It’s late October, and I’m stuck in this dead-end job at Marty’s Video Rentals. Halloween’s coming, so the place is crawling with people who think they know horror. They don’t. They rent the same tired slashers, the same monsters that never change, never learn. Outside, the streets are strewn with brittle leaves, the air heavy with pumpkin spice. Everyone says it smells like home. To me, its sweet enough to make you gag if you breathe too deep.
Work here long enough and you start to learn people’s habits. The guy who swears he lives for slashers, but every Friday walks out with the same soft rom-com. Fraud. Fake. Makes my skin crawl. And the so-called “true horror fans”? I know you better than you think. I watch you drift down the aisles, pretending you’re hunting for something rare, something challenging. You’re not. You always end up clutching the same five titles like a child with their favourite blanket.
I don’t just remember what you rent, I remember when you come in, who you’re with, the way you hesitate in the horror aisle before grabbing your usual picks. Little details nobody thinks matter, but they do. They always do.
Tonight’s unlucky customer the one stuck with my awkward, half-remembered attempts at conversation is a girl from just a few blocks away. She used to ride her bike past my parents’ house, back when things were simpler less messy. Her name’s Emily. I know because her name is scrawled in neat handwriting on the rental card, she slides across the counter every Tuesday without fail.
She drifts through the aisles like she’s chasing something invisible, though I doubt she knows what it is. I step out from behind the counter, forcing a smile that feels like a mask stretched too tight.
“Looking for something scary tonight?” I ask, eyes fixed on the way her fingers twitch against the shelf. She wasn’t expecting me not tonight. Her eyes flicker with hesitation, caught between wanting to answer and wanting to disappear.
“You’ve got that look,” my voice dropping just low enough to feel like a warning. “The kind that already knows what’s coming.”
She swallows hard, forcing out a nervous laugh, but I catch the tremor beneath it the fear she tries to hide. Most people think they’re good at hiding. They’re not. Not from me.
She’s the first one in a long time to react like this. Most are obvious, or too polite to be interesting. I’ve even made a few acquaintances if you want to call them that. But Emily… she sees something in me that others don’t. And that unsettles me.
I’ve spent years watching people drift through these aisles each one a potential story, a puzzle I felt compelled to solve. At first, it was harmless enough. Curiosity. What movies did they choose? How did they move, speak, breathe? But curiosity rots if you let it sit too long. Mine festered into something else. Something sharper.
I learned their routines. Their ticks. The way one man always bought candy before picking a horror flick, he’d seen a hundred times. The way a woman’s eyes darted to the door every time it chimed, like she expected someone to follow her in.
Most were disappointments. Loud claims about loving slashers, betrayed by rentals of soft romances and safe dramas. Some were rude. Some were forgettable. None of them were worth what I gave them.
And yet, I followed them. Quietly. From the glow of the store lights to the shadow of their doorsteps. I wanted to see what lived under their masks. What they hid when the curtains were drawn. One by one, some… stopped showing up. Vanished, as if the ground had swallowed them.
Their families still come in sometimes, holding themselves together just enough to rent a movie or two. They smile politely. I smile back. We talk about nothing at all. They have no idea.
The past doesn’t go anywhere. It lingers in the hum of the televisions, in the faded covers of old tapes. It watches, waits. And now… Emily’s here.
But let’s leave the past where it belongs. It’s what’s in front of me that matters now. Emily. She’s different, enough of a challenge to make things interesting. That excites me.
Maybe I should give her something… special. Something that doesn’t just put her on the edge of her seat but pushes her clean off it. I reach for a blank VHS from the bottom shelf, the kind most people wouldn’t even notice.
“This one’s special,” my voice steady.
Her eyes flicker not just with fear of what might be on the tape, but of me. She takes it, anyway, trying to pass it off as politeness. But I see it: that tiny spark of curiosity, the part of her that wants to know what she shouldn’t.
This one will do more than scare her it’ll make her think about who handed it to her. That’s the point. It’ll make the cold night easier to bear when I’m outside, waiting in the dark, letting the wind bite at my face.
It’ll be worth it in the end. And maybe, if things go just right, I’ll meet her family someday.
Credit: R L
Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.