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A Hot Day



Estimated reading time — 6 minutes

The day was hot. Damn hot. I think the only reason these buckets of sweat stopped leaking out from my every pore is because I’d already been drained of all the water from my body. I just sat there panting like a dog. A searing, suffocating heat. The few clothes I had on were soaked full with the foul smelling sweat. Nobody here expected this kind of weather – we found ourselves unprepared for the melting.

“You know,” Grandpa starts off, “back in my day and I mean waaay back in my day, when I was about as young as you are…” Oh great, Gramps is off on one of his boring stories again. And it’s so freaking hot today! I’m not in the mood to sit through one of these lame oldman tales, but seeing as how he’s old and might drop dead from this heat at any moment, I let him continue. He and I sat outside under what pitiful coolness the trees offered.

“Back in my day I saw a heat wave like this. Only once though. They said it was the hottest day ever recorded. And you know what, boy?”

He waited for me to look in his direction. I shrugged.

“I believed it!”

Gee gramps, thank you for that all important fact…

“There isn’t a lot of time, boy.”

“Time for wha—“ I attempt to interject, but he is already moving on.

“Ever notice how Granny never wears short sleeves?”

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Come to think of it, I hadn’t. He must have observed my puzzled expression.

“From where they grabbed her.”

I felt my brows lower in confusion. “What are you talking about, gramps?”

“And that limp of hers? Notice she’s always hobbled about?” he continues, with a sort of glazed look in his eye. Perhaps the heat is already getting to him.

“Yeah, sure,” I say almost unconsciously. There is an ominous vibe between us now. I’ve never seen him like this. Something in his mannerisms is different.

“From the fall – busted her ankle real good. A tiny price, though, wouldn’t ya say, boy?”

I nodded, still unsure what the old man spoke of. He rocked back and forth in his chair. The dull squeaking of the metal legs annoyed me greatly in the heat. Then again, when it’s this blistering hot any little irritation will seem severe. His breathing even got my on nerves.

“They’re just things, boy. Nobody knows. Some say they fly, some say they walk, some say they tunnel in the ground, some say a lot of things. Some say they do it all.”

“What are you talking about, Grandpa?” I asked. He didn’t seem to register the question.

“She wanted to go, boy. I saw it in her eyes. Something, somehow she had been convinced to go. I knew right then and there that what I saw taking hold of her and what she saw, were two very different things.”’

I put my hand on his arm. “Gramps what are you—“

“It’s hot, boy!” he intoned quickly. “No touching. Stay on your side! It reminds me of that day so long ago… Hot just like this. Probably even hotter, well, maybe just as hot. You feel it don’t you, boy?”

“Yeah I feel it,” I told him, reclining back in my chair as the awkward nature of this conversation intensified. The sky didn’t harbor a single cloud. Dull blue stretches of space as far as the eye could see. No relief from the sun. Although, the heat didn’t seem to be emanating from the distant fireball. I guess it had to be. But somehow it felt like a closer source was creating this scorching, burning warmth.

Gramps lifted his arm from the chair, directing a hand toward the woods. “Some say they caused the heat. Something about them warmed the very air itself. But not me, no way, boy. I never thought they was the cause… I always thought they followed it. The things here never caused it. Something else did. They just came along with it.”

Alright… gramps’ story was becoming anything but boring. Downright unnerving in fact. He had a peculiar way of talking now which lead me to question whether he knew who was in front of him or not. “Would you like some water?” I offered.

Here I noticed Gramps would sporadically look to the sky or to the tall trees offering a bit of shade, although his face never changed as he did so. It remained just as stoic and straight as ever. I had to wonder how the man had so many wrinkles on his face in such strange places, when he never made a single expression.

“The neighbors too. I didn’t much care about them, though. Just your granny when they got hold—“

“Gramps… WHAT are you talking about!” My voice sounding perhaps a bit harsher than I intended.

“You’re never the same after,” he said, almost in a whisper. “No one is. How could you be?”

“GRANDPA!” I shook his arm. “What the hell are you going on about!”

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“I said don’t touch! …They, boy. They.”

“They? They who?”

“All those years ago, boy. When they came. On a hot day just like this one. Clear sky but you feel the warmth like it’s bubbling up from the ground. Like every blade of grass and pebble on the road is a hot stove.”

