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The Masked Man



Estimated reading time — 10 minutes

Tuesday, October 11th
Today, I drove my 7-year old son James into town to go Halloween shopping. I didn’t have to buy any candy this year because we live in a cul-de-sac out in the middle of a farming community on the outskirts of the city. I moved last year because I had divorced my wife and lost my old house along with custody of James. It’s rather the shit-end of the stick, but James and I love Halloween. It’s one of the few times a year that Tracy finds it acceptable for my only son to come visit me. James stays with her on every other holiday throughout the year, his birthday, and everything else in between. I get to see him only on my birthday and the week preceding Halloween, unless the high bitch-court finds it suitable for him to come spend the night every once in a while. Hmph. Frankly, I’m surprised she let him come shopping with me.
Upon perusing the aisles, James showed a strong affinity to a flamboyantly green and purple Buzz Lightyear costume. It’s really typical for a kid to have an eye for the most expensive thing on the rack, but I didn’t have the heart to say no to those bottomless blue eyes. He also picked out all the house decorations. I know we won’t be getting any trick-or-treaters out where I live but adorning the exterior of our home was always one of our favorite things to do together.

 

Friday, October 21st
It looks like James and I will be having some competition for the “Best Halloween Decorations” award, which sadly, in this neighborhood, is only a pat on the back. When I lived with James and my ex-wife, he and I won the trophy every year since he was three.

Reminiscence aside, my next-door neighbor is really giving us a run for our money. He did quite the splurge on decorations. He must have ordered everything online because aside from the cliché “Happy Halloween” banners and the like, the festive treasures found on his house and lawn were nowhere to be seen in the store where James and I shopped- which sold only festive decor. The fellow’s garage door sat below a strand of kite string on which hung dozens of expensive-looking bones and skulls. He also placed several other bones sticking straight up out of his lawn. There was no color or detail, just random bones placed here and there; strewn about his unkempt lawn. Truly, though, he’s nothin’.

 

Saturday October 22nd
While walking through my house at dusk, outside the dining room window I noticed a quick flicker of movement dash in and out of my peripherals as I was preparing for James’s week-long stay. I inspected. I don’t even know if I should be glad that I did. I walked back in front of the window and saw the same animation, but this time in the center of my vision. I walked back away from the window, and slowly, I peeked out from the corner of the glass. I made out the shape of the very top of a person’s head peering over the top of my fence, and it seemed to be watching me. Whoever it was ducked down again right after they realized we had made eye contact. I backed away from the window. I don’t know why. I crawled over to the family room window, which was about 15-20 feet to the left, but facing the same direction as the dining room window.

I stayed knelt. Timidly but curiously grasping the curtain, I ever so slowly pulled back the cloth, only to gaze upon the masked fellow who was snooping around behind my property. This time, I saw his entire head. The mask had a gaping, dangling mouth, similar to the mask used in the Scream series. The only difference was that the jaw of this particular mask was swaying about in the wind, and it also had teeth. Long, thin, fang-like growths that appeared almost like the strands hanging from the mouth of a whale, though fewer in number. The expression on the mask was plain, and the color was rather pale, with slight gray discoloration. It didn’t have a goofy smile or an intimidating stare, just a mouth hanging wide open and a couple of perfectly round, beady little chameleon eyes- eerily shaded.

After about ten seconds of observation, one of the eyes appeared as if it was steadily drifting off- away from where it was fixated, and very slowly, began to scan to the left- and as soon as he seemed to lock on to where I was, he quickly disappeared.

 

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Tuesday, October 25th
I don’t really know my neighbor, much less where he gets all of his decorations. I noticed a new ornament of sorts in front of his door today. It was a ceramic bowl full of guts, comically placed where he would place a bowl of candy were he too lazy to answer the door for trick-or-treaters. Behind it was a large white piece of paper bound to the wall of his house. On it was written in nearly illegible chicken scratch: “TAKE ONE”. The whole sign had bloody fingerprints smeared all over it. More convincing yet was the bloody tape. And the bloody wall. Nearly the entire wall was smeared in brownish-red. Spooky. The streams of blood that ran from the handprints were, strangely enough, dry. I didn’t know they made novelty blood that could dry like that.

