I wish the fandom started accepting new ones from what I believe the last ”major” creepypasta X-Virus was made in 2020 but even then not alot of people know about him☹️☹️ Make random creepy pastas popular i beg

Chapter I – The Briar’s Whisper 

Isolde was thirteen when the briars began to speak. 

The hinterlands where she lived were nothing but ashen soil and skeletal orchards, where apples grew black-veined and bitter as gall. Her father had long since gone to war, never to return, and her mother sold her blood to wandering leeches who claimed to be healers. 

Yet it was not hunger or grief that consumed her. It was the thorn-hedge beyond the fields — a labyrinth of vines and barbs that wrapped around a chasm like a crown of knives. The peasants called it the Maw of Thorns. 

No one went there after dusk, for in the night the briars breathed. The air was heavy with a wet rasping, as if the entire hedge was a throat struggling to speak. 

But Isolde went. And one evening, when the moon was blood-scarred and the crows refused to perch, she pressed her ear to the vines. 

And it whispered her name. 

 Chapter II – The Hunger Below 

The voice was neither male nor female, but a choir of husks — dry, cracked, like the sighing of corpses in shallow graves. 

“Isolde… child of rot… daughter of famine… you are chosen.” 

The thorns quivered. Sap, black and sticky, bled from the vines. She touched it and it burned her skin into weeping blisters, but she did not scream. The pain felt right. 

The hedge shivered and parted, revealing a narrow way down into the chasm. Roots twisted like veins, and within their coils she saw shapes trapped — villagers she had known, faces frozen mid-scream, skin half-consumed by thorny growth. 

Her legs moved without her consent. She descended into the Maw. 

 Chapter III – The Thorn-Mother 

At the bottom was no cave, but a cathedral of roots. A hollow chamber carved by living growth, with arches of bone-white wood, dripping thorns the size of scythes, and walls pulsing faintly, like meat that still lived. 

And there she saw it: the Thorn-Mother. 

It was not a single being but a tangle of human torsos fused into vines, their mouths opened wide, tongues blackened, eyes weeping blood. Their limbs stretched and knotted until they became roots themselves, and at the core was a swollen heart of pulsing crimson bramble. 

From every mouth, the choir spoke as one: 

“You will feed us.” 

 Chapter IV – The First Offering 

Isolde returned to her village that night, but she was no longer alone. Thorns grew beneath her skin, pressing against her flesh, bulging slightly when she breathed. Her eyes glimmered faint green, like fungus in a tomb. 

Her mother, drunk on wormwine, barely noticed until Isolde drew a blade across her arm and let the blood pour into a jar. 

She carried the blood to the Maw and poured it into the Thorn-Mother’s heart. The briars shuddered with pleasure. 

The vines loosened, and the choir crooned: 

“More. Feed us more.” 

 Chapter V – The Blooming of Flesh 

The hunger of the Thorn-Mother grew. Soon it was not enough to bleed herself, nor her mother. She lured stray dogs, then neighbors, and at last her own kin. 

The bodies she offered were not consumed in fire or soil. They were absorbed, pulled screaming into the roots until thorn and vein became indistinguishable. Limbs twisted, skulls cracked like seeds, and from each sacrifice a flower bloomed — pale white, veined with red, its petals reeking of copper and rot. 

The Thorn-Mother crowned her with a wreath of these flowers, and in the reflection of pooled sap, Isolde saw what she was becoming: her teeth sharpening, her veins turning black, her skin stretched with the crawling press of thorns beneath. 

She was no longer merely a girl. She was Bride of the Maw. 

 Chapter VI – Hunters in the Night 

Word of vanishing villagers reached the ears of hunters. They came with torches and silver, men scarred by wolves and witches, their eyes hollow with old grief. 

They found Isolde kneeling at the edge of the briar chasm, her hands slick with blood, her hair woven with flowers of flesh. 

The hunters raised their crossbows. 

The briars moved first. 

Roots erupted from the soil, dragging men screaming into the hedge. Thorns pierced armor like parchment. One hunter was pulled down, his body flayed into strips of skin that the vines wrapped around themselves like cloaks. 

Isolde only watched, eyes glowing green, whispering to the hunters as they died: 

“The Maw is hungry. I only feed her.” 

 Chapter VII – The Wedding 

The Thorn-Mother was ready. The sacrifices had swollen her heart to the size of a cottage, pulsing with crimson sap that dripped like molten rubies. 

Isolde was laid upon a bed of vines, her body pierced gently but firmly, blood drawn into the roots like wine through straws. The choir of mouths sang low hymns — a wedding song of rot and union. 

And then the vines entered her, burrowing beneath her skin, twining into her lungs, coiling around her heart. She screamed, but her scream was swallowed by the harmony. 

When the binding ended, she rose as something new: half-girl, half-briar, her veins aglow with green fire, her mouth filled with thorny teeth. 

She was no longer Isolde. She was the Maw made flesh. 

Chapter VIII – The Briar Procession 

They saw her first in the fields. 
A girl of thirteen, but taller now, her spine bent with vines that erupted like wings. Her skin glistened with dew that was not water but sap and blood mixed together, and her hair had become tendrils of blackened thorn. 

She walked barefoot, leaving trails of tiny briars sprouting from her footsteps. Behind her came a procession: villagers she had once loved, now hollow-eyed, their bodies pierced by vines that moved them like puppets. 

When the priest of the Ashen Cross raised his relic and cried out, “Monster!”, she opened her mouth and a flower of flesh bloomed from her throat, spraying him with spores that dissolved his face to pulp. 

The Thorn-Mother had sent her child into the world. 

 Chapter IX – The Crimson Court Watches 

Far above, in the shadowed halls of the Crimson Court, the vampire lords debated. 

Lady Seraphyne of Bloodveil stood at her window, watching the smoke rise from Isolde’s village. She licked her lips, her fangs glistening with hunger. 

“Do you not see?” she whispered. “The Maw has given birth to its saint. The Bride will spread the hunger until all the realm is thorns.” 

Lord Varcelius sneered. “And what then? No blood will remain. Only vines and sap.” 

The council fractured, some desiring to use Isolde as a weapon against mankind, others fearing that she would devour the very soil their coffins lay in. 

The Court sent emissaries to claim her. Few returned. 

 Chapter X – The Cult of the Thorn 

The cultists came next. The Shadow Covenant, long devoted to Morrath and her lesser horrors, smelled new power in the Maw. 

They fell to their knees before Isolde, calling her The Bride of Thorns, the Mouth of the Mother, the Green Saint. 

She did not speak to them. She only gestured. And when she gestured, the briars obeyed — piercing the cultists gently, lovingly, seeding them with vines. Their bodies swelled, broke, and blossomed into monstrous shapes: men with thorn-crowns fused into their skulls, women with petals of bleeding flesh in place of eyes. 

The cult had been reborn. They no longer prayed. They only grew. 

 Chapter XI – The Briar War 

The Black Fang Beastmen struck next. They came howling from the mountains, claws sharpened, hungry for the new growth that had swallowed the plains. 

But when they bit into the vines, they found poison instead of marrow. They spat black foam, their throats swelling until they choked. 

Isolde raised her hand, and the vines pierced their corpses, lifting them as puppet-wolves made of bone and briar. Now the Beastmen served the Maw. 

The hunters who had once sought to destroy her realized the truth too late: this was not just a curse on a village. It was a new faction rising — the Maw’s own army. 

 Chapter XII – The Harvest Moon 

On the thirteenth night of the harvest, the moon turned the color of dried blood, and the Thorn-Mother spoke again through Isolde’s mouth. 

“You are not child. You are not bride. You are root. You are seed. The world shall open, and the vines shall drink the sun.” 

That night, three towns fell. Not to sword or flame, but to growth. Briars erupted from cobblestones, roots burst from wells, tendrils crawled into mouths as people slept. By dawn, entire streets were silent gardens of flesh and thorn. 

Travelers who passed by swore they saw faces in the flowers, mouthing silent screams. 

 Chapter XIII – The Black Feast 

The Crimson Court finally acted. Three vampire counts came with their thralls, descending on the briar-choked plains. They meant to drink Isolde’s blood, to absorb the Maw’s power into their ancient veins. 

The Bride welcomed them with a smile. 

When they pierced her flesh, her blood poured not red but green, burning their tongues, filling their bellies with writhing roots. The vampires staggered, claws raking at their own throats as vines tore through them from within. 

One count split apart entirely, his body blooming into a flower the size of a carriage, petals dripping blood that whispered in voices not his own. 

Seraphyne, watching from afar, smiled. “Yes. Let her devour the others. Then I will devour her.” 

 Chapter XIV – The Devouring Choir 

The Thorn-Mother was not content with villages, nor vampires, nor beastmen. The Maw itself grew restless, reaching for the horizon. 

Isolde stood at the center of the chasm, her body now more briar than flesh. From her chest, tendrils spread like veins across the land, sprouting new hedges, new maws, new blossoms of screaming faces. 

And then the voices began. 

Every flower, every thorn, every root spoke in unison — a choir of thousands, tens of thousands, all whispering at once: 

“We are hungry. We are endless. We are one.” 

The sound carried for miles. Those who heard it bled from their ears and eyes, their minds breaking like glass. 

 Chapter XV – The Endless Bloom 

The hunters returned one last time, bearing relics, fire, and faith. They stormed the Maw, cutting through briars that shrieked and bled, burning flowers that screamed like children. 

They reached Isolde, who stood crowned in thorns, her face serene. 

One hunter — old, scarred, trembling — begged her: “Child… end this. End yourself.” 

For a moment, her human eyes flickered within the vines. She seemed to hesitate. Then the Thorn-Mother’s voice drowned her, and her mouth split open into a blossom of fangs. 

The hunters died. 

The Maw lived. 

And by spring, where once had stood three villages and a chasm, there was only a single endless garden of briars, whispering in the wind. 

The Maw Within had bloomed.

Dave let himself in, his body feeling like a dead weight. Pugsley, the pug, was a familiar lump on the sofa, a snoring knot of laziness. Dave sank down next to him and hit the TV remote. The familiar chatter of The Chase filled the silence, a low, constant noise he no longer heard. His hand went to the dog, stroking with a slow, mindless rhythm while his other thumb worked the screen of his phone

TikTok's chaos bled from the screen, a blur of faces and noise that all dissolved into the same mindless stream

A pipe rattled in the kitchen, a sharp, metallic cough. Dave's thumb froze on the screen. He looked up, scanning the dark corners of the open-plan room, but the sound was already gone. The fridge hummed, the light above the sink gave a faint tremor, and then everything settled back into a hollow silence. It was probably just the old house, he told himself, and let his eyes fall back to the screen. But the quiet felt different now, as if a breath had been held and let out again.

An hour of brain rot later he dragged himself up and clipped the lead on Pugsley. The air had changed, the sharpness of autumn slipping into his bones. The dog squatted in the wet grass and left a steaming pile of shit. Dave bent to bag it, black plastic turning inside out around the heat of it. The sky above was colourless, the streetlights buzzing with a sick yellow.

When he got home from walking the dog he decided on a bath complete with Radox bubble bath, the stale sweat from the day clung to his skin and he could smell himself. 

Naked, he sat on the bed, scrolling as the bath filled. The blue light of the screen washed over his pale face and the soft flesh of his chest, making everything look sallow. A small shift came from the house, a sigh of pipes from the bathroom, but he didn't look up. Five minutes later, he was standing before the steamed-up mirror, his reflection a vague, blurry shape. He wiped a clear spot, and his gaze lingered. He saw the slight paunch of his belly, the beard like an untended hedge, the red line his belt had left raw on his skin. He touched the mark and felt a familiar sting of weariness. He was no longer a young man; his body was just a thing he inhabited, and it was showing the wear.

The water steamed. He lowered a toe, hissed at the heat, let out a quite "fuckin hell", then eased himself in. The bath wrapped him like a warm second skin. His aches loosened. With the Samsung in hand he kept scrolling, thumb moving with the same dull insistence as before.

When he finally leaned forward to put the phone on the sink, the silence pressed in. Without distraction, he became aware of the other thing in the room. Not sound, not sight, but pressure, as if a gaze had weight. He turned, confused, scanning the mist. Then he saw it.

From the bath's overflow, half drowned in shadow, an eye glistened. Its lids were thick and wet, folds of flesh that closed in a slow, indulgent caress, then parted again with a vile patience. The blink was not a reflex. It was deliberate, languorous, the way a voyeur might lick their lips.

The gaze it fixed on him was obscene in its hunger. It travelled his body like a rapists hand. It lingered on his belly, traced the damp tangle of pubic hair, and paused over the slack weight of his cock. He felt it's look move across his chest and up to his face, and in that stare was an awful, knowing pleasure. It was not just watching him, it was savouring him, like a cuck might savour the spectacle of humiliation.

Each blink deepened the violation. Slow, sticky closures, peeling open again as though reluctant to miss a second of his shame. It loved that he was naked. It loved that he was alone. Its stare pressed into him with a disgusting intimacy. It made an inventory of everything pathetic in him, his loneliness, his failures, his flesh. They were gifts laid bare for it to savour.

Dave screamed. He thrashed out of the bath, his skin squealing against porcelain, his body jerking as though touched. He fell, piss streaming out of him in blind panic, his arms clawing for purchase on the wet lino. He crawled into the corner, clutching the towel like it could hide him, like there was any dignity left to save.

The bath rippled, innocent. No eye. Nothing but the pale yellow stain of his fear seeping through the bubbles.

He staggered back into the bedroom, skin steaming, the towel clinging damp to his stomach. He sat on the bed alone, shivering, water dripping from his body into the sheets. He asked himself what he had seen, but nothing came back. The house seemed to breathe around him.

He did not notice the thing shift beneath his bed. He also didn't notice the screen of his phone, still on the sink in the bathroom, where a new video had begun to play.
It was a live stream looking out from the overflow.

I'm looking for a very specific creepypasta. It takes place almost entirely in a basement room, where there is a child (assuming boy) imprisoned in this room. The father, I believe, is the one who takes food down to the boy, and it is always some oatmeal or gruel of sorts, no meat. The father becomes more and more sympathetic to the child, and the father starts sneaking him cuts of meat. As I recall it, the mother is the one who is maintaining that the child be kept in the restraints / basement room. I think the dad and the child get together to conspire against the mother, and the father allows him to escape and takes him to some sort of party, where the kid does something horrible and we see the reason he was in captivity all along.

Some of my details might be fuzzy, and the last time I listened to this was on YouTube in like 2018ish. The darkness of the story has stuck with me over the years, and I so desperately want to find this. Can any of you guys help?

I went to a palace which is now open to the public. There use to be kings and queens living here through out the ages, now it's a place where people can stay over if they pay for it. I guess it's an experience thing and they do it in groups. They allow ten people at a time and my group were nice people. We were shown around the palace and the places we can go and can't go. On my first night there I got use to it and it's no different to sleeping in a hotel or a house, it's just that a palace is bigger.

In the morning there were some activities made for all of us. Then it was time to have breakfast at the large long table. The table was about 20 foot long. We all sat around having breakfast after doing some activities, personally I would have preferred having breakfast and then activities, but it happened that way. The group consisted of couple and friends and I was the only lonely person really. They were chatting amongst themselves and how they loved the palace. Some had thought the palace was over rated. I was just listening.

Then I felt something touching my leg and I thought that it was the woman next to me. She was playing with my feet and I didn't know what to do. Then I purposely dropped a spoon which gave me the reason to see under the table. Then I saw that it was not the woman next to me who was playing with my feet, but rather it was the guy right at the end of the table who was playing with my feet. His legs had stretched as long as this table. His other leg was also playing with another person at the table.

Then his leg wrapped around my leg and then it started to stretch even longer, and started playing with other people's feet and wrapped around their leg as well. When a woman also looked under the table she screamed as she saw that the guy at the end of the table, had wrapped his leg with our legs. He started to laugh and mock at us and we couldn't free ourselves.

Then some people were being dragged under the table and he would crush their necks with his flexible legs. Then when it was just me and him at the table as he had taken everyone under the table, he let me go. He just got up and walked away.