“That’s fine, grandpa! Yes I feel it too! Who is THEY? The FBI? A ghost? Some monster?”

“No, boy. I don’t believe in the supernatural. These things wasn’t the paranormal. They weren’t some ghost tale.” Gramps paused for a moment as he gathered a load of spit in his mouth, before forcefully expelling it from his lips with an awful sound as it sailed over my head (the loud sizzling effect as the liquid landed). “They were real. Who knows where they came from. Who knows how they came about. I just know they do come about. And when they do, boy, you don’t want to be about.”

Yup, definitely the heat. He must be off his rocker by now. I should probably take the hose to him. However, I’ll play along a bit more.

“What did they look like?” I questioned him, my palms beginning to sweat (and not just from the heat this time).

“What did they look like, boy? Something I never cared to see again. That’s what it looked like.” His unflinching resolution echoed in each of the words. My grandpa had never been a prankster. He’d never told a real joke in his life. I leaned in closer, my heart beating just a bit faster.

I looked more closely at his face, perhaps for the first time in my life, I really examined the lines. Like nothing I had ever seen in person before. At least not first hand. Extraordinary wrinkles you might say. Not your everyday old man set of wrinkles (however gross that sounds).

“Gramps,” I said, “how did you get all those lines on your face?”

And for a second I thought he almost smiled. “You don’t think they make me look perdy? Have you seen these kinds of lines before, boy?”

“Yes I think so.”

“Oh? Where at?”

And I did have a vague recollection. “They were in some book I saw a long time ago. Something about otherworldly or incredible encounters or something like that. There were several people with them in the book.”

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The old timer ran a bony finger along the deepest wrinkle stretching across his jaw line. They appeared to be little valleys carved right into the skin with an almost unnatural color to them.

“Boy,” he spoke, “I made this expression one time – all those years ago, just as I moved to save your granny from being… I made it one time. And they’ve been stuck ever since.”

I stared intently at his visage. “Do you think the heat, uhh, kind of burned them on? Or what happened?”

Gramps just grunted. His favorite answer most of the time.

“You were doing what for granny?”

“It’s not something you want to know about, boy. Hot day, just like this one… They came or she went… Makes no matter. The end was the same. You could never see, but you could always feel. I think they wanted you to sense their presence. To know they was about.”

There came a slight tremor in the ground. You could feel your feet shift ever so slightly. So minor you might just as easily have missed it, if not for my heightened senses and bated breath.

“But don’t worry yourself too much, boy. Not just yet. We’ve still some time left.”

“Gramps… please,” I whined, “Tell me wha—“

A large, fast moving shadow swept over the ground. I jerked my head upward but by the time my eyes reached the skies, there was nothing. I heard a branch snap from somewhere above us in the nearby tree line. Off on the horizon, the sun began its final descent for the day.

Grandpa put his hand on my knee. His face looked calm as he stared up toward the noise.

“Why don’t you and me go inside now, boy?”

The next sound came a little closer.

Credit To – S.R. Tooms

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20 thoughts on “A Hot Day”

  1. First, the story: the idea is it preys on everyone’s fear of the unknown. Are the things real? Is grandpa crazy? Is the heat affecting one, or both, of them? The narrator sees and hears something, but is it because his brain is heat addled? Is it because his grandpa is acting crazy so his imagination is running away from him (like it does when you read too much creepypasta late at night)? The narrator doesn’t know, and neither do you. ANY cp requires the suspension of a degree of disbelief, if this one didn’t work for you, maybe your imagination isn’t strong enough. Maybe you’ve never had experience with something like this and just can’t relate. Maybe you couldn’t get past the editing errors enough to get into the story. All are valid, just as someone who liked it is valid for whatever reason they liked it.

    The comments: why on earth are people arguing with each other about what they think of other people instead of on the story itself?! Someone complained about the first comment made, about how they haven’t written anything (which isn’t the case, but moot for my point here), so they shouldn’t be commenting on other’s work. I never played baseball, but I can tell if someone’s swing needs work and I can help them make it better, even if my swing is crap. I can read a story and decide if it was good or bad for myself, even though I’ve not written one. Saying something is good or bad isn’t a claim that you can do better, it’s a statement regarding that “thing” – nothing more.

