A man and woman walked out of the bank, hand in hand. This might be a normal thing for anyone, maybe even you. But not for her.
The man made a typical, throwaway remark about their lunch plans. Under usual circumstances, this would just be interpreted as a feeble attempt to incite lightheartedness into the conversation. But not for her.
With a quick, agile movement, the woman, his wife, picked up a slab of concrete by the sidewalk and, with great aim, hit two doves perched on a low-hanging branch. They fell, like two pathetic white balloons. As soon as they hit the ground, his wife beat them to a pulp-she could see that they were still breathing. And her husband knew that he fucked up again.
Some passerby began to stare openly at the horrible sight of two bashed birds.
“Linda!” Her husband yelled. “Stop it!”
“I thought we were going to kill two birds with one stone?” She replied, in a voice of unnatural calm. Her face gazed up at him from the ground, stoic and rigid, like some dread mask.
…………………………………………………………………………………………..
She had a certain….well, mental illness is a bit of a euphemism. Let’s just say she had a disability. A serious and rare one. Linda could not understand the difference between jokes and imperatives. She took every figure of speech she heard seriously, and was often compelled to make whatever it was into an actuality. Her husband recalled, one point, when she nearly pushed him out the window, when, in light of the recent resignation of his business partner, he remarked that he was in fact flying solo. Linda wasn’t always dangerous, though. Sometimes, he’d go home only to find her giggling like a little girl at the sight of milk on the floor. Or maybe even staring out windows during rainy evenings to see whether any cats and/or dogs were to be found falling from the sky. But then came the times when she would get harmful. Only last month, the pediatrician living in the apartment next to theirs got pelted with apples and other fruits. Poor woman nearly tripped down the stairs. This other time, an event which still scared him up to now, she shoved in his hands a bit of her bloody scalp, saying it was a piece of her mind. She had to wear a bonnet whenever she had to get out of the house after that. In spite of all this strange and violent behavior, he still loved his wife very much and could not bear to send her away to a mental hospital.
His mistake.
He became very careful around what she would see or hear coming from anybody since the episode with the birds. Much to his joy, a year and a half passed without much incident, and their firstborn child was soon to come. It was good, since the coming of a baby took their minds off whatever financial problems they had.
He was away when it happened. After he heard that child was born, he rushed back home.
As soon as he stepped through that door, he knew something was wrong. His wife was calling him from the kitchen. In her arms was the son he could never know.
In the light of their kitchen, lain on the table, were the remains of the baby, their baby. Its mouth was stretched open to such a degree that it split open, the underside of its jaws seen. It reminded him of a tear in cloth, the seams not made of fabric but of flesh. What little blood the baby had to spare was everywhere. In response to his child’s grotesquely expanded mouth, his father’s jaw fell open in surprise and terror and disgust, threatening to do the same. A scream tried to come out, but it did not.
Forcibly thrust into the gaping hole that was a baby’s mouth, was his wife’s forearm. She seemed to be trying to claw something out of the-
As soon as his wife spotted him, she turned in his direction, bloody baby still stuck on her arm.
“You have to help me! The doctor said he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth!”
You know how Fox has a weird way of counting Simpsons episodes? They refuse to count a couple of them, making the amount of episodes inconsistent. The reason for this is a lost episode from season 1.
Finding details about this missing episode is difficult, no one who was working on the show at the time likes to talk about it. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening. During production of the first season, Matt started to act strangely. He was very quiet, seemed nervous and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry, and forbidding you to ever mention it to Matt. The episode’s production number was 7G44, the title was Dead Bart.
In addition to getting angry, asking anyone who was on the show about this will cause them to do everything they can to stop you from directly communicating with Matt Groening. At a fan event, I managed to follow him after he spoke to the crowd, and eventually had a chance to talk to him alone as he was leaving the building. He didn’t seem upset that I had followed him, probably expected a typical encounter with an obsessive fan. When I mentioned the lost episode though, all color drained from his face and he started trembling. When I asked him if he could tell me any details, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. He begged me never to mention the episode again.
