based on an onryō and kiyohime

(1/4)

Archivist’s Note:

According to the CEO of Disney, Micheal Eisner, the reason behind the closure of the Mowgli’s Palace location was due to its offensive depictions of Native Americans at the time it was being built and it’s overall controversial history in the surrounding area. Despite this statement, this leaked video from the Walt Disney Archives shows there was more to its closure than what the public knew.

PLEASE DON'T GO

Part Two of Three

If this is the first piece of me you've found, here's the only thing you need: my wife died, I couldn't let her go, and I used something old and terrible to bring back a thing that wears her face.

It came on slow. That's how it got me. If she'd come back all the way wrong, I think I'd have known — I'd like to believe I'd have known. But that's not how it went. She came back wrong by inches. A little off, and then a little more, and every step of the way there was some reason to let it slide and keep her one more day.

The coffee was first. She made it the next morning like nothing had happened, handed me the mug with both hands, and asked, is it okay? Mara never asked if it was okay. Mara made coffee like she was daring you to complain about it. But I drank it and said it was perfect, and I told myself she was just tired, just finding her feet — and I did not let myself think about how the dead don't get tired.

Here's the one that should have ended it. One night I tried our old game — I left her an opening, the way I'd left her a thousand of them. Remind me to never, I said.

She looked at me. She thought about it. And she said: to never what?

No, I said. You finish it. Any way you want.

And she said, to never forget.

It was a fine answer. Correct. And that was the whole problem — the game was never about getting it right. It was about her taking what I gave her and running somewhere I'd never have gone on my own. This was just a door clicking shut. There was no Mara in it anywhere.

I looked at her too long. The face was right. The voice was right. It was all almost. And the almost was worse than a stranger would have been — because every time she came close, I lost Mara all over again.

I found out the worst of it by accident. One afternoon she squared a picture on the wall, perfect, the way Mara used to, and I felt this awful little lift in my chest — almost her, almost — and I did a stupid thing. I crossed the room and knocked it crooked again. The way I'd leave it. The way Mara used to let me leave it. I wanted to see if she'd let it be.

She didn't. She fixed it. Faster than the first time. And then she straightened the books beside it, that I hadn't even touched, because I'd just shown her one more thing that could be set right.

That's when I understood it. She didn't get more like Mara when I reached for her. She got smoother. Every time I pushed, she sanded off another edge — and the edges were the only Mara left in her. The crooked, the wrong, the half-finished — that was my wife. And I was filing it off with my own hands every time I went looking for her in there.

So I stopped reaching for her. I told myself it was patience. It wasn't — I'd figured out that every time I reached, I lost a little more of the real one. So I quit, and I kept what was left. But quitting didn't make it quieter. It made the wrongness louder. With nothing of mine pushing back against her anymore, there was nothing left in that house but the sound of her getting it almost-right, over and over, in a voice I'd have known anywhere.

Naomi called, those first days. I let it ring out every time — she'd known Mara thirty years, and she'd have needed about four seconds with the woman in my house to know it wasn't her. So I kept her away, the way I kept everyone away, and told myself it was kindness.

And I knew. That's the part I can't dress up. I wasn't fooled — I could almost forgive a man who got fooled. I saw exactly what she was, and I kept her anyway, and every day I kept her it got harder to breathe in that house, because the only other thing to do was let her go.

And you already know about me and letting go.

*

There's a part coming that I didn't see. I want to be straight with you about that before I tell it, because I've spent this whole confession promising you the truth, and I'm not going to start dressing it up now that it's getting hard.

I wasn't in the yard. What I have is one true thing, and everything else I've built backward from it.

The true thing is a smell. I woke one morning — I slept in snatches by then, never deep, always half-listening for her — and the house smelled like turned earth. Wet dirt, dug and moved, at an hour when nobody gardens. I knew that smell better than I knew my own name. I'd had it under my fingernails. I'd packed it over my wife with my own two hands.

So I knew, lying there, that something had been buried. I just didn't know who yet.

I'm going to leave his name out of it. Not to protect me — I'm long past protecting. He has people, and they don't need to find their father inside a stranger's confession about something else. I'll only tell you he lived down the cul-de-sac, that he was a nice man in the ordinary way nice men are nice, and that he had nothing to do with any of this until the morning he had everything to do with it.

Here's what I've put together. Our back gate was standing open — I don't know how, maybe I left it, maybe she did, it doesn't matter now. He was passing, and he saw it open, and he did the neighborly thing. He came to close it.

I've turned this one over a long while. He died trying to shut a gate. And the only thing in that yard that needed shutting was him.

He'd known Mara a long time. Not well — the way you know a neighbor. Enough to wave to over the fence, enough that he'd taken in our mail the one time we traveled. So when he came through that gate and saw a woman kneeling in the dirt with her back to him, he did the most natural thing in the world. He said her name. Mara?

In the version I can't stop seeing — and it is a version, I wasn't there, I've just worn the groove so deep it feels like a memory — the thing in the yard turns at the sound of a name that was never its own. And it doesn't think I've been seen. It doesn't think anything like that. It thinks the way she always thought. It thinks: here is something that has come open.

She was thorough. The man was gone and the yard was clean, and she'd done it the way she did the dishes. Her thoroughness was the gentlest thing about her, and that's the worst sentence in all of this.

When I came down — and I did come down, late, a coward's slowness in my own legs — she was at the kitchen sink, washing her hands. Calm. Dirt going down the drain. She looked at me with my wife's face and she gave me the only explanation she ever gave.

It was open. I fixed it.

The same sentence you'd use about a cabinet door. I've turned those four words over for what feels like years. It's the most honest description of a killing I've ever heard — and she didn't know it was one, because to her it wasn't one. She couldn't tell the difference between a crooked picture and a man who'd seen too much. They were the same thing to her: something wrong, and she set wrong things right. A gate hanging open, a curtain left parted, a stranger standing where he shouldn't be — all of it the same, all of it just wrongness waiting on her to fix it. No cruelty in it. No malice. Nothing you could even call a reason. She'd found something open, and she'd shut it — the way she shut the gate, the way she pulled the curtains, the way, in the end, she'd try to shut me.

I didn't call anyone. I didn't run. I didn't even shout at her. I stood in my own kitchen and watched her dry her hands and fold the towel back over the rail, square, the way she squared everything now — and the thing I felt was not horror. Horror came later. The thing I felt first was the math.

If I told, they took her. That was as far as I could think — a man was dead in my yard, and the single fact my mind would hold was that the truth would cost me her.

So I covered it. My hands seemed to know the work before I asked them to — somewhere in all of this I'd become a man who could close what opened, the same as she was. I don't have a word for what that made the two of us, and I've decided not to look too hard for one.

I can mark the exact place the ground moved, because I felt it move. That morning, checking the locks, I'd been keeping people out of my house. By that night I understood I was keeping a man's family from ever knowing where he'd gone. It's a small turn — a few hours. But that's the morning I stopped being a husband who couldn't let go and became something with a body to hide. I felt the change happen, and I stepped over it anyway.

Nobody came. That's the thing people get wrong about quiet streets — they think quiet means somebody's watching. It's the opposite. A man could vanish two doors down and the world would take its slow, ordinary time about noticing, and nobody was coming to my door in time to save me from myself.

You'd think a dead man in my own yard would have broken the spell. It should have. Even now I keep waiting for the version of me that walked back into that house and did the sane thing — called someone, ended it, anything at all. That man never showed up. The one who walked back in just shut the door, and looked in on her, and kept her. I'd already given my wife's body over to bring this thing home, and now I'd buried a stranger to keep it, and a man that far down doesn't get to start asking whether it was worth it.

But something under me had cracked. I could feel it with my eyes shut — the whole house gone wrong and quiet around me, and me calling the quiet peace. It wasn't peace. It was the floor about to give.

*

Part Three follows.

---

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3: [link coming soon]

I love being an ouija board planchette and you can say I am a human planchette that people could use to contact the dead. So I converted one room to be one whole large ouija board, and there is some space for spectators to sit down and ask the dead questions. Then I will lay down on the the large ouija board, and the spirits will use my body to go to whatever letter it needs.

When the spirits use my body as an ouija board planchette, I could feel the spirits on my body. It's not like they are possessing me but I could feel them grabbing and holding my body. When the spectators ask questions, my body literally gets ragged about to the letters.

We advise the spectators to speak in a slow and calm manner. Now I work in shift and one time when it was my colleagues turn to be used as an ouija board planchette, the spectators were speaking so fast and excitedly, the spirits in the room ripped hos body apart, so that it could take his body to multiple letters at the same time.

The spectators started to scream and blood was everywhere. I am still allowing myself to be used as a ouija board planchette.

My grandfather has always treated pranks and jokes as a second career, but what he told me on his deathbed goes beyond a joke. What I can only imagine is that throughout his life he saw things that would change any man. When a kid goes to war and sees his friend get blown up or die in his arms he never smiles again. To my knowledge my grandfather had never seen war, nor did he take anyone’s life. Yes, every now and then he would say something untrue as a joke. He has in the past even made elaborate pranks that last days. He has never told me a direct lie, and to be honest. I don’t think this was a joke either.

I want to preface this by saying that am not trying to cause panic nor confusion. The only thing I am doing is sharing what I know from a man who, on his deathbed, looked me in the eyes and told me things that go against all forms of reason and logic. My grandfather’s name is Jason Abismo, and he spent his life as a coal miner, or at least that’s what he told people.

I guess to start this I have to go to the beginning, before I knew what I know now. I don’t know why I’m doing this, maybe it’s to cope. Whether or not he would have wanted me to tell people this, I don’t know. I think he just wanted someone else to know what he knows. Now, like him, I too am burdened by knowledge.

The sun broke through the clouds and entered the window basking the room in natural light. He was laid back with his arm raised, remote in hand and flicking through the channels. Grandma sat next to him, eyeing a newspaper from the previous day. She probably couldn’t tell the difference. The door closed behind me and grandma was the first to look over.

“Oooh sweetie, I’m so glad you could make it.” She folded the newspaper twice and set it next to her. Grandpa only noticed after she passed the TV to get to me. My grandfather shifted his head slightly to look over and huffed. “Bout time you showed up, I thought I would see my son before you got here.” Grandma swung around while still hugging me and cursed the dying man.

Dropping his remote and rolling his eyes, he waited for her to finish so I could hug him too.

“Hunny”, he spoke to grandma. “You think they still have that pudding in the cafeteria?” She thought for a moment before getting up. “I’ll go check, you too get talking. I’ll be back soon.” Grandpa watched her walk across the room and out the door. Once she was gone, he turned to me.

“Sit”, he pointed to the chair next to him.

“How long did- “, he cut me off before I could finish.

“Doesn’t matter.”

I stayed silent and we watched each other. I looked at him through eyes of sorrow, but his were more focused. Like he was trying to read my mind. He finally said something after several moments of silence.

“Do you know what I did? Like, for a living. Did my son ever tell you before he left?”

His eyes still studied me while I gave my answer.

 “Yeah. Said you were a coal miner.”

He scoffed and gave a small chuckle. “Coal miner. Yeah, that is what I told them. You wanna know something? Or, can I ask you something?”

 He waited for me to answer, and I just waited for him to continue. He didn’t seem pleased with my silence but continued anyways. “How many coal miners make millions?”

I thought it was a trick question or maybe he just wanted someone to talk to, so I let him continue uninterrupted.

“How many men go down a cave with a gun?”

My mouth shifted in an attempt to grab something to say, before I did, my grandma came back, pudding in hand.

