few times, it would help you pull yourself together. Of course, no water came out. Suddenly, you see something in the corner of the mirror that caused you to choke on your own breath.
In one of the stalls was a little girl. Her eyes, peering into yours. Except, she didn’t really have eyes, only milky white marbles that seemed too big for her skull. It wasn’t only her eyes, though. Everything about her was just not normal. Her skin clung to her bone, causing her joints to poke out. Her hair was matted and missing in some spots, like an old doll. She was wearing this torn white dress, stained with dirt and blood. And then a sudden realization hit your thoughts like a brick wall.
Under what seemed to be the remains of a rotting corpse, you realized that she resembled the girl who appears in your nightmares. Her lips slowly curled back revealing an awful set of teeth that were sharpened to a point. You scream, and run out of the bathroom. On your way out, you take note that the building didn’t look neat anymore, but was back to its state of decay. Suddenly, you bump into Mike as you turned a corner.
“What the hell are you doing?” Said Mike, clearly frustrated,” This is the second time you’ve abandoned your job.”
“What the fuck is going on here?” You yell, demanding an answer. Mike throws you a questioning look, and spoke up,
“What are you talking about? Nothing’s happening. Listen, if you feel a little sick, you can go home.”
“No, I’m fine,” You respond,” I promise I’ll finish this time. Now, where is the way back?”
Mike points towards the flight of stairs at the end of the hallway,
“Up the stairs, and down the hall to your left. You’ll see the double doors when you reach them.”
As the two of you make back to where you originally were, a thought emerges from the back of your mind.
“Hey,” You ask Mike, “Why’d this place shut down, anyways? It looks as if everyone just left one day, and didn’t come back.”
“Well,” Started Mike as the sound of footsteps reverberated around the stairwell,”A young girl, a student, died here. Apparently, it was too much sadness for the kids to handle, and it made them all depressed. So, in hopes of erasing the incident from their minds, they moved them to a different school.”
The cold hand of fear ran its sharp nails up your spine.
“How- how exactly did she die?”
As you go through the double doors, Mike answers,
“She fell from the playground and broke her neck.”
You swallowed hard, as Mike began to leave and go back to what he was doing.
“Shouldn’t be long now,” Said Mike, “You don’t have much more left to do, you’ll be done in no time.”
The sounds of the metal doors slamming shut followed afterwards.
You figured that you should hurry up, and finish tearing up the wooden boards, so that you can go home, and never come back. You start your music back up, and continued your job, half expecting to hear laughing, but nothing happened. Even when you finished, nothing happened.
On your drive home, you start questioning wether or not it was all in your head, and that the nightmare had caused you to go crazy. At the thought of the nightmare, your stomach dropped, remembering what Mike had said. This thought stuck with you until you finally decided to go to bed, knowing what was going to come next. You didn’t want to think about the playround, or the girl, ecspecially not after today.  But the image of her face, her awful, awful face stuck with you.
There should be no reason for you to be paranoid now. It’s over. You’re here, and she’s all the way back there.
“Hell, she probably doesn’t even exist.” You say to yourself, as you slowly lose conciousness.
As you shut your eyes, awaiting the horrible vision, a small chuckle escapes from outside your bedroom door.

Credit To – TVATR

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45 thoughts on “Laughter”

  1. Guys… This was a very well-made story! It had an interesting plot, and while descriptions weren’t full in parts, they WERE there. They’re good, too. Besides, it ended pretty satirically. In a good way, for-creepypasta-only style.

  2. It’s not THAT bad, although my inner grammar Nazi made me feel like I wanted to find the author and shove every key on the keyboard down their throat. But all in all, it really wasn’t that bad. It had a good plot, yet not that scary. Creepy, but not scary. And decently detailed…In a way. Good job, author, give yourself a pat on the back. Although…It wasn’t as good as Jeff The Killer or The Rake, it was pretty decent.
    But the grammar just kills me man…It kills me. Here..Let me ignite my inner grammar Nazi/spelling Nazi rage and explain in detail what I will do:
    I would go to your house, break in when your parents are gone, and hang you up by your feet. Then, I would yell, “YOU KNOW THE MOST POPULAR LETTER IN THE ALPHABET? ‘E!'” Then shove the letter ‘E’ from your keyboard into your throat. “YOU USE A QUESTION MARK WHEN ASKING A QUESTION!” The question mark would be the next in your gullet. After shoving all the keys in your throat and making you eat the words you typed, I would gut you so all the keys spill on the floor. Finally, I would look at the webcam and point at it, “pass on the literature lesson.” And leave. THAT IS HOW SHITTY YOUR GRAMMAR IS.
    Everything else is fine though.
    ~Shadowblade

  3. I searched for L.J and THIS is what I got…..
    Shit…
    I must search again!
    It was a bad CP I’m sorry but it was

  4. I didn’t think it was that bad. Actually, I think it was a great story! It could use a little bit of work, but I loved it!