The piece of paper had a website address on it, I would rather not say what it was, for reasons you’ll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser, and I came to a site that was completely black, except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it, and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy, it was the worst virus I had ever seen. System restore didn’t work, the entire computer had to be rebooted. Before doing this though, I copied the file onto a CD. I tried to open it on my now empty computer, and as I suspected, there was an episode of The Simpsons on it.
The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality animation. If you’ve seen the original animation for Some Enchanted Evening, it was similar, but less stable. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. Homer seemed angrier, Marge seemed depressed, Lisa seemed anxious, Bart seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for his parents.
The episode was about the Simpsons going on a plane trip, near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. Bart was fooling around, as you’d expect. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window on the plane and was sucked out.
At the beginning of the series, Matt had an idea that the animated style of the Simpsons’ world represented life, and that death turned things more realistic. This was used in this episode. The picture of Bart’s corpse was barely recognizable, they took full advantage of it not having to move, and made an almost photo-realistic drawing of his dead body.
Act one ended with the shot of Bart’s corpse. When act two started, Homer, Marge, and Lisa were sitting at their table, crying. The crying went on and on, it got more pained, and sounded more realistic, better acting than you would think possible. The animation started to decay even more as they cried, and you could hear murmuring in the background. This crying went on for all of act two.
Act three opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Homer, Marge, and Lisa were skeletally thin, and still sitting at the table. There was no sign of Maggie or the pets.
They decided to visit Bart’s grave. Springfield was completely deserted, and as they walked to the cemetery the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. When they got to the grave, Bart’s body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of act one.
The family started crying again. Eventually they stopped, and just stared at Bart’s body. The camera zoomed in on Homer’s face. According to summaries, Homer tells a joke at this part, but it isn’t audible in the version I saw, you can’t tell what Homer is saying.
The view zoomed out as the episode came to a close. The tombstones in the background had the names of every Simpsons guest star on them. Some that no one had heard of in 1989, some that haven’t been on the show yet. All of them had death dates on them. For guests who died since, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates were when they would die.
You can try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Simpsons guest stars, but there’s something odd about most of the ones who haven’t died yet. All of their deaths are listed as the same date.
//
Not gonna lie, I personally think this one’s not that great, but it’s been both submitted and searched for a ton, so apparently it needs to be archived. Only credit I can find is to someone calling themselves “KI Simpson”, so there you go.
Posted 1 year, 11 months ago at 7:23 am. 124 comments
They say that the hour of three A.M. is the time when spirits can become active, and I’m sure of that. My apartment was always a little too quiet for one in the city, especially at night. No drunk shouting in the street at that time, no sound of car horns and alarms could penetrate the dark at that particular hour. It’s like my apartment was high on a platform, surrounded only by a dense fog that the sharpest of hawk eyes couldn’t penetrate. I was usually attempting to sleep at that time, after bleaching my skin in the pure electric light of my computer screen. Emphasis on the phrase attempting, because from that stems this tale. I advise you, if you’ve been here long enough to find it, you’ll soon discover of what I’m talking about. I should really tell you anyway, just so you know you’re not insane. I know I’m not.
Every night for the past four months that I decided to make this apartment my home, a strange sound would pierce the strange blur that surrounded my home– or maybe just my mind. I have searched the apartment many times for it, but behind the hollow-sounding ivory walls and hard pine floors, I couldn’t find any source. The sound, at first, was like scratching. If you have fingernails, drag them along a table. Like that. It was slow, and every time I heard it, I froze up. It wasn’t as dramatic as anything like ghostly moaning or anything like that, but it still scared me so much I reverted back to childhood and stuck my head under the blanket.
During the day I worked at what could possibly be the most boring place on earth, a factory that stamped out cans. They didn’t even need workers, but I really didn’t care. It paid the bills, and getting to sit around until someone needed help fixing a machine wasn’t too bad. I sort of miss it. There was always something bad happening though; in retrospect, I feel as though it was following me. For instance, a man’s hand ended up being caught in the stamping machine under a sheet of aluminum. The crunch was sickening, it sounded like a dog chewing upon a bone. That same splintering sound.