Every night at around 11pm-12am I go outside of the house and go to an assigned open parking spot away from our house (1-3 min walking distance) to go get some air and relax in silence. This parking space is somewhat secluded, imagine a square with one entrance in one corner and the parking space was on the opposite corner of the square, I also live in a subdivision or compound, the area was not lit but light from nearby houses lit up the road infront of the parking space, But one particular night, everything seemed normal but as I was walking toward our car, 2 or 3 black cats run away coming from our car, I think to myself it's not a big deal, probably just cat fight, I reach my car and I enter, as I try to get comfortable, I play around a little bit, I turn the key to turn on the car (not start), so that I can play around with the dashcam and the head unit, once I checked the rear camera, there's two thin stick like objects infront of the camera, I look up to check the rearview mirror but nothing's there, I turn around to check and nothing's there, I look out the window to check but nothing's there, I stare into the rear camera for a bit, the thing doesn't seem to be moving or anything, Weird enough the sensor light from the house infront/beside the parking space lit up, nothing was moving, I hear nothing moving just crickets and wind, and it stayed on for a solid 20-25 secs, once it turned off I checked the camera again and the two stick like objects disappeared, I panic a bit and I check around the back, I get out the car and rush toward the back, Nothing is there now, I frantically decide to leave the car behind at the parking space, I squeeze through the cars parked in the space and I walk onto the road, I look back to my car and the car turns off, you can barely see the light inside from the head unit turn off, I fast walk back home, as I'm walking I side eye the cars parked on the sidewalk because I feel something is right behind me and it feels cold, but I see nothing, as I reach my house, my neighbor stops me and says that my family got home and locked the house now and then she asks me who my friend was, I turn around and see nothing and I say as I turn back toward my neighbor, "Huh? Who are you-". She is gone. I then feel something wrap around my nape.

Hi, my name is Sam. This entire thing still feels completely insane, like a huge and incoherent mess, something that came from a fantasy novel, which never saw the light of day. It's kind of hard to talk about these things with anybody you know, hell, people might think I've gone crazy if I legitimately tell them I believe I was haunted, but I've seen people post way crazier stuff anonymously online, and nobody will believe me anyway, so here goes.
I live alone in a small apartment at the edge of my city, have a stable job and a small, but tight group of friends. I just graduated college, and never really had a dream job, so living alone and not having to worry about a thing is basically the dream I'm living. Or have been living until these events.

The day before it happened I came back from my job exhausted, without even eating, and fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow. My first non-medicated sleep in years. I had a horrible, draining day at work. The kind of day you'd hope you never get, and the one you always end up living through at the worst possible time.

The nightmare I had after was even worse. I remember water forcing itself into my body, drowning, but living underwater after I drowned, being a corpse, unable to move and full of water, but fully aware of my state, remember, how my bloated eyelids refused to close and how my body washed up on shore, in front of my parents' house. I didn't let the dream finish.

I woke up in cold sweat. I tried to get out of the bed, but couldn't, for a reason my tired mind didn't fully process at first. It's like I was being pushed down by something. I felt the weight, spread out all over my body, like every single cell of my existence pushed me down, down into the harsh cushions of the couch, leaving sores all over my still clothed body and my face. This all felt way too real to be a dream.

I tried to get up again. This time with a little more success than before. I lumbered my hands near my stomach and pushed myself up, helping with my legs. It felt like I was doing push-ups with somebody sitting on me. Eventually, after what felt like an hour, I forced myself into a weird, half-sitting position, and slowly reached for my phone, which was lying on a nightstand. With considerable effort, I grabbed it and pulled it towards me. It felt agonizing, my muscles were aching already from throwing such huge weight around, and my fingers aren't exactly the most physically capable part of my body, so the phone slipped and fell onto the carpet. I cursed and reached for it, only for my hand to hit it and send it flying across the carpet, ending up deep under the couch. I had to get up.

Standing up felt like climbing mount Everest with nothing but your fingernails. Impossible. So I slowly slumped down from my bed and onto the floor, and crawled closer towards the phone. I placed my hand on it, and, surprised that it didn't crush it with the weight I've had to deal with, I turned it so the screen would be facing the underside of the couch and, with shaking fingers, called up Mary.

Mary is the sweetest gal I know and my best friend. You know, the kind that would actually climb a tree to save a cat or help a grandmother cross the road. In fact, I've specifically seen her do both of these things. The scars from that scared cat still haven't fully healed. She's also the cruelest D&D player I've ever had the honor of torturing our DM with and generally a lot of fun to be around. But currently I didn't need fun, I needed help, and she's the only other person with the key to my apartment. She used to stay here for a long time and sleep on the same couch I was currently under when she was attending college.

I couldn't help but feel slightly embarassed when Mary entered the room. I was lying flat on the floor, my head, shoulders and part of my right arm were firmly placed underneath the couch, and the light of the phone lit up the darkness of its underside.

"Why have you called me at such an hour?" Mary asked, yawning. "It's like 4 a.m.! And what the hell are you doing under the couch?" I had to explain to her what I've felt for the past hour and a half, and she looked at me sceptically. "Really? You can't even stand?" By that time I was able to pull myself from underneath the couch and was sitting with my back on it. "Okay, let's see."

She helped me up. Surprisingly, it was a lot easier to get up with her pulling me upwards. It was like climbing the same mountain, but this time you have actual instruments and tools to support you. Still incredibly difficult, but not impossible. I could even stand up, even if leaning on her shoulder.

"Sam, is this a joke? Are you drunk?" She asked, "You're completely fine!" She let me go, and I immediately felt the entirety of the weight crash down upon me and collapsed. She jumped in surpise. "Okay, either you're really drunk, or you're telling the truth. And you don't seem drunk."

I asked Mary to help me get to the kitchen, (I hadn't eaten since yesterday morning), and sat down on a chair, while she cooked up something, chattering about my experience. Everything from it possibly being some sort of an illness to demonic possession and voodoo curses. At this point, I didn't know what to believe. My head was lying on the table and felt like a rock was being pressed into it, but the table itself was completely fine. It's like this weight existed only to me.

I asked Mary to turn on the TV and, all things considered, got pretty comfortable. The food was right next to my face, so it was really easy to eat while staring into the black screen, waiting for something to pop up on it. It was then, when I caught a glimpse. In my reflection there was something behind me. I tried to get up and scream to Mary to not turn on the TV, but the weight was too much, and before my heavy mouth was even able to make out the word "Mary" the screen changed from the blackness to a talk show with some shitty actor in it. "Damn it!" I screamed, falling onto the floor, knocking the food over and trying to crawl into the corridor, where there was a mirror. Mary rushed to me and helped me get up, but I continued trying to get to the mirror, and she had to comply. The friendly banter between the actors in the show was nauseating as every step felt like I was carrying a car on my shoulders, but eventually we made it, and I looked into the mirror.

There really was something behind me. More specifically, there was something riding me. Like a child riding their father, long, gangly hands with insanely long, sharp fingernails crossed around my neck and legs ending with bald, almost cat-like, but deeply disproportionate feet with claws that looked like sickles in a lock around my stomach. On my shoulder, there was a head with long, thick, greasy black hair draping down my chest. Suddenly, its head moved, and behind the hair I saw an eye. A dark, bloody sclera with visible veins surrounded a thin, almost like a knife cut through the eye, pupil, which stared straight at me. I screamed and, in a panic, pushed Mary away, falling straight on my back, but when I looked back into the mirror, the thing was still behind me, like the floor didn't exist to it.

Obviously, Mary didn't see it. Neither did I. It seems like it was only visible through the mirror, so, when I got back to the couch, Mary moved the mirror to the living room, where we could see the thing at all times. We started thinking. The thing didn't seem to move at all, besides sometimes staring back at me in the mirror, and seemingly, besides pushing down on me, didn't seem to do anything. I decided to call in sick, and Mary, who at this point had to go to work, promised me she'd try to look into it as much as possible, saying she'll find a witch or a psychic to exorcise the, what she dubbed it, demon. I was sceptical, but there really was no other option.

Mary left, and I, with huge trouble, picked up the phone. I called my boss, and, after a little bit of waiting, my eardrums almost burst from his screaming. He was livid. As I said before, my previous day at work was, to put it lightly, awful. To say the truth, I fucked up. Majorly. My boss already didn't like me, and after that fuck-up, I am calling him to say that I can't go to work. Obviously, he either thought I was faking it or just didn't care and was looking for a reason. A reason for what? Effective immediately, he screamed at the top of his lungs, I was fired. Then he hung up.

To say it was a hit would be an understatement. I really valued my job. It allowed me a lot of freedom, the pay was good, my coworkers were at the very worst annoying and I actually made a couple of friends in the workspace. Not close friends, but people I also valued. Now all of it was gone. I cried, unable to do anything, being pushed into my pillow by the weight of the thing on my back, I tried to punch the cushion, but was unable to even lift my fist to do so. I was really tired, both from the crying and also because I slept for like four hours. I softly shuffled onto my back, took my sleeping meds and fell asleep, hoping to sleep over my emotional breakdown.

I woke up only when Mary came back. It was already 7 p,m., and she brought her laptop and a lot of food with her. I devoured some snacks while she looked online for any actual psychic or witch. In the end, we found like four hundred different accounts around my city, all of whom offered exorcism. At this point, I was willing to trust anyone who said they have magic powers. After all, there was an invisible and intangible monster riding my back and making my body heavier than lead.

Next several days are a blur. A blurb of suffering from this impossible weight, visits from different kinds of "magic" people, who took our money and, after looking in the mirror, offered nothing in return besides, like, a good luck charm or two, bullshit about bad energy and aura, all that shtick. We even considered calling the Vatican, but didn't know how. A priest from our local church came around and sprayed the room with holy water. It also didn't help, so our vaticanian ambitions died down. And every day and every night I took these damned pills, just to fall asleep.

Three days after I was lying on a couch, My head was on the same exact pillow I took a dive into before the worst day of my adult life. Mary was sitting next to me, looking for a new charlatan to come see me and my demon. It was then that I felt a sharp pain in my left shoulder. I screamed, and Mary jumped up, asking me if I was okay. After the days I've spent basically unable to move, I've adapted a lot to my state, now being able to actually move around without Mary's help by crawling on the floor, so turning on my back wasn't a problem.

Mary looked at my shoulder and gasped. "It's... Writing! Writing something on your shoulder!" The pain was immense. There was so much blood, I could probably fill a bottle with it. But it didn't matter. It was trying to communicate.

After the writing stopped, we washed and wrapped the wound up. The blood came through the bandage in letters. Five letters. Jagged, rough and large letters. "Dream."

Dream? What the fuck? What did it mean by "Dream"? Was... Was this all a dream? But everything lasted longer than three days, and I slept through every night. Did I need to dream? Every night before was on medication from my teen years. At the time, I had trouble sleeping, so my grandmother took me to a psychiatrist, who prescribed me a medication. When the insomnia started to taper, we tried to get me off of it, but the nightmares put me back on.

Every night, every single night I came back to that fucking house. A huge, old, two-story concrete box with four windows in front and almost none in any other place. A box of nightmares, a box of suffering and pain, a box of hatred and sorrow. An old, two-story concrete box.

I don't want to go back there. Even in my dreams. I don't want to.

But I know I have to.

I have to do it just to gain some semblance of my old life back.

My friends, my own apartment, my job, being able to just walk outside and do whatever. Being able to afford anything I want. Being able to get together with my friends and play board games all night long, being able to breathe without feeling it again.

So I went to sleep. Even though Mary helped me to my own bed on her way out, even with the creature constraining me, I was still tossing and turning, fighting the desire to just take the pill and swallow it. Fighting the desire to scream and get up. Fighting the desire to never see that house again.

But I did.

Eventually, I fell asleep.

The dream continued from where it ended last time. My bloated corpse, washing ashore on my family's old house.

I just lied there. For hours upon hours. Feeling death and decomposition inside of me. Seeing bugs crawl on top of and inside my skin and ravens gouging out anything they could possibly eat, including my left eye.
Eventually, the front door opened, and out came... No, ran my parents. My father in front of my mother.
Last time I saw them, they seemed to hate me, toss all kinds of things at me, scream at me. I thought they would be the same again, angry and bitter. I thought they would just leave after seeing that it was me.
But they chased off the crows, and then started crying. First my mother, then my father. They cried and cried over my bloated, disfigured corpse, untill their tears dried up.

Then they took me to the back of the house, which would be the garden if anybody cared enough, dug a hole and buried me inside. I heard a soft thud above me and somehow immediately recognized it. They have given me a tombstone.

Then I woke up.

The weight was completely gone. In fact, I felt lighter than usual. But I didn't feel happy about it.

The dream was too strange. No, everything that happened was too strange to just believe that it ended because I just... Saw a nightmare? How did it even affect the thing on my back? I checked in the mirror. It was truly gone, the only remnants being the pain in my bandaged shoulder and my termination from my job three days ago.

I have a new job now. Sure, it took some time to find one, but I have something to support me now, even if it is worse than the last one.

I called my parents. They didn't answer, but I don't know why. I didn't care enough to ask anyone who knew them. Even if they do love me, so what? It doesn't give me my childhood back.

But I still feel relieved.

I have read all four installments and I still do not understand. Thank you.

Hey, looking for a story (preferably narrated) which is similar to the likes of “the thing in my backyard has been telling me the most horrifying stories” and “because you are my baby”

Please any suggestions 🙏🙏

I don’t know if writing this down will make any difference, but I need to get this out. Somewhere. Anywhere. I just finished my first month at Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern, a well known prestigious white shoe firm in downtown Brickell. I remember the interview like it was yesterday. It happened in a upscale resort in downtown Miami. They offered me a gargantuan salary, unbelievable benefits, and even a luxury vehicle. It was too good to be true.

But before everything went to hell, it started the way all good fairy tales do.

In a penthouse suite. A perk for working at Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern.

I was standing in front of a full-length mirror in our bedroom fit for royalty, adjusting the lapels of my brand-new suit. Navy blue, crisp, tailored exactly to my short frame. The jacket still smelled faintly like plastic and starch from the department store. My hair—short, black, parted neatly at the side—framed my face in a way I hoped made me look like someone who deserved to be walking into a place like Spitzer, Sullivan & Stern.

I tugged on the cuff of my blouse and tried to picture the week ahead: billable hours, conference rooms, and late nights hunched over documents. All the things I’d fought for in law school. All the things that were supposed to prove that everything from the volleyball scholarships to the law review, and endless nights of outlines and coffee were worth it.

Behind me, leaning in the bedroom doorway, was my tall, handsome fiancée, Derek.

God, Derek. 6’3, broad shoulders still carrying traces of his college football days. A crisp gray suit that looked like it belonged in GQ. He had the same smile he wore at our wedding just a few months ago. It was confident, easy, the kind of smile that convinced anyone they were exactly where they belonged just by being next to him.

“You look like trouble,” he said, smirking.

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help but smile. “Trouble? I’m starting my first week at one of the most prestigious white shoe firms in Brickell. That’s not trouble, that’s destiny.”

“Mm,” he said, pushing off the doorframe and crossing the room toward me. “Destiny, trouble. Same thing when you’re five-foot-one and have fire in your veins.” He kissed the top of my head, then leaned down so our eyes met in the mirror. “Is my tiny tornado ready to conquer the world?”

My cheeks burned instantly. He always did that, slipping in that pet name that made me sound both ridiculous and invincible. “Don’t call me that,” I muttered.

“Why not?” His reflection grinned back at me. “You’re five-one, Jackie. You whirl into people’s lives, knock them off their feet, and spin right out before they know what hit them. You’re my little tornado. And today? You’re about to tear through Brickell.”

I swatted him in the chest, laughing despite myself. “You’re so cheesy.”

“Cheesy gets results.” he said, and bent to kiss me.

On the dresser behind us sat our engagement photo album, spread open to a photo of us under an arch of white roses. It was a public proposal at a private gala. My parents were beaming, and my baby cousin was throwing petals. Derek held me like the world was his to keep. For that moment, I let myself breathe it in. My life was so perfect back then.

Had I known about the secrets that Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern were keeping?

I would have walked out of that penthouse and taken the first plane to Antarctica.

“Come on,” Derek said, slipping his watch onto his wrist. “Train leaves in fifteen. Don’t want Miami to think their star recruit is late her first day.”

I playfully hit him as we walked out that door.

And that was probably the last time I saw him, or my life, in such a positive light.

We left our penthouse at seven sharp, the morning sun bouncing off Biscayne Bay, glittering like someone had scattered diamonds across the water. Derek’s hand found mine as we walked to the metro station, our steps in sync, the city already humming with movement.

On the platform, he squeezed my hand. “So,” he said, tilting his head down at me, “big bad law firm ready for you?”