  5. Probably the best part in my opinion was when it says,”Then you here a chuckle escape from outside your bedroom door

  6. Oh dear… THIS is what you troglodytes call horror? This is a tired old concept with nothing to make it stand out save for the abysmal grammar.

  7. Really, really good. Couldn’t see much wrong with it, and it left it with a nice unfinished air about it. I’m glad this didn’t turn bad with some kind of ritual that got rid of the dreams. An awesome story, Bravo. Bravo indeed.

  8. I think that the story was a good one, though I agree with firstnamelastname on the second-person narrative not being your thing. Overall, though, this was a good pasta, and I will nom in the near future

    -Herobrine
    Always watching

  9. firstnamelastname

    oh and one more (sorry!)
    i agree with anon, about the troubles with keeping the tense the same in second person narratives.
    it is a TASK!
    and why i stay away from it, lol.. not that i don’t love a good challenge, or to expand my writing even still, but… meh, i suck at it too XD

    ok that’s all i promise:)

  10. firstnamelastname

    ….which isn’t to say that your writing is bad.
    it just means that perhaps…
    second-person narratives just aren’t your thing:)
    no shame in that:)

  11. firstnamelastname

    *sighs*

    i tried to get into this one. especially after reading some of the more critical comments, i wanted to really read it through, and again i found my thoughts wandering whilst reading it, it was just plain hard to engage in.
    i think, what it was,
    i just really found the second-person narrative extremely off-putting,
    it didn’t do what a second-person narrative is supposed to do, which is submerse you into the story..
    i felt like i was just reading a story without a main character.

  12. Idk why everyone’s being so tough on this one. I really enjoyed it. I mean….sure there were some errors and such, but the idea itself was a good one. I rated highly.

  13. Sorry for my crappy grammar:

    Actually, the school was closed down coz everyone present in the play ground on the day of accident got killed under suspicious circumstances one by one.

    Just one person escaped luckily, but unfortunately lost his memory due to trauma.(guess who).

    That’s why I don’t write :(((((

  14. I didn’t feel the present/past tense was used correctly, and I’ve never been a big fan of stories told in that point of view. But the idea was haunting enough, that it could be worked on. Add some more original scares, though – I mean, accidental death is a lot less scary over suicide/murder. Say, he dreamt that moment of her tragic fall over and over. Then he hears the real story – she was pushed, and the next dream/scare would now show the terrifying face of the murderer, or hear his deep chuckle. You know? A small twist, to speed up the heartbeat right before the end.

  15. It was alright,though I would have let it gone off as just a ”noise” and not have followed the noises.[rule to survival anyways]also,why would the girl only follow him?

  16. The problem with writing in second person, I’ve noticed, is that the author seems to have a difficult time keeping the tense in the same form. If more attention had been paid to that it would have made quite a difference.

  17. that…was….simply…..amazing!!!beautiful. great job
    you should seiously become a writer
    the story sent chills up my back
    5 stars

  18. The thing I hate most about this, is that it’s a really cool story. It’s well-written, it’s a neat idea. A second-person narrative and a couple of style choices just ruin the whole feel of it.

    TVATR: It’s not stupid, don’t beat yourself up. It’s kinda awesome. I wish this had hit Crappypasta so maybe it could’ve had a rewrite. But it’s not Crappypasta, so here we are. You’re a good writer, this just needed work, that’s all.

    1. Well, if TVATR feels so inclined, she’s more than welcome to send me a rewrite and have me edit this post with it. I agree that the story has a very good core (obviously), and would enjoy seeing it tightened up a bit.

  19. Really liked it. Very rare for someone to write a story in second person objective point of view. Made you feel like you were actually standing in the vacant gym. One if the best I have read in my opinion. What ruined it was telling us that everyone was depressed and so they had to move to another school. That was kind of pathetic, other than that, chills ran through my spine. I feel like denying her existence haunted you. When he realized who it was she was quiet, then when he went to bed he denied her again, and heard her laughter again.

  20. ..I forgot all about this, and looking back at it, it seems so stupid. Kind of like embarrassing kid pictures.
    2/10 stars

    1. Yeah, I agree. I still liked this story when it was posted. It was good at the time…I just think if it was edited a little it could be even better. Its not the worst successful pasta and its not the best. I still think you did a good job. :3

      1. the dark voices inside your head

        i agree but it can be better like streach it out more more scare and more killing like instead of 1 little girl make it a massacre of ooohhhhh say about 20 kids that’s about a class full right and it be the girls ghost cause they stayed!!! btw I have bad grammar sorry

  21. The terrible, terrible grammar ruined this for me, veering wildly between past and present tense. Totally off putting.

  22. This ones honestly not even good. The reason for all the kids to move to a different school was crap. We’ve had several deaths in my school and we’re all still here. This should’ve gone on crappypasta it still needs more development cause it is a good idea.

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