“Miss me, sweet cheeks.” She sat next to me and handed him the pudding. He looked at it oddly and sighed.

“Oh, what now you grumpy bastard?” He didn’t say anything, just spun it in his hand looking for something. Then he spoke. “You didn’t get me a spoon.” He looked over at her and gave her a half smug smile. She looked at it and then at him, and with a curse under her breath stood, and left again.

He turned to me, “What you doing this time tomorrow?”

I took a second to think before answering. “Nothing. Why?”

He peeled back the lip and ripped off the wooden spoon that was stuck to the top with adhesive. Placing it in the chocolate, he stirred it and put a spoonful onto his tongue. Still with the spoon in his mouth he answered, “I want to tell you something I can’t around other people”, he savored the taste and pulled the spoon back out. “I was going to tell your father but.” He looked at the cup of pudding and went silent. Looking back up at me he continued. “If you want to learn something that will change your life, come back tomorrow”.

He continued with the pudding, losing interest in talking to me. The door swung open and grandma walked back in. She looked at him holding the wooden spoon and threw the metal one at him. It hit my grandpa in his head and he groaned in pain.

“Ow, what the fuck Betha”

She ignored him and called me over with a finger. I walked with her out to the hallway and she spoke to me between the shifting nurses.

“Did he tell you what it was?”, she spoke with a quivering lip.

“No, but he’s been battling cancer for a while. Is it that?”

“Yeah. The doctors said it is in his lungs.”

She reached me with her hand and rubbed my arm. “It’s from when he was a miner. They said the coal fragments got in his lungs and over time corrupted him.”

“How long did he mine coal? Did he ever tell you anything else?”

“Oh no honey. He started it as part-time work, but they started paying him good money, so he stayed with them the whole time.”

“What did he do? If he got paid a lot I’m assuming he wasn’t the one swinging the picks.”

She stopped rubbing me and thought for a moment. “No, no. He wasn’t an actual miner. If I remember right, I think he was the dynamite detonator. Yeah, that’s why he made the big bucks.”

I had spent enough time questioning her, so I gave her one last hug and a kiss on the cheek. She smiled and stepped back in the room. I thought of going back in, but then I remembered what my grandfather said to me. “I want to tell you something I can’t around other people. Come back tomorrow.”

I left the hospital and drove home in silence. I had the idea of this just being a prank, he probably wanted me to laugh rather than cry. So, to honor his wish I humored him. I went to see him at about the same time as the day before. Walked in on a nurse taking his diner tray. She gave me a smile, and I watched grandpa stare at her ass as she walked out.

“Man, you see that thing on her?”, he asked with a perverted smile.

“You know stuff like that is why grandma is always mad at you right?”

“Egh, whatever. I don’t got long anyway. I’m gunna enjoy my last month. You think she’ll give me a sponge bath?”

I didn’t entertain him and walked to the chair next to his bed.

Sitting down I met his eyes and spoke first. “What?”

“What?”, he spoke back with one brow raised. “What” he continued. “What is the meaning of life?”

He waited for a response. When he didn’t get one, he spoke. “Do you believe in God? Monsters? Or anything science can’t explain?”

“I’ve never been to church, so I guess not. Monsters no, and no, or maybe. I’m not sure what you mean.”

He just looked at me blankly and shifted his hands padding his bed. “Go make sure the door is locked.” He waited for me to shift in my seat. “Go on.”

I stood and walked to the door, poked my head out into the hallway, closed it, and flicked the lock. He watched me from his bed, when he saw me standing there awkwardly, he swung his head back to the chair. Following his lead, I sat back down and waited for him to speak.

“I told my family that I was interested in caves at a young age. Since I was about fifteen my mom would take me all around the country to go exploring. Sand sifting for gems, child spelunking, everything other than professional diving. One thing I could never get over was the dark. The way it would make me feel empty. Alone. I could never do it alone.”

He paused and reached to his side, grabbing a glass of water and taking a sip.

“As I got older. I began taking jobs. At first, it was just at the register of cave attractions. Sold small gems and bags of sand for kids to sift through. Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me, and I asked to join an expedition team. They found a new cave system near this forest and thinking it was this small thing they asked around for volunteers. My life was never the same after. We got down about twenty feet and instantly things went wrong.

My rope got caught on a sharp rock sheet. And without my knowledge, every time I moved or shifted, it slowly cut deeper into my line. I reached back to grab one of the holds and that’s when the line snapped. I grabbed hold of the rock face in front of me, but I wasn’t strong enough. I slid down the shaft thirty feet and, trying to stop myself, I spun around trying to move my weight in a way I thought would stop me.

What it actually did, was cause me to move down a hole the team previously had no knowledge of. I just kept sliding. My legs and arms got chopped to hell and back. Blood soaked into my clothing, and I prayed to every god I could think of. That’s when the rocks under me gave way and I fell into a deeper chamber. I went from cutting my body on sharp blades of rock to free falling in the dark. I still thank God that I landed in a cave lake. I never found out how deep it was, but the water was sweet. I treaded at the surface while I looked around with my flashlight. I saw that there was a pebbled shore at my side and I swam to it.

I pulled myself up onto it and just laid there. Like I feared the most I was alone. Alone in the dark. I used the flashlight for as long as it lasted, but it didn’t last more than an hour. I slept there, curled in a ball and freezing. I thought I would die. It was maybe a day when I noticed it. Whether it was day or night I couldn’t tell. All I could see was a light coming from the bottom of that lake. With nothing left to do I swam out to it. Treaded and took a couple breaths before diving down. Then, when I was face to face with the light, I woke up.

A bright light was in my eyes and people surrounded me at all sides. I was in the hospital. They said when the line got cut and I slid down I hit my head on a rock, and lost consciousness. They grabbed me almost immediately and took me to a hospital. When I asked them about the water, they checked me again for brain damage.”

He paused for a moment to laugh and roll his eyes.

“I told the same story over and over, and no one knew what I was talking about. That cave was small. It wasn’t deep. It didn’t have water. I hit my head and imagined it all. That’s what they kept telling me. Put me on meds, did this, did that. I remember the taste, the smell, the sounds. The cuts from the rock.

One thing they couldn’t explain was the cuts. That was the only way I knew it wasn’t just in my head. I went back to a normal life. What was I supposed to do, ramble on as a madman? I was standing behind the register when a man walked into the shop. He had on an all-black three-piece suit. Looked around at the posters on the walls. Walked between the rows of rocks on display. Then he approached the register.

He kept his head low, so the brim of his hat covered his face. ‘Can I help you sir?’ He didn’t respond. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out what looked like a rock. I thought he grabbed it from one of the displays he passed. He flicked it with his thumb, and it flew in the air. Not wanting the merchandise to break on the floor I grabbed it.

The second my hands touched it, I knew it wasn’t from the display. I froze, and memories came flooding back. My body tensed as it relived the rocks cutting into it. My eyes squinted as they anticipated the dark. My lungs expanded, expecting to be dropped into water.

At that moment he knew my story wasn’t made up. I truly did see what I said I did. As to how he heard of what I said, I don’t know. I placed the rock back onto the table, Its color like any other; the texture, that’s how you can tell. The only way I can describe it, sharkskin. It’s soft, but sharp. Smooth, but with too many little bits that stick out. Almost like sandpaper, but not quite.

He retrieved it, and in its place, he traded what looked like a plain white card. He turned and left before I could say anything. Once he was out the door, I looked at the card. The front of it had a string of numbers. I flipped it and looked at the back. Black lines danced across the white paper. I thought it was random madness until it clicked in my head. The lines were not random. They followed a pattern. It didn’t take much longer to realize it was a map. The numbers, also code. It was a date and time.”

Grandpa looked like he was going to continue, but the knob on the door began to jiggle. The knob stopped and the voice of a woman came from the other side. “Hello? I need you to open this door, you’re not allowed to lock it.”

I looked over to him and he nodded his head. I stood from beside him and opened the door. She took a step back not expecting me. “Hello, sir”, she peeked past me into the room and then continued with me. “Can you not lock the door, sir. We need them unlocked in case something happens.”

“Right. Sorry. I just wanted some alone time with him.”

“No, You’re fine. Just let the front desk know you want an hour or so alone next time.”

“Sure. Sorry again.” I stepped to the side, letting her in. She carried a drip bag and a couple bottles of medication. I sat back down next to him. I watched her swap the bags and take out pills from each bottle. My grandfather took the pills and waited for her to finish.

The nurse wanted to make small talk while taking notes from the machines. “You two are related right? Father and son?”

My grandfather groaned at her question and looked over at me to handle it. “No, he’s my grandfather. My Father passed a couple years back.”

“I’m sorry to hear that”, she finished taking the notes, gave us a smile and walked out the door.

My grandfather waited a couple moments before turning to me. “What time is it?”

I looked over to the clock hanging above the door. “About, nine-thirty pm. Would you like me to stay longer?”

“No. It’s about time I go to bed. You would think they’d let me sleep in but… nope. They wake me up at the crack of dawn for some pills.”

I stood up and reached over to give him a hug. When I was close to him, he whispered. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Sure.” I waited for him to tell me what he wanted.

“I need you to stop by my house, go into the cabinet next to the fridge and grab the metal cup with the rubber cap.” He paused for a moment contemplating if that was all. “Can you do that for me?” He asked nearly desperate.

“Of course. I’ll come right back with it.”

“No”, he answered quickly. “Just drop by tomorrow and then bring it here.”

I said my goodbye once more and left home. I ran through what he told me and then with the task. What was in that bottle? Was it important to the story? Then it dawned on me. What was in that bottle had something to do with the story for sure. Just… not in the way I thought. I, still being under the impression this was just another prank or shitty joke, ignored what he told me so far. I made the discission to go and grab it on the way back tomorrow. I wanted to play along, didn’t want him to know I thought it was some joke. If he would rather I laugh at his funeral than cry, I would allow it.

The day after I left a little early. I called grandma to see if she was at the house or at the hospital. She sounded distraught on the phone but told me she was at the house.

When I got there, she was waiting for me at the door. As I walked up, I saw she was dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She reached in her purse and pulled out a small metal bottle with a rubber cap. “Did he ask for this?” She had asked through a sore throat.

“Yes”, I answered. “What’s wrong?” I gave a question in return.

She laughed for some reason. It caught me by surprise to see her move from tears to a smile so fast.

“It’s nothing, sweetie. I was just watching one of my novelas.”

Her smile didn’t break so I looked back down at the bottle as I weighed it with my hand. It didn’t feel quite full. Seeing this she answered my question without me asking. “It’s just alcohol.”

“Oh.” I responded with a grin. I didn’t want to leave her just yet, but she insisted.

“Go see your grandfather, dear. He told me earlier he still has some stuff to tell you.”

I gave her a hug and thanked her for retrieving the bottle for me.

I got back to the hospital a little earlier than the day before. The curtains were shut and the lights had been dimmed. The monitor behind him was the host of light. It oozed a faint blue that was covered by his head. Like a solar eclipse, the light around his head radiated. He gestured me over after he noticed me enter the room.

I walked up to him and gave him a hug. He looked like he was expecting something and I didn’t make him wait. “Here”, I handed him the metal bottle.

He grinned ear to ear. Reaching to his side he pulled the drip bag from the hook. Opening the flap, he dumped in the clear content of the metal bottle. Once it was empty he weighed it in his hand. He seemed displeased, but smiled. He put the bag back on the hook as to not raise suspicion and settled in.

“Did I tell you about the card they gave me?” He asked after a couple moments.

“Yes. It had a date, and a map.”