I’ve only ever spoken to this guy once, and it was around the time that I moved. He seemed rather distraught. As I approached him, I asked if everything was alright. He said that he was late for work, which was odd, because it was around 8:30 at night. I asked him where he worked, and he revealed to me that he was a biologist and worked at the military base, with no other details. It was strange. Every time I saw him after that encounter, his pants had traveled up his ankles another centimeter. Midlife growth-spurt, I guess. He was henceforth stumbling around awkwardly and tripping over himself. My other neighbors and I mocked him from time to time. I remember one specific instance when he was watering his shrubbery, and one of his knees gave out. Backwards. Kind of like a large bird’s leg. A pelican, or perhaps a heron. It looked excruciating to me, but he just walked it off. I’ve only ever seen him outside again once after this display, but it was months ago.

And last month, as I walked to the mailbox late one afternoon, I heard his kids crying frantically. Screaming, almost. It continued into the evening. The noise stopped eventually, though. I was having trouble sleeping through that horrifying racket. I sincerely hope he had his parenting privileges revoked; however, I’ve never even seen his kids. Let’s hope he’s only an uncle.

 

Wednesday, October 26th
Ever since James arrived earlier this week, he has simply abhorred the idea of removing his costume. Little Buzz has been running rampant throughout the house quoting Toy Story. He hasn’t disrobed once since he put it on, save for when I demanded he allow me to wash it because he was quite literally rolling around outside in the dirt.

I haven’t seen any more of this weirdo in the mask lately. Probably some mischievous kid from the neighborhood behind mine. It’s a cul-de-sac too, just a bigger one. There is a dirt road that accompanies an irrigation canal separating the two neighborhoods. My house is the farthest house from the main road, and the canal runs parallel to my fence. I don’t know of any bridge he could have used to come across, but I never look back there, and I don’t particularly care to.

Neighbor-man bought a new ornament. 200 feet of lights to accompany the 200 feet of intestines he had previously thrown all over the tree in his front yard. The lights coexist uniquely with the prior décor, though; all I could smell when I went outside was the burning odor of the sizzling ensemble of mix-matched decorations hanging from the tree. The moisture of those oddly-genuine-looking innards had adhered to his archaic festive bulbs, producing a deep red glow. Intentional or not, the smell was almost enough to coerce a complaint out of me. Almost.

Come to think of it, the smell wasn’t so bad. Almost like a barbecue.

 

Friday, October 28th
I’m going insane. No simple words can properly describe what I believe I have witnessed. As the sun was setting this evening I got another glimpse of this “masked” man. What I saw now was not at all what I would describe as a “mask”. I was sitting in my living room reading. The bay window in my living room overlooks the entire street, and I had my blinds open. I had startled and looked up and out the window toward the nearly-dissipated sun because I had heard what sounded like an asthmatic man gasping for air through a megaphone over top of a vocal, frightened cat. I stood up from my couch and walked briskly toward the window. I cupped my hands above my eyes to deter the sunlight, and pressed my face against the window. And I saw it. It was pursuing a small cat. It ran like an Ostrich. Where it was not bald and discolored, it was spotted with long patches of spindly hairs and networks of pulsating blue veins. Thinning, isolated strands of gray hair flat against its flaky, decomposing head. Its flapping, low-hung chin keeping rhythm with its bounding stride as the sprinting thing began to overtake a creature built for agility. Ultra-thin, ultra-broad shoulders dutifully bounding up and down in harmony with its tree branch-like arms, easily giving it at least a five foot reach. Mammoth hands, chopstick fingers, and those repulsive, chameleon eyes. Buckets of drool spilt impatiently from behind its hellish teeth. Emaciated, stilt-like legs completed the horrific image. Altogether, I observed an eight-and-a-half foot freak show with greasy hair practically leaping from yard to yard chasing this poor kitten for a reason ostensibly beyond simple sustenance.

The cat approached a fence on the left side of the street. It leapt towards a delusion of safety. The beast proceeded to effortlessly jump from the sidewalk, over the lawn, and snatch the animal from the top of the fence with its talon-like claws, as a falcon might. The cat didn’t stand a chance, nor did it even manage to voice a squeal. The thing disappeared into the shadows with its, erm, meal. An unforgettable two-and-a-half seconds.