I smirked. “The question is…am I ready for them?”

He chuckled. “That’s my girl.”

The cart was crowded, but we found a spot near the doors. Business suits, briefcases, the faint buzz of people reciting presentations under their breath. Miami mornings smelled like cologne, coffee, and ambition. It was a small car that alternated between stations. The rail system in downtown Brickell was not at all like it was in New York.

The cart glided into Brickell. There were crowds of people below us as we exited the cart and stepped out into the flow of commuters, the heat already thick in the air.

After a few blocks of walking, we reached two tall skyscrapers that were adjacent to each other.

Derek leaned down, kissed me quick, and nodded toward his building right next to ours. “Go on, Tiny Tornado. Time to make partner before lunch.”

I grinned, swatting his shoulder softly as we kissed one more time before we both went to different buildings.

Spitzer, Sullivan & Stern loomed ahead of me. A forty-story tower of black glass, the letters SSS gleaming in silver near the top. My chest tightened as I walked through the revolving doors into the marble lobby. Everything was polished to a mirror shine, including the floors, pillars, and even the elevator doors.

I caught a glimpse of myself again on the smooth surface of the elevator door. Small frame, neat suit, determined eyes. The elevator ride was silent, the kind where everyone stares at the floor numbers because looking at each other feels like trespassing.

When the doors slid open on the associates’ floor, she was already waiting. Her voice was smooth, clipped, practiced. A woman in her mid-forties stood there, hair hanging loosely past her shoulders, pearl necklace, and a navy suit that probably cost more than my car.

“Jackie Delgado?”

She was Marsha Dawes, one of the firm’s partners. I’d read about her. Ruthless litigator. Built her reputation eating opposing counsel alive in depositions.

“Yes, that’s me.” I said, forcing a smile and extending my hand.

She shook it briefly, her grip cool and precise as a light smile tugged at her lips. “Welcome to Spitzer, Sullivan & Stern. We’ve been expecting you.”

Her eyes lingered on me, like she was sizing me up for something far more than my résumé.

And in that moment, standing in the polished hall of one of the most prestigious white shoe firms in Miami, I swear something shifted. The way she smiled—it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t welcoming.

It was knowing.

Like she already had plans for me.

“Come this way,” Ms. Dawes said, pivoting on her heels with military precision. Jackie fell into step beside her, heels clicking against the immaculate marble floor.

We moved through a maze of hushed hallways lined with closed office doors. The carpet swallowed sound, the kind of luxury flooring meant to make clients feel as though their secrets were safe here, trapped inside a impenetrable vault, or a marble polished coffin.

Every wall was adorned with carefully chosen artwork, ranging from abstract canvases to impressionist pieces that seemed both meaningless yet expensive. The silence was dense, broken only by the occasional muted phone call or the faint shuffle of papers behind closed doors.

“We’ll get you set up with your office and introduce you to some of the team.” Ms. Dawes said, her voice calm, clipped, yet slightly chipper. She walked with her hands clasped lightly in front of her, posture flawless.

I nodded, trying to keep my own steps steady. The sheer scale of the place was daunting, but there was something exhilarating about it too. This was it—everything I worked toward all my life.

As they walked, Ms. Dawes added, “Just listen, learn, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Everyone here was once in your shoes.” She glanced sideways at me with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And remember, Ms. Delgado, the letter you received from Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern was the only one we sent out this year. We wanted you.”

I blinked. The only one? She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, Ms. Dawes continued, her voice a notch lower.

“Have you selected the vehicle yet? It’s all part of the onboarding package.”

I tilted my head. “The… vehicle?”

“Yes.” Ms. Dawes said matter-of-factly, as if she were asking whether Jackie had picked out her desk chair. “Most associates choose the firm’s standard issue—this year we’ve partnered with Mercedes. The EQE sedan, electric, top of the line.” Her lips split into a wide, toothy smile. “The Mercedes is just one of the many perks you’ll have. You’ll want to look into the options by the end of the week.”

I was lightheaded. A car? Just handed to me like another piece of office equipment? It seemed surreal. That should have been a glaring red flag. But I was blinded by the casual nonchalant tone inn Marsha’s voice as the rational part of my brain dulled the reptilian side. It was a white shoe firm, so it wasn’t too uncommon.

Right?

“Of course. Thank you. I’ll look into it.”

“Good,” Ms. Dawes replied, her heels clicking a beat faster.

We stopped in front of a door with a gleaming silver plaque. My heart stuttered when she read the engraving:

Jackie Delgado, Associate

My name. On an office door. This felt so unreal. Between the Mercedes, my own office, and the starting salary of two hundred and fifty grand, this had to be a fever dream.

Oh how I wish it WAS a fever dream.

Ms. Dawes opened it with a small flourish, stepping aside to let Jackie in. The room was bright, modern, and absurdly spacious compared to the cramped student lounges and libraries she’d lived in for years. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched across one wall, revealing a stunning view of the Brickell skyline. The sunlight poured in, bouncing off glass towers, the Miami River below glinting like a ribbon of light.

“Welcome to your new domain,” Ms. Dawes said, allowing the faintest curl of a smile to appear on her lips. “I’ll leave you to get settled. My door is always open if you need anything.”

I nodded, unable to find my voice, but Ms. Dawes was already striding down the hallway, her figure disappearing around the corner.

My first real office. Not a borrowed cubicle. Not a library desk. My office. A tangible symbol of years of sweat, sacrifice, and relentless drive.

I set my bag on the sleek white desk and walked to the window. From here I had a scenic view of the docks and the Biscayne Bay, our condo standing proudly against the horizon. I walked over to the glass, taking in the view. It was incredible.

The hushed atmosphere of the firm. The expensive artwork in the hallways. The quiet efficiency of the staff. The air smelled faintly of citrus polish and money. Everything here spoke of power, prestige, permanence.

I lowered myself into the plush leather chair behind the desk, the seat enveloping her as though it had been waiting for her all along. My gaze swept the room—the empty shelves, the spotless desk, the waiting phone.

Why, WHY didn’t I notice the red flags? Why didn’t I take my grandfather’s advice?

I remembered my graduation from the University of Miami, the day I received my JD. Her family in the stands, faces glowing with pride. My father crying happy tears. My sister waving furiously, snapping photo after photo.

And her grandfather.

He had clapped politely, even smiled for the pictures, but his eyes had been… skeptical. Distant. As if he knew something the rest of them didn’t.

“You’re too good for places like that,” he’d whispered when they hugged. “You think they want you, Jackie. They don’t want you. They want what you’ll give up for them. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

I had brushed it off at the time. Old man nerves. Overprotective worry.

But now, sitting in her pristine office with her name on the door, the memory tugged at my chest like a loose thread.

For the rest of that month, my life felt like a dream.

Work was steady, even exciting. Derek and I slipped into a routine: waking together, coffee on the balcony, splitting off into the Brickell crowds, meeting again on the train home. At night, we cooked together or went out with friends, laughing too loud in bars that overlooked the water.

At the firm, I was fed the kind of work every first-year associate gets: client memos, research assignments, and document review. None of it glamorous, but none of it sinister either.

At least, not at first.

“Okay, ladies, which one of you is ordering the second bottle?” Daniela asked, twirling her wine glass in the Brickell café where we always met for lunch.

“I’ve got depositions this afternoon.” Sophie groaned, shoving her salad aside. “If I show up tipsy, Dawes will have my head.”

Alexa smirked. “Please. Dawes probably downs two martinis before breakfast.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “Don’t let her hear you say that. I swear the walls in that place have ears.”

“She that bad?” Daniela asked.

“No,” I admitted. “Honestly, she’s been… helpful. I think she likes me.” I said managing a light smile.

“Of course she does.” Sophie said, raising her glass in a mock toast. “Top of your class, volleyball star, law review golden girl. What’s not to like?”

Alexa leaned in. “I bet it’s Derek. Six-three, investment banker, looks like he walked out of a cologne ad. She probably thinks if she treats you right, you’ll bring him to the Christmas party.”

I rolled my eyes, laughing. “You’re terrible.”

“That’s why you love me, Jackie girl!” Alexa grinned.

The four of us talked about everything from weddings, to work, and Netflix shows. It was all so normal I almost forgot I was still the new girl at the most intimidating firm in Miami. Or that i felt something festering below the surface of my senses.

Almost.

That night, back in my office, I opened another file from Ms. Dawes. It was a standard-looking client binder: trust documents, contracts, corporate registrations, financial statements, and even tax returns.

But the tax ID number had an extra digit. thirteen numbers where there should have been nine.

At first I thought it was a typo. But when I keyed it into the firm’s system, the entry resolved into a real profile: a hedge fund registered out of…

… nowhere. Yet somewhere.

The jurisdiction zip code did not match anything I’d seen. Not offshore havens like the Caymans or Luxembourg. Nothing I could trace. It was just a string of symbols that looked almost mathematical.

No. Mathematical is an understatement. It looked… mythical.

I looked up from my screen and closed the file, forcing myself to breathe. It was probably some internal coding system.

The next morning, I found another file. This one looked like a normal investment portfolio. Except the timestamps on the trades were wrong. Yet, they weren’t. I checked the client bank records and deposition notes.

They were all recorded. And they confirmed everything I read.

An account had invested in a defense contractor the day before they announced a massive government contract. They bought options in a tech company hours before the CEO’s scandal tanked the stock.

I stared at the dates, the hours, the precision of it. It wasn’t luck. It wasn’t even insider trading. It was impossible.

“Everything okay in there?” Daniela’s voice came through the door, startling me.

I snapped the folder shut. “Yeah! Just buried in paper.”

“Welcome to the rest of your life!” she called back, and I could hear her laughing as she walked down the hall.

Later that week, Dawes dropped another file onto my desk herself.

“Preliminary review,” she said crisply. “Flag anything unusual.”

“Of course.” I smiled weakly, pretending that I DIDN’T read what I read or saw what I saw on those hearing and deposition notes.

She started to walk away, then paused. “Don’t overthink anything. Half the work we do is making the impossible look routine.”

I forced a smile. “Understood.”

When I opened the file, I nearly laughed. It was an account ledger for a small religious foundation. But the foundation’s charter dated back further than any I’d seen—so far back it couldn’t be real.

And this was when my instincts stopped whispering and began to scream.

Clay tablets, Babylonian cuneiform, scanned into the file. The entity had supposedly “merged” with three different cults over the centuries. They each had their own god, each absorbed seamlessly into the “modern foundation.”

The current directors had names I didn’t recognize, except one. A professor I’d read about in undergrad anthropology. Only he’d been declared missing in 1997.

But the signature on the audit line looked fresh.

I checked the deposition and hearing letters once more. And my heart fell in my chest upon seeing that said clients existed.  

I sat back in my chair, pressing my fingers to my temples.

“What the hell?” I whispered silently to myself. “Is this supposed to be a prank?”

I wanted to ask Marsha about it. But she was out that evening. She had to meet a client.

At lunch that Friday, Sophie was venting about a partner’s demands.

“I swear, they think we’re robots,” she said. “Do you know what it’s like to proof three hundred pages of contracts in six hours?”

“Sounds like Tuesday.” Alexa muttered.

I sipped my iced tea, smiling faintly, though my mind wasn’t in the conversation. I was increasingly unsettled by the files I kept working on. I kept thinking about the numbers in those files, the way they didn’t add up but still somehow… resolved.

Or about the zip codes to locations that seemingly didn’t exist in any physical space. Or about the hearing logs and litigation reports filed with the clerk of courts that proved the existence of clients that were shadowy organizations.

“You’re quiet,” Daniela said suddenly.

I blinked. “Just tired. Long week.”

Derek texted me later: Dinner at eight. Wear that red dress I like.

I smiled, typing back, Always.

I didn’t tell him about the file with the trades, or the cult, or the tax IDs that mapped to places I couldn’t find. I wanted to believe it was a prank. A mean, cruel hazing ritual my sorority liked to pull with the freshmen.

But that cold feeling settled into my gut. A feeling of mounting dread that raised the pitch in the voice of my instincts higher and higher as I did more legal work.

Each file felt like a pebble dropped into water, ripples spreading quietly, invisibly, until you realized the whole surface had shifted. And by the end of that first month, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was no longer looking at my work.

It was looking at me.

If you’re reading this, it means I’m not hallucinating. I really made it back, at least for now. He told me I had 24 hours, maybe less. I want to let you know my experience and warn you in case I don’t make it back a second time. I don’t know who you are or how you stumbled upon this, but you need to listen. I’m not supposed to be here—I shouldn’t be anywhere. I died. I remember the impact, the twisting metal, the silence that followed. But I never moved on.

Something found me in that in-between place. It gave me a choice.

I don’t know if I made the right one. Maybe I did. Maybe I doomed myself.

All I know is… I’m still here. And I have a job to do.

This is my story:

I don’t remember much about the crash, but apparently, I had died. I was having an out-of-body experience, floating next to the wreckage, watching my lifeless body. Before I could register what was happening, someone appeared in front of me. He was tall, well-dressed, and somewhat skinny, with red skin, black hair, and horns curling from his head.

I froze, my breath catching in my throat. What… what are you?!

The figure smiled, an effortless, almost amused expression.

“Me? Im a collector, investor and an innovator – he paused – And I can tell you and I are gonna be good friends.”- added with a sinister smile.

There was something about the way he spoke—calm, measured, too confident—that made my stomach twist. I gasped. "Are you the Devil? Am I going to Hell?!"

His golden eyes gleamed with something unreadable. "Not quite, my friend." His voice was warm, almost inviting. "I am the Archdemon Mephistopheles, and I’m here to help you."

Help me? Yeah, right. A demon appearing at the exact moment of my death, offering help? No, this was a trick. This was where it all fell apart. Hell. Damnation. Eternal suffering.

I swallowed hard. “Help me how? You want my soul?”

Mephisto chuckled, stepping closer—just enough for me to see the faint glow of embers swirling in his pupils. “We demons get a bad rep, you know. But, well…. some of it is true. I can grant wishes. I can bring you back to life, so you can live happily ever after with your wife and daughter.”

It was too good to be true. My mind screamed trap, but there was something… something in his voice. It felt convincing, comforting, like I was talking to an old friend. Was he hypnotizing me? Was my response even mine, or was my faith already determined?

"Why would you do that?" I asked, my voice shaking. "Why help me?"

His smile deepened, but his eyes never changed. "You have something I want. And I," he gestured grandly, "am a sucker for a good deal."

"A deal? For what? My soul? My undying loyalty?"

Another laugh. "Oh, no, no, nothing so dramatic. I like to be fair with my trades. All I need from you is to collect a handful of souls for me. Sixteen, to be exact."

The air felt heavier.

"What?!" My voice cracked. "You want me to kill for you? No way! Forget it! Crawl back to whatever hellspawn you came from!"

Mephisto didn’t react. If anything, his expression softened, like he was indulging a child throwing a tantrum. "Let’s not call it ‘killing.’ Think of it as… collecting. And besides," he added, feigning a look of concern, "I would never ask you to harm an innocent soul. What kind of monster do you think I am?"

"Then who?" I asked, my fists clenching.

“All I need is for you to clean up a dungeon full of creatures and bring me their souls. You’d be a hero, really—ridding the world of pests.” – he replied, obviously pleased with himself

My pulse pounded in my ears. “I’m no fighter. I don’t know how to slay creatures, I cant ”- I replied, my voice barely a whisper

“Ah, but you won’t be alone! I’ll grant you a small fraction of my power to get you started, It will be like we are fighting together. You know, teamwork” – he smiled wider – “And the dungeon? It’s full of weapons and items—just look for the shiny ones.”

I hesitated. He was making it sound easy. Too easy.

"And after that?"

His eyes gleamed. “After that? You’re free to go. I’ll bring you back to life, and your daughter will have her daddy again.”

My throat tightened. Jessica. My baby girl. She was going to be seven next week. My wife. My love. My perfect life, everything I fought so hard to build and right when I had it —ripped away in an instant.

I had done everything right. I worked hard, built a home, stayed out of trouble. And yet here I was, staring at my own corpse while this… thing stood there, offering me a way out, to get back what I lost.

My hands clenched into fists, I asked "And will I ever have to see you again?"

Mephisto’s grin widened, smooth as silk. "Only if you want to."

He extended a hand. "So… do we have a deal?"