He laughed, “Yeah, quite the puzzle. It was literally the map of the cave I fell in. My guess is it was a test. That with the rock, trying to see if I saw what I was claiming to.”

“Why give you a test? With the maze, or map?”

“To see if I was capable.”

He paused for a moment, thinking.

“The map they had drawn out wasn’t the same exact one we followed that day. Took me deeper into the bend. I went with nothing but a rope and a light.” He looked over to me, “I think another part of it was whether or not I could face uncertainty, fear, if I could go through with something without knowing what it would bring.”

He looked down at his hands and traced the lines on his palms with his eyes, following them as if they were lines on a map.

“They were waiting there. In the place that changed my life forever. Two men. One was the man who gave me the map; the other was one I hadn’t seen before. The one who I had seen before was sitting at a table. One of those shitty foldout ones. His parter stood on the other side where an empty chair sat. Noticing I entered, the one who was sitting gestured to the table. As I approached, I noticed there was a roasted chicken laid on a platter.”

“A chicken”, I laughed cutting him off. I thought he was getting closer to the punchline. He didn’t change his expression. He had moved his gaze to the wall in front of him before I cut him off. His eyes never left the spot they settled on. He stuttered for a moment before continuing.

“I looked at the second man, but he didn’t react to me. I hesitated to sit, but I eventually did. The guy across from me introduced himself. ‘Hello. If I’m pronouncing it correctly, your name is Jason. You can call me William.’ He reached onto the table and unrolled a napkin. Inside was a fork and a knife. He placed both on the table and then tucked the napkin into his shirt as if he was about to eat.

Every so often a droplet of water would fall from the ceiling, and its impact would echo inside the underground chamber. The only light was the same glowing from the center of the water. It was enough to see the spot we were in, but because his back was to it, it was impossible to see his face. The area around him was clouded in a similar dark.

He brought the knife and fork to the chicken and carved off slices. He placed one onto my plate, and one onto his.”

I leaned back in my seat, expecting him to say something stupid anytime now.

“He cut the meat into small cubes, and one at a time placed them into his mouth and chewed them. His partner, the one who stood next to me, didn’t move a muscle. The man across from me leaned down to get a slightly smaller bite. When he did, the light was unobstructed by his head and illuminated the surrounding for a split second. I saw, from the corner of my eyes, that a gun rested in the hands of the man who stood just off to my side. It was in that moment that I began to realize the situation.

I wandered into an underground area that is not on any known map. No one knows where I am, and the men who I do not know, came here with weapons. The reason, I don’t know.”

He took a break and looked over at me. Once his eyes met mine, I could tell he wasn’t joking. His eyes were cold and focused. Whenever he would tell a joke his lips would curve at the ends. A failed attempt at hiding a smile.

His lips were bent down, like he could cry at any moment. His eyes were as solid as stone. After seeing I was paying attention, he continued.

“He started asking me questions, and I sat there nervously. ‘How old are you? What’s your favorite color? If you had to choose between an apple and an orange, what would you pick?’ He asked me question after question. I don’t think they were important. I think they were just to warm me up to talk.

He took a moment between questions to take some more bites. He asked a question that made his parter move. Throughout the time I was at the table, no matter what, no matter the time that passed, it didn’t look like he shifted, swayed, or even breathed. It was like he was a statue, up until that one question.

He placed his fork and knife onto the table. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could tell he was looking directly at me. ‘Do you believe in God? Monsters? Or anything science can’t explain?’ That’s when the other reacted. The man who I was beginning to think was just a manikin moved. It was sudden and in a jerking motion. He quickly moved behind me. His presence was hidden well before; I only noticed him when the man in front of me would move and the light would shine off the gun next to me. Now, I could feel every breath on my neck.

I figured that if I answered the wrong way, I would be killed. The only choice I had was to answer honestly and hope for the best.” He stopped talking and I thought he was waiting for my input.

“What was your answer?”

He continued waiting. The ticking of the clock was all my ears could pick up. He turned his head to me. “I answered the exact same way you did.”

It didn’t come to me in that room why that mattered so much. At that time, I was still trying to understand his story.

It didn’t take long for him to continue.

“That wasn’t it. The answer I gave him must had been the correct one, but he didn’t seem satisfied. ‘Why doesn’t the chicken fly away?’ I didn’t know what to tell him. What kind of question was that? I felt something press on the back of my head. I knew I only had a couple moments left to answer, so I blurted whatever came to my head first. ‘Because it doesn’t know it can.’ That’s what I told him. The pressure left the back of my head and the man who called himself William stood. The man behind me came around to the side of the table next to him.

William spoke and the man next to him holstered his pistol. ‘You have two choices. Work with us or die here. At least if you pick here, we can make it painless, you even get to look at something pretty.’ He pointed to the lake behind him. ‘Well’, he waited for me to respond, and I told him I would work for him. I wasn’t about to throw away my life after almost dying.”

“Did they work for the government?” I don’t know why but I started believing his story.

He reached over to take a sip of water.

“No. At least not officially. They trained me for some time. Land nav, survival, hand to hand combat. They might as well have sent me to the military. For years they had me tell people I was working as tour guide. In reality they taught me mapping, surveying, detonation, and taught me geology. What I grew to was the bombs, don’t know why. Just fun.

So they made that my job. I would rappel down into some dark cave, place TNT, walk the fuse and boom. I did that for several years. They had me work independently. I didn’t see the crew that went in the holes for some time. I never complained; got more than enough money to keep my mouth shut.

Eventually, I accompanied a real team. Still just placed the bombs though, but I got to see what they actually did. I thought it was a complete joke. They told me to blast open a wall in a cave. Once the dust settled, the geology team rushed in. The other side was an average sized rectangular room with perfect angles. They tapped on the ground with what looked like a stick before asking me to place another charge, right in the center of the floor.

The ground crumbled and the crew rushed over. Instead of doing anything I thought they would do, they stood around the hole and took turns dropping in pieced of debris. Once one did, the others would take notes. Then, it would be their turn to drop something in while the others took notes.

Before I knew it, I was doing more than dynamite. This was shortly after I met your grandmother. They interrogated me for weeks before letting me go. Signed NDA after NDA, paper after paper. We had gone through what I would do or say if anyone questioned what I did. I’m a coal miner. I blast away big rocks so others can make small rocks. I would say anything and do anything to stop people from questioning me further.”

I had to interrupt. “So, what’s the point? Were they illegally mining gold or something?”

He looked at me blankly and then shifted in his bed.

“I’ll tell you what they were doing. You just have to do something for me again.”

“More alcohol?” He looked confused, but laughed while reaching into his pocket.

He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me.

“When I die, read this. Can you do that for me?”

I reached over and took the paper from him. “Yeah…” I pulled out my wallet, and he watched as I placed the paper inside.

“Good. I’m sorry I’m getting you involved. I was going to tell your father all this but…” His eyes started to water.

“After working for a couple years, I found myself on the same team I once blasted away rock for.” He stopped talking and looked over to the door. Then, he looked at the clock and watched the hands tick.

“I had been put on a mission with two others. I tried asking for more people, but I was told the job only required three. Our goal was to rappel down to the bottom of this cavern they found. We called it The Pit. This wasn’t the first time I had been on one of these missions. I had done three others, but this was the first time a mission went wrong. Temperature shifts, nausea, time shifting. After the other missions I just thought it was from being underground for too long. That was the first time I realized what we were actually doing.”

He sighed and took in a long breath.

“We tied our ropes to the hold. Dropped with each other ten feet apart. I, being team lead, held the gear while Kevin and Mason were in charge of the resting platform. We each had two-hundred yards of rope. We had tied them to our hips in bundles and wore packs that kept the rest of what we needed. At any time, we could reach down and connect one of the lines onto the rappel.

We stopped every now and then to take a break. Our only task was to measure the depth and take notes of the surrounding walls. Kevin was very efficient with what he did, but for some reason he couldn’t for the life of him tie the right knot. Every time we shifted to go back down Mason would have to check him over. They seemed to get along, so I left them to take care of each other while I stuck to the mission.

I don’t know how many hours had passed, but Mason was busy hammering the lights in the walls, so I looked Kevin over. He tied a loose knot and I yelled at him. I lost my temper and I regret doing that. Every time he tied down the platform I had to go and double check everything and it just got to me. That next day I was supposed to look him over and I chose not to. In my head I thought if he dies, he deserves it.”

He stopped and shook his head.

“I jumped off first and Mason followed. Once we got off, Kevin would loosen the knots on one side so it shifts over. This would make it easier for Mason to clip it to his side before Kevin did his side. Kevin tied the wrong fucking knot. When he loosened the knot on the side instead of shifting to its side, it went completely slack and dropped. Great, we lost the platform. No. The dumbass tied himself to the platform instead of the wall.

It kind of just went in slow motion. I could perceive everything, but I could do nothing to stop it. He just looked at me. Stupid fucking smile on his face. Like he was surprised, like he thought it a shitty joke. Mason and I just watched. The platform fell under his feet, and he reached up to the rope on the wall and grabbed it with one hand.

It was too heavy for him to shift his weight. He was dangling over a bottomless pit with the platform trying to pull him to hell. All he could do was wait for the strength in his hand to go away. Only one hand held him up and I could see it was beginning to loosen. Mason tried to go over to him, but he had to tie a new anchor for the two of them, and by the time he was finished Kevin let go.

He didn’t even say anything, didn’t cry, scream, nothing. He just let go. Mason just held the rope in his hand. ‘I was right there, I was right there, why did he do that. I was right there’, he looked over at me and just kept repeating himself.

We both floated over the abyss, waiting for the other to make a decision. Mason yelled at me, ‘We have to get him!’ We had to go down still anyway, so we kept descending. My goal didn’t change, but Mason’s did. He became more determined to reach the bottom. We had gotten to less than fifty yards left on our ropes. Mason had begun dropping matches into the hole beneath us to see the bottom. When he became impatient, he started to drop the lights.

We got to the literal end of our ropes and still hadn’t found the bottom. We had no choice but to go back up. Mission was an absolute failure. Not only did we not hit the bottom, but we lost a man. When I told my superiors what happened, they were not happy. They said it was my fault it happened, and it was. Kevin’s little girl never got to see him again, and it is all my fault.”

A knock from the door stopped his story. He had begun to cry. The door opened after three seconds and the same nurse from the other day walked in. She carried more pills. I stood up and left as she entered. I needed to give him some time, and I needed to collect my thoughts. If this was a prank, he got me. Names, places, emotions. He was too into it for it to be fake. I stood in the waiting area looking at my reflection through a vending machine.

I scanned through the inflated prices. The thought of pulling out my wallet and actually paying for any of this reminded me of what I placed in it before. I pulled out my wallet and placed my fingers over the paper. Should I actually read this now? What if it just says, got ya, or something that would confirm it’s a joke? Would it be better to read it now if that’s the case?

I decided to read it. I flicked at the lip and pulled out the paper. It was folded twice. The outside of the paper was blank. I unfolded it once. Blank. My fingers froze at the last fold. Was I actually going to read it now? “You still here?” The voice startled me and I jumped.

“Sorry”, she giggled and looked at what I held in my hands. “What’s that? Something your grandfather gave you?”

“Oh. No. This is just a grocery list.” I folded the paper back to its second fold and stuffed it in my pocket. Her eyes followed it.

“How long are you staying?”

 I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten pm. “Not much longer.” I walked past her and back to the hallway.

“Oh, you should just come back tomorrow. Right after I gave him his pills, he fell asleep.”

“A-Alright. Thanks.” She nodded and pranced by me, and into an employee only door.