Then I thought of my son. He could have very well been in the place of that plaintive animal. No, I should never say such things. Regardless, what am I to do? Forgo what little time I have throughout the year with my boy because a scary monster is on the loose? Tell my ex-wife that my neighborhood in the middle of nowhere has become too dangerous for our son to stay with me? Buy a rifle and hunt the thing myself? No matter. With only two days until Halloween I doubt there will be any more trouble.

 

Saturday, October 29th
I’ve thought about calling the police, but for what, exactly? I definitely couldn’t call in and report a burglar- or even anything human for that matter, because they wouldn’t be looking for what needed to be caught. No one can know.

Earlier tonight, my neighbors threw a street-wide costume party at their place down at the entrance of the street. I didn’t go because I had to work late, and after I picked up James from his friend’s house, we anticipated having a game night with just the two of us.

Sometime during the night, James took a bathroom break. He was gone for over fifteen minutes. When he returned, he seemed excited to inform me that he looked out the living room window, in between the blinds, and saw what he described as a “Really tall weird-looking person with a bag” running patiently to the house where the party was being held, empty bag in hand. According to James, it would disappear into the back yard of the house, and seconds later, bolt out of the yard with a full bag and tear off towards my neighbor’s house, wearing a costume. It repeated this process several times, each time, wearing a different costume than before.

He said that on its last round, it stopped in the middle of the street, cocked its head to the right slightly, and its right eye slid to the side of its head and stared right at him as if there weren’t blinds between them. He said that it then turned its head 180 degrees and locked eye contact with him, and then its colossal mouth sluggishly transformed from a probing expression to the widest smile he thought he’d ever seen. “Millions of teeth” were his exact words.

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He said that its smile had then hastily collapsed, dropping the chin into a visible freefall which ended with a swinging slap on its chest. It then darted off into my reclusive neighbor’s yard and that was when James decided to come alert me of his findings.

I thought of that horrid monster smiling at my beautiful boy. I despised the idea. I tried to envision what that particular smile might look like, though I really couldn’t. I didn’t think a flapping maw that gargantuan had the muscle to maneuver that flailing chin in the first place. Then again, it has to eat sometime.

 

Sunday, October 30th
More decorations were, stealthfully as always, erected by my mysterious neighbor. A couple-dozen or so skeletons, all different sizes, all dressed in cliché Halloween attire. There was a Marilyn Monroe skeleton, a Darth Vader skeleton, an Abraham Lincoln skeleton, so-on; so-forth. Every one of them was strung up by the back of its neck, feet swinging, head looking down. I really wanted to ask this guy how he comes up with all this. Where he gets it all. Perhaps if he knows that last night’s rain washed the color off of most of his little knick-knacks. Gotta hand it to ‘im, though. That slew of morbid décor in combination with his filthy, run-down, cobweb covered home emits a true horror movie feel.

It’s now just past midnight. I just got finished with my work, I brushed my teeth, and now the doorbell’s ringing. Again. And again. And again. Reluctantly I rise up and walk toward my front door.

I open it. My neighbor. No, the freak next door, but the fellow who lives behind me- on the other side of the canal. He’s disgruntled. He’s practically out of breath and is threatening me about something but none of it is sinking in because one of the skeletons hanging from my neighbor’s tree- a newcomer- is staring right at me. Its jaw unhinged, unlike the others. It’s smaller than the other skeletons- and appears to be dripping with something. Moonlight revealed to me its eyes. Big, blue eyes.

I turn to face the man yelling at me.

Him: “You listenin’ over there?”

Me: “Oh… Yeah.”

Him: “’The hell y’tryin’ to pull. Y’almost gave my wife a heart attack with that mask”.

Apparently my son and I aren’t the only ones who have spotted the neighborhood missing link. How could he possibly confuse that thing with me?

Him: “And don’t try and smooth-talk yer way outta this one pal. I saw ya jump clean over that fence a’ yours- ‘the hell you managed to do that I’s a-still wonderin’- and crawl right back inte yer basement. It’s dark n’ all but no doubt it was you, pal.”