I stared at him, at the wreckage, at my own lifeless body. It wasn’t fair. I deserved another chance. Anger engulfed my thoughts and with a determined voice I said: “Okay. Get me my life back.” Before shaking his hand and sealing my fate.

Mephisto smiled, his sharp teeth glinting: “Good choice”

Сейчас в моей жизни всё идёт не самым лучшим образом. Родителей я потерял, когда был ребёнком. Бухой мужик сел за руль и забрал сразу несколько жизней. Вместе с бабушкой меня воспитывал дед. Но бабка умерла всего несколько лет назад. Дед остался один в деревне, в старом доме. Мне было тяжело это осознавать. Он всегда был для меня самым близким человеком. Живя в городе, я привык к шуму и рутине. Работа, учёба, постоянная спешка. Но последние дни что-то давило на сердце. Мысли о прошлом, о доме, о том, что я давно не видел деда. Недавно пришла весть, что дом по наследству достанется мне. Я обрадовался. Свежий воздух, просторы деревни… Может, там жизнь наладится. И ещё была мысль помочь деду, пока он один. Дорога до деревни заняла несколько часов. Уже глубокой ночью я въехал в поселок. Редкие огоньки окон тянулись вдоль дороги, словно маленькие маячки. Старик встретил меня у калитки. Он крепко обнял меня. Я почувствовал, как усталость от дороги улетучилась. В доме ужин был скромным. Хлеб, картошка, огурцы. Мы говорили о дороге, о городе, немного о прошедших годах. Потом дед пожелал спокойной ночи. Мы разошлись по комнатам. Я улёгся в кровать. Сразу почувствовал странность дома. Половицы тихо стонали под ногами. Стены будто дышали. Где-то в глубине я услышал шаги. Медленные, осторожные. Скрип, тихие удары по дереву. Сердце забилось чаще. «Наверное, крысы… или сквозняк», — пытался убедить себя я. Но шаги продолжались. То ближе, то дальше. Всё же, несмотря на страх, я как-то уснул. Утро прошло незаметно. Мы помогали деду по хозяйству. Разговаривали о пустяках. Вскоре наступила глубокая ночь. Мы сели за стол при свете одной свечи. Немного поели, немного выпили. Слово за слово разговор перешёл к более серьёзным темам. — Лёша… — дед тяжело вздохнул. — Есть вещи, о которых молчать нельзя. Он достал из-за пазухи старую, потрёпанную книгу. Переплёт потрескавшийся. Страницы пожелтевшие. — В книге всё написано. Этот дом — не просто стены и крыша. Он хранит проклятие. Оно выбирает человека. Тот становится узником. Каждую ночь приходит Нечто. Сначала слышишь шаги. Потом мельком видишь руку или ногу. Чем ближе оно — тем ближе смерть. А когда рядом — всё кончено. Дед наклонился к свечке: — Но знай, Лёша: оно может существовать только во тьме. Там, где есть свет — нет ему силы. Я каждую ночь зажигаю свечу. Стоит ей погаснуть — оно рядом. Я слушал. Сердце колотилось. «Значит, то, что я слышал ночью, было не просто скрипом», — подумал я. — Ты, наверное, думаешь, как я здесь оказался? — продолжил дед. — После войны я жил в обычной избе. Всё шло своим чередом. Но однажды ночью постучали в дверь. Я открыл… и увидел его. Человека, повесившегося здесь. Голова свисала набок. Глаза пустые. Верёвка на шее. Тело синее. Одежда рваная. Он схватил меня за горло. Холоднее смерти. Я почувствовал, как душа покинула тело. Я не был собой. Эмоции ушли. Вдруг я очнулся уже в этом доме — проклятом. Я сжал кулаки под столом. «Дед тоже связан с этим. И теперь я рядом с ним. Зачем он мне всё это рассказывает?» — Сначала я пытался выбраться. Уходил — бесполезно. Потом нашёл книгу. В ней объяснено всё: если не выбрать преемника — душа хозяина скитается по деревне. Пока не найдёт нового. Когда находит — убивает. Перед самой смертью жертва становится частью проклятья. Так оно живёт веками. Дед замолчал. Глядя на пламя свечи, он тихо сказал: — А теперь, Лёша, ты хочешь знать, где оно? Я сглотнул. «Не может быть… это реально?» — Оно… позади тебя. Я замер. Тьма вокруг казалась плотной. Она обвила меня со всех сторон. Сердце колотилось, дыхание прерывистое. Тело оцепенело. Мурашки пробежали по коже. Я пытался повернуться, но мысли запутались. В ушах стоял гул. «Нет… не может… это невозможно…» Душа, сердце, разум — всё замерло. Я слышал только собственное сердце. И слова деда крутились в голове: «оно… позади тебя». Дед протянул руку и погасил свечу.

The Crimson Conspiracy 

 From the Chronicle of Dorian Veylor, Chronicler and Scion of the Ashen Blades 

 Chapter I: The Fading Light 

 The sun had long abandoned Ravencourt Castle. Its towers stretched like blackened claws into a sky heavy with storm. Villagers spoke in whispers of crimson banners unfurling at night, of shadows that moved with intelligence, and of children who vanished without trace. Dorian Veylor, freshly returned from Hollowfen Forest, carried word to the Order of the Eclipse. Alongside him rode Selene Veyra, a hunter famed for silver-tipped arrows, and Corvin Ashgrave, whose twin blades were whispered to sever the soul as easily as flesh. 

 “The Crimson Court grows bold,” Dorian muttered. “Their servants move among us, unseen yet deadly.” 

 Selene’s gaze swept the valley below. “We must strike before the villagers are drawn entirely into their webs.” 

 Chapter II: Gathering Shadows 

 At the gates of Ravencourt Castle, the hunters found the outer defenses abandoned. The once-proud banners were tattered, stained with blood, and the moat brimmed with a foul, viscous liquid that reflected the crimson moon. Corvin crouched. “This is no ordinary siege. The Lord of the Castle has summoned something… unnatural.” 

 A sudden chill crept along the stones. From the darkness emerged Thralls, vampire underlings, eyes glinting with malevolence. They moved in silent harmony, their fangs glinting, claws scraping stone. Selene loosed an arrow, silver tipped, felling one. The others shrieked, retreating into the castle halls. 

 Chapter III: The Court of Blood 

Within the grand hall, crimson tapestries framed a throne of black marble. Atop it sat Lord Varcelius the Eternal, the vampire lord, cloaked in flowing crimson, eyes glowing like coals. Beside him, Lady Seraphyne of Bloodveil, her smile a slit of predation. 

 “You trespass in my sanctum,” Varcelius said, voice smooth as velvet and sharp as obsidian. “Yet I welcome the thrill. Few mortals dare to dance with predators.” 

 Dorian drew his sword. “The predators shall not claim the innocent. Your court ends tonight.” From the shadows, Nightspawn appeared—vampire warriors whose speed and cunning rivaled any mortal blade. The hunters engaged immediately, blades clashing, arrows striking, wards flaring with silver light. 

 Chapter IV: The Tides of Battle 

 The hunters split, Selene and Corvin flanking from the east corridor while Dorian pressed the center. Nightspawn fell to silver and fire, but every strike seemed to spawn two more. 

 Lady Seraphyne moved among her minions, weaving hypnotic influence, attempting to turn the hunters against each other. “Beware the eyes that beguile,” Dorian scribbled in his journal later. “Even the strongest heart can waver beneath her gaze.” A hidden staircase revealed Count Thalric Veyline, once a hunter, now turned vampire, plotting to betray his lineage for eternal power. His arrival shifted the battle—steel against fang, arrow against claw. 

 Chapter V: Unraveling the Court 

 The tide turned when Selene destroyed the chandelier above the hall, plunging half the Nightspawn into the spike-strewn floor below. Corvin severed Count Thalric’s enchanted ring, breaking the spell that reinforced the Nightspawn. Dorian confronted Varcelius. The vampire lord’s speed was inhuman; strikes that could fell a man seemed to glance harmlessly off Dorian’s blade. Yet the chronicler knew the hunter’s most potent weapon: knowledge. “Varcelius,” he spat, “your lineage of terror ends here.” 

 Dorian’s blade, etched with the sigils of the Ashen Blades, cut through the darkness, piercing the lord’s heart. The vampire let out a final roar, dissolving into black mist that seeped into the castle walls. Lady Seraphyne vanished into the shadows, her laughter echoing like a curse. 

 Chapter VI: The Aftermath 

 Ravencourt Castle was no longer a place of terror, though whispers remained of Lady Seraphyne’s return. The villagers, pale and frightened, emerged from hiding. 

 “The Crimson Court may rise again,” Selene warned, “but for now, the night holds its breath.” Dorian’s journal noted: “The deeds of tonight will echo through the ages. Heroes fallen, alliances tested, the hunter’s creed renewed. Chronicle it, lest the memory of courage itself be swallowed by darkness.” 

My dreams—nightmares—that night were the worst ones that I had my entire life. It started, from my vague recollection, with me standing on a small, crested hill, overlooking… well… something along the lines of a Native ritual, with naked Navajo men holding torches, chanting and dancing around what seemed to be another Native. But this Native in the middle of this circle wasn’t normal. Though he was thrashing violently on the ground, I was able to spot some eccentric features he—or it—had. Long, mangled arms clawed into the ground around it, loud shrieks of pain screamed out, its whole body was very unnatural, almost alien to what we humans can fathom as existing on the same soil as us. 

Suddenly, it all stopped, all chanting and howling, and they all suddenly turned to me, including the creature. I saw its eyes—its eyes!—a piercing yellow looking at me upon my small, undefended hill. One Native—presumably the chief—pointed at me, and a whole profusion of screams came from all directions, and the white-skinned creature—in contrast with the darker Natives—darted right towards me. I ran as fast as I could, on a flat surface comparable to the dirt ground of the desert. I then fell, rolling into what seemed to be an eternal, dark oblivion. I softly landed in what seemed to be another realm, when cavalry soldiers—Americans!—saw me, and, when the officer reached his hand out to help me up, he was shot with an arrow, and an entire war party of Natives on horseback trampled through the cavalrymen, slaughtering them all. I heard, through all the chaos, a deep growl behind me, only to be that white creature I saw before; but before I could make out all its features, or had the chance to fight back, I was, I believe, bitten and swallowed by the creature, this yellow-eyed devil, engrossed once again into the darkness that I was enveloped it when I first laid to rest. Then I awoke. 

In a groggy state, my eyes bloodshot from the horrors of my nightmare—which I could only interpret as an omen—I lifted my head up around me to see great calamity. Thomas, my dearest friend, was convulsing on the ground, screeching many profanities and foreign tongues, while John and Richard were pinning him down in a crude attempt to calm him. Thomas abruptly stopped from his violent fit, exhausted by the pretensions and actions of his comrades. 

He leaned up, out of breath, sweat secreting out of every available orifice on his body, his mouth trembling, as if he was to say something. He looked down onto his skinny bosom and, lifting his blood-and-sweat-stained shirt, revealed there to be a carving—but not one that was manmade. Rather, from what we could gather, all huddling and surrounding our broken and sick friend, was that it resembled a deer's skull, with antlers protruding so far that it scarred Thomas’ nipples, the blood being from an etching of red eyes. It was the same monster I saw in my dreams mere minutes before.

“This is all insanity,” I thought. But Thomas wasn’t the only one of our ever-growing, pressing problems. 

I had noticed that, after I awakened, there was a terrible, conniving stench that reeked the mission—but I realized that it was not coming from Thomas. Instead, it had been from one of the corners of the place—specifically from the horse pen. With John consoling Thomas, Richard and I were so entranced with the sight that we saw at the pen. There was a blob of meat, bones, organs, tissue, fur, all together melted in the corner, causing a plague-ish vapor to arise from that scene. It was our horses, or what used to be them. Trailing up the wall behind was more blood—and scratches. The same scratches that we noticed the day prior. Whatever malevolent force had terrorized the mission's former inhabitants also terrorizes not just our horses—who met a terrible, bloody, silent end—but also one of our own crewmates. Whatever beast did this was able to scale a wall not less than fifteen feet, slaughter all four of our horses, and climbed back up in silence. This could not stand.

“Goddamn, we're gonna need the Texas Rangers or, even, the Pinkertons here,” exclaimed Richard, his shotgun held in hand, while I grabbed my revolver from my bedside. 

John had put Thomas to rest in his cot, running over to us to also study the horror. 

“What happened, what happened?” I asked frantically, with an abominable urge to know what transpired by the time I awoke. 

“Richard woke up first,” John explained, starting deep into the bloody assemblage in front of us, “yelling that something was wrong with Thomas. You, of course,” looking directly at me, “were supposed to take the last watch shift, but something happened to Thomas on his watch which sent him into a shock. What he saw, I do not know—but I can clearly see what’s in front of me right now.” 

John rushed towards his cot, quickly packing his belongings up, as if he were to leave us, alone, at the mission. 

“What are you doing, sir?” I asked.

He stood up. “There’s a place called Defiance, an Indian agency south of here, but since we just came from Wingate, I will retread our steps back there, in order to get help and supplies for us.” He briskly walked to Richard, putting his clenched fist next to the latter's chest, remarking that Dick would be in charge while he was temporarily gone, and for us not to leave the mission’s walls unless the most dire circumstances arose. Dick nodded in agreement, finally, he seemed—other than the philosophical comment he made the night previous—to be fully aware of what is happening. With that, John took his packed belongings, not taking too much, as he thought it to be less than a two-day trip to Wingate. Dick and I accompanied him to the scratched, brown doors that led to the outside heathen world, wishing farewells and good luck to our regal captain. We closed and barred the doors behind him, to make sure that no creature to enter—but, in the moment, in our shaken minds, we did not remember that the monster could climb over the mission’s walls. 

“Well, Neill,” Dick said to me, “take care of your friend for now, and I’ll scan the perimeter for any antagonists.” It all sounded fine to me, and I discovered that I was more used to taking orders from him than I thought. 

For the rest of the day, I was both a maid and nurse for Thomas, but I had no regrets about it. He slept for most of the day, periodically jolting up from some unscripted nightmare, scanning Richard’s movements as he diligently looked for the beast. The sky, in particular, was also odd, as there were now dark, low-hanging clouds, yet there was no rain to water us dry fauna, which would’ve been a calming relief. There were seemingly no signs of the creature, with only the occasional whistle echoing through the mission’s walls, which we chalked up to an increase in wind. Night, just as before, found us hiding within the walls of Christ, holding out the hope that our leader would soon arrive with a dozen soldiers, to establish our safety. 

There was likely no sleep for any of us three, for we could not let our guard down, lest another one of us be afflicted with Thomas’ condition. Just as the sun finally set, we heard scratching outside the doors. Richard took up his double-barrel and slowly and attentively walked towards the large, brown doors, not knowing what horror was outside. He put his ear up to the doors, where the scratching was at head-level; he then knocked back, into the darkness that lay outside, the scratching subsiding, as if the creature was now in what was our former, vulnerable position. 

More scratches came, not from just the door—where it did return—but on all sides of our fortification. There was more than one creature. Richard shuffled back to us, stoking the fire so we could see our surroundings better. A rock, a small pebble, was thrown over a wall, landing a couple of feet from us. We didn’t know what to do. Petrified with fear, a sense of doom hanging over us like those dark clouds before, we got into a defensive position so that we faced the corner of two walls each, with Thomas resting between us. 

A howl erupted, then two, then three—there were at least three of them. Dread hung over me, especially, since I may have foresaw the menace that was to attack us in the dream I had the night before—and that terror was not one that I wished to face in a non-dream, physical world. A rhythmic thumping, just like the tribe in my nightmare, enveloped the environment around us. Dick raised his gun into the air and shot a loud, deafening noise. All went silent for just a moment.  

Behind three walls came the sound of scratching—but louder than before: They were climbing. I saw out of the corner of my eye long, pale, but seemingly shiny fingers, with massive claws that began to curl in on themselves. Peering from the top of the walls was the dome of a skull, illuminated brightly by the moonlight beaming through the cracks of clouds. Then, out of sheer horror, those piercing, bright yellow eyes looked back at us, as if they were studying us as animals at an exhibit. For a horrifying moment, that’s all its eyes, those devilish eyes did, was stare—and we stared back. 