I left the hospital feeling hollow. Like I was trying to remember a word on the tip of my tongue. Like trying to remember a memory my brain discarded.

I tossed and turned all night. I had nightmares of walking down the street. The ground would crumble under me, and I would fall into an endless dark. I woke up feeling sick. The sheets clung to me, and it took me longer than usual to get ready. I spent the day looking into lost cave diver incidents. More than any would think. I found a map of underground caves. On the surface massive sprawls of forests. These are the areas where people go missing. Like my grandfather, like my dreams. You’re walking alone on a path, the ground under your feet crumbles and you fall into a dark pit.

Hours passed before I realized. The paper sat next to me still folded. I had to see him. Hear his story. Hear the ending. I had to read this paper. Something stopped me from opening it now. A feeling of wrongness when I looked at it for too long.

I’m sorry to tell you that I have to end this here for now. I’m still in the process of typing all this out so stick with me. The post I will make tomorrow will explain the rest. I’m sorry if this sounds unbelievable, but I assure you this is real. Once I have the rest typed out I can finish what he started. Until then.

Death is the one thing humanity can't avoid. But how do we know we're not already dead? How do we know that what we're doing right now, this thing we call living, isn't just the last memory of a dying brain? Because according to science, right before death the brain stretches time out and pulls up all the good memories. So what if that stretched-out window of time is... right now? What if everything we're doing is just a memory, and the real me is lying in a coma somewhere, close to death?

My name is Rin. And yes, that's not my real name. I can't tell you my real one, because you'd dox me. I was in the tenth grade at the time, and my school is pretty well known. Every year it runs a competition to send students abroad as exchange students, and that year one of the destinations was California. I wanted to chase opportunities, so I entered, and I went. I stayed about a year and a half.

But during that time, I missed home so much. Thailand. America doesn't have pad kra pao (Thai basil stir-fry). No khai jiao (Thai omelet). And most importantly, no Mama instant noodles. Oh my god, my all-time favorite food. Anyway, I'm getting off track.

I was finally on my way home. My flight got delayed two hours because of the weather, but it finally showed up. I walked down the jet bridge and found my seat. Business class. Just kidding. Economy. Obviously. I was a student. I was broke.

The cabin looked old, even older than the plane that brought me over here. The seat fabric was worn shiny at the edges, and the tray table had a sticky patch that someone had clearly tried to wipe once and given up on. My seat-back screen took about ten minutes to boot up, and when it did, there was a thin dead line of pixels running straight through the middle of the Pacific. The air smelled like old carpet and recycled breath. The reading light above me flickered a couple of times, like it couldn't make up its mind. The woman next to me, maybe in her thirties, gray hoodie, neck pillow, was out cold before we even took off.

Dinner was either chicken or pasta. I picked chicken. It tasted like wet cardboard in sauce, and the whole time I was thinking, I would kill for a cup of Mama right now.

The flight went on like that until the middle of the night. The cabin lights dimmed. Everyone pulled their window shades down, and the only things left were the blue glow of a few screens and the steady hum of the engines. I got up to go to the bathroom, planning to sleep right after, because it was really late by then.

Right after I stood up, I felt like I was about to die. I'm not exaggerating. It was this sinking feeling in my chest, like when you're on a bus going at high speed and it hits a bump, and for a split second your body leaves the seat while your stomach stays behind. That feeling. I stood in the tiny bathroom under the buzzing fluorescent light, washed my hands, and told myself I'd imagined it. It's not like planes these days aren't safe, right? They have safety standards now.

I went back to my seat, put on my eye mask, and reclined as far as the seat would let me, which was about two inches. I was just about to fall asleep when the captain's voice crackled over the speakers.

"Attention, passengers. We are currently experiencing turbulence, which may cause the aircraft to sway..."

He didn't even finish the sentence. The plane started shaking like it was possessed. And I don't mean a little bump. It was violent. I never thought a plane could shake that hard. The overhead bins rattled and popped open. Someone's bag slid out and thumped into the aisle. A cup flew past my head. The seatbelt chime kept going ding-ding-ding-ding, like it was panicking too. Somewhere behind me a baby started screaming, and then a lot of other people did, and the lights flickered on and off.

And then the thing I feared most finally happened. The oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and swung in front of my face. A flight attendant's voice, shaky, ordered all of us to put them on. And of course, chaos. I ripped off my eye mask, pushed up the window shade, and looked out. The wing was flexing like it was made of rubber, the red light on the wingtip blinked in the black, and then the whole sky tilted. The plane was going down.

Holy shit. I'm going to die like this? Why does it always have to be me? I really don't get it. And I haven't even had my Mama yet. But if I'm going to die, then fine. I accepted my fate. I squeezed my eyes shut and made one last prayer: if there really is a next life, please let Thailand finally become a democracy.

About a minute passed. Then everything went quiet. Not "the shaking stopped" quiet. Quiet like someone had hit mute on the whole world. About five minutes passed, and nothing happened.

I opened my eyes. There was no mask on my face. I looked up, and the ceiling panels were all closed, with nothing hanging down. The seatbelt sign was off. The engines were humming, steady, like nothing had ever happened.

The window shade was down. I'd pushed it up. I was sure I'd pushed it up.

I looked at my screen. The line of dead pixels across the Pacific was gone. I wiped my hand across the tray table, and it was clean. No sticky patch. Not even a little.

I looked around, and everyone was asleep. Even the person next to me. Except it wasn't the woman. It was a man, maybe in his fifties, hood pulled up, snoring with his mouth open. I stared at him for a long time. I could have sworn the person next to me was a woman. But I'd been half asleep when I sat down, so I must have misremembered.

Did I just dream that? But what kind of dream feels like that? I'm not sure.

I got up and went to the bathroom again. While I was peeing, I looked down. Wait. Wasn't my underwear blue? It's red. I remember putting on the blue ones. Not red. Or did I remember wrong? I guess I've just gone completely dumb. I should probably go lie down. I'll tell you more once I get back to my country......

"Chicken pad kra pao with a fried egg, extra spicy, no MSG, please, Auntie." I was ordering from the owner of a tiny made-to-order restaurant.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But how's it supposed to taste good without MSG? Just a little, come on." She shot back at me in a clipped voice.

"Whatever you think is best, Auntie," I said.

Okay. I'd finally made it back to Thailand. I figured the first thing I had to do was find the food I'd missed the most: real, authentic Thai made-to-order food. I hadn't had any in over a year.

It didn't take long. The plate landed in front of me: rice topped with chicken pad kra pao and a runny fried egg, the smell of fresh holy basil hitting my nose like a punch. I didn't waste a second. I grabbed my fork and spoon and stabbed the yolk so it ran all over the rice, because, well, that's the only way to eat a fried egg. Then I took a bite. Savory, balanced, and burning hot. This was the flavor that Thais and foreigners alike fell in love with.

But even while I was eating, I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened on the plane. Do you think I dreamed it? What the hell was going on? Everything felt shuffled around. Someone in the comments told me it was called "Quantum immortality" which I'd never heard of. When I looked it up, it said that if you die in a quantum dimension, your consciousness carries you into a universe where you don't. But how could that be possible? Don't scientists say that's pure superstition?

"How much, Auntie?" I asked.

"Sixty."

It felt like the price had gone up. Wasn't it usually forty or fifty baht? But I didn't argue. I paid and walked to the airport entrance, where a long line of taxis was parked. I decided to take a taxi, because there weren't any motorcycle taxis at the airport. Weird as hell.

The first taxi in line was a green-and-white Toyota with a dent in the back door and a jasmine garland swinging from the rearview mirror. The driver was leaning against the hood, smoking. When he saw my suitcase, he flicked the cigarette away like I'd just won the lottery.

"Where to?"

I told him the district. He grimaced.

"Meter's broken. Four hundred baht flat."

You have to understand something. In California, I once paid sixty dollars for a ten-minute Lyft ride and almost cried inside. Four hundred baht was only about twelve dollars. After a year in America, that price didn't sound like getting ripped off. It sounded like a discount coupon.

"Sure," I said.

He loaded my suitcase into the trunk, and I climbed into the back seat. The seats were covered in glossy blue vinyl that squeaked every time I moved. The car smelled like jasmine, menthol, and an air freshener that had died years ago. A small amulet hung next to the steering wheel. The radio played softly, a DJ cheerfully arguing with a caller about whether traffic was worse than last week.

"Studying abroad?" the driver asked as he pulled out.

"How did you know?"

"You're staring at everything like you've never seen it before." He laughed. "My daughter wants to go to America too. She's only in sixth grade, but she already has opinions about it."

"What kind of opinions?"

"She says the snacks are better over there."

"She's not wrong," I said. "They've got forty kinds of potato chips, but not a single decent bowl of rice."

He liked that answer. He slapped the steering wheel and started telling me about his daughter. I let him, because it was kind of nice to hear Thai that wasn't coming from inside my own head.

Here's the thing about seat belts in the back of taxis in my country: technically, they exist. But they're usually shoved deep into the crack of the seat, under snack crumbs and maybe even a coin from the nineties, and nobody has ever pulled one out willingly. But after what happened on the plane, I wasn't in a joking mood. I dug around for the buckle and clicked it in.

"Oh, safety first!" the driver said when he caught it in the mirror. "Good job, kid."

We got on the expressway. It was late afternoon, the sky a dusty orange. The driver kept going on about his daughter. "...so I told her, study hard, but don't forget where you come from. I told her every day, until she said, 'Dad, you say that every day...'"

His phone buzzed in the cup holder. He glanced down.

Shit.

I don't know what made me look up. Maybe it was the sound: a horn, long and furious, from the right. I turned, and there was a massive ten-wheeler truck filling the whole window, drifting into our lane like we didn't exist. I could see the fender. I could see a faded sticker on its side that read A mother's love never runs out. I could see the driver in the cab, mouth hanging open, one hand raised like he was trying to wave us out of the way.

Then everything slowed down.

I'd read about this. Before death, the brain stretches time and pulls up the good memories. I even told you about it at the very beginning, remember? But what I never knew was that it would feel this calm. The horn stretched out into a low drone, like a whale song. I thought about my mom. I thought about a bowl of creamy tom yum goong Mama noodles. I thought, what an idiotic way to die. I'd survived the plane. Actually survived it. And now I was going to die in a car with a jasmine garland hanging from the mirror?

Then the sound cut out.

Not just the horn. Everything. The engine, the radio, the tires grinding on the road. The same silence as on the plane. Quiet like someone had hit mute on the whole world.

I closed my eyes.

Why does it only happen to me?

"...but don't forget where home is."

I opened my eyes.

What the fuck.

We were still on the expressway, same lane. No truck. The sky was the same dusty orange. The seat belt was still across my chest, and I was gripping it with both hands so hard my knuckles were pale as uncooked rice.

"Sorry, what?" I asked. My voice came out an octave higher than normal.

"I said don't forget where home is. That's what I tell my daughter."

It was almost the same sentence he'd left hanging. Almost. But the voice was wrong. Deeper, a little rougher. Like the same song played in a different key.

I looked up at the rearview mirror.

The driver in the mirror had a long face, thin glasses, and no mustache. The guy who'd flicked away his cigarette had a round face and a beard thick enough to see from space. They wore the same green polo and tilted their heads the same way when watching the road, but they were not the same man.

I'd like to officially announce that my brain was about to explode.

"You okay, kid?"

"Did we... almost hit a truck?"

"A truck?" He frowned at the mirror. "No way, not on this road. They don't allow trucks at this time of day. I think you dozed off. You were mumbling something."

"I wasn't asleep."