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Me: “….I’m terribly sorry…” I improvised. “I don’t know what came over me…” “If there’s anything I can do-“

My heart sank.

Me: “Wait here.”

There’s no way. I’m running like a fool into my own house because this asshole bangs on my door at 12:15 in the morning to tell me that he saw this… thing jump into my basement. With my trembling hands applying convulsing energy to the doorknob, I turn, and fling the door wide open to reveal my son, sleeping, facing the wall, just as I had left him. Figures. He’s never all the way under the covers like that, but it is a bit cold in here. Goddamn, though, this guy at my door really does have some nerve. He scared the shit out of me.

Me “Sorry… I just-“

He interrupted.

Him: “Aww, save it. I ain’t give no shits at all about yer problems. Y’just stay the hell away from me and mah family. Y’hear?”

Me: “Yeah… Sure…”

A calming chuckle digs its way into his angry tone as I recognize those freshly familiar bottomless blue eyes stuffed inside the head of that skeleton.

Him: “I gotta hand it to y’though. I nearly busted out laughing when I saw y’runnin’ around wearin’ that little kid’s Buzz Lightyear Costume.”

 

Credit: Harrison Dimpley

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82 thoughts on “The Masked Man”

  1. Okay this story is pretty good and all but my only question is how would a skeleton have eyes??? How could the father have recognized his son’s skeleton by his “bottomless blue eyes” when the definition of a skeleton means nothing is left but the bones. This was something that really didn’t make sense to me.

  2. I’m confused. Who was the monster? Is the kid or dead? Also, did the dad have anything to do with the deaths?

  3. I’d actually had a dream about a creepy masked man, I’ve tried to looked up to see if it was creepypasta, thankfully no luck yet. But a great creepypasta 9/10

  4. Wow, these people are dumb… O.O

    There is a ‘person’ running around and instantaneously blame it on the person. It is logical, but it can’t have been him every single goddang night, they had to have known something was up.

    Anywho, nice story. XD

    I rate this 5/10!

    Sincerely,
    Grim Gamer

    Blood is red, corpses are blue and guess what? I’ll be watching you…

  5. How do people not understand the story!? Seriously, I knew what was going on since the first description of the neighbor’s ‘decorations’. The only thing that surprised me ever so slightly was the son ending up dead at the end.

    I’d give this a 7.5/10. Good story but I found it was not mysterious enough and it was quite easy to tell who the masked man/monster was quickly. I know you weren’t trying to hide who it was but I think it would have been better with more of a surprise plot twist personally.

  6. Further evidence incriminating the neighbor includes the fact that his legs bend backwards like a bird (too lazy to find passage in story soz)

  7. One of the few times that a pasta actually caused my heart to race. The one thing to make it better, though, is to make the ending just a tad bit clearer. It took a bit to realize that the bird-thing took his son (at least, I think that is what happened).

    9/10

  8. That was enough to terrify me. The ones about parents whose children got murdered by the monster right before they may be scare me like hell since I am a mom. Nothing scarier than the idea of your child being hurt or killed.

  9. I liked this one even though the ending was very predictable by the description of the neighbors house. Reading the comments makes me lose faith in humanity “I don’t get the ending!!” It’s really not that hard to get if you actually read the story from the beginning.

  10. *reads title*Masked Man?Batman!!!
    *reads pasta*Well,Batman got scary pretty damn fast.
    Anyway,the pasta was brilliant,although the last paragraphs had me a bit confused.10/10

  11. This felt like a parodypasta. Seriously made me “lol” multiple times. Not in the least bit creepy/scary/whatever. Also narrator/main character is fucking RETARDED. And apparently half the readers should fail basic English lit courses since the monster is NOT wearing costumes of its victims but rather hanging them on skeletons from a fucking tree. How would an 8 foot tall ostrich-monster wear man-sized costumes? God my brain is hemorrhaging.

    1. Except the story explicitly states that he’s wearing the costumes.
      “It repeated this process several times, each time, wearing a different costume than before.”