Every night, I would retire from this slightly gory boredom to my apartment, back to my beloved computer. The cycle was always the same. Work, computer, scratching sound. I never really thought to ask anyone about it, I would usually forget about it by morning.
But one day I didn’t. I sat there in my folding chair at work, surrounded by the drab, bleak grey concrete walls, a long ignored cigarette that was gradually becoming one trembling tower of ashes in my grasp, trying to think of a way to discover whatever this thing was. Why wouldn’t I just follow it? Get my nerves together and find the continual source of fear for me. It made me cold just at the thought, but I knew I had to do it.
So that night, I turned off the computer as usual, but then took one extra step. I grabbed a flashlight. It would be faster than dashing across the room to my light switch. ‘It could even be mice,’ I thought to myself as I slipped into bed, wearing the hero’s garb of any sleepy man; a pair of boxers and socks. At least if I ran crying out of the building, a few people could get a laugh.
The clock slowly began to head towards three o’clock. My heart began to pound nervously. Like a sword I held the turned-off flashlight to my bare chest. The necklace around my neck felt strangely cold, even though I had at least three comforters on. Oh, the joys of a particularly cold winter. Closing my eyes, I heard the scratching. Slowly it got louder. My hand began to shake, but I kept my eyes shut. Why wasn’t I turning on the light? Why wasn’t I looking? Because there was a new sound. A tinkling, strange shaking, like a maraca full of metal instead of beans or beads.
A loud thunk against my door made me leap up. Turning on the flashlight, I managed to run to the light switch and flick it on as well. With an icy, trembling hand, I opened the door.
What I saw will never leave my mind. There was the source of my fear, the thing that had somehow invaded my home. An oddly small, waif-like creature, like a starving child with skin that was too pale. It was like a corpse dropped in water, for its skin was tinged with blue. Every vein was visible. Oh, how I wanted to gag at the sight. But it gets worse. Strategically placed in this demented creature’s flesh, long metal nails were embedded. Through the tips of its fingers and toes, sticking out of its neck and shoulders, down its chest and out of its eyes. They were everywhere. How loudly I screamed, I didn’t know. Would anyone hear it through the fog surrounding my house? Would I hear it? I couldn’t stop staring. The dried, cracking blood against that decaying flesh brought up my earlier meal, and a gushing hot river of vomit poured out of my mouth onto the ground.
I backed up as the creature took a step. Its lank hair was missing in chunks, and as it stepped closer, its feet dragged upon the floor, the nails in them making…a scratching sound. Why I had to keep my room in a state of continual chaos, I don’t know, but the mess was astounding. Of course I fell. Scrambling back, I stared in horror at the dead thing.
It didn’t move right, I realized. It didn’t just walk. Its motions were snappy and disjointed, and one foot dragged behind it while the other advanced towards me. In its hand, there was a heavy, rusted hammer, dripping with what I hope was water. It was slightly rust-colored. I couldn’t bear to see it, but in the other, there was a plastic grocery bag that sagged and poked out with the weight within it, like if someone hung a porcupine from a diaper. I felt the wall against my back. The creature moved forward; I was paralyzed with fear at the sight of it. It was so grotesque. In front of me, it stopped. I noticed the puncture marks upon its tiny calves where the nails were, and I felt a strange sense of pity.
The bag in its hand split a little, and the sight of what was within made me let out an audible, and most likely bile-scented groan. A nail jutted out. I cried out loudly as the thing pounced upon me, as I felt the first nail go into my eye, it was worse. Through the blood blocking my vision, I could see its tiny mouth pull back in a widely-toothed smile, the nails in its lips making them split and gush rotten black blood down onto me. I moaned in pain again as another nail entered my second eye. Blindly I swatted, but it was to no avail. Perhaps it would be over soon. Perhaps death would be better than being tormented by this rotten thing. But still, the nails entered. Still I cried out loudly, especially when I was dragged. I couldn’t see where, but damn, it hurt.