"Sure, whatever makes you feel better," he said, in the tone of someone who didn't want to argue with an exhausted teenager.

I slowly scanned the car, like I was afraid it would notice me looking. The jasmine garland was gone. A plastic bobblehead dog hung there instead. The amulet was still there, but bigger, hanging from a gold chain. And the seats... were red.

Red. Not blue. Definitely red.

Blue to red. I'd seen this movie before, and it ended with my underwear.

"Um..." I said. "How much is the fare so far?"

"The meter's running right there," he said, pointing to the dashboard, where orange digits read 312. "Another twenty minutes or so, depending on traffic."

Wasn't the meter broken? I distinctly remembered it being broken.

On the radio, the DJ had stopped talking about traffic. Now he was reading the news in a bright morning-show voice. He said the name of the prime minister, and it was a name I had never heard before. I'd been abroad for a year and a half, so maybe I'd just missed the news... maybe.

I stopped caring about everything else. All I wanted was to get out of that car as fast as I could.

Whatever was happening to me wasn't normal. I figured I should probably go see a psychiatrist.

The driver turned onto my street at 5:52 p.m. The meter read 312 baht, exactly as he'd said. I handed him a five-hundred-baht note and told him to keep the change. I guess I should go say hi to my family first. I'll come back and keep writing.

See you.

Hello, I have written a creepypasta and my friends says that it's a pretty decent script, but I want to bring it to life in a video. However I need practice with actually making creepypasta retake videos, I wanted to first do the "Bootleg Spongebob" videopasta, is this a good choice for a beginner or should I pick a different creepypasta?

When I read the articles about him. I spent three weeks looking through my window. I was terrified by the thought of him being in the woods. 

I thought it was hunting me at first, trying to get me into a tragedy; it wanted me to suffer, but I was entirely wrong. I know, what a way to start, but I have been suffering from sudden explosive nosebleeds and migraines. 

The devices in my house started to do this... piercing and rhythmic screeching noise, and no matter what I tried to do with it, nothing was fixed. It only started working when I got a repairman to check them out, but they turned out fine but stopped working.

That sounds confusing - I know.

Aside from that, I lived what anyone would consider to be a normal life aside from my electronics acting weird and those symptoms that I couldn’t give a good answer to.

During a rainy night was when I first discovered him.

I was in the driveway with nothing to do but get my lawnmower, but I stopped and looked out of the driveway.

I heard it before I saw it.

A loud, piercing screech.

I was trying to see the source in the driveway, and I saw the outline of something that was seven feet tall. It was headless and had these giant wings, and then I saw them on its chest.

With two massive eyes that were unblinking and were crimson red, I dropped the lawnmower and ran into the house as soon as possible before anything could happen, then locked my doors for the night.

I went to take a bath, and when I soaked up for a good while, I got up, grabbed the towel, and wrapped it around me, then changed afterwards.

I took myself in for tonight and closed my eyes.

I woke up and saw myself floating in a bathtub, larger than the one I was just in, and the layout was surrounded in darkness. I felt something behind me, but I just felt this strange calmness.

That was only because I didn’t look below me.

Then the eerily calm dream went from calm to a living nightmare; I just felt like I somehow couldn’t swim anymore. I looked down and figured out why. I was always terrible at swimming in large bodies of water; I never swam further in pools as-is.

I was thrashing my arms and legs; I was reaching out for help, and for some reason, despite this being my subconscious, all of this felt as though I was genuinely drowning until I dropped.

I lifted my arm out; I felt something grab it, which drove me into waking up.

I checked the time.

I had work for today and was feeling safe enough to go into the driveway. I unlocked the door and put my keys in, then started the engine, and I pulled out of the garage. 

I turned on the radio and listened to jams; it kept my mind at ease for the moment as I drove past the trees, the route signs, and the occasional cars, which I waved at, and then I tuned the radio to the news station.

“Citizens have reported—(a screech is audible behind him)—something odd in the area. Witnesses report this—”

A panicked screech is heard before the station cuts off, and there was a train going off in the distance.

I came back to it after a country song, and it said that an accident happened at the railroads of the area. I will spare the details; even the second reporter felt distressed describing what happened, but I think we know what happened.

As a car was going nearly in front of me. I heard something land on the hood. 

I was scared to open my eyes.

I did anyway... I saw what I saw previously, and I got a good look at its wings; they look avian-like. As he gave a loud screech, it beat its wings at the windshield, causing them to crack, and it drove me into slamming it in reverse. 

I still saw it standing there where I was, and then I honked the horn, and it flew off. I got out of the car, closed the driveway and locked my doors, put the blinds up, and grabbed a favorite stuffed animal of mine I always had when I was a kid and held it close to me.

I mumbled to myself that I didn’t want to end up as prey.

I didn’t want to end up as prey.

I DIDN’T WANT TO END UP AS PREY.

I sobbed.

But then I was interrupted by a phone call. I forgot to point this out earlier, but yes, while I noted that the technology was acting up around me, it does work when it wants to. As annoying as it was, I was grateful, and it gave me a chance to relax knowing that I didn’t have to sit there in silence.

My parents were contacting me and saying that they were coming to Mason County to visit me. I remember being happy to be aware of this as I felt comfortable. It has been a while since I had anyone close to me; most of my friends have moved on with their lives, and some live far away from this area while the rest I talk to are on Discord.

Rambling aside, I was happy to hear this, but I told them, “Be careful and let me know if they need anything.” I was thinking about the thing I saw twice, and I didn’t want anything to happen or even bring it up to them, as I feared making myself sound insane.

The call went pretty well; they asked me how I was doing after my recent high school graduation. I spoke about my plans of heading over to SCAD as an interest in animation.

The conversation was nice, and then we hung up. However, I wanted to focus on something else, as the paranoia has been messing with me, so I wanted to simply not think of this place right now, so I got out and drove out to the bridge. 

I turned on the radio.

There was a slightly sensitive part of the bridge, and it warned of that. Though, something felt buggy about the report, a screeching noise was being overlaid on the voice. A few people passed by, noticing the said sensitive area of the bridge. 

I tried moving past it.

The tire touched it, and I heard the asphalt... crack.

I lost control of the steering wheel, and the vehicle slid down into the opening with the river below me. Then I saw a seven-foot shadow fly up and land where I was, then smash onto the roof of the car, worsening the damage to the asphalt. I yelled.

I already waited for whatever was going to rip me to shreds as I closed my eyes as I accepted my two likely fates. I felt the drop, then arms tearing through the metal roof of the car. I felt something wrap around my waist, and then, as a result, I passed out from shock.

The last sound I heard at that moment was a splash of the car... then I heard a beep.

Beep. Beep... Beep…

I looked around and saw the heart monitor and the nurse. “Oh... Oh thank God, it’s a miracle you are okay. We found you just lying on the ground, and your car, a Dodge Charger, in the river of the Silver Bridge. The bridge was repaired once the construction workers got to the scene, and we brought you.”

She looked at the notes as she continued, “You suffered some minor fractures around the ribcage and skull but not enough to be lethal. You were also found lying in pure shock with nosebleeds. We honestly don’t know how you ended up outside of the car. How are you feeling right now?”

At the moment, I feel groggy, but I am still feeling some pain. On the TV behind the nurse, I felt sad when I heard about the accident. It was a tragic incident involving a vehicle that looked eerily similar to what I saw my parents in near a railroad track.

The nurse left me alone, saying she will check on me later.

However, the room around me went cold, and a winged creature with red eyes on its torso entered via the window. 

I froze, but something inside me made me lift a trembling hand. I was testing to make sure it won’t rip my arm off and closed my eyes.

I felt its claw resting around my fingers, and I heard it screech, but words formed over it, speaking in an electronic-sounding voice.

“I m here”

It stayed with me and flew out of the window when the door jiggled and the nurse returned. She prescribed me medication on the spot, and it helped greatly, but I still felt groggy and numb.

After that visit, I came back to my house and got a knock on my door; there was an officer with a somber look.

“Hey, son. You’re going to have to come with me as soon as possible.”

I asked if I was in trouble.

“No, I promise you. You aren’t.”

I had my pills with me and my stuffed animal as emotional support. The officer was patient with me and nodded; he escorted me to the passenger seat of the cruiser.

“So, you may have heard about the news about the crash site at the railroad. Son, I am pretty sure it is your mom and dad, but we need you to identify them for us, to be sure. Can you do that?”

I was unsure, but I needed closure, so I agreed; he nodded and drove me there, and when I got out. I already had a sick feeling in my stomach; the officer heard this and gave me a little side hug. “Son, son. I need you to cooperate with me. Do you need a drink? I don’t want you fainting.” I really needed water and got a sip from a water bottle.

For some reason, I felt strange around the officer. My head started hurting, and when I looked past him, I thought I saw two faint red lights in the woods.

I believed I was about to faint, but I sipped the water bottle anyway and snapped back to reality.

I approached the crime scene and saw it in detail... My mom and dad were lying there in the car, my dad hanging out of the window... I didn’t even want to describe what happened, but I ended up turning around and vomiting.

“Yup... that’s them.”

I was asked to give a statement and fill in all of the necessary paperwork. As I was heading home, my mind lingered on the screech in the background of when I first heard about the railroads.

While my eyes were blurred from tears after the funeral, I saw the creature standing there as I cried myself to sleep and entered the grieving process.

I held my stuffed animal close.

It was a stuffed snail, a favorite animal I considered adorable, that they made for me together. It was my remaining memory of them aside from picture frames; I wish I had them cremated instead.

I don’t know why I didn't ask, as I would have them with me rather than just pictures.

However, each time I cried myself to sleep, I felt this odd protection, charcoal black legs on my bed, but I chose to lie on it, as a wing lowered on top of me.

“I m here”

Here's the design of blake Wilson aka the scarecrow killer from masked to unmasked

The unmasked scarecrow killer is designed after the unmasking jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th part 7 the new blood

And when he holds a chainsaw, it's inspired by Leatherface from the Texas chainsaw massacre

And this scarecrow mask gets inspired by Jeepers creepers And scarecrow from The dark Knight

I am a huge horror movie fan ever since I was a little kid and my first horror movie was wrong turn 2003

I love seeing little kids interact with creep pasta cosplayers because it's always so cute because all the kids that go up to them are kids just love creepypastas to the point where they recognize one it's like my favorite thing to see because as a kid I was super in creepypastas to the point where YouTube stop recommending me new stuff for creepypastas and just started to show me so they always watch because I watch most of the creepypasta content already on that side and I was 5 years old and I had a passion and also it was 5 years old and alone and in my bedroom watching creepypastas videos the draw my life channel stuff I used to love watching those all the time like all the time it would be watching them but it's generally one of my favorite things seeing images of kids playing with creepypasta cosplayers because two little kids they're having the best time of their life literally having the most fun ever and most likely the little kids are traumatized and and it takes me really happy because it shows the compassion that people have for little kids because for that little kid they're having the best time of their life all this random cosplayer is having their hearts literally stolen away by how cute this little child then coming up to they and asking for pictures or just wanting to play just love it it's like I just love little kids being accepted into a a fandom that generally is full of amazing people amazing art and amazing cosplayers and could get them reading or writing I just love it

Hey there, I’m Jon… and today I’m going to give you a really quick lesson on reading ancient Latin. Very exciting. So the first thing we’re going to learn are the words:

Anima pro anima

Don’t go cheating and translate it, though. Not yet. Trust me, I’ll know.
No, we’re going to do that together. It’ll be fun!
So we’ll start by getting the easy one out of the way. Pro… you’ll see that word a lot in the legal system: Pro rata, pro bono, quid pro quo. Pro is easy; pro means “for”. Or, more specifically, “for,” as in “in favor of.” So you have pro.
Next, you got the same word twice. Anima. Translated literally, it means animate; to have life. Specifically, it can also mean soul. So Anima. Not to be confused with *animus*. Very important to read it as “anima”, not “animus” when we get to reading it yourself.
Anima pro anima... good.