  12. This was genuinely creepy but I had one major issue with it: the journal style. I don’t know if others have mentioned this, but the journal comes off as very unrealistic. If this is truly a journal, then why would the narrator need to write things like ‘my 7-year old son James’ and ‘I moved last year because I had divorced my wife’. It’s almost as if he’s clarifying these things for any potential readers!!! Obviously you’re setting the scene but you need to find a better, subtler, way of giving us this information. There’s also problems with the tense. I think you should have scrapped the journal entries and just ran it through as a direct narration.
    Apart form that issue, the story is really good!!

  13. NOM NOM NOM epic pasta the best I’ve read in a while not piss your pants scary but just enough to be fun though great pasta though spelling could have been better but I’m not a Grammer Nazi epic

  14. “what am I to do? Forgo what little time I have throughout the year with my boy because a scary monster is on the loose?” For future reference, that is *exactly* what you should do. I can’t believe anyone would have such a cavalier attitude to something like that.
    Otherwise, the story was pretty good.

  15. This story was written nicely, but I got a little confused at the end. It might just be my stupidity, but the ending confused me a little. While the story was great, there may be a fewe circumstances where the reader misinterpritates the point. I dunno.

  16. SPOILER ALERT:

    So the creature was his neighbor? The narrator did say his neighbor was a biologist who worked at government facility. Did he catch some virus that mutated him into this creature? The strange movements of the neighbor described by the narrator could be the result of his mutation. And were the screams of the children in the neighbor’s house be the result of him cannabalizing his own children after he mutated?

  17. I felt this story wasn’t as scary as it was just weird. Especially the part where the monster was chasing the cat around and eating it. There is some possibility of the neighbor being the monster, but it could also be some punk in the neighborhood trying to scare people. Your guess is as good as mine though. Overall, this was decent. 9/10

  18. For those still confused about who the monster is. It’s obviously the neighbor.

    The narrator reveals it mostly when he says:

    “I remember one specific instance when he was watering his shrubbery, and one of his knees gave out. Backwards. Kind of like a large bird’s leg. A pelican, or perhaps a heron. It looked excruciating to me, but he just walked it off.”

    He poses as a normal man at day, but during the night he must become this freakish murdering mutant that collects his victims as trophies. Not entirely sure, but that’s the best I could make of it.

    This was a brilliant read, though. Flawlessly written and nothing felt out of place. 10/10!

  19. I like how well the monster/mask face thing was described, I was able to picture it really clearly and it was horrible. Way too much foreshadowing though.

  20. It took me a little while to grasp the concept, but after a while i started to get it. Excellent pasta, pretty scary. Not the scariest I’ve ever read but still pretty good. Could have used a little more gore but hey that’s my opinion. Very good wording and literature and well thought out 9/10 :)

  21. Had to read several comments before I fully understood the ending, but once it clicked, I was like, “OH, HOLY SHIBADEE WHAT DAFUQ”

  22. I understand this pasta, but something that others did not mention was that he could be taking the organs and skeletons out while leaving the skin, which is why the narrator still saw James in the bed. Would also explain the guy running back and forth several times from the houses.
    Sounds kinda dumb now, but whatever.

  23. This is the sort of paste that you want to eat, even if your asshole friend took a dump in it just before you started eating it.

  24. Ok, for those still confused, the neighbor himself is the monster. It was mentioned that the narrator and a random other neighbor make fun of his rather odd increase in height, and call it a “mid-life growth spurt”. The monster is described as an extremely gangly creature with unnaturally long arms, legs, and fingers. The Neighbor, being a supposed biologist for the military, could have easily been exposed to something that resulted in the mutations, warping him physically and mentally. During the scene in which the monster is running from the neighbor’s house to the party with a bag back and forth, seeing as the neighbor’s house has all the “life-like gore-filled Halloween decorations”, it’s probably safe to assume that he was transferring the innards of the party-goers as the decorations, and using the skeletons as mannequins for the costumes after he’s finished in them. At the end, when it mentions the smaller skeleton with the blue eyes, that’s the narrator’s son, and the figure in the bed could possibly be the monster himself. With his length, he could probably fold his legs up in the shape of a small child, and with the blanket being pulled all the way up, at first glance the narrator would think nothing of it. With all that being said, it’s not really a cliffhanger knowing that the narrator is in the same house as the monster, and that the monster is in the bed he thought his son was in, with the knowledge given from the person from the other cu-de-sac about the Buzz Lightyear costume.