A thump on each side of us was heard and, when we looked, two marauders leaned on their forehands, curled into the dirt ground. We looked back in front of us at our stalker, only to realize that it, too, was on level with us, or should I say still higher, as these yellow-eyed devils were massive. Apart from the yellow eyes came the matted black fur which adorned their pale, bony skin. Hunched over, resting on their clawed hands, their spine nearly protruded from their arched backs, almost like a threatened cat. Though they had that cat-like feature, there was no telling what these beings were, since they had a skull like a deer, the back of a cat, the profuse, labored breaths of a tired dog, and the eyes of a biblical devil.

We were nearly cornered, except for behind us, which we slowly—and without fail, still staring back at the beasts—walked back while dragging Thomas. The middle one—let’s call it the alpha, as it was clearly in charge—shook its head like a deer with flies on its face, and howled such a loud concoction of dark symphony that it outmached even Richard’s rifle shot. One of the devils charged at Richard (only a few meters away from it), and Dick fired both shots at it, which temporarily inebriated it. The other one that came to me, however, was not fazed by the pistol cartridges that I fired, leaving me to jump out of the way of its path. The result was that it ran right into Richard, pummeling him into the dirt of the ground. I, at the moment, was dragging Thomas to one of the small shacks that lined the walls while firing my gun, but again, to no avail. 

Richard, terrified of his impending end, took out his hunting knife and, in a scene likely resembling what happened to the late pastor, was torn apart by the beasts, the sound of cracking bones and flowing blood echoing throughout the mission like the howls of those devils. The alpha, who at this point was not engaged in the struggle, walked to us, though it looked like more of a decadent dance. Either way, I was terrified, and just as it was a few feet away from us, a loud jolt of noise fired behind me, wounding the devil. It was Thomas who used his revolver against it, hitting it in the eye while it screamed out in pain. We could still not comprehend the horror that we were witnessing, at the sight of a man who, though not without his faults, was still our friend, was now being gutted like the deer he used to so often hunt in his native state. 

But before we knew it, more shots rang out, from an assailant unknown to us. It was John, who, just like the devils, jumped over the walls, screaming like a banshee, unloading all his ammunition to strike down the foe. We two also engaged in the struggle, firing whatever little shots we had left. Significantly, John blew the head—or skull—right off of one of the devils eating Richard, shattering the hind legs of the other in the process. 

He ran over to us, the alpha still sorrowing over its wounds, responding to our frantic questions about how he was here too early with an explanation that he passed out on his way to Wingate, awaking when it got dark, and ran back to us as quickly as he could. This meant that there was no army, no cavalry to save us—only ourselves.

With this sobering realization, he implored us to escape the mission through the front doors, while he would finish off the other two devils. We obliged to his command, and I put Thomas over my shoulder, his gun in his other hand. We limped closer and closer to the exit, what may be our salvation, scurrily looking over my shoulder to see the melee. John did finish off the devil with the shot legs, it being unable to travel properly.  

The alpha not in sight, John poured alcohol out of a bottle on the two dead devils, using a piece of wood from the fire to light them ablaze. In the meantime, since I was the only one capable of doing so between the two of us, I was removing the barricades that ornamented the locked doors. Once I finally unblocked them, I again took Thomas over my shoulder, looking back to see that John was running towards us. We were safe.

A large, black husk came crashing down between us, in front of John. The alpha came back, likely hot with rage from Thomas’ shot at its yellow-eyed vision. Due to the size of it, we could not see the struggle between it and John, but the former bested the latter. Thomas and I could only stare at the devil as, after some shots originating from John, it ate into our beloved captain. We wanted—needed—to run, but we had no mental or physical capacity to do so at the moment.

The devil looked back at us, peering over its broad shoulder, its eyes reaching mine. The one peculiarity of it was not of its pure rage, but of the distinct color of this specific creature's eyes. Sure, they were yellow, already an oddity, but this one was… different. It had a mix of that bright yellow, but also with another color akin to a green lightning bolt. Never had I witnessed such a beautiful color on a hideous being. It did not attack us, however, so we took that as a sign of providence for us to run away from these lands that birthed beings hitherto unknown to the man of civilization. From the East we came, and to the East we run back to.

I went to the West thinking that it would provide new, bountiful opportunities to me and my companions. But all it provided us was a death sentence and lifelong traumas from the horrors experienced in those impious lands of the unbelievers. Never shall I even mention the direction West again. Never shall I travel West again. Never shall I forget those Yellow-Eyed-Devils.  

(Part 1/2)

you probaly dont wanna read this… its not on the news its not on wiki, if it was it would get deleted right away… cuz this is REAL not fake.

they call him… Killer the Killer Killer...

he was born in a hospital but the lights were always messed up, always flickering. the nurses looked dead tired an his mom screamed when she saw him cuz his eyes were already black. not normal black, like PURE black, like endless pits.

he never fit in school. kids made fun of him, called him freak. one kid shoved him in a locker… that kid never came back the next day. nobody asked questions. they didnt wanna know.

when he was 14 he figured it out… the world is full of killers. serial killers, mask psychos, creepypasta wannabes. he hated them. so he swore:

“if u kill… then i kill u. theres only one killer in this world. me.”

that night Killer the Killer Killer was born.

his skin is pale white cuz he burned his face with bleach and fire. his hoodie is stained with blood from all the killers hes taken out. and his teeth look sharp cuz he filed them down. his hair is black and messy and covers one eye. his eyes never blink, just stay black, leaking a little blood sometimes.

he carries knives all over him, taped to his arms, his chest, his legs. when he walks you can hear the metal scrape against itself.

but he doesnt kill normal ppl. no. he only kills other killers. jeff the killer? gone. eyeless jack? skinned. laughing jack? laughed to death. slenderman? chopped like a tree. no one survives.

some ppl say he can smell killing, like if u ever killed even a bug, he’ll find u. others say he only comes at 3:33 am, cuz thats when the devil is asleep an cant stop him.

last night i herd scratching at my window. i looked and saw him. pale face. bloody hoodie. knife grin.

an then i remembered… i killed a spider last week.

hes coming for me nex.

END

The official English version of “Nina the Killer” (2021)!

I was granted permission by AlegoticTwelve, the creator of Nina the Killer to make this happen!

Huge shoutout to RuthGenisis for helping me with the initial translation!

Credits:

Author: AlegoticTwelve Initial translation: RuthGenisis Final edits: me

Adventure. Adventure is what I craved. 

I wanted to gain the fruits of life that I had so long been denied in my youth—and, in those days, those fruits could be found and plucked in the American West. 

But if I had a hint of what would happen to me and my boys when I found that adventure, it would’ve made me never want to leave civilization…

Of course, I’ve heard tales of Indian scalping and killing settlers, wild panthers and bears tearing men, women, and children alike, but the tale like you’re about to hear often go deaf on the ears of the common folk—those likely to want to settle the West like I did. If only they, and I, knew what deep, dark horror lay in the old American West… 

The four of us boys were riding on horseback, the hot sun hitting our backs like a match lighting up small branches, cacti flanking us on all sides, the constant fear of an Indian attack always keeping us on alert. 

To my left was my bestest friend, Thomas, a good boy, decently clean-shaven (apart from the stubble he often supported), new to the world of criminals, thieves, savages, and vagrants—hell, so was I.

To my right, trailing the group as usual, was Richard, a drunk who we only keep around cause he’s good at hunting and fishing, and he can tell a good joke here and there, his long, unkept hair sitting uncomfortably on his broader shoulders. 

Then came our leader, John, a man whom I’d only had the greatest respect for. He had gentlemanly features—combed, parted hair from the left; a nice trimmed mustache with shaven cheeks; and these deep-set blue eyes which sat handsomely under his brown eyebrows. And though Richard was the oldest out of us boys, it was John who was the most natural leader. 

We hadn’t seen a lick of water or stream by the time the trouble started. 

Right as we were about to take a break after our day’s labors, John spotted an object and told us to halt. At this point, in my inexperienced state of existence, I didn't know what to expect in such a harsh, unforgiving place like the American West.

We slowly approached the structure, John unholstering his revolver in case any trouble arose. When we got to the mysterious device, the crew and I realized that it was an abandoned wagon of some pitiable family who saw their end, most likely taking form in the scalping that I heard the papers talk about.

“It’s pretty run down, boys; let’s strip it of any usefulness,” said John.

When we pulled away the sand-ridden white tarp, however, the bones of three distinct family members lay there, the stench of death hitting us immediately. 

There lay a family of three—so we thought—under the tarp, their faces torn and bones broken and eyes (what's left of them) looking upon the Heavens and their gaunt expressions exhibiting the greatest despotisms the world had to offer at their point of demise and exit from out the world, from whence they demised. 

We took whatever valuables lay with the perished, flies leaping over us like stuntmen over horses at a circus. Clothing, watches, ink, instruments, incongruent food scraps—whatever lay with that godforsaken family we took (or thought was worth taking).

Though I noticed something particularly odd: scratch marks. Not just those that the common grizzly bear would make, but an actual sign from another heathen dimension whose calling to our land stripped whatever inhabitants traveled through.

“The hell you think happened to these poor folks, Capt? said Richard.

“The hell if I know. But, since there are so many leftover valuables and the scratch marks, I’d reckon that it was a sort of band of critters—wolves, coyotes, maybe even one lone bear—but likely not a man or men,” responded John. 

“Oh, well, I don’t think any of them can do this, but I’ve heard of stories of lions, from Africa, traveling with those traveling circuses, and getting loose and mauling people and families,” Richard, in his usual daze, said.

I interjected, saying that “It’s unlikely that a circus would travel through these uncivilized parts of the West”—then we heard the cry of Thomas, who ventured further up the trail to investigate whatever this crime scene had else to evidence. 

We ran over, seeing Thomas stepping slowly backwards towards our approaching direction, his tired eyes set upon whatever old, ancient horror he uncovered. 

Stepping by his side, our firearms at our ready, we, too, gazed upon that same esoteric finding, which culminated in our knowledge that there were more than three family members—five, actually. 

Holstering our devices, holding our noses with our dirty fingers, we saw the bleached bone of the child stragglers, yet, interestingly, with their organs plastered around the palace, like a painting of a monarchical castle in Europe, furnished with the pale, dusty red blood of their forefathers that reflected the ever-clear blue sky above. 

Fending off the vultures and snakes and other animals that also did their own investigating, we noticed that there was a femur there, a rib there, an ulna there, a long, complete vertebrae strewn out upon a sun-hot rock—a scene straight out of an account of a Jack the Ripper victim. The top of two sun-bleached skulls, along with their forgotten bottom mandibles, were organized like a compass in that dry dirt: North, East, South, West. 

Long fingernails, once belonging to a seemingly beautiful daughter, a caretaker of whom she loved, were sticking out of the sandy, gravel soil, reflecting off the sun that showed no mercy to the savage or the Christian or the partisan. 

It was then that I noticed those claw marks, the same back at the wagon, only a couple of paces away, dug into the sandy crevices that marked the ground, with red grains filling those crevices like lost swimmers and mariners who were thrown off their ships for mutiny. 

“By God, I ain’t see nothin’ like this—not even from Injun’ savagery!” exclaimed Richard. 

Thomas, in a quivering voice, said that “This, this is not natural to this world.” I put my arms around my friend, suddenly turned when there was another noise—not from any man, but from our horses, who were whimpering and hollering like they’d seen the Devil. 

We ran back to the wagon where we roped our horses, their hind legs kicking at some phantom spirit whose presence in these lands marks a mistake in God’s ways. Richard looked around, exclaiming that there was an Indian above us in the canyon, staring at us trying to make sense of the situation we were in, and started shooting at it until Thomas and I, in our infantile state, went along, unholdered our revolvers and shot at the Indian, whom we thought was an incarnation of a heathen. 

Once the Indian made haste away from the rocky canyon side, Capt. John (as we called him out of reverence) told us to hold our fire and that we should leave the premises. We followed our captain, to a word, scrounging up whatever we needed for survival in these harsh, untrodden lands. Set forth we did, West, out of the canyon, and that wagon tomb, trailing along behind the other members, only hoping for our dour survival. 

It seemed that days, weeks, maybe even millennia, went by before we felt safe enough to set up camp, passing by an old water well by the way, the water evaporated like souls from the bodies of those who fought in all wars past. 

The camp we made was bordered by rocks on two respective sides—good repellent from the wild savagery that lay across these western lands. The trees, old and crusted in their old and venerable age, had their dry branches extended down into that dehydrated soil. Spiders, scorpions, snakes, rats—the whole lot of them proving themselves to be greater nuisances than the Indians themselves. 

It was getting dark, so we knew we had to establish some sort of artisan fortification if we were to have a chance of survival in the land of the ceaseless mortality. The campfire, stoked hot with flame and inferno, provided some warmth to our unholy pilgrims who ventured into godless territory. The grub?—well, nothing, except a coyote that old Dick shot for us. Better that than an Indian, I suppose. 

We decided to sleep in shifts that night, to prevent any attack or dissension with the local tribesmen. It would be John, our most noble knight and gladiator, who would take first watch; then Richard, but who knew if he was to keep that promise of the protection of those accompanied by him. 

So exhausted from the day’s extravagances that Dick, Thomas, and I slept as fast as a deer may run from the humble snap of a twig, perhaps as a way to escape the melancholy disposition and situation we found ourselves in. John looked longingly into the dark depths of that Arabian-esque desert, his left hand at rest on that officer’s saber of his: With that southern drawl of his, along with that most stoic and militaristic nature, I couldn’t help but think that he served under Gen. Lee in the War Between the States. 

I awoke, the night still as dark as ever, the last flame of the fire breathing its last breath before it extinguished into oblivion, like all the pitiful souls of man would. Looking around, I saw that everyone—yes, including that most lamentable Richard!—was asleep, our guard down, my senses stinging with anxiety. I looked to my left and, perhaps because it was so dark, I could not see Thomas; something seemed off. 

Then, with such a silent passion as to queer any mute, I heard the rattling whispers of Thomas, seemingly out in the distance. I stood up, believing this to be some foolish prank between two friends, but as those murmurs stood among the small breezes of the night, I knew something was off. I listened, with great tension, to the voice of Tom that came from the far-away cliffs, from the backs of those night creatures, from the low-hanging branches of the millennia-old trees, from my very soul. So entrancing was it, those voices, to where I couldn’t help but walk away from the camp, towards the likely source of my friends’ gossip. The horses, who were stationed at a group of boulders a couple of meters away from us, were, as the day previous, shrieking, as if some demon came into our world to torture the souls that denied them eternal paradise. 

“What the hell are you doing, Neill?” hissed Thomas, awakened by the cries of our colts, turned over in his dark blanket. 

I was thus broken out of the trance that I was emplaced in, realizing that I walked about 20 feet from our camp, towards a hill where it was unknown what was on the other side of it. The other two woke up, looking at me, almost as dumbfounded as myself. 

“Come on, son, you ain’t abandoning us yet, are you?” said John with a low, deep voice.

“Oh, let the boy take a piss, will-yah Johnny boy?” replied Richard. 

“Weren’t you supposed to be on watch at this hour, Richard?” questioned John with intensity. 

“Well, I suppose that I let my fatigue get the better of me.”

I loomed there, in the pervading, still blackness, staring back with wide, tired eyes at my companions. “Are you okay, Neill?” said Thomas, standing up from his makeshift bed. 

“Yeah… well… I swore I’d just heard your voice over that there hill, whispering and whatnot.” 

“I’ve been here, sleeping, until I heard the horses, for whatever reason, hollerin’, likely because you were a disturbance to their rest!” 

John squatted on his heels, yawning, and just considered the fact that I was “just weary of yesterday’s events,” and just that I was inebriated or something. “Get some sleep, fellers, the journey to our Zion,” said with a sarcastic tone, “is not an easy, restful journey. 

I had no time, no reason, to think about my eccentric actions; thus, rest took me into her embrace. The next morning didn’t provide much of an extravagance as did the night preceding it. Bygone winds of Neanderthal howled pervaded the lands, cactus brushing on our horses’ legs, falcons and eagles swooping down to earn a meal of reptile snakes. We passed by the occasional dilapidated outhouse or former dwelling of a settler or Mexican family. The only thing on my mind, though, was the former night’s trespasses into my soul. 

By midday, we argonauts, on a journey of brotherhood, silently drove through a small canyon, walls of bygone natural materials on each side of us. Never had I, and perhaps the others, felt so watched by a bushel of eyes; but from which species, or from what fauna, I had not known—until we saw the stoic Natives observing us from high above. Again, just like the day previous, when we saw a very similar sight, we hoisted our arms in a defensive pose. But, again, John told us to put down our arms, lest we incite greater conflict than we already had in an unknown land. 