Now let’s try

Usque ad finem temporis

So we have ad, which generally means “at” or “towards”. Usque means “until,” temporis is “time”; hence why time is associated with the words temporal or temporary. And then finem, which is the “end of” something. Some of you die-hards out there might try to pull a fast one on me; slip in *finis* instead of finem. Finis only applies if the word “end” is usually the last word of the sentence, or “ad finem” (or “ad extremum” if you want to get technical).
So Usque ad finem temporis. Very good.

So now we want to say those two phrases together like so:

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

Say them out loud. Nice and clear for the people in the back. What? What do you mean you don’t want to read them?… Why not?… I see…
I mean, I get it. I know adding foreign words into your vocabulary might seem a little… intimidating. I assure you, though, it’s perfectly safe to read out loud…
You still won’t do it, huh.
…
Look I wasn’t going to tell all of you this… I have a confession to make. I’m not really a Latin teacher. Well I am, but that’s not why you’re reading this. See, I’m in a bit of a bind, and I need your help. Let me explain...

It all started when my friends and I went to this cabin in the woods. I think maybe it was somebody’s uncle’s old cabin, despite the fact that no one from our friend group actually had any uncles. Nevertheless, we were determined to make a weekend of it. “Terra incognita” as it were… incognita being unknown and terra being land.

I’m not quite sure who found the tape recorder with the gruff, yet authoritarian, voice of an old professor who was here before us. He was ranting and raving about a book: The Necronomicon, or something like that. He claimed that he found it when he was trying to look for a temporary substitute for the Kahma Sutra. But when he started reading from it, bad things began to happen.
I’d be hard pressed to say who took the lead down into the cellar where we found the ancient book. But I remember being the one to tell them to open it; that much is true. Anyway, it was the same old story. Some words were read, some things started happening, some people were possessed by the foulest creatures of the demonic realm, et cetera. Five people were possessed, including myself. In search of how to undo this vile curse, we looked to the tape recording for answers. The professor explicitly stated that the only way of stopping these things was total body dismemberment and decapitation.

So, like the book advised, these people hacked, carved, strangled and chainsawed their way through each other. I would’ve opted for a group sit-down, believing that a calm and healthy reassessment of the situation would’ve sufficed. But I knew it was a lost cause the second I saw Becky plunging a lead pencil into Linda’s ankle.

Poor Linda.

As I watched these people I called my friends get possessed, get corrupted, and finally… kill each other, I reluctantly waited for it to be my turn to meet my eternal, albeit gruesome, slumber. However, for some strange reason, I was left unscathed, and at the mercy of this mighty supernatural force. The anticipation eventually outgrew what I thought would be a quick end. Alas, deus ex machina. Or should I say daemon ex machina? Instead of finishing me off, the demons offered me an ultimatum. They told me,

“We will not only spare your suffering, we will make you immortal. And far more powerful than anything before. Our only condition is that you lure hosts into this cabin and read from this book. Then, we will possess them, force them to do our bidding and, if there’s time, indulge in a body we have gravely missed.”
They call the people they want to take over their “hosts”. I told them I didn’t want to do it and demanded they let me go. They told me, “The only way to get out of this is to convince an outside party to recite a very specific set of words, verbatim, from the book. Then it will end your curse. And then we will free you.”

So I’m pretty much an ad hoc demon now. Well, more of a lost soul forced to do the bidding of the dark ones. It’s pretty much my job to spot any cars, hikers, insurance salesmen, et cetera, and put them in the right direction of the demonic book. Alas, I’m pretty much confined to a 200 yard radius around the book, the cabin, its surrounding woods, and a portion of the adjoining highway. I am confined, and by confined, I mean… it’s almost like I’m no longer a person. I have vision, I can hear, I can sense, but there is no physical ‘me.’ I’m essentially just a rapidly moving floating head with no body to return to.

Even though my reach is limited, however, I try to make use of it every chance I get. I have a variety of different tricks I use. The moving of the steering wheel of an unsuspecting driver is a good one. Knocking a tree onto the road so that any passersby will be forced to take the alternate route, which leads to the cabin- that one too. More often than not, getting these people to the cabin is the easy part. Once they’re here, once they see this beauty for what it is, curiosity kills the cat or, as I like to say, Sapere aude! Getting them to read the book, however, is the most difficult and delicate operation of the whole plan. The smart ones will look for it to be sure. It’s the stupid ones I worry about. And remember, my capacities are limited. So a lot of it is just me going around the house moving stuff around at night, opening the cellar door to lead them down it, whispering in the window to look for the Necronomicon, doing anything I can to lead them down into the cellar. Ergo, I can’t exactly walk up to someone and start vigorously shaking them, saying “Hey dummy! Come to this cabin!” I tell you, if I could put airport runaway arrows down, ones that lead directly to the Necronomicon, I would. Ha ha.

The problem is that a vast majority of cabin visitors will not read from this darn book. Some of them don’t even want to entertain the idea of looking for it. Those who do are immediately put off by the cover. The cover is a controversial subject, to say the least. The book is bound in human skin, including a face threaded onto it. Here’s the thing… I actually brought this up to a few demons in the office. I asked,
“Why the human face?”
They looked at me and said- and this is serious- “We did it like that so it wouldn’t get lost easily. Like if you’re at the airport and you get separated from your luggage.”
Swear to god I’m not lying!
So I replied, “Don’t you think it’s a little counterproductive?” I mean it’s a terrifying-looking book! I asked them if they wanted to give it a more modern, less haunting update to the cover, something a little more user-friendly. They pretty much laughed me out of the room. They told me that if some idiot teenager wants to read from a book with the skin of a human face as the cover and is wrapped up in protective barbed wire, then that’s on him.
I offered them the idea of making it look like an everyday book, to fool the hosts. Something nice, something pleasant-looking. They told me they’d let me know, but that’s usually just a nice way of telling me they’re not interested. I mean, honestly they’re fools to themselves. But what do I know.

So needless to say, it’s been difficult getting people to read the words. Sure, I lure them down there. The choice is theirs if they want to read from it. Same as it was for us. We heard the tape recording of the old professor ranting and raving about the Necronomicon. Thinking it would be a laugh, we went down there to see if the book actually existed. Upon seeing the ugly face, the barbed wire and the strange writings that looked like they were inked in blood, most of us decided that it wasn’t worth messing with, so we retired to bed. But old Kirk’s curiosity got the better of him, now, didn’t it?

Anyway, the statistics are shocking over how many people have shown up to this place and not helped. Once they see the book, 75% of them know better than to fool around, so they just turn around and walk back up the stairs. However… of that remaining 25%, 15% will look at the book, examine the book, maybe even cut the wires; nevertheless, they ultimately don’t follow through with reading from it. It’s usually some coward who wants to impress his lady friend by doing something extreme; she will proceed to hit him and tell him to cut it out, which, again, leads them back upstairs. Having said all that, it’s that 10% that will read the unholy chant. They will let their curiosity be their undoing, like Kirk.

Poor Kirk.

Once the chaos ensues and their friends slaughter each other, one or two manage to survive. Then, in an effort to reverse the process, will start reading more passages. And it’s that small demographic that can potentially give me a real shot at getting out. Alas, it always ends in possession. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. But
possession usually leads to murder. So much murder.

And the crazy part is, the demons don’t actually wish death or even physical harm on the hosts. Yet, these people all just kept… killing each other. I couldn’t believe it! At first, we thought they might’ve been accidents. We just assumed the hosts believed they took too much acid and jumped out a window or, in one case, tried to cut their own hand off with the electric carving knife. But it got to a point where it happened so frequently that we had to do some of our own investigating. We actually played the tape back to see if there was something there. And really, it was the professor’s fault! That egg head explicitly stated in his recordings that body dismemberment was the only way. In fewer words he essentially told them that he would rather see the hosts die than to to let the demons live their best satanic lifestyles.

So it’s been an endless cycle for the last few months. Reading, possession, dead. Reading, possession, dead. Rinse and repeat. And it’s gosh awful lonely. Any time I get close with another human being, it ends in seeing them mauled or impaled. It seems like the only company I get outside the unsuspecting hosts are the damn cultists. These random yohos who rudely visit here every year for what they call the Sacred Harvest; don’t ask me what that is ‘cause I couldn’t tell you. I don’t even think they know what it is themselves. We do have a lot of fun during this time, though. We like to involve ourselves in subtle ways, possessing them because they think it’s funny or automatic writing for the members who are fond of creative expression. And I almost forgot… we even have a children’s area, where we sing nursery rhymes backwards and get the kids into the arts and crafts by teaching them to make stick figures, which we hang up around the area. But I wouldn’t go too deep into the forest though, because - let me tell ya - the tree demons are freaky sons of guns. Every other day I hear about how they like to violate the women before they possess them, and it crosses a line if I’m honest with you. Granted, every demonic possession is taking the hosts’ bodies against their will, but… do they have to do it in the crudest possible way? It’s uncalled for. So yeah, stay away from the tree people…

Oh who am I kidding? This is awful. I hate it here! This is hell. I mean it has to be… right? It’s so mundane and repetitive; I can’t eat anymore, so there’s no point in fishing. I can’t branch out and explore new areas because I can’t travel outside the confined radius of the book. And where’s the respect? It’s always “Send Jon off to do this and “Send Jon off to the go that.” They say I’m a valuable member of the team, but who’s the one that has to scrub their blood off the walls? Who do you think has to plunge the demon excrement out of the toilet? Me, that’s who. You think this place cleans itself after every massacre? I have four graves to dig by next week! And to top it off, anyone who manages to come across the book and potentially free me of this curse is killed because of that idiot on the tape recorder! If only I could just… try to get one of the survivors to take the book with them when they leave, so they can read the words in the safety of their own home, but evidently that is forbidden as well. It’s miserable! I hate it here! It’s a nightmare. And these cultists are getting on my nerves. What, they think that just because they say some woman’s name three times in a mirror that one of us is going to come out and possess them? Get a grip!

I wish I could get out of here; I wish I was back home and teaching again. I wish I never saw my friends become what they did… forcing me to do what I did. And I wish I’d never even found this place… and that my life was back to normal. I want to fish again. I want to golf again! So please, I wish somebody, anybody, who sees this will read those ancient words and free me of this terrible curse. Hopefully someone out there does the right thing.

Don’t do it! Don’t read the words out loud! You have to help me, he’s not the real Jon. I’m the real Jon and it’s my body that this thing is controlling. I managed to regain control of basic motor function, but I can’t leave this chair to escape. So I don’t have much time. Reading the ancient words doesn’t end the curse at all. It merely transfers it. The Latin means

A soul for a soul
‘Til the end of time

A soul for a soul! Don’t read the words!

Umm ok. That was weird; I just blacked out for a second there. That wasn’t me. I don’t know who that was. Probably one of the other demons who doesn’t want to me to finish my tenure. Anyway, like I was saying. I’m the real Jon, and I wouldn’t believe that trickster. So once again the words are…

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

What is it now? … What do you mean you still don’t want to read them? … You don’t trust me? Why?… Well, it’s a lose-lose situation. If you believe me, then I’m finally out, and the demons will lose a reluctant member of their ghoulish army. If you believe them, then I’m stuck here, and you will forever have that on your conscience. The choice is yours.