  25. He should have just called the police and told them that some guy kept on stalking him and his child every night and tell them he’s coming from his neighbour’s house. Some “FREEZE POLICE” and “WTF IS THAT THING SHOOT IT SHOOT IT” and boom problem solved ;)

  26. well if you really think about it, the monster could have just gouged out his eyes and put them in a skeleton and left the dead body facing the opposite side of the door in the bed. makes sense if you really think about it. and the reason he was wearing the buzz costume like many people have said before was to wear it because it was the monster’s last victim. but those are just some of my opinions. only the writer really knows what’s going on

  27. I had to read the ending twice to really get it, but when I did I was like “HOLY SHIT NO WAY”. 9/10

  28. blabla shut the fuck up

    Last comment: Um…if you dont take the brain out or the eyes…always. The eyes attach to the brain on the..cords…for lack of a better word.

    And I dont see how people dont get this. It was wonderfully written, easy to follow.

    Neighbor mutated, and is now killing people. He wears their costumes afterward. Hence the buzz lightyear reference,

  29. This scared the heck out of me. I completely got the plot and the ending, it freaked me out! 9/10 for this pasta! Great job :)

  30. I forgot to add something;
    The dad saw that the skeleton had “blue eyes” and was smaller than the other skeletons. (James)

  31. The “smaller” skeleton is James.
    Remember when the Dad and the kid were buying decorations?
    “It’s really typical for a kid to have an eye for the most expensive thing on the rack, but I didn’t have the heart to say no to those bottomless blue eyes.” In the first entry?
    And remember this?
    “Reminiscence aside, my next-door neighbor is really giving us a run for our money. He did quite the splurge on decorations. He must have ordered everything online because aside from the cliché “Happy Halloween” banners and the like, the festive treasures found on his house and lawn were nowhere to be seen in the store where James and I shopped- which sold only festive decor.” Extremely tasty pasta. 10/10

  32. Ok, stay with me here people. Would creepypasta.com not make a fantastic tv show? Like if every story was a different episode? Like masters of horror but not as shitty? Just a thought.

  33. @Alyssa

    The neighbor was a scientist, doing biochemical research.
    Say an experiment goes wrong; it would distort one’s physical and mental being to the extreme.
    I think it’s quite the beautiful concept. Before he was mutated into a monster, he loved Halloween. That carried over into his mutant form in a very twisted way.

    And, speaking to all those that say,
    “MONSTER BETTER DO NOTHING.”

    What would you do?
    Try to catch it? Way to go and get eaten.
    Tell your kid he can’t have Halloween? Way to make your beloved child miserable for your own “irrational” fears.
    Send the kid back to his Mom? Yeah, okay.
    Call the police? As if they’ll believe you.

    Seriously, in a situation like that, you probably wouldn’t do anything either.

    1. If I saw something jump a fence and eat a cat, I would call the police and tell them there was a wild animal prowling the cul-de-sac. And yes, if I seriously feared for my son’s safety, I’d send him to my bitchy ex-wife. Especially if my son saw the same monster as I did.

  34. This one was really interesting for me. I get the point that the monster thing was running around killing people and putting the skeletons in the front yard, but what’s the relation with the creepy neighbor and the monster? I know that sounds stupid. Are they the same person? Because i thought the neighbor wasn’t8 feet tall…or are they partners? Idk, just a little confused.

    1. He grew over time. “It was strange. Every time I saw him after that encounter, his pants had traveled up his ankles another centimeter. Midlife growth-spurt, I guess.”

  35. I don’t think the monster was eating the people, I think he was using their insides as decorations for his house. Delicious pasta 9/10

  36. Well, this one was… nice. I enjoyed the description (Although, all I saw in my mine was Mr. Face from Amnesia, but that’s besides the point.) When I first started this “I didn’t have to buy any candy this year because we live in a cul-de-sac out in the middle of a farming community on the outskirts of the city.” I thought to my self wow, perfect original set-up. *rolls eyes* Hallow’s eve, small child, outskirts, cul-de-sac, farming town. This hits all the points of an average pasta. -_- Going on, I could see that it was really quite obvious that the neighbor, who just so happens to be a military biologist with an experiment gone wrong theme, lives right next door and the perfect way to protect your child is to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING? No wonder he ended up dead. I don’t care if you never get to visit him again, it doesn’t mean you have to let the kid die. Over all 7/10 for lay-out and execution.