It’s gone now, the nailed child. I don’t know where it went, but I know somewhere, it will be coming out at three o’clock. And so will I.
I think you ought to check your clock, because it looks like this bag in my hand is about to split.
We’ve all been there. You have just gone to a certain place, at a certain time on a certain date, done a special thing and the thing you suspected would happen has just fucking happened, not to mention the fact that you’ve just seen whatever the fuck it is that lives in your mirror, been told in detail how you’re going to die, and the highly demonic and invincible thing you summoned is heading towards you.
Also, your family are all dead, your friends are all missing and you’re being framed by someone with access to your bedroom. What the fuck do you do now, sweet protagonist?
Well, you’ve come to the right place to find out: These are the simple rules one must follow in order to firstly, not become the victim of creepypasta and furthermore, to come out kicking if the worst does happen. With the help of this guide you too can be the catatonic, traumatised wreck as opposed to the guy currently being worn as a coat by some dude who roams a lot. Just keep these simple rules in mind…
1. Mirrors and darkness don’t mix.
2. Actually mirrors are a general “NO”, in creepypasta world, there is nothing more sinister.
3. There is zero chance of survival if you look the thing that no one else can see or answer it’s question incorrectly.
4. If you are alone at night in a creepy mental institution,take some time to consider what the fuck are you doing there, then, if it is appropriate to do so, leave.
5. Avoid going to places where everyone else who went there never came back or died inexplicably.
6. If someone stops your vehicle at night and asks to come with you, it would probably be in your best interests to politely decline.
7. Killing is the last method of survival, use it sparingly but without fear.
8. WHO WAS PHONE is always a good thing to ponder. Also who the hell answers a phone while kissing a dead persons sexy daughter. A douche is who.
9. Get a simple .38 revolver. Load it with 2 silver bullets. If you really feel there is no chance to come alive out of a situation, take one shot at whatever’s threatening you. If this doesn’t work, you still have the last shot to become an hero with.
10. Area 51 is simply too well guarded to let you get in. Or to let any alien out.
11. When going to a hotel, try to steer clear of unauthorized areas. If you couldn’t resist but you saw a red thing, take some time to consider the price range and hotel standard on your next visit. Have you ever stayed at a haunted Hilton?
12. When booking your hotel stay, Trip Advisor can be an invaluable tool in deeming whether your choice is the scene of a multiple murder/full of dead people/built at the mouth of hell. Local newspapers can also be helpful.
13. Invoking demons, speaking weird languages and performing rituals of any kind is considered dangerous. Refrain from doing that, especially around Abandoned Warehouses, Churches, Psychiatric Institutions, Forests and your house in front of a mirror at night.
14. When going to a new area, environmental understanding is a key to survival. Ask around for cursed places, legends, dangers and other details. Listen to the local peoples’ advice, and don’t be afraid to ask if you’re unsure of which attacks/disappearances are paranormal and which aren’t.
15. Always have a Bible next to your bed. Provides average reading material, proof of beliefs and a really heavy object to throw at enemies.
16. Don’t count on Holy Water. Get a sturdy vial of Sulfuric Acid and let a priest Consecrate it.
17. Japanese priests cleanse rooms by waving katana swords around. Their ritual is 100% effective on corporeal forms.
18. If you find 666 messages on your phone, mailbox, email, etc consider changing the said service provider. Also don’t bother listening /reading the messages. It’s spam. Extra dimensional, possibly, but spam nevertheless.
19. Old pharmaceutical companies cant help you. Unless you specifically need “Blood Of The Innocent”, ”Snake Oil”, and “Radioactive Syrup”. Which is never.
20. If you need to sign it in blood, you do not need to sign it. All mainstream governing bodies will accept contracts signed in ink, bear this in mind if offered deals that seem too good to be true.
21. Lighthouses are dangerous. Avoid them at all costs. If you work at a Lighthouse consider a career in Insurance Sales, or Veterinary Care.
22. There is simply no reason to listen to music that causes suicidal tendencies, or to watch films that have had strange/disastrous consequences..