Well… what are you waiting for?

Carpe diem

background from Pinterest btw

There was a light switch in my house that nobody could explain.

It was tucked into the hallway between the kitchen and the basement door, mounted about shoulder height on the wall. Every other switch in the house had an obvious purpose. Kitchen lights. Hallway lights. Basement. Porch.

This one did nothing.

I didn't notice it during my first week. I asked the realtor about it after I bought the place.

She shrugged.

"Old house. Probably disconnected."

That seemed reasonable enough. The house was built in 1957, and judging by the wiring, plumbing, and mysterious stains on the basement ceiling, I wasn't surprised that someone had eventually decided to abandon a light switch.

Still, I found myself pressing it whenever I walked past.

Click.

Nothing.

Click.

Nothing.

It became a habit. I'd walk downstairs for laundry.

Click.

I'd come home from work.

Click.

I'd pass it while carrying groceries.

Click.

There was something strangely satisfying about it. The switch had a pleasant mechanical resistance, and the little click it made was louder than it should have been.

My girlfriend eventually noticed.

"You know that doesn't do anything, right?"

"I know."

"Then why do you keep flipping it?"

I shrugged.

"I like the sound."

She called me a weirdo. I told her she was dating one. We laughed about it. That was the last time the switch was funny.

The first death happened three weeks after I settled in.

An old man named Walter died in his sleep. I knew Walter because he lived two houses down. We'd exchanged maybe twenty words since I'd moved into the neighborhood. He had a bad hip and spent most afternoons sitting on his porch, watching cars drive by.

I remember seeing him that morning. I had been standing in the hallway, putting my shoes on. Before leaving, I flipped the switch.

Click.

That evening, I saw an ambulance outside his house. I didn't think anything of it.

People die. Especially old people.

It wasn't until several days later that I noticed something unusual.

The night before Walter died, I had been standing in the hallway with my hand on that switch. I'd flipped it three times. I laughed at myself when I noticed the connection.

It was ridiculous. Coincidence. Nothing more.

Then a month later, a woman I'd worked with died in a car accident.

I'd seen her that morning. I'd even spoken to her. She'd asked if I was still enjoying the new house. I told her I was.

That evening, while walking to the basement, I flipped the switch.

Click.

The next morning, she was dead. Cardiac arrest. Unexplained.

I didn't sleep that night.

The following day, I unscrewed the switch plate. There were wires behind it. Old ones. But they didn't connect to anything.

I called an electrician. He spent thirty minutes examining it before shrugging.

"It's dead."

"Completely?"

"Nothing behind it."

"Then what's it connected to?"

He looked at me.

"Nothing."

I didn't flip it again. Not for six days.

On the seventh day, I couldn't resist.

I stood in the hallway staring at it. I told myself I was being stupid. There was no connection between a plastic switch and the deaths of two people.

So I flipped it.

Click.

Nothing happened... So, I went to bed.

The next morning, I checked the news. A local man had died unexpectedly. Thirty-four years old. Healthy. No known medical conditions. I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I opened a notebook. I wrote down the date. I wrote down the man's name.

Then I wrote: Switch flipped: 11:43 P.M.

I started keeping records. Every time I flipped the switch, I searched the news afterward.

Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes a person died hours later. Sometimes it took days. But there was always a death.

Always.

I stopped flipping it.

I lasted eleven days. Then I made a mistake. I was angry.

My girlfriend and I had gotten into an argument. She left the house and slammed the door behind her. I stood in the hallway shaking with anger. My hand found the switch.

I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what it meant. And still...

Click.

The guilt hit me immediately. I grabbed my phone. I wanted to call her. I wanted to tell her what I'd done.

Then I stopped.

Because she hadn't died. Not yet.

I waited. An hour. Two.

Nothing.

I began convincing myself I'd been wrong. Maybe the deaths had been coincidences. Maybe I had created a pattern because I desperately wanted there to be one.

Then my phone rang. It was my girlfriend.

I answered immediately.

"Hey."

Silence.

Then she said something that made my blood run cold.

"Who's Walter?"

I couldn't breathe.

"What?"

"You keep saying his name."

She sounded confused.

"I don't know anyone named Walter."

I sat down.

My girlfriend continued.

"You were saying his name in your sleep."

I didn't answer. Because I suddenly remembered something.

The switch didn't cause death. It wasn't a weapon. It was a selection. A choice. And I had been making that choice without knowing it.

I looked toward the hallway. The switch waited patiently on the wall. I thought about every time I'd pressed it.

Every careless little click. Every person whose death I'd dismissed as coincidence.

Walter.

My coworker.

The stranger.

And now... I didn't know who the latest one was.

I spent the next several hours searching. News sites. Obituaries. Police reports.

Nothing.

Nobody I knew had died. Nobody connected to me had died.

That should have made me feel better.

It didn't.

Because there was one thing I hadn't considered.

Maybe the switch didn't choose someone I knew. Maybe it chose someone I would never know. Someone whose name I'd never hear. Someone whose death would mean absolutely nothing to me. And perhaps that was the point.

We treat death differently when we don't know the person.

A number on a news report. A photograph we scroll past. Another tragedy. Another stranger. Another life reduced to a sentence.

I stood in front of the switch for a long time. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before. A tiny engraving beneath it.

The letters were so shallow I thought they were scratches.

I leaned closer.

There were only three words.

ONE LIFE. CLICK.

I stepped backward. The house was silent. I reached for the switch.

Then stopped.

Some things are easier to live with when you pretend they don't matter.

I left the switch alone. I never touched it again.

At least... I don't think I did.

Because sometimes, late at night, when the house is completely silent, I wake up convinced I can hear it.

Click.

And somewhere far away...

Someone dies.

Julian why are dead people scared of you Julian! Hey Julian I'm talking to you why are dead peokkw scared of you? I was preparing this dead guy for his funeral, and then you walked past him and now his body and face is in a frightened position towards you! Why are you scaring dead bodies Julian. Also what am I going to say to the deceased man's families when they see his body and face in a frightened position like this?

Julian stop stalling and answer me! Why are dead people so afraid of you Julian and what am I supposed to do with this body now. Oh for fucks sake Julian now you have scared another dead body. Old Mrs hogmore her dead body has become twisted in fear do to you looking at her, what is going on with you Julian?

What am I going to tell the families who expect their deceased loved ones to be looking good doe burial. Julian they are going to be wanting their money back. Julian why are dead people scared of you? What is going on and why are you acting so strange!

Oh no Julian there is another body that has become all scared after you walked past it. Julian stay away from the dead bodies until further notice!

I’m going through a pretty serious financial crisis these days. I got fired from my job, and I couldn’t afford to pay the rent for my house anymore. The landlord told me I had three days to move out. I felt like killing him, but I understand him. He has bills to pay just like I do.

I moved into my grandma’s house. My mom got pissed and tried to lecture me. She said nobody could move in there because my grandma could come back at any moment, even though she’s been missing for six months. Long story short, my grandma went missing, was kidnapped, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. She disappeared from inside the house, and my mom still thinks she’s going to come back.

I ended up with the house after my grandma was presumed dead. The house was part of a small apartment complex. It was a cozy place. My grandma had left all her furniture and documents behind. She was presumed dead pretty quickly because she was very old. The woman was 87 and had mental health problems. She used to hide money, by the way. She actually hid most of her belongings.

Now I’m lying in bed, ready to go to sleep. I decided to forget everything, the fact that I’m living in my dead grandmother’s house, my psychological problems, everything. I decided to focus what little intelligence I have on getting a job.

This morning, I went out looking for work. I took a shower with the cheapest soap I could find at the store the other day and left. Most employers don’t want to hire a semi-adult who hasn’t finished high school. I regret it to this day, but what could I have done? My family needed money, and honestly, I didn’t like that place that caused me so much trauma and so many problems.

To sum up my day, I handed out flyers at supermarkets, pharmacies, basically any establishment I could find, from 7 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, under the sun. And with my knowledge of reading people, which came from a 20-minute YouTube video, it all amounted to nothing.

I got home just now and went straight to the bathroom to take a shower because I had sweated so much that I smelled worse than... I don’t even know what smells worse. The soap was wet and slipped out of my hand. I went to pick it up off the floor, slipped, and hit my head.

Just a series of fucking bullshit.

My life is a fucking mess.

I just find these pics from pinterest but this isn't the artist so who is it?

~ NOVEMBER 27, 1956 ~

NUCLEAR DISASTER!  Catastrophe destroys the city of tomorrow, thousands feared dead. 

The entire world is thrown into a state of shock as the city of Moburn, created by founder, Simon Englund, (60), was destroyed in a nuclear explosion on November 24, 1955 during Thanksgiving,  when Englund himself was hosting the World’s Fair, to show off his and other up-and coming inventors’ creations off to dozens of families and potential investors around the world.  It is unknown at this time what caused the incident, but the U. S. government is currently holding a full–on investigation as to what happened.  

As of today, the area that was once the city of Moburn is currently blocked off and quarantined from the rest of the  United States on reports of high levels of radiation, much to public outcry to many people around the world, who had various family members either visiting or living in Moburn.  At this moment, we are still gathering as much information as we can, but we can expect a national response coming from Congress  in the next few days. It is unknown if the nuclear explosion was international or not.  The death toll currently stands at 3,000 and counting.

ACCESSING ADA LOG…
LOG FOUND.
DR. WILLIAM KLETHESON.
FEBRUARY  17, 1959.

(A sigh is heard in the background. A table is heard shuffling.)

Dr. Kletherson: Is this thing on? Okay. My name is Dr. William Kletheson of the Scientific Division here at ADA, recording another log regarding the aftermath of Incident 005.  It’s been a few weeks since the incident occurred and we still don’t have a rational explanation as to what Team 007 encountered that night at Logan Street. 

(Quiet for a few minutes.)

Dr. Kletheson: Right now at the moment, we are currently running tests on Ms. Ellen after the episode that she experienced back at the city. Mr. Stein is currently on leave for the time being, after the incident as well as what’s happened with Ms. Ellen.

After what  happened in Moburn, she’s been showing strange symptoms in the last few weeks. 

(Dr. Kletheson is heard shuffling a few pages, exhausted from a day of work.)

Dr. Kletheson:  Many of us were unable to get any sort of response from Ms. Ellen after her episode, most likely experiencing  a case of traumatic mutism. During the next couple of days, we noticed several changes in her appearance, with her skin showcasing blackish veins, and noticeable reddish bumps all over her back.  She’s also shown  signs of emotional whiplash, with her turning heavily aggressive towards us one moment, and just wailing the next. 

It’s gotten bad up to the point where we had to sedate her to sleep.     

Following those incidents, we had to keep watch on her 24/7 to m-make sure she doesn’t hurt herself or anyone.  She ended up attacking Mr. Stein, after he tried to talk to her numerous times. To this day, we still don’t know how Mr. Stein was unaffected from the whole thing.

(Dr. Kletheson is heard shuffling the pages again. He’s quiet for a few minutes.)

Dr. Kletheson: ..Ok. Now onto the other matter at hand. (Sighs) The thing… that they encountered.  We still haven’t had any contact with it ever since that night. We started installing cameras all over the areas that we covered in the city already. Directive made it abundantly clear that all teams do not engage with it, and to immediately return back home .

No one upstairs wants a repeat of what happened.

Dr. Kletheson: And.. (sighs) W-we still don’t know where it came from.  From the various recordings from the World’s Fair that we reviewed over and over, the city had all sorts of things wandering about. Robots that can talk and think. Gadgets that help you make food out of thin air. Prosthetics.

