Paris
My Grandfather’s brother lived most of his life in Paris, France. On the few occasions I’ve met him, it was very clear that he was a disturbed individual with some sort of something bothering him all day and night. I figured he’d had a stroke or perhaps he was just plain senile. After a few meetings with my grandfather’s brother, I became curious. My grandfather hesitated to tell me the story, but I talked him into it.
Now it’s a well known fact that beneath Paris, there’s over 400 miles of ancient catacombs, going deep underground. It’s a subterranean labyrinth that many people have explored and got lost in. My Grandfather’s brother, Alex, had no plans of exploring the catacombs. He had recently graduated college and was engaged to his future wife. Things were going just swell for him.
Alex said that he was off to fetch some food for dinner and decided to try a different path to the store. He took a wrong turn, and kept going, and before he knew it he was lost in Paris. The next part was blurry. He was in a very shady neighborhood with very poor lighting. The last thing he remembers is walking to the side of the road for a smoke. Next thing he knew, he was in total darkness and up to his waist in water. He had fallen into a recently opened hole leading to the catacombs of Paris.
He’d noticed the passageways began leading downward, not what he wanted. Eventually he claims to have found a large empty room, he decided to rest there. He couldn’t sleep, and had lost almost all hope at this point. He was tottering on the edge of passing out, but he heard something. He (painfully) stood up, held his breath, and listened. He could hear footsteps and heavy breathing, what sounded almost like wheezing. He called out for help, and the footsteps and breathing stopped. The catacombs were deathly silent except for the occasional droplet of water. He stood like that for about an hour, listening for a response. Eventually the footsteps began again, and once again, he called out for help. This time he got his answer.
A scream rang out that he claimed to be too feminine to be a man and too deep to be a woman. The shriek was loud and lasted a long time. Beneath that he could hear the footsteps with increased tensity. He jolted up and ran away from the yell, blindly struggling through the catacombs. The scream didn’t seem to be getting any further, and he kept running for all his life, no matter how much it hurt to do so. Eventually the shriek faded, but the footsteps were as loud as ever. He ran through the catacombs for what he said seemed like hours, and eventually came across a ladder.
He climbed the ladder, and from what it sounded like, the mystery thing did not follow. He took out his lighter and shined it down to see what had been chasing him, but it moved away upon seeing the light, and Alex hauled ass up the stairs. He found a manhole, but it would not budge. He yelled and banged for a while, and eventually some passers-by heard him and the police came to his rescue. He was a good thirty miles away from his apartment, in a residential part of Paris.
THEN WHO WAS CATACOMBS?
Eh, not really creepy.Obviously the second to last paragraph was supposed to be the climax, but it didn’t do much. I liked the idea of it moving away, because that meant it was right behind him.
He should’ve played chess with the Sewer King for his grandfather’s watch. That’s how Arnold beat him.
I know the whole “Anything in your head will be scarier than what they describe”, but I’m honestly bored of the whole “it was gone before I did this” thing. I want to know what some of these guys look like! I would think it would show the ability of the author if they can creep me out that way instead of a cop-out like this story did. And no, I’m not going to make a “BUT WHO WAS” joke.
Not bad, not good.
3/5
Average
totally stupid.
1/5
Kind of anticlimactic.
Dissapointed, but hey, I’ll get over it.
Man, I love Europe.
WHAT THE FUCK? THIS STORY’S ENDING MADE NO SENSE! SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN IT TO ME!
I think the ending was incomplete but then…
WHO WAS MANWOMAN
Shit sucks.
2/5
@Snowden – I haven’t seen that show in YEARS! It was a great show.
I do have to agree with everyone else though. It wasn’t that great. 3/5.
@3: You win an internet.
The story, on the other hand, had a decent concept but was too choppy and not descriptive enough.
Well, my point has already been said countless times, but Snowden still gets a million cyber cookies from me.
THEN WHO WAS FOOTSTEPS?!
Choppy. Very unsatisfactory ending.
all i wanted was love
I JUST WANTED TO GIVE YOU A RING FOR YOUR WIFE, YOU PRICK
doesnt explain ending
He climbed the ladder…
…Alex hauled ass up the stairs.
Ladder became stairs in less than a sentence. Bravo.
I thought it was pretty good.
Other than the whole thing pipboy pointed out in #14…
I don’t understand it!
D:
THEN WHO WAS FRENCH ZOMBIE?!
Ooh I liked it, It sounded somewhat believable but I don’t really think that would have made him a ‘disturbed’ person..
A movie cliche that will always get me- footsteps, slow and methodical, until a character calls for help, then RUNS towards the character screaming. Have to agree, though, anti-climactic but otherwise very good.