23. If you like to plan ahead and have some money, buy your auntie and uncle a house in Bel-Air. Nothing can harm you there no matter how scared your mother is.
24. Secret secluded untouched places in old buildings are left untouched for a reason. Pioneers never say “die” but in fact they do have an unusually high mortality rate.
25. Before you start swimming in the ice-cold waters of a murky lake at the center of a dark forest at midnight, ask yourself, do you really want to travel to an ancient and terrifying city? If the answer is “no,” then stay at home instead, and watch whatever quality programming is available on Cinemax.
26. On your 33rd birthday try celebrating in a well lit house with the company of others.
27. Refrain from using the One True Name for anything, there is probably a reason people gave it a nick.
28. Watching TV static for long periods may be hazardous to your health, try satelite TV to combat this problem.
29. Get a cat. Those furry little hairballs seem to perceive unnatural phenomena better than us, and if desperate, simply throw it at whatever is about to get you.
30. Cemeteries are bad places, especially in foggy conditions and on halloween.
31. Try not to close your eyes, ever. If you must, do so only briefly.
32. If you hear chanting, run until you are out of earshot.
33. If you are too old to play with dolls, you do not need to be anywhere near one of the creepy little fuckers.
34. Legends can offer valuable insight of where not to go camping with friends.
35. When babysitting, ascertain the family’s tastes and preferences, to avoid being killed by poorly selected statues.
36. Even if you are certain that running will not save you, it is always best to try.
Follow these simple rules and little (or massive) harm may befall you. Either way, the important thing is to make sure your tale is told, copied, and pasted repeatedly.
Posted 1 year, 11 months ago at 2:29 pm. 106 comments
One day at a shopping mall in the afternoon, a woman was coming out of the mall from a shopping spree. She was in a happy mood. She had gotten to her car and loaded her stuff that she had bought into her trunk. When she was done loading, she shut the door of her trunk and she saw an old lady standing by the passenger side of her car.
The old woman said “Would you be a darling and give me a lift home? I don’t have a car and I was walking all day.” The woman said “I’d be happy to.” So she unlocked the door for the old woman.
As she started to make her way around the car to the driver’s side, she started to feel uncomfortable. So when she got in the car, she looked in her purse and said “Darn, I can’t find my credit card. I’m going inside to see if anybody found it.” The old woman said “I’ll wait for you here.”
The woman left to go look for help. Then she found a security guard and told him the situation. They went back to the woman’s car and the passenger door was wide open. On the seat of the car was a shopping bag that the old woman had been carrying. Inside of the bag was the old woman’s dress and a gray haired wig, along with a huge butcher’s knife, a video camera, and a roll of duct tape.
Posted 1 year, 11 months ago at 10:09 pm. 88 comments
In rural Wisconsin, there is an old abandoned park. Built in the 1920s, it served as the town’s gathering place for everyone.
That is, until a newly developed Train and Tunnel for Tots™ ride was installed in 1932. It was an innocent looking childish train, with one main (mechanized) head car, with three small trolleys pulled behind it. It went around some loops before going into a small tunnel.
But this is where the story gets weird. There were numerous cases of child deaths that year, all of them happening after the child rode on that train system. Some kids went missing in that short tunnel (about ten feet), and others went comatose after leaving. One, upon exiting, was found to be dead. Her dress was covered in what looked like small bloody handprints. Some killed themselves by scratching at their throats until they bled out, and one of them even killed another child before hanging herself with razor wire at the family’s farm.
The park was closed, and the town’s popularity as a tourist town plummeted.
Recently, a team of scientists were sent out to the park. They taped a video camera to the train, and put a new intern in with it, before sending it on its way onto the tracks.
When the train left the tunnel, it was empty, except for the camera.
The last ten seconds were nothing but static, save for the sound of children laughing.
–
Credited to Arachne.
Posted 1 year, 12 months ago at 7:52 pm. 118 comments
As a kid, I loved making flip books. They were all I did in art class, whenever I had it. I worked really hard on one particular flip book. It was around 50 pages long, I guess. It had a simple stick figure walking into the page, waving at me, and then walking off. I would look at it at least a dozen times the day that I made it. Then it got boring. You know how kids are, not entertained by one thing for very long. I tossed it under my bed and never gave it a second thought.