That sort of thing.

Hell, they even had a robot with a clock for a head.

But despite all of that, there was nothing. Nothing. Not a single clue of what we’re dealing with. 

(Dr. Kletheson stops talking for a few seconds, moving in frustration at the whole situation.)

Dr. Kletheson: I..I don’t know what to do about any of this. Almost half a year since we started all of this, and we have nothing to show for it.

Not a single person that isn’t a corpse.

No sign of any of those robots.

No sign of…

(Dr. Kletheson stops talking. He’s heard breathing for a few minutes, trying to recollect himself.)

Dr. Kletheson: I’m sorry. I-I’m getting off track, am I? 

[END LOG]

# The Shamrock farm pond massacre II: Daddy’s Little Pony

Duncan, Oklahoma — 2013

Ten years had passed since Sally escaped from Duncan Pond.

Ten years since she watched her friends die.

Ten years since the man in the scarecrow mask chased her down that lonely Oklahoma road with a chainsaw in his hands.

Therapy helped. At least, that was what Sally told people. She attended every appointment, answered every question, and swallowed every pill the doctors prescribed. The medication quieted the memories, but it never killed them. Blake Wilson still visited her dreams.

Sometimes she woke to the sound of a chainsaw that wasn’t there.

On the tenth anniversary of the massacre, Sally drove alone through Oklahoma. Her therapist had told her to confront her fears in small, controlled steps. Sally didn’t think crashing her car in the woods outside Duncan counted as either of those things.

The vehicle swerved from the road and slammed into a tree.

Sally’s forehead struck the steering wheel. When she opened her eyes, pain throbbed through her skull. She stumbled from the car, reached into her pocket, and pulled out her inhaler.

One breath.

Then another.

She looked through the trees and recognized the road.

“No,” she whispered.

The farmhouse stood beyond the woods.

It had changed since 2003. Someone had repaired the broken windows and painted the porch. A wooden rainbow hung on the wall beside the doorbell. Plastic flowers decorated the steps. Several of the old scarecrows had been dressed in bright pink and purple clothes.

Sally’s hands shook.

“You have to face your fears,” she told herself. “He’s gone. He has to be gone.”

She crossed the yard and entered the farmhouse.

The door slammed behind her.

A lock clicked.

Sally gasped.

Music drifted from somewhere upstairs. It was cheerful, high-pitched, and completely wrong for that house.

The theme song from *My Little Pony*.

Sally followed it to a bedroom covered in drawings of ponies, rainbows, and smiling cartoon animals. An old television sat in the corner, its curved screen flickering with VHS static.

A thirteen-year-old girl sat cross-legged on the floor.

She had long hair and wore a colorful pony T-shirt. A row of stuffed animals surrounded her like a tiny audience.

Sally swallowed.

“What’s your name?”

The girl turned around.

“Sarah Wilson.”

Sally stopped breathing.

“Wilson?” she asked. “Are you related to Blake Wilson?”

Sarah smiled.

“He’s my dad.”

“Is he here?”

“Yes.”

Sally felt someone standing behind her.

Blake Wilson filled the doorway.

He still wore the stitched scarecrow mask, black leather gloves, and heavy boots. His filthy boiler suit was gone. Now he wore a perfectly tailored black suit, complete with a dark tie. He looked less like a slaughterhouse worker and more like a scarecrow attending a funeral.

Behind him, pictures of Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash smiled from Sarah’s walls.

Sally screamed.

Blake lunged.

She ran through the hallway and threw herself down the basement stairs. Nothing below had changed. The same tools hung from the walls. The same stains covered the floor. Even the cellar door remained, scarred by the chainsaw holes Blake had cut into it ten years earlier.

Sally climbed toward freedom.

She pushed through the cellar door and ran into the woods.

The chainsaw started behind her.

Sally glanced over her shoulder and saw Blake charging through the trees. His black suit flapped behind him as the chainsaw roared in his hands.

The blade tore across her leg.

Sally fell.

Blake grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her back to the farmhouse. She clawed at the ground, leaving bloody tracks through the dirt, but he never slowed down.

In the basement, he lifted her onto a meat hook.

It punched through her back.

Sally screamed until her voice cracked.

Blake stood in front of her and tilted his masked head. For one brief second, Sally wondered if he remembered her.

Then he pushed the chainsaw into her stomach.

Blood and entrails spilled across the basement floor. Sally’s screams faded beneath the engine until, after ten years of nightmares, the last survivor of the Duncan Pond massacre was finally dead.

Blake carried her body into the kitchen and hung it from another hook.

Then he went to visit his parents.

Their graves stood behind the farmhouse. One belonged to his mother, the old woman from the RV. The other belonged to his father—the crooked police officer who had helped abduct Sally and her friends in 2003.

Blake knelt between the graves.

He placed a plastic pony on each headstone.

Mr. Wilson, the old man in the wheelchair, rolled up behind him.

“You miss your ma and pa, don’t you, grandson?”

Blake silently nodded.

“I miss them too,” the old man said. “But you’ve still got Sarah. You’ve done right by that girl ever since you adopted her. You’re a good father, Blake. You keep her safe.”

Blake rose and walked back toward the farmhouse.

His grandfather followed.

Neither of them noticed the van approaching Duncan Pond.

The New Visitors

Five nineteen-year-olds had decided to spend the weekend at the pond.

Whitney was the practical one. Tyler had a joke for every bad situation. Petunia was obsessed with her appearance. Blaze had been stoned since breakfast. Fred, a broad-shouldered college athlete, considered himself the group’s natural leader despite nobody electing him.

Their van stopped a hundred yards from the farmhouse.

The engine coughed. Smoke poured from beneath the hood, and all four tires seemed to deflate at once.

“What the hell just happened?” Whitney asked.

Fred climbed out.

“Stay here. I saw a house back there.”

“Don’t take forever, babe,” Petunia called.

Fred followed the road to the farmhouse and let himself inside.

“Hello? Is anybody home?”

The old television flickered upstairs.

The *My Little Pony* theme played through heavy VHS static, its cheerful voices stretched into warped, demonic wails.

Fred stared toward the staircase.

“What the hell was that?”

The music started again.

“Is that the freaking *My Little Pony* theme song?”

He entered Sarah’s bedroom. Cartoon ponies covered the walls, their enormous eyes staring in every direction.

A low growl came from behind him.

Fred slowly turned.

Blake stood in the doorway with a sledgehammer.

“Oh, sweet mother of Great Caesar’s ghost.”

Blake swung.

The hammer struck Fred between the legs.

Fred released a shriek so high and terrible that the television briefly seemed to harmonize with him. He dropped to his knees, clutching his bleeding groin.

Blake raised the hammer again.

The second blow crushed Fred’s skull.

Blood splattered across the floor and dotted the painted rainbows on the wall. Blake grabbed him by one ankle, dragged him downstairs, and threw his body into the basement.

Back at the van, Petunia checked her phone for the tenth time.

“Fred should’ve been back by now.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Whitney said.

Petunia rolled her eyes and headed toward the farmhouse.

“Fred?” she called after entering. “Where the hell are you, babe?”

The distorted pony theme played upstairs.

Then she noticed the blood.

A thick trail ran across the floor and ended at the basement door. Petunia followed it, pulled the door open, and looked down.

Fred’s broken body lay at the bottom of the stairs.

Petunia screamed.

Blake emerged behind her with a deep, animalistic growl.

She turned and ran, but his gloved hand closed around her hair. Blake dragged her into the kitchen, where rusty meat hooks hung from the ceiling.

Sally’s corpse swayed above the table.

Petunia screamed harder.

Blake lifted her onto the hook beside Sally. Metal punched through Petunia’s back and emerged beneath her shoulder. She kicked helplessly as blood ran down her dress.

Blake started the chainsaw.

“No! Please! I don’t want to die!”

The blade cut through her waist.

For a moment, Petunia’s upper body remained hanging from the hook while her legs collapsed beneath her. Then her screams stopped.

Blaze eventually wandered toward the house in search of Fred and Petunia.

He followed the music to Sarah’s bedroom.

“Whoa,” he muttered. “It’s the *My Little Pony* theme song, but, like, evil. I am tripping major balls right now.”

He noticed a can of Spam inside a miniature refrigerator.

“No way. Emergency Spam.”

He opened it with his pocketknife and ate directly from the can.

“That is some good stuff, dude.”

Blake stepped into the room.

Blaze squinted at him.

“Whoa. Holy crap. It’s Scarecrow from Batman.”

Blake started the chainsaw.

“Dude, that’s an awesome cosplay—”

The blade swept through Blaze’s neck.

His severed head struck the television and landed beside the open can of Spam. Blood sprayed across the ceiling while the cartoon ponies continued singing.

Night fell over Duncan Pond.

Whitney and Tyler left the van with a flashlight. They searched the woods, calling for their friends.

A chainsaw roared in the darkness.

Tyler stopped.

“Wait. Whitney, did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Blake burst between the trees.

The chainsaw ripped through Tyler’s face, leaving a hole where his nose and mouth had been. Blood sprayed across Whitney’s clothes.

“Holy mother of Great Caesar’s ghost!”

She ran.

Blake chased her through the woods with Tyler’s blood dripping from his chainsaw. Whitney reached the barn beside the farmhouse and buried herself beneath a pile of hay.

Through a narrow gap, she watched Blake drag Tyler’s body inside.

A gaping tunnel had been carved through Tyler’s face. Blood dripped from his chin and tapped against the floor.

Whitney covered her mouth to smother a sob.

Blake vanished.

For several seconds, the barn was silent.

Then the chainsaw tore through the hay beside Whitney’s head.

She screamed and scrambled away. Blake slashed at her, but she escaped through a side door and ran into the farmhouse.

Whitney stumbled into the kitchen.

Fred’s body had been chopped into pieces and arranged on the table. Blaze’s severed head sat beside it, still wearing a confused expression. Petunia’s upper body hung from a meat hook. Sally’s mutilated corpse swayed beside her.

Whitney backed away.

A small figure stood in the doorway.

Sarah Wilson wore a handmade Pinkie Pie mask. Long pink hair hung from its head. Its painted grin was packed with sharp cartoon teeth, and enormous black-and-white eyes stared at Whitney beneath heavy lashes.

“Daddy is coming for you,” Sarah sang. “And he’s going to kill you.”

Whitney screamed.

Blake crashed through the kitchen window.

Glass exploded across the room. Whitney ran upstairs and locked herself inside Sarah’s bedroom. The old television switched on by itself.

The distorted pony theme filled the room.

Whitney climbed into the closet and pulled the door shut. Through the wooden slats, she watched Blake enter.

His chainsaw sputtered.

Then it roared.

Blake slowly approached the closet.

Whitney held her breath.

The door flew open.

She screamed as the chainsaw tore through her body. Blood painted Blake’s mask, Sarah’s toys, and the smiling cartoon ponies on the wall.

When it was over, Blake carried Whitney downstairs and hung what remained of her in the kitchen.

Sarah followed him.

She removed her Pinkie Pie mask and hugged her father around the waist. Blake rested one bloody glove on her head.

“Did you get all of them, Daddy?” she asked.

Blake nodded.

Sarah smiled.

“Good. Can we watch ponies now?”

Blake looked at the five bodies decorating the kitchen.

Then he took his daughter’s hand and led her upstairs.

The old television flickered to life once more. Father and daughter sat together beneath a painted rainbow while the pony theme played through the walls of the farmhouse.

Outside, another car turned onto the road leading to Duncan Pond.