  2. I’m suprised this story recieved such a low rating. Although it wasn’t off the wall creepy, it was definitely an interesting read and I could imagine what was going on as they talked clearly. I give it a 8.5/10

  3. I liked that the grandpa made me feel frustrated with his vagueness but im pretty disappointed in the lack of detail of the monster. Theres no description at all to tell us what it looks like or why we should be scared. For all we know it could be taking our grannies on a nice vacation…

  4. I enjoyed this. I don’t know how to explain it but I liked it. I believe it’s how you spent your life that will portray the story to you. I’ve had my childhood watching all kinds of cartoons and hearing many stories like these. I guess it’s the curiosity that makes me like this or something close. The story in my view is about an old man and his wife, or rather Couple when they experienced it, who had an encounter with “Them” or paranormal beings. The old man tells(very vaguely) his grandson about how they came on a day like today. So he’s pretty much warning the grandson before They come. Once they make their appearance or their presence known the grandpa takes his son in to not suffer the same fate as his grandma. (I meant same fate as in wanting to go not death)
    I probably gave a bad explanation so think of a UFO abduction at a farm. Closest simplest thing I can relate to it right now.

  5. CMT:
    Then nothing happened, since the narrator is still able to tell the story afterwards, in past tense (although some passages are in present tense for no discernible reason). This takes a lot of the creep factor (not much to begin with) away.
    The story is definitely too vague, the reader isn’t able to imagine what he should be afraid of, or even IF he should be afraid, since the grandfather might as well be rambling for a heatstroke, there’s no proof to the contrary.

    I see you make a lot of negative comments on many stories. Yet… You have yet to write one. Lets see a work of art. Sense you are obvious a litariture genius.

    1. Oh, apparently you haven’t done your research well enough. “The Doll Cemetary” is an amazing story, written by – can you guess? – CMT. So, next time you want to say something about someone, make sure you look up what you are talking about.

      **Oh, and obviousLY you aren’t a LITERATURE genius, seeing how you spelled since wrong.

      You made a fool of yourself, bruh.

  6. I feel like the lone wolf saying I actually liked this one a lot. Is Grandpa nuts? Is it just the heat making the narrator uneasy? Or is there some otherworldly presence approaching, hoping to steal away unsuspecting grannies? All jokes aside, I enjoyed this pasta’s ability to make the reader feel the frustration, uneasiness and agitation of the narrator.

  7. The story is very vague. Not enough information is given to the reader to imagine the malevolent presence supposedly plaguing Grandpa. It felt like Grandpa was just suffering from a combination of heatstroke and dementia. The protagonist felt a very slight tremor, that one could not feel without his heightened senses. Who is to say the heat was not getting to him as well?

    On the bright side, the dialogue was able to build suspense and tension, which is a must in any scary story. However, the story fell flat due to the vague, almost non-existent threat.

    Another point would be the writer’s usage of both past AND present tense. Stick to one, either past of present. Do not use both as it is grammatically incorrect and it just makes everything confusing and irritating to read.

    Thirdly, sentence structure. The writer’s use of descriptive sentences in the opening paragraphs do not sound right. They feel disjointed and some sentences redundant and out of context.

    In conclusion, not a very good story and the writer needs to work on his writing and language skills.

  8. Well written; a pleasant read. I’m sure there will be some who won’t find this pasta creepy or busy enough, or they won’t be satisfied with the subtle ending, but, personally, I’ve always enjoyed a short tale that plays on the interaction between only a couple of characters. This tale had a homey, simplified feel to it that I enjoyed.

  9. Wow…I wonder what that thing is.That grandpa was getting on my nerves, not answering the boy’s questions.But in all, great story.9 1/2 out of 10.

  10. Then nothing happened, since the narrator is still able to tell the story afterwards, in past tense (although some passages are in present tense for no discernible reason). This takes a lot of the creep factor (not much to begin with) away.
    The story is definitely too vague, the reader isn’t able to imagine what he should be afraid of, or even IF he should be afraid, since the grandfather might as well be rambling for a heatstroke, there’s no proof to the contrary.

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