A few months later, I was cleaning up my room and swept the stack of paper out from under my bed. I couldn’t quite remember what it was. I flipped through it once and got a sweet taste of nostalgia. I flipped through it once more and noticed the pages hadn’t aged or gained dirty at all. I flipped through a third time. The little stick man walked onto the page, waved at me, but didn’t walk off.
Instead, a second stick man joined him. It waltzed up, having either an item in its hand or a severely disfigured arm; its not like anyone could tell the difference. The second stick man walked next to the first stick figure, stood there for a moment, then whacked the poor fellow upside the head. The stick figure fell, and the second stick man swung his stick at the other man. Again. And again. And again.
What I assume was its blood ran from the stick figure’s rather jagged body. It looked like nothing more than smeared pencil stains. The killer stick man proceeded to bend down, and tear apart the first stick man’s body, limb by thin limb. Once he was done, he bent each one into characters and letters. He set them upon the page to form a single word. He grabbed the base of his own round head and tore it off. Then he tore off his legs, and then one of his arms. His zig-zagged body parts formed themselves into a second word. What I read made me burn the flip book.
The freak meandered through a group of the undead. It was nearing nightfall, and he began to head back home. His pack had plenty of food in it, and he shouldn’t have to leave his house again for another week or so. Unless one of the zombie bastards punched its way in again. He didn’t carry a gun anymore. He had figured out a while ago that they couldn’t see him. It wasn’t necessary for him to carry a gun, because if they did realize he was there he would be dead long before he could pull out any kind of weapon whatsoever.
He did have to carry a weapon, in the earlier days, back when he was normal. Back before he became a freak. The people back then would try to steal food from him, attack him in delirious, starving rages. He killed quite a few people, in self-defense, but managed to detach himself from emotions. If he hadn’t, he would be dead right now. Or insane. He was free of the burden of emotions now, and all he ever felt was contentment. He used to be afraid, he used to hate himself, but now there was no reason for either. He hated himself for not being normal. He used to be normal, but now he was just a freak, a freak in a sea of normalcy. He was only content, not feeling too strongly towards positive or negative emotions.
In the early days, the infected, the zombies, the monster, the ghouls, the beasts, were the minority. They were the freaks. They were the repulsive ones. Now it was him. He was the freak. He was one of the last of his kind. He was the last of his kind he had seen in some time now. When the virus first hit, it wasn’t that big of a deal, just a few hurriedly covered stories in the local news, stuff like that. It wasn’t close to home at all, it was in little jungle villages in Africa. But it spread quickly. This sickness was spread through the air. Coughs, sneezes, bodily contact. It all spread the disease. The symptoms were subtle. And by the time you died and returned, it was too late, far too late.
When they first started to attack, when he first became a freak, he was with a few more like him. Hunted. They all stowed themselves away in a child’s treehouse. They had pulled the ladder up behind them, but they knew where the freaks were. They always knew. They were sitting, waiting. There were seven freaks in the treehouse total. Cramped, moist, afraid. A few of them had guns, and were firing wildly at the remade below. The freaks with guns were panicked, didn’t know how to shoot, and didn’t know to shoot for the brain. They were out of ammo and they had only destroyed one.
The reanimated shuffling men couldn’t see. Their eyes were either closed, filmed over, or missing. They smelled, felt vibrations through the air, heard, or maybe some unknown new sense. Nobody knew. It didn’t matter. You were dead if you weren’t immune. If you were immune, they couldn’t sense you in whatever way it was they used. But if you touched them, they would feel you. They would feel your warmth. And they would take it away. One of the monsters in the treehouse wasn’t immune. The rest were. The one who wasn’t immune was showing symptoms already, and they all knew it. They planned to push him down sometimes soon, but he was too overactive right now.