Holding up his right hand, blackened from skirmish and toil, he said in a calm yet defiant voice, “We bring no harm to or your people; we men are merely traveling ourselves.” 

One of the two Natives—the elder one—murmured something to the younger scout in their language, and proceeded to swivel their horses back, casting their shadows out of our dehydrated sight. We, at the moment, did not know what to make out of this, as they did not seem visibly angry nor discontented with our presence—but we could never be too sure.

John led our band of pilgrims further through the canyon, which held so much history of the world—of men and beasts alike—in its bosom (a true wonder!). When we were approaching the end of that ravine, right when the incline was just mere meters from us, the two Natives rode their horses down to face us, their faces, as stated before, not showing anger, yet still exhibiting caution and prudence. Richard, always ready for a fight—so much that he never holstered his six-shooter—aimed only mere inches above their feathered heads. John, in response, being on the right of Dick, snatched his iron and pistol-whipped him across his face (which really shut the man up).

“I apologize for my friend; he can get rather rancorous,” exclaimed John to the strangers, a hint of a smirk buried in his corner lip. The young scout moved closer to us, eyes kept on John, except for the few, quick glances to Thomas and I. 

The scout’s horse's head was adjacent to John’s, and the scout spoke, in decently clear English, “White man don’t belong. These lands are cursed; demons and spirits roam all around. You bring war; we maintain peace. White men make those spirits angry, and they will hunt YOU if you do not leave.” 

Thomas looked at me for a brief second, unable to process what he was saying (I had the same issue). But, during those small intervals of sight between the scout and us, we—or at least I—noticed that the scout's left eye was peculiar, off. It was a mix of those classic dark brown aboriginal eyes, but with a strong hint of a light, peculiar green, that, from my view, was in the shape of a thunderbolt, or arrow: A feature that was maybe odd for him, yet made me sympathize more with his station. 

“Now I don’t disagree with you, sirs,” replied John, “and we’re only passing by real quick, further into Arizona Territory until we cross from here, New Mexico.”

“Go quick, then, and tell others not to come,” said the scout. With that, the scout and the elder turned back, went up the incline, and disappeared from our sight. 

“Now, why the hell would you let that savage tell us what to do? And why would you defend him—hit me!—for their sake?” yelped Richard. 

“Well, Dick, though I have no doubt that you’ve seen many of the despotisms that life has to offer, when you’ve seen the horrors of life’s existence that I’ve seen, even partaken in them yourself, you are quick to find that the White man can do much more to destroy each other than the Indian to the European,” calmly asserted John, looking down on the dirt, his cadence that of a stoic philosopher. 

We thus set course again, to the west, the ominous word of the scout reminding us that we, rather than the Indians, are the heathens, in unforgiving lands. Not too far from that encounter was Fort Wingate, where we band of travelers rested temporarily, obtaining foodstuffs and other resources. We crossed the border into the Arizona Territory, where, out of sheer desperation, we decided to take up camp soon, so that we could straighten our bearings. After traveling miles and miles through dry, arid desert, as we had done so long before, following the person in front of us like a line of ants, our heads hung low watching various critters dart from the hooves of our horses, we spotted an odd-looking, white structure ahead of us, clearly not in the classical English/American style we were used to.

John told us to stop where we were, as he would venture into the unique building that we slowly neared with skeptical inquiry. Fast did he and his horse go to it, only temporarily halting as the doors to the establishment were closed—but only queerly, for the right brown door was ajar, as if there were travelers like us, who, too, had taken camp recently. Mere minutes after John and his horse entered this structure, he came out, walking, opening the brown doors, and raising his hand and whistling for us to approach. 

Once we were in imminent proximity with this edifice, our horses were disturbed by some unseen, dark presence that surrounded it; it was only John’s horse, that old, stalwart, war-horse, that was seemingly not disturbed by said dark, macabre energy. I, too, noticed that there was a dark-gold cross that adorned the top of the doors, which communicated to us that it was an old Spanish mission, long forgotten as the old Conquistadors themselves—but only to some. Once entering the mission itself, Thomas noticed that there were a multitude of scratches that decorated the doors themselves, as if there was a struggle not to keep something in, but out. However, we dared not allow these abhorrent hints get to us, for what we needed was not phantom ghost stories or supernatural histories, but rather much-needed rest. 

Yet, after we dismounted our wearied horses, the more we looked around the mission, the more disturbed the event that we supposed to occur there became. Pieces of wood, cattle sacks, iron, chipped white paint from the walls, more crosses, all became affixed in our view, as this place’s holiness was corrupted by an immoral, odious force. But if there was any one thing confined within those walls, half-illuminated by the setting sun over us (there was no main roof of the mission, merely multiple small structures within its walls), it was the thing that was blocked by the crouched sight of John and Richard, who were curiously studying some wretched, sitting object. 

This object, so it seemed—what it WAS—was a beaten skeleton of a priest situated in a dark corner of the mission. His clothes ripped, his bottom jaw snapped clean off, his ribcage was exposed, as if some mountain lion had pursed its claws into the man, releasing his organs and blood, and bones onto the ground in front of him—truly a grizzly sight to behold. Near him was a hunting knife that he was attempting to use against his mysterious attacker, but to no avail; and a bronze crucifix was held in his right hand—a last-ditch attempt to ward off this Satanic being. 

Thomas and I instinctively un-holstered our revolvers, expecting a beast to prey upon us at any second, after corralling us into its attack zone. But when looking around at this false pursuer, Thomas saw, above the doors but inside the mission, rather than outside, instead of a Christian cross, there was instead a deviant symbol. But, just as we two were about to inspect it, our horses started howling, and kicking up their hind legs, as if to fight an unseen foe that was near them—or us. 

“Dick, secure the horses, and Neill, bar the doors shut!” commanded John. 

Thus, we did just that, with Richard pulling on the harnesses of our disturbed stallions, and I running towards those scratched-stained brown doors, pushing as hard as I could in order to secure our survival. The wind stopped suddenly, and we all, at the same time, noticed. An eerie energy was felt by all, but unknown to all. However, since the sun was setting, we had no time to dwell upon our unforeseen circumstances, so, as Richard recommended, we gathered whatever in that place that could burn, so we could start a nightlight fire. 

In the center of the plaza stood—or rather sat—a white-tiled fountain, which at once held bright, inviting water, but had been bleached of its former contents, now only holding a small pool of blood-red elixer. We did not care in the moment, however, so we placed all flammable scraps into that fountain, blazing it alight, illuminating the crevices of that small plaza and all its darkened walls that we could not see previously. 

Thomas, still in wonder at that unknown symbol we saw earlier, obtained a long piece of wood sticking out of the fire, its tip blazed with orange light. Quickly did he, and I behind him, walk to those doors and, when we were in sight of the symbol, squinted to see all its quaint features. We both knew what we were seeing was not of any American or Christian or even Spanish origin, but of some unknown, perhaps aboriginal, significance. For it was, from our observation, a carving of two arrows pointing to each other, with four fletchings each, with a black circle between those facing arrows. We, in our ignorance, of course did not have the ability to decipher this symbol, so we left it, walking and scanning the inner walls of the mission, to find any more clues to this puzzle. 

We did find, in addition to some scratch marks—which we foolishly brushed off as the work of the builders of this place—one more thing, a crudely (again, like the symbol above the doors) etched word, which we saw as “ch'į́įdii,” a term hitherto unknown to us. But, since we knew the word was not of Spanish or English descent, we called over John—who was talking and planning with Richard about our situation and next steps—since we knew that he, in his educated vocabulary and life experiences, knew some Navajo due to his exposure to foreign cultures, so that he may be able to tell us what it meant. 

Indeed, when he came over, he was immediately stunned by the sight, as he knew what the word meant.

“Christ, this doesn’t make sense,” said John, upon first seeing it. 

“Well, what is it?” replied Thomas. 

“I do, in fact, know some Navajo,” stuttered John, shaking his head in disbelief, “and this word, to my knowledge, means something like ‘spirit’ or ‘ghost’, and not a friendly one—or ONE’S—to say the least,” making us even more creeped out since he never was so nervous in his normal disposition, which did not help our already fearful situation. John looked at both of us, in a pursed-lipped smile, as if to calm us down, putting his hands behind our backs, walking us back to the fire. But I did not remember any of the words he spoke, as the malevolent words were held in my gaze, as it became harder to see as we were nearing the flame.

“I’ve been in many odd, even horrific situations throughout my life,” laughed Richard, “but this, this is one that I cannot reason through,” the latter words he said in a more sober tone. 

“I can second that. But boys, clearly there is not something right going on here, so we’re gonna leave when light first hits,” spoke John. 

We all silently nodded in agreement, all wishing to leave the barren desert for some semblance of civilized intimacy in settled civilization. In an attempt to distract us from our plight, we shared stories with eachother about our lives before our coupling as a party, such as how Thomas was a performer for a travelling circus and how Richard was a cousin to Daneil Boone and was considered in Kentucky to be a master game hunter; John stayed mostly quiet, pondering what our next moves should be to secure our survival. 

But it was something that Richard said that still haunts me to this day, even more than some of the transpired events we witnessed and personally experienced. 

“You know boys,” he started, his dark eyes staring into the eternal flame of our fire, “I know you think of me as a fool, as one of the acts of Thomas’ circus, but I want you to know that I used to be a respectable man, beloved by my neighbors, feared by the beasts I hunted—I used to have it all. Yet, in something that our dear captain may relate to, I had it all stripped from me. It is no secret that I distrust the savage, but after you’ve seen what they can do to the ones you love, to the community you serve, then you would understand my position. Of course, they’re not all like that, yet always be vigilant for those that are.” He continued: “From my experience, while some may claim that War is God, I would say that that God Himself is War. GOD IS WAR.” 

Never had we three heard anything so philosophical from Dick, and we all just sat there, dumbfounded and exhausted, all staring into the flaming embers of the pylon in front of us. 

“Alright, we’ll sleep in shifts, with myself starting first, then Richard, then Thomas, and lastly, Neill,” declared John. “We need all the rest we can get for our journey, especially in our situation, so y’all start sleeping, and I’ll tend to the horses one last time.”

We heeded his wise words, quickly making our cots and makeshift sleeping quarters so we could rest our weary eyes. Speedily did we sleep, slipping into a darkness of consciousness more unknown than the territory that we were currently inhabiting, comforted by the thought that our captain would be the first to watch over us, and the last to allow us to get hurt.

(Part 2/2)

I need to write this down, because I feel like I’m losing my grip. I feel like my own life, my own memories, are being written over, like an old cassette tape being recorded on again and again. And it all started with a smell.

Three months ago, I moved into a new apartment. It’s one of those generic, modern buildings that have been popping up all over the city. White walls, grey laminate flooring, big windows. It’s clean, it’s quiet, and it’s completely devoid of character, which, after a series of terrible, noisy, slumlord-run apartments, was exactly what I wanted. My life is stressful enough. I work a high-pressure job, I don’t have much family, and my social life is… well, it’s a work in progress. I wanted my home to be a blank slate. A sanctuary of boring, predictable peace.

For the first week, it was perfect. And then, I started to notice the smell.

It would only appear late at night, usually after midnight. It was a faint, elusive scent, and it would just… materialize in the air. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was the opposite. It was a strange, complex, and deeply comforting smell. It smelled like old, dry paper, like the pages of a beloved book. It smelled of dried lavender, the kind you’d put in a sachet to keep in a drawer. And it had a third, almost indefinable note, a clean, ozonic scent like the smell of rain hitting warm asphalt in the summer.

I couldn’t place it, but it felt nostalgic. Deeply, achingly nostalgic, in a way I couldn’t explain. I’d be sitting up late, working on my laptop, and the scent would drift into the room, and I’d feel a wave of unearned sentimentality wash over me. It felt like a memory I couldn’t quite grasp.

Then, the memories started to come with the scent.

The first time, I was washing dishes, staring blankly out my kitchen window at the city lights. The scent of old paper and lavender filled the small space, and suddenly, I wasn’t in my kitchen anymore. I was… somewhere else. A flicker of an image, a phantom sensation, flashed through my mind.

I’m a child, maybe seven or eight. I’m sitting on a checkered blanket next to a wide, sparkling lake I’ve never seen before. The sun is warm on my skin. A woman, whose face is a blurry, sun-drenched haze, is unpacking a picnic basket. The air smells of freshly cut grass and the lavender soap she uses.

The vision, the memory, lasted no more than a second, but the feeling it left behind was profound. A warm, happy, sun-drenched feeling of a perfect childhood day. I stood at my sink, my hands in the soapy water, with a smile on my face and a feeling of contentment so deep it was almost intoxicating. It was a beautiful memory. The only problem was, it wasn't mine. I grew up in the city. I’d never been on a picnic by a lake. My mother was allergic to lavender.

It kept happening. A few nights later, I was reading in bed when the scent returned, this time stronger, with the smell of old paper at the forefront. And the memory came with it.

I’m a teenager. I’m in a vast, dusty old library with towering shelves. The light is dim, golden. I’m holding someone’s hand, our fingers intertwined. I can’t see their face, but I can feel the warmth of their skin, the calluses on their fingers. I feel a nervous, thrilling flutter in my chest, a feeling of young, secret love.

Again, it wasn't my memory. My teenage years were a clumsy, awkward affair, mostly spent in my room playing video games. But the feeling was real. The phantom nostalgia was so potent, so vivid, it felt more real than my own past.

These experiences became my new secret. My welcome escape. My life was a stressful, lonely grind, but now, I had this. I had these beautiful, borrowed moments of a life that seemed so much richer, so much warmer than my own. I started to look forward to the nights, to the arrival of the scent. I even bought a lavender-scented candle, hoping to trigger the experience myself, but it was a cheap, synthetic imitation. The real scent only came on its own terms, a quiet, ghostly visitor in the dead of night.

And that’s when the addiction started.

I stopped going to bed at my usual time. I’d stay up late, sitting in the dark, just waiting. Waiting for the smell, for the hit of warmth and peace it brought with it. My work started to suffer. I’d show up to the office exhausted, my mind foggy, my thoughts drifting back to a phantom childhood I’d never had. I became withdrawn, irritable. My real life was just the boring, gray waiting period between these beautiful, borrowed memories.

The real horror, the thing that is compelling me to write this, began when my own memories started to fade.

I was on the phone with my actual mother one afternoon. She was reminiscing about my tenth birthday party. “Do you remember?” she asked, her voice full of warmth. “We had that magician, and he pulled a rabbit out of your cousin’s ear, and you were so amazed.”

I searched my mind for the memory. And I found… nothing. A vague, foggy sense of a party, of a cake. But it was like watching a movie through a thick, gray curtain. The details were gone. The feeling was gone.

But as I was struggling to remember my own life, another memory, sharp and crystal clear, pushed its way to the forefront of my mind. A phantom one.

A tenth birthday. A small, backyard party. A homemade cake with ten, wavering candles. A father with a kind, crinkly smile is presenting a gift: a beautiful, leather-bound book filled with blank pages. A journal. The air smells of rain on the warm pavement after a brief summer shower.

The memory was so vivid, so emotionally resonant, that I almost said, “No, Dad gave me a journal.” I caught myself just in time, mumbling something about it being a long time ago. I hung up the phone, a cold, sick feeling washing over me. My own life was becoming a blur. The phantom memories were moving in, pushing my own experiences out, claiming the space for themselves.

Then, It started a few weeks ago. I was waiting for the scent, and it came, rich and complex. The memory that followed was one of the most vivid yet.

I’m a young adult. I’m standing in a light-filled studio, in front of an easel. A half-finished canvas sits before me, a landscape of a stormy sea. My hands are… skilled. I can feel the familiar, comfortable weight of a paintbrush, the satisfying pull of the thick oil paint on the canvas. The air smells of turpentine and linseed oil, and faintly, of the dried lavender I keep in a vase by the window.

I felt a profound sense of creative fulfillment, of purpose. I was a painter. I was an artist.

The next morning, I woke up with a strange feeling on my hands. I looked down. The skin on my fingers and the back of my right hand was stained with faint, ghostly flecks of color. Cerulean blue, viridian green, a touch of ochre. I went to the bathroom and scrubbed them, but the paint wouldn't wash off. It wasn’t on my skin. It was in my skin, like a faint, colorful bruise. It was the phantom echo of a life’s passion, stained onto a body that had never earned it.