Weak! So weak!! You go to the back of the class!
Meh, giving this a 2/5 for using words in conjunction with punctuation, and separating into paragraphs.
but snowden
your grandpa has a thousand spares anyway. and its still broken
I see potential with the catacombs, but this story wasn’t really all that creepy.
The story wasn’t that good, but I’ve always wanted to see the Catocombs in Paris.
So sick.
@ 28
Dammit, Grandpa.
Moral of the Story: Never eat raspberries.
10, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!
Oh, and of course, we must know
who was ladder?
I liked reading it.
But just for the sake of reading words. =/
The ladders are not stairs.
Agh. I too tire of this whole not seeing the monster thing. This wasn’t creepy at all, although I like the thought of something just hauling ass after you, shrieking.
I wish we could’ve gotten a GLIMPSE of it, at least.
The catacombs have always scared the bejesus out of me – the entire idea frightens me to no end.
I didn’t need a description of the…thing…I’m still freaked out.
it seemed like a pretty good story, but when it said “hauled ass”. That was kind of lame.
it was all the members of oasis merged into one
Sucked.
1/5
hey i think this was pretty good. Should have been more detial i think, i don’t really get how he ended up in the catacombs it was kind of unclear.
And then, as my great-uncle’s eyes welled up with tears, he sobbed… “I was killed”
And then I knew it was bullshat.
What is this shit, where’s the ending? It was good until “and then he was 30 miles away LOL END”
I think it could have been better if you had made it go in one way or the other. It felt like the creep factor was meant to be that it was ‘real.’ However, you put too much force into the details of the story that you shouldn’t have known. I think that the concept was trite, honestly, but could have been executed well.
tl;dr You ruined what could have been good.
“He kept running for all his life” …so…he’s…dead?
THEN WHO WAS SCREAM?
It was clearly just a Magypsy wanting to teach him PK Love.
it was alright
“…and Alex hauled ass up the stairs.” kind of killed the mood.
“He stood there for about an hour”
lol, wut? fail pasta is fail.
You had the idea: Paris’s catacombs is the perfect setting for a creepy recipe. However, Alex being lost just doesn’t sit well. He lives there. Why couldn’t he ask someone? A passer-by? And why would he fall into water and suddenly into the catacomb? To me, it’s like a blur. Too much of a blur to offer any real sort of ‘creepiness’ feel to it.
Keep at it though. You have the potential to write better pastas in the future.
I don’t know about everyone else, but that would be horrifying. In that postition it wouldn’t get the chance to kill me cause i would most likely shit myself and die.
this story had so much potential and i feel like it really just fell flat. i loved that it was set in the catacombs and that the premise was that something fucked up happened down there and scarred this guy for life. but then the fucked up thing was just hearing a scream and some footsteps?
like i said, this had SO MUCH POTENTIAL, but it really needs some work. keep at it, though! you obvious have the creativity to come up with great ideas, you just need to work on fleshing them out right.
Almost, but severly let down by the anticlimatic ending. Better luck next time.
Fear the Darkness
-Nex
Could it be that he was running from himself the whole time? The screams and footsteps were echoes. The story represents man being controlled by an unintentionally self-imposed mechanism, which, in this case is fear.
He was running from the echoes of his own footsteps and his own screams, distorted by the reverberation of the catacombs. The story represents man being controlled by his own devices.
He was running from his own footsteps, fleeing his own screaming. The sounds were echoing throughout the catacombs, distorted by the reverberations. The story can be interpreted as a cometary on mankind being controlled by his own devices.
So he got chased by some sort of androgynous zombie monster for hours, that managed to keep up with him for 30 miles without either of them getting lost? What the fuck?
It feels like there isn’t an ending. Great story though (so far), I just think it needs a little more to it, like maybe he began to see the sewer manwoman in places & realised it was following him (dun dun dun!) and to this day, he’s all senile & grumpy, whatever, because it turns out, as time wore on, the sewer manwoman got less shy and won’t leave him alone (could be living in his house, visits him at night). To make this work, though, sewer manwoman would probably need to get ‘overprotective’ or something… Maybe he/she killed his fiance?
Sorry, didn’t mean to rewrite the story, it just seems incomplete. If you want to use this though, feel free
pfft. It’s probably just a velociraptor or something. no biggie.
It was Rake. Pale, feminine, yet not, chasing someone in the darkness. Rake was napping, and some dumbass woke him up.
2 things annoyed me.
“Hauled ass” Never put this in scary writing.
Also, he was waist deep in water, but saw passages leading downwards? So either those passages are completely submerged or he’s in a current, which he can just follow upstream to get out above ground.
THEN WHO WAS LADDER?