They had watched as he shot up on heroin a few minutes ago. He was too violent and unpredictable now. His rifle was now firing dry. He kept pulling back the bolt and firing anyways. Crazy bastard. The plan was to push him down when the opportunity was there, distract the re-living enough for the rest of them to get away. They didn’t know how smart the undead were yet, though. About twenty minutes later, he had finally begun to crash. Three of them exchanged a glance, and shoved him down. He hit the ground with a sickening crunch, and the undead closest to him stood up, walked over, broke his neck, delivered a swift blow to his skull and left him there.
That was when the monsters realized how smart the undead were. Maybe not completely genius, but they knew. They had killed the addict, and destroyed his brain to make sure he wouldn’t come back. They needed the food, after all. They had heard two rifles firing at once, and knew from experience a man could only fire one at once. They knew there was at least one other up there, probably more. They were surrounding the tree, waiting. The survivors were at a loss. “I…I think I know what to do,” a small, fortyish balding man piped. He was still wearing a button-up shirt and khaki pants, but he had ditched his dress shoes long ago. They only slowed him down. Everybody turned to him as one.
“I think…since they can’t see us…since they can’t see us we could maybe go down and try to sneak through. A few of us will…won’t make it. But it’s a better chance then we would have.” They had all died but the freak. Now he was alone, and was glad. If he saw another survivor, he would probably kill it in disgust. And he had done it before. A few months ago, he had found one more survivor, dying of dehydration. He slit his throat. They couldn’t be spared to live. And now this. He had just mounted a crest, to see about twenty immune people hiking down the highway. He grimaced. The freak reached into his pocket.
Do not suffer a monster to live. He pulled forth a well-made pipe-bomb. He had made it over the course of a week. Why hurry when he had all the time in the world? He pulled a lighter out of the other pocket, and then stuffed the pipe bomb into his belt, covering it with his “Welcome to Margaritaville” shirt. He held the lighter in his left hand, hidden, then began to tromp down the hill, holding his hands high in a gesture of peace. They were all overjoyed to meet another like them. There was a child with them, but the rest were either middle-aged or in their early twenties. He awaited an opportunity to use his weapon, but none arose until later that night. And he didn’t even need the lighter. There was a fire in the middle of the camp, and they were all sleeping.
They had rigged up an alarm system consisting of soda cans on a string. They all slept soundly. He stepped outside the limits of the camp, and pitched the pipe bomb towards the fire. It detonated almost immediately. He ran from the blast of heat and smiled. He had stopped them from trying to overturn the world, how the world worked. They were re-organizing. That was not allowed. He had ended them all. He giggled, and headed back home.
It’s a strange fact about the modern age, that in order for a thing’s existence to be confirmed, you cannot trust to your own five senses anymore. In order for reality to be ‘real’, it must be confirmed so by the greater populace. Television, and the internet, have changed our way of life whether for good or ill. Events in my life over the past few weeks seem…so odd, even now, that the act of writing them down and…’publish’ it online may be the only way for it all too feel like more than a slide into delirium.
In my living room, near the door that leads to my bedroom, there once hung a 3 1/2’ by 5’ oil painting. The artist was one William Cartwright, an obscure Wolverhampton native who, the owner told me, had died mysteriously in the early 1950’s. I made the purchase at a garage sale for a princely sum of £10 – the owner, a middle-aged man called Charles Franklin, must’ve been desperate to sell, considering the dilapidation of both his house and himself. The picture itself is a bucolic scene, as wholesome as a Rockwell, and as verdant as a Matisse. It depicts a family picnic within a lush meadow, buttercups blooming around the gathering, a small copse of trees to the left, and rolling hills in the background. The weather is fair, and the subjects – mother, father, three rosy-cheeked children – are accoutred in post-war attire. On careful inspection, however, one can see a rather less cheerful detail. Partially hidden behind the foremost tree is another person, a drably clothed young man with a sour expression on his face. I only really saw it after I’d made the purchase, and it rather ruined the painting’s main mood for me…though not enough that I didn’t end up hanging it anyway.