  37. Xavier, he was talking about the costume because the monster would be wearing a different costume from each of its victims, and it was wearing the Buzz Lightyear costume, from the kid.

  38. Thy Awesomeness

    ok, think i know what’s going on. /spoiler/ i think the creature who lives next door is killing these people, and taking their costumes to wear after he’s killed them. it makes sense if you look at it right.

    1. the guy next door has the weird Halloween decor all over his house. obviously, he’s involved.

    2. it is shown that the creature eats all sorts of meat, shown when it eats the cat.

    3. when James saw the creature, it was going from house to house, coming back with a different costume each time. presumably, the creature is eating the people at the door, taking their costumes possibly so it wouldn’t be recognized. or it just likes wearing the kill-prize. because of the bone decor on the weird neighbor’s house, the bag it’s holding is filled with the bones from its kill (since it’s a carnivore and ate all the meat), which it’s using to put in front of its house to add to it’s creepy collection.

    4. when the father checked on James, he was deep in his blankets and facing away from him. there is no proof that James is actually there. it could be the “stuff-a-pillow-in-your-place-and-hope-someone-thinks-it’s-you” trick in place. since the creature was seen coming out of the basement window or whatever, wearing the Buzz Lightyear costume, it can be presumed that it has eaten James. James is the new skeleton that the father recognizes./spoiler/

    i hope that clears it up a little.

  39. so… is the skeleton supposed to be his son or something? i didn’t really get the ending… is the thing sleeping the monster? but that aside, it is a very nice, well written story! i love the diary pastas.

  40. I have no idea what the end meant. I re-read it.. and I get the part with the dead kid, but why did the guy talk about the buzz lightyear costume? Was the weird neighbor the monster, and then he killed the kid and took his buzz lightyear costume? I don’t know. can someone clarify?

    1. dude. it ment that the creepy thing that killed the kid is a phycopath and he takes the costumes of the ones he murdures. duh

  41. @Tom:

    The last portion of the story was in present tense, so it seemed to be like a narration that was occurring as the events took place (starting at “It’s now past midnight”), and looked like the author had finished his last entry and the end-part was sort of inner monologue. It had a different feel to it as well. Also, it didn’t seem like the author was directly quoting what the child would say, except for the one phrase that you cited.

    I thought it was great, though. 9/10 for me.

  42. These “found diary” pastas are sometime quite good, but they often leave unanswered questions. The main one here is simply what happens next.

    I assume that the person in the bed is the monster and that it presumably kills the author, but if this is the case then when did he write the last entry? Additionally, if the author survives, why is this the end of the story? It seems unlikely he would have an encounter with the monster then write about everything up to that point and then stop.

    Unless, of course, this isn’t supposed to be a “found diary” pasta, and the diary layout is just a choice of ways to tell the story. The problem with this is that it feels out of place, and the reader doesn’t know what exactly they are supposed to be reading.

    I understand that it may be easier to write in this style, but it also leads to some further problems, such as when the author is talking about his son watching the monster. The author uses phrases and embellishments far beyond what a young child is likely to describe, further backed up by the fact that he also quotes the child as saying it has “millions of teeth” which itself sounds like a more reasonable thing for a child to say.

    All in all, a good effort and interesting monster idea, but with some details that could be reworked. 7/10

  43. WHO WAS BED??++

    All in all, a nice read. I personally liked the length of it, gives it more chance (if skillfully written, as in this case) to build up to the horrifying conclusion.

    The ending was a tad “disorienting”, had to read the last few paragraphs again for it to make sense. Not that I’d change it in any way, it’s excellent as it is.

    10/10 (I was going to give it 9/10, but the last point comes from the shudders I experienced when I read the ending…).

    1. I liked this one, too. But the fact that his neighbor had realistic decorations had nothing to do with this story? Was the in depth explanation just to throw us off? :s good pasta though 7/10

  44. See giant mutated neighbor-monster? Better do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

    Delicious pasta though. So happy to see new updates!
    : D

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