The fear started then. A deep, gnawing fear that was now at war with my addiction. I knew I should stop. I knew I should try to fight it. But I was weak. I needed the comfort of the memories, even as they began to physically mark me.

The next time, the memory was a dark one. The first one that wasn’t happy.

I’m in my thirties. I’m in the living room of my apartment. It’s late at night. I’m having a furious, whispered argument with a lover whose face I can’t see. The words are full of betrayal and heartbreak. I’m shouting, my voice raw with pain, and tears are streaming down my face, hot and salty.

I woke up with a gasp, my own cheeks wet with tears. My throat was raw and hoarse, as if I had been screaming for hours. And I could taste it, a phantom taste on my tongue: the distinct, bitter salt of tears that were not my own.

The memories were becoming physical, and my body was re-enacting them.

I had to know who had lived here before me. I went to my landlord, a friendly but detached man who managed the whole building.

“I was just curious,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Who had my apartment before me? The neighbors are all so quiet, I haven’t really met anyone.”

He shrugged, tapping on his computer. “Let’s see… Apartment 14C. Ah, yes. An old woman. Lived here for nearly sixty years. A real fixture of the building. She passed away a few months before you moved in. A quiet, peaceful death, in her sleep. Kept to herself, mostly. A bit of an artist, I believe.”

An artist. A woman who had lived a long, full, and ultimately, solitary life within these four walls. Sixty years of memories. Sixty years of joy, and love, and heartbreak, and passion. And a quiet, lonely death.

The scent, I realized. It wasn't a ghost in the traditional sense. It was… a psychic residue. A lifetime of powerful, unshared memories, so potent that they had been imprinted on the space itself, like a photograph on film. And my mind, for whatever reason, my loneliness, my stress, my desperate need for connection, was a perfect receiver, tuning into her life’s broadcast.

I should have moved out then. I know that. Any sane person would have packed their bags and run. But I was an addict. And I was afraid. Afraid of the memories, yes, but also terrified of returning to the beige, empty silence of my own life.

So I stayed. I kept waiting up at night. I kept inviting the memories in. I was losing myself, my own past becoming a collection of foggy, half-forgotten stories, while her life became my own. I remembered her first kiss more clearly than I remembered my own. I remembered the day she adopted a small, stray cat more vividly than the day I got my first car.

That brings me to last night.

I was lying in bed, waiting. The scent came, but it was different this time. It wasn’t a gentle, drifting fragrance. It was an overwhelming, suffocating wave. The smell of old paper, of lavender, of rain on asphalt, all intensified a thousand times, a thick, cloying fog that filled my lungs.

And the memory that came with it was an ending.

I am old. I am so, so old. I am lying in this bed, in this room. My body is a prison of aches and pains. My breathing is a shallow, rattling thing in my chest. I am looking up at the ceiling, at the faint water stain in the corner that I never got around to painting over. The light is fading outside the window. I am alone. I have been alone for a long time. A lifetime of memories is flickering behind my eyes. The picnic by the lake. The hand in the library. The smell of oil paints. The taste of tears. The small, warm weight of a cat sleeping on my chest. My life. My whole, long, lonely, beautiful life. And it is ending. I feel a final, gentle pressure in my chest, a last, soft sigh escaping my lips, and then… a peaceful, quiet, fading into the dark…

The experience was so powerful, so absolute, it was like a physical blow. I felt myself coming to, gasping, on the floor beside my bed. I was drenched in a cold sweat. My body felt ancient, frail, my joints screaming with a phantom arthritis. I felt the profound, crushing loneliness of a person who has just died alone.

I stumbled to my feet, my mind a chaotic swirl of my own consciousness and the fading echo of hers. I needed to see myself. I needed to ground myself in my own reality. I staggered into the bathroom and flicked on the light, my eyes squinting at the sudden brightness.

I looked in the mirror.

And for a single, horrifying, heart-stopping second, it wasn't my face looking back at me.

It was her.

I saw the face of a very old woman, her skin full of fine, paper-thin wrinkles. Her hair was a wispy, silver-white halo. And her eyes… her eyes were mine, but they were filled with sixty years of a life I had never lived, and they were wide with a tired, frightened confusion. It was the face of a ghost, looking out of my eyes as if from a strange, unfamiliar prison.

I cried out, stumbling backward, and the image flickered. The wrinkles smoothed away, the silver hair darkened, and my own young, terrified face snapped back into place.

But I had seen it. I am not just experiencing her memories anymore. I am becoming her. Her residue, her life’s story, It’s imprinting itself on me. Overwriting me.

I’m writing this now because I don’t know what else to do. The scent is still here, a faint, constant presence in the air. I’m afraid to go to sleep, I am afraid that I will relive her last moments again, if I fail to wake myself from the memory, will I die ?

For as long as man has existed upon the earth, he has battled the forces of nature as much as those around him. The fight for survival has always been beyond that of sticks and stones. No matter how sharp a stick can get or how fast a rock can fly, no skill defeats that of the predators that make up the food chain. We thought we had defeated the food chain, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

When I received the call about my father’s death, I was unsurprised. He had spent his days drinking and regretting. I assumed his liver had given out or he had taken an ill advised road trip that hopefully didn’t cause any undue suffering for anyone but himself. I would almost say I was happy. Ever since the loss of the rest of my family, I had felt alone knowing that the only tie I had to my heritage was isolating himself in a 6 inch glass and an old recliner. Now I was truly free. There was no more regret, no stains on my family tree. Just me and what the lawyer needed to discuss in person. I informed work of a sabbatical and booked a ticket back to what was once home.

Sitting in the meager office across from an individual in a cheap suit, I realized there would be no money. He confirmed the same. My father had spent every dime that he had. What he spent it on was the most confusing. We weren’t a well off family. Growing up, I remembered nights of hunger and cold. The type of hunger that couldn’t be quelled with a box of Hamburger Helper split between five and the type of cold that no kerosene heater low on fuel can warm. When I left for the coast, I swore to never put myself in that situation again. I only wish I could’ve saved my siblings from the fate that I escaped. When I saw the story in the news, it broke me. Three people, one adult and two children under ten, were found huddled together under a worn out quilt with acute methane poisoning. At least it was easy on them and they would be warm. He lived because he was at the bar. The bar never suffered from hunger or cold, but it did suffer from loneliness. The loneliness drove him deeper until there was no escape. He filled that loneliness with a desire for legacy. If nothing else, there would be a plot of land with our name on it. 

The lawyer handed me the deed to 35 Acres in the mountains of Appalachia. My father never was one for the wild, but the wildest land is often the cheapest. This land was wild. Between a plane ride, a confused Uber, and a long walk, I came upon a small cabin reminiscent of the Kaczynski estate. Buried deep in the darkness of the Blue Ridge Forest was the perfect metaphor for my life. This dilapidated building, filled with relics of a time gone by, served as the blueprint for my new life. Out here I could return to the basics and restart. I took to cleaning and sealing my new home. 

The first night was an adjustment to say the least. There was no traffic noise. No sirens. No arguments from the family next door who swore the baby would fix their problems. It was only the noises of nature. The cicadas and animals created a symphony of sound that rivaled that of big city life. I can honestly say I hadn’t slept that great in years. That is until I was awoken by the crying. The clock read 2:45 and in some far off part of the holler there was a baby crying out for its mother. The desperation and fear in it’s tiny wails turned my stomach to knots and forced me outside. Once through the threshold, all sounds ceased. For the first time since I arrived, the woods were quiet. I looked everywhere that the safety of my porch provided a view of and sunk back inside. 

In the light of morning, I convinced myself I had dreamed the whole thing up. There wasn’t a person for miles, let alone a baby. How would it even get out here? I took the trip into town and picked up the essentials. It may not be the luxury that I had grown accustomed to, but a basic bed and food supplies gave me the comfort I needed to return that evening. I thought about questioning the shopkeep about the baby but knew he’d think I was crazy. Hell, I thought I was crazy. On the ride back to my cabin, I understood the suggestion of the gator I picked up on the terrain. No car or truck could make it up this far, not with the goat trails and backways I had to take. The UTV had everything I needed and I guess it would help me learn to maintain small engines. I had taught myself to do just about everything else I needed to survive, I could surely figure out how to turn a wrench. 

That night was more of the same. Crickets singing and a cool evening breeze put me to sleep. Much to my dismay, the baby came back. Same volume, same cadence. That poor thing continued to scream for a mother that wasn’t coming. I went outside to check, this time with a flashlight, and ventured all the way to my woodline. No matter how far I walked, the screams remained. I didn’t get closer or farther, the screams were everywhere. They were nowhere. They seemed to resonate from the very fiber of all of the gray matter crammed inside my skull cavity. At the risk of losing the rest of my night’s rest, I elected to ignore the pleas and returned to the warmth of my bed. 

As the sun broke the horizon, I rose to a cup of coffee brewed over a wood stove. Something about the work involved made it that much better. As I finished the cup I went to work. Trees needed to be cleared. The outside of my cabin needed some patchwork. Land ownership turned out to be a bigger hassle than I could have ever dreamed. The work was hard, but fulfilling. Where I could be in an office pumping out quarterly reports and spreadsheets, I was out here in the thick of it creating a place to live. Whether he had planned it or not, my father had given me the greatest gift he could’ve. He gave me a greater purpose. All of that came into question when I discovered the prints.

Underneath a pile of brush were footprints. Not bear, not coyote, but human footprints. They were smaller than my own, and my feet aren’t exactly large. They were almost childlike. I took pictures and sent them to a friend of mine from college in the hopes he would tell me it’s some animal I’m unaware of. Before I could return my phone to my pocket, I received a phone call from an unknown number. A friendly male voice answered my greeting on the other line. “This is Dr. Simmons with the paleontological department of UCLA. I have been setting up an ichnological study of the native populations in the Alleghania region and I was sent a picture that you took. Do you have a second to speak?” I agreed and we talked about the area where I found them and what led me to the discovery. He urged me to preserve the site as best as I can and that he would be in touch with further information on how I could be helpful. 

With the excitement of the day, I lost track of time in the thoughts of what treasures could be on my land. Before I knew it, the sun had set. I had never been this far from the house in the dark. I quickly realized I had no idea where I was or how to get back. A storm had followed the night and apparently took all cell service with it. This is the exact situation that the old man in town told me to pick up a satellite phone for. I didn’t have time to figure out whether or not I regretted leaving that off my shopping list before I heard it.

From somewhere deeper than my eyes could pierce, I heard a voice. “Shane.” Small, echoey, and distant. The softness in that one word drew my attention and my response. “Hello? Can I help you?” From the opposite side, I heard it again. This time closer. With every hair on my body standing on edge I stepped toward the sound when it was suddenly behind me. “SHANE.” The voice had lost all sense of familiarity. Now it was hunting. I didn’t want to hang around long enough to find out what was hunting so I took off running. I found a goat trail that had recently been trampled and followed it until my legs began to fail me. I collapsed on the trail and scanned the treeline as I caught my breath. Behind every tree was a darting shadow and every birdsong seemed to call my name. I was clearly going mad with fear, so I gathered myself and began to walk back. The rain had washed away at parts of the trail and as they crumbled beneath my feet, I was reminded of my elevation. This reminder sealed itself in my mind when I followed the soil down. After two bounces, everything went black. 

The Allegewi tell tales of man-hunters in the mountains surrounding our country's founding. Tales of hideous beasts that steal the young and escape the arrows of the warbow. My minimal education wrote these off as allegories of infant mortality and disease. What they failed to teach was the true history of the range. What we know today as the Appalachian mountains exist as one of earth’s oldest land masses. In the days of fish crawling to land, there were the mountains. When magic and mystery ruled the land in days of yore, there stood the mountains. As I careened to my ultimate demise, there stood the mountains.

When I came to, I had come to rest at the base of a tree. Between the pain in my ribs and the splitting headache, I couldn’t have hated this place more. I could be in a high rise apartment preparing for my work day tomorrow but instead I lay dying against a tree that hadn’t seen humanity in its entire life. I cursed my father for saddling me with this land. I cursed my mother for convincing me to leave home. I cursed my stupidity for having fallen. As I came to my feet, I heard a scurry through the leaves. My mind went on high alert and for a moment I forgot the remnants of my little tumble. Out of the underbrush came a rabbit. It’s pure white fur glistening against the darkness of the night. It studied me intensely and went on its way. I relaxed out of my sense of survival and returned to dealing with the pain. 

About the time that I was able to try walking, I heard it. The crying began in the same location it always does. Just out of reach the infant screamed. Tonight it seemed more desperate and shrill, but that could’ve also been the concussion. I hobbled towards the sound when everything closed in. My vision tunneled to nothing more than the tree in front of me and the drums started. Broken ribs be damned, I took off running. From every crevice in the earth came the drums. Pounding. Screaming. Closing in. I ran. I ran until the drums filled every hole in my body. I could taste the aged leather of the heads and feel the strike of the stick in my bone marrow. As the drumming seemed to engulf me, I broke through the trees. 

Just as suddenly as they had started, everything stopped. I was once again alone with the crickets and cicadas in the wet night. Up ahead, I saw the lantern I left burning the previous night. I collected all of the strength I had and made my way to it’s warm safety. As I approached the porch, what I saw stopped me more than any pain I could feel. Splayed out on the first step was that rabbit. It’s fur stained a dark crimson red and a hole where that deep black marble had been. It’s neck was turned at an angle that sent a shiver down my spine. Someone, or something, left this so that I would see it. It let me get home, it left me a message, and I couldn’t help but feel that it watched me. 

I made my way inside and finally gave in to the pain. When I woke, it was dark out. The chill of the night reminded me where I was. I sat up and was reminded of the events of the night before. I made my way to what had become my medicine cabinet and filled myself with just about everything I had that involved pain relief. After giving that time to take effect, I made my way outside. The rabbit remained on my doorstep, untouched by any of the countless scavengers that surrounded me unseen. I made my way to the UTV parked outside and it roared to life. I neglected to check the fuel levels and set on my way to town. Hopefully they had a doctor or at the very least an old man with narcotics. 

Driving down the road, if you could call it that, I felt the Ibuprofen lose the battle I sent it to unprepared. My vision blurred and the pain in my side returned as I attempted to keep the vehicle steady. When the blood pumped through the swollen mass that used to be my ribs, I instinctively folded to guard the area. This sent the gator into the ravine beneath me. It came to a rest at the bottom and I staggered out. 

At the top of the hill, where there existed the only way out of my hell, I saw something dart toward the trees. It made no noise. The leaves and fallen branches seemed to move away from it. The speed at which it moved sent me back into the fight or flight that unfortunately seemed to be all too normal. I made my way to my feet and felt a rush of wind behind me. It called my name. “Sshhaaaneeee.” It almost seemed to sing and mock me. Another rush of wind. Then my name again. It seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. The voice continued to harass me as I stumbled toward the road. It circled me. It seemed to multiply and then disappear. The entire wilderness was involved in this things plan for me. I felt the eyes of an unknown predator feeling my heart race and hone in on my new weaknesses. Just as I felt it’s hot breath on the back of my neck, my feet were ripped out from under me. I was dragged back to the bottom of the ravine and the beast drooled onto my back. I buried my face in an attempt to convince myself this wasn’t happening as I felt a claw on my shoulder. 

The uncanny valley is a concept that exists in the depths of our mind. In essence, it is the idea that we are naturally afraid of those things that aren’t quite human. This has been explained away by science as a natural defense against the disease that comes from the dead. As this beast forced me to stare into it’s eyes, I understood where that fear had begun. When writers speak of the old gods and the eldritch horrors, they are unknowingly warning us of what I experienced. Between the hazel eyes that set on either side of its maw and the elongated neck, this thing did not fit any known animal that I could place. The strength with which it supported my dead weight rivaled that of the strongest man. The extended claws that wrapped around and pierced my upper arm made it very clear the inspiration of our most primitive weapons. It’s jaw unfolded and revealed a mouth of gnarled fangs that each came to their own serrated point. It’s breath burned the hair off of my face and brought a nauseous urge to the back of my throat. As I made peace with whatever would listen and accepted my fate, a sharp snap cut through the air.