I bought it six weeks ago, and it was one week after that all this started. It was 6:30 in the evening, and I was returning to the living room from the bathroom when I noticed that the painting had been altered. Maybe it was set at a wrong angle? I inspected it, and found it was hung perfectly straight. Nothing had changed within the frame, either…the picnic still progressed merrily, and the dour youth still looked on with his back to the trees. I turned away, prepared and ate dinner, watched some fitfully funny sitcoms and went to bed.
I awoke in horror at 3:30 am that morning, shivering and soaked with sweat, the riddle of the painting answered. I knew what had changed…the stranger, once partially obscured only a few hours before, was completely visible. The still life had moved.
Over the next week, I kept a wary eye on the painting whenever I passed it. Sure enough, with each passing day the dark figure grew ever so slightly larger in comparison to the foregrounded figures. And, as his features became clearer, I saw that his face wasn’t so youthful, or so angry either…maybe it was a trick of the light, but sometimes his expression was more akin to a smile, albeit a sinister one. It wasn’t just the painting, either. Any horror movie I watched, whenever the monster leaped at the screen, it seemed more vivid and threatening than before. Maybe it was my eyes unfocusing, but it seemed to me that the edges of the screen warped outward each time it happened. Every time I listened to music, I heard occasional murmuring, like somebody…or something… whispering the apocrypha of the damned. The backyard of my house always played host to small animals and birds, most of them visibly sickening. And as for the dreams…the less said the better.
Two weeks ago, a loud thump on the back door woke me up in the early morning. Eyes barely open, I staggered out to the living room to investigate the noise. The noise had been made by a crow dashing itself against the door, and it’s crumpled form lay quite dead in the wan dawn light. With the aid of a plastic bag, and considerable reluctance, I brought the corpse inside, went out to the street and gave it a cursory burial in the nearest bin. I then changed and walked out to get that day’s newspaper and a coffee from the corner store.
Ensconced once more in my home, I received a mild shock several pages into my reading. An article, brief and embellished only with a grainy photograph, detailed the investigation of a suicide in the local area of one Charles Franklin. The picture was of a sunken eyed, somewhat unkempt man fast approaching sixty. The picture also matched the features of the previous owner of the Cartwright painting. An involuntary shiver spasmed between my shoulders, and I became ever more aware of the painting behind me. I had not inspected the progress of the dark figure yet, and so paced towards it, brackish dread filling my stomach with each step. I was right to dread…if anything, I wasn’t scared enough.
Nothing I’ve drunk since then can erase the image of that tranquil abomination contained within the frames. As usual, the menacing figure on the left had inched further, further into the foreground than the background now. And, as before, the family enjoyed a frozen repast in the heatless sunlight. The familiarity, even that of the unfamiliar, had been intruded on twice, though. A bird hovered above the meadow, a bird with the dusky feathers of a crow. And in the mother’s hands a baby, dark eyed and sombre, was cradled. Even with the weight of years and worry lifted, I knew I saw none other than the face of Charles Franklin.
I’ve since covered the painting and sealed it in a cupboard in the spare room – yet still I can sense it no matter where I am. It exudes a suffocating aura, instilling me with a leaden torpor no amount of caffeine can shake off. Many times I’ve thought of destroying the damn thing, yet whenever I endeavour to do so fatigue overwhelms me, and I am left unable to rise from the floor. I’ve advertised it for sale, but so far there hasn’t been so much as a single phone call. I can’t listen to music anymore…it’s drowned out by horrendous babbling, a cacophony of obscenities and hatred. I don’t watch movies either…or indeed, anything. I looked into my bathroom mirror for the last time five days ago, and what stared back at me was the dark man’s murderous leer. It took more courage than I care to admit just to switch this computer on. I do not know the nature of William Cartwright, or the nature of his painting, or the nature of the spectre that haunts me. What kind of man was Cartwright? What kind of monster? How many paintings did he create before consigning his flesh to rot? Did his soul follow? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now. All I know is that it has consumed me completely, like it consumed Charles and his family.
The sounds of faint hammering drift from the spare room. May the padlock hold out, at least until the pills have rendered me oblivious.