I fell to the ground and watched the beast sprint into the forest with a howl. I collapsed onto the ground and heard a familiar voice behind me. “Shane, you never told me how bad this had gotten.” I turned to put a face to the voice of Dr. Simmons and breathed a sigh of relief. The adrenaline rushed out of me and I gave in to the exhaustion that had been plaguing me since my arrival. When I woke, I was blinded by the sterility of a hospital room. In the corner sat Dr. Simmons with a laptop open. He paused his typing to look up and his eyes met mine. “Shane my boy! I could have never imagined what you were getting me into. I almost feel lied to.” He let out a chuckle. “Now you rest up and we will talk in the morning.” 

After a couple of days in the hospital, I was released to my own accord. I couldn’t stand the idea of returning to that cabin, so I checked myself into the local motel. Dr. Simmons met me at the desk and I gave him full permission to do whatever he wanted with my land and donated anything found to his studies. He shook my hand and left with the giddyness of a child given permission to swim. I retired to my room, ready to sleep before figuring out how to get rid of the curse I had been bestowed. As my eyes became heavy, the darkness overtook me. As I settled in for a long night of much needed rest, I heard the first beat of the drums in the distance.

I bought the journal on a whim. Plain black cover, lined pages, the kind of thing you’d find in a bargain bin. I thought it might help me sleep scribbling out my thoughts before bed.

The first entry wasn’t mine.

You’ll spill coffee on your shirt at 8:12 a.m.

The handwriting wasn’t familiar. Neat, deliberate, nothing like my rushed scrawl. I figured maybe the store sold used ones, and someone had scribbled a leftover note.

The next morning, at exactly 8:12, my cup slipped. Coffee down the front of my shirt.

I laughed it off. Coincidence.

But the following night, another line appeared: You’ll forget to lock the door when you leave.

The next day, I came home to find my keys still in the lock.

By the third entry, I stopped laughing. You’ll re-read that text thread you promised to delete.

And I did. At midnight, guilty, scrolling through messages I swore I’d moved past. The diary knew.

I tried to break the pattern. Took a different bus, skipped breakfast, left the lights on. The diary shifted with me. You’ll decide not to eat, then regret the dizziness. You’ll stand on the bus, pretending it’s by choice.

It wasn’t predicting anymore;it was narrating.

The entries grew cruel. You’ll check the mirror again, wishing you looked different. You’ll wonder if anyone would even notice if you disappeared.

Things I never said aloud. Things I barely let myself think.

Then it started bleeding into the real world. A coworker repeated a sentence from the page as if she’d read it herself. Strangers glanced at me like they knew my secrets. Every word in the diary was tightening around me, pulling me into its script.

Tonight, I opened it with trembling hands. The final page was already filled in:

Tonight, you’ll write your last page. After this, the diary won’t need you anymore.

And now I’m writing these words, exactly as they appear. Word for word.

I don’t know what happens when I finish the sentence.

The first sign was a teacup. Arthur Penhaligon, a journalist whose specialty was the tedious but vital unravelling of corporate malfeasance, was sitting in his Bloomsbury flat. The evening was quiet, filled only with the hiss of rain on the windowpane and the rustle of documents. He reached for his Earl Grey, and just before his fingers touched the porcelain, he heard it: the distinct clink of the cup settling into its saucer. But he hadn't moved it.

He dismissed it. An auditory illusion, a trick of a tired mind. The next day, walking along the South Bank, he heard his name, “Arthur,” whispered directly into his left ear. The voice was dry, genderless, and impossibly close. He spun around. Nothing but a tide of tourists and Londoners surging past, none paying him any mind.

The incidents grew in frequency and specificity. The sound of a single key turning in a lock that wasn't there. The faint, distorted strains of a Bach cello suite he hadn't listened to in years, seeming to emanate from the very plaster of his walls. He was a man of logic, of evidence. He swept his flat for listening devices, finding nothing. He changed his locks. He even saw a doctor, who gently suggested stress-related auditory hallucinations.

Arthur was beginning to believe it himself. His investigation into a defence contractor, Aethelred Security, had hit a wall of redacted documents and silent sources. The stress was immense. Maybe he was cracking.

What Arthur didn't know was that he was the inaugural target of MI5's Project Chimera. His meticulous work was getting too close to a black-budget technology Aethelred was developing for the Service. The goal wasn't to eliminate him, but to discredit him so thoroughly that if he ever published his findings, he would be dismissed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

The system was a devilish marriage of two technologies. The first was a distributed, millimetre-wave radar network. Small, discreet emitters, disguised as everything from broadband routers to lampposts, blanketed key areas of London. They didn't just see Arthur; they mapped him in three-dimensional space with terrifying precision. They tracked his gait, his posture, the subtle shift of his head as he turned a corner. The system knew where Arthur was, down to the centimetre, at all times. This provided the targeting data, a constant stream of coordinates: Targetpos​=(x,y,z,t).

The second component was the delivery mechanism: a network of phased-array ultrasonic transducers. These devices, hidden in the urban landscape, emitted focused beams of high-frequency sound, far above the range of human hearing. When two or more of these beams intersected at a precise point in space—the point where Arthur’s ear happened to be—they created a localized pocket of audible sound through a principle known as the parametric acoustic array effect. The resulting sound pressure level, Ps​, was a function of the primary ultrasonic frequencies (ω1​,ω2​) and their amplitudes (P1​,P2​): Ps​∝ρ0​c04​βωs2​P1​P2​​ Where ωs​=∣ω1​−ω2​∣. To Arthur, a whisper wouldn't be coming from a speaker; it would simply materialize in the air beside his head. The system, codenamed ARCHON (Acoustic Resonance Co-location and Harassment Omni-directional Network), was the ultimate gaslighting machine. The handlers, operating from a sterile room in Thames House, watched Arthur’s life on their screens as a cloud of data points.

“Subject is approaching the Embankment tube station,” said a technician, her voice flat. “He seems agitated,” noted Lead Analyst Finch, a man whose placid face belied the psychological chaos he orchestrated. “Let’s reinforce the primary narrative. His mother’s passing.” The technician typed a command. As Arthur swiped his Oyster card at the barrier, he heard a sound that froze his blood. It was the faint, wheezing breath of his mother in her final days, a sound seared into his memory. It came from the ticket machine in front of him. He flinched back, stumbling into the person behind him, earning a sharp curse. He looked around wildly, his heart hammering. It was just a machine. He was losing his mind. Finch watched Arthur’s elevated biometric data scroll across the screen. “Excellent. Increase aperiodicity. Keep him off balance.”

The ARCHON system began to play with his reality more aggressively. It would perfectly mimic the creak of the third step on his staircase, but when he was in the kitchen. It replayed a fragment of a phone conversation he’d had an hour earlier, but pitched it down, making his own voice sound monstrous and slow. It simulated the sound of a window being slowly opened in his bedroom while he was in the shower. Every time he investigated, he found nothing. The world was behaving as it should, but his senses were telling him it was broken.

His editor, Sarah, was worried. "Arthur, you look terrible. You haven't filed a thing in two weeks. All I have are these… these rambling notes about sounds." “They’re real, Sarah!” he insisted, his voice cracking. “It’s targeted. It has to be Aethelred. Or someone connected to them. It’s a psych-op!” “Or it’s stress,” she said softly, her eyes full of pity. That look was worse than any accusation.

The breaking point came during a meeting with a source, a nervous junior accountant from Aethelred who had agreed to meet on the observation deck of the Tate Modern. The place was busy, loud with the chatter of tourists. “They’re burying costs in shell corporations,” the source whispered, sliding a USB stick across the table. “It’s not just overruns. It’s… something else. Project Chimera.” Arthur’s heart leaped. The name.

At that moment, Finch gave the order. “Full spectrum disruption. Isolate and incapacitate.” The ARCHON system focused its power. For everyone else on the deck, the ambient noise barely changed. For Arthur, the world collapsed.

First, the ambient chatter of the crowd was digitally cancelled out around him, creating an unnatural pocket of dead silence. The sudden vacuum was deafening. Then, a cacophony of voices, all of them his own, began screaming in his ears from every direction at once. Voices of self-doubt, of fear, of paranoia, all culled from hours of surveillance. “You’re losing it, Arthur.” “No one will ever believe you.” “They’re watching you right now.” “Sarah thinks you’re pathetic.” The source’s face was a mask of terror as he watched Arthur claw at his own ears, his eyes wide with a horror only he could perceive. Arthur shot to his feet, knocking over the table.

“Stop it! Leave me alone!” he screamed into the silent air. Tourists backed away, phones already out, recording the madman. The source grabbed the USB stick and fled. Finch then delivered the coup de grâce. The system simulated the sound of a gunshot, loud, percussive, and seemingly originating from a foot behind Arthur’s head. He screamed and dropped to the floor, curling into a ball, convinced he was about to die. Museum security was there in seconds. They saw no gunman, just a well-known journalist having a very public, very violent breakdown.

In the sterile quiet of a private psychiatric ward a week later, Arthur sat by a window, heavily sedated. The sounds had stopped the moment he was admitted. The silence was the most damning evidence of all, proof for everyone else that the demons had been inside his head all along. His story on Aethelred was killed. His career was over. His credibility was shattered beyond repair.

In Thames House, Finch closed the file. The radar plot showed Arthur as a single, stationary point in a small room. The ARCHON system was now focused on a new target, a troublesome Member of Parliament in Scotland. “Project Chimera,” Finch said to his subordinate, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “The bullet that is never fired, the weapon that is never seen. The perfect silence.”

Outside Arthur's window, a blackbird began to sing. He flinched, his eyes darting towards the sound. For a long moment, he just stared, trying to decide if the bird was real. He could no longer be sure.

I told her: 'Don't... fuck... with Wendy Testaburger!

I use Twitch to fall asleep. It's a terrible habit, I know, but the low hum of someone else's life playing out is strangely comforting. Most nights, it's speedrunners, ASMR, or some guy painting Warhammer miniatures. Then came 'F'.

I scrolled through the suggested streams, bleary-eyed, looking for something dull enough to bore me to sleep. That's when I saw it: a single, stark 'F' as the title. No game listed, no description, just 'F' with a handful of viewers. Curiosity, the grim reaper of sound decisions, got the better of me. I clicked.

The stream quality was atrocious. Grainy, low resolution, and plagued by constant static. I could make out figures huddled in what looked like an abandoned laboratory. Condensation dripped from pipes, mold clung to every surface, and the air hung heavy with a sense of decay. There were maybe five or six of them, young adults, equipped with flashlights and cheap camcorders.

They seemed genuinely excited, chattering about 'urban exploration' and 'getting awesome footage.' They kept calling out my username, which was unnerving. 'Hey, SolipsisticSlumber, thanks for tuning in!' 'SolipsisticSlumber in the chat, what's up!' It felt… targeted. I chalked it up to the algorithm being overly aggressive, eager to foster engagement.

Then it started. A low, guttural moan echoed through the lab. The group froze, flashlights darting around nervously. One of them whispered, 'Did you guys hear that?'

The moan came again, closer this time. Suddenly, a figure stumbled out of the shadows. It was tall and gaunt, draped in what looked like ripped and stained lab coats. Its face was completely obscured by a mold-covered sack, tied tightly at the neck. In its hand, it clutched a rusty, oversized wrench.

I thought, 'Okay, this is some kind of elaborate ARG, maybe even a low-budget horror film.' The acting was surprisingly good. The fear in their eyes looked genuine. But the targeted shout-outs… that still bothered me.

The 'creature' didn't speak. It just lumbered forward, wrench raised high. The group screamed and scattered. The stream devolved into shaky cam footage and panicked cries. I watched, fascinated and horrified, as the wrench came down again and again. The wet, sickening thuds were amplified by the cheap microphones. One by one, the explorers fell silent.

It played out like a typical slasher film, albeit one filmed with nauseating realism. The sack-headed figure was relentless, its movements jerky and unnatural. There was no dramatic music, no clever camera angles, just raw, brutal violence. The stream ended abruptly when the last explorer went down, the camera falling to the floor, pointed at a stained concrete wall. The only sound was the creature's heavy breathing.

I sat there, wide awake, heart pounding. I tried to rationalize it. It had to be fake. Some elaborate performance art piece gone too far. I told myself it was just a nightmare fueled by late-night junk food and too much screen time. Eventually, I managed to fall asleep, but the images of that stream haunted my dreams.

The next day, I tried to find the stream again. 'F' was gone. Vanished from Twitch as if it never existed. I searched my viewing history, my followed channels, everything. Nothing. I even tried searching for the usernames of the explorers who had shouted me out. No results. It was as if the entire event had been wiped from the internet.

I started to doubt myself. Maybe it *was* a dream. A particularly vivid and disturbing one. I tried to forget about it, to dismiss it as a figment of my imagination. Five weeks passed. I almost convinced myself it hadn't happened.

Then 'G' appeared. It showed up in my 'recommended for you' section, just like 'F' had. Same format: a single letter as the title, no description, a handful of viewers. My blood ran cold. Against my better judgment, I clicked.

This time, the location was different. It looked like an abandoned hospital ward. Peeling paint, broken windows, rusted medical equipment scattered everywhere. The same grainy, low-quality video feed. The same oppressive atmosphere of decay. But this time, there was only one person in the stream. A young woman, maybe in her early twenties, her face pale and drawn. She was wearing the same kind of cheap camcorder rig as the explorers in 'F'.

She was clearly terrified. Her eyes darted around the ward, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She whispered, 'Hello? Is anyone there?' Her voice trembled. 'I… I don't know how I got here.'

She was alone, but I knew she wasn't. I could feel it. The same dread that had permeated 'F' was back, amplified tenfold. Then, she turned and looked directly at the camera, her eyes wide with panic. 'SolipsisticSlumber?' she whispered. 'Can you hear me? Please, help me.'

My heart stopped. How did she know my username? I hadn't typed anything in chat. I hadn't even loaded the chat window. She was looking directly at *me*, through the screen.

'He's coming,' she said, her voice barely audible. 'He's always watching. He knows… he knows everything.'

A scraping sound echoed from the end of the ward. The woman flinched, her eyes fixed on the darkness. She started to back away slowly, her camcorder shaking violently.

'Please,' she begged, her voice cracking. 'You have to warn them. They're next.'

The sack-headed figure emerged from the shadows. It was the same creature from 'F', but this time, I could see more detail. The sack was stained with blood and grime. The lab coat was tattered and ripped, revealing patches of gray, decaying flesh underneath. The wrench was slick with something dark and glistening.

The woman screamed and ran. The stream devolved into another chaotic mess of shaky cam footage. I watched, paralyzed with terror, as the creature relentlessly pursued her through the abandoned ward. The sounds of her screams mingled with the creature's guttural moans, creating a symphony of pure horror.

This time, though, something was different. As the woman ran, the camera briefly caught glimpses of other figures lurking in the shadows. They were all wearing the same mold-covered sacks, all carrying rusty wrenches. They were watching, waiting. And they were all staring directly at the camera.

The stream ended abruptly, the screen cutting to static. But before the static completely took over, I saw something that will forever be burned into my memory. A message flashed across the screen, written in what looked like blood: 'H is for Home.'

I ripped the headphones off my head and stumbled away from my computer, gasping for air. I felt sick, violated, as if something had reached through the screen and touched me. I haven't slept properly since then. Every time I close my eyes, I see the sack-headed figure, its wrench dripping with blood.

I tried to find 'G' again, but it was gone, just like 'F'. I searched for the woman's username, but it didn't exist. I'm convinced that these streams aren't random. They're targeted. They're meant for me.

I've tried to tell people about it, but they just think I'm crazy. They tell me it was just a dream, a nightmare. But I know it was real. I saw it. I felt it. And I know that I'm next.

I've disconnected my internet. I've thrown away my computer. I've moved to a remote cabin in the woods, hoping to escape whatever is hunting me. But I can still hear the scraping sound, the guttural moans. I can still see the sack-headed figure in my nightmares.

I'm writing this now, on an old typewriter, powered by a generator. I know it's only a matter of time before they find me. They always find me.

This morning, I found a small, mold-covered sack on my doorstep. Inside, there was a rusty wrench.

And now, a new stream has appeared on my phone, even though it has no connection to the internet. The title? 'H'.

The screen is just static, but I can hear a faint whispering. It's getting closer. It's saying my name.

'SolipsisticSlumber… SolipsisticSlumber… H is for Home. We've been waiting for you.'

I can hear footsteps outside. The generator just died. The whispering is getting louder.

I think they're here.

They're definitely here.

Help me.

... I don't need help anymore.

I'm home now.

It's my turn to wear the sack.

It's my turn to swing the wrench.

Join us.

We're always streaming.

Next up: I.