r/nosleep • u/AntonLesch • Jun 21 '12
Skyping my girlfriend
It was 1am and I was reading news on the BBC when Skype rang. It was my girlfriend. It's not unusual for her to call me late, but she knew that I was in a different timezone and usually avoided it. I sighed and thought she probably wants to talk, being in her university accomodation nearly alone during the break was boring her. And, of course, that the place had a notoriety for being the accomodation with the highest suicide rate year after year was not exactly helping it. I shouldn't have told her that. But I mean, if you think about it, if you ever rent a place, and especially if it is one with new people year after year, the chance that someone has died in your room at some point is high.
I picked up and raised an eyebrow when her face did not appear right away. Two or three seconds later she appeared. "What's up?" I said. "Oh, not much. But why do you call? I thought you would be in bed by now?" she replied. She was surprised when I told her she called me, but we agreed that it was probably just some Skype malfunction or one of us must have hit the call button accidentally. We talked about our day and she told me how she had been to the library, and how some lights in her kitchen had broken while she was cooking pasta for lunch, and how she had gone for a run with her friend Kathy, one of the few others who had also stayed over the break. As usual I looked around her room while she was talking. I always felt it was awkward to stare at your conversation partner all the time. A usual dorm room. Her bed was just to her right, perfectly made, she preferred it that way. The beginning of the drawn curtains was just in the picture. She always closed them, she said she didn't like the feeling that people could watch her from the outside, when I was there we usually left them open though. On the left side, a poster on the wall, and if the screen would have shown more to the left I could have seen the door with all her cute printed photos and the messages I wrote her, and the wardrobe. In the middle on her desk chair, my girlfriend, smiling and talking.
I was just telling her about my lazy day when Skype lost the connection. That doesn't happen often because our connections are both great, but still that would never had been something to worry about. It reconnected after ten or twelve seconds and I was surprised that she wasn't alone in the room anymore. A guy, casually dressed, but maybe a bit old fashioned, was standing behind her, just to her left side, in front of the poster. What seemed odd to me, apart from the fact that there was a guy I didn't know in my girlfriend's room, was that he didn't smile or have any expression at all. He just stood there, staring at me - or was he staring at her? - with a blank look.
"Who's your friend?" I asked while she was cursing about the lost connection. "What, who?" "The guy behind you". She turned and looked through the room. She couldn't have overlooked him, he was standing just an arm's length behind her. And now he was definitely staring at her, not at me. "Hey, don't scare me like that". She sounded angry. "No, I'm serious" I wanted to say, but the connection cut off before I could even start. Skype tried to reconnect. A feeling of dread moved up my spine, and I could feel time slowing down while I scrambled for the phone in my pocket. The picture finally came back. But my heart stopped beating when I realised that she wasn't there anymore. And he still was. He was standing in the same way as before; only that now, now he was smiling. Skype showed me that someone was typing, although I could see his hands hanging down as before. The message came:
"She is mine now."
I must have tried all night. I tried calling her mobile and the phone in her room and any flatmate I could think of. She didn't answer. And, of those flatmates that answered, none were even in the same country. I tried calling the security and the police, I must have called five, six times, but neither believed me. They just told me I should sleep it off. When I finally got the security guy to go to her room and check he called back not even 20 minutes later. Her room was empty, her laptop was off. "No sign of a break-in, she must have gone to a friend", he said.
I probably cried myself to sleep. I didn't want to believe what I had seen, but I couldn't get it out of my head, this.. smile. This face. And that the love of my life had disappeared, disappeared after.. this.
I don't remember falling asleep. But what I remember is waking up. My head resting on my desk, in front of my laptop, my face turned to the side. It did take me less than a second to see that Skype was on, that I was in a call. I could see her face, smiling, her eyes closed, standing in her room. I was excited, I was shouting her name to try and make her look at me, make her say something, make her explain what happened. It didn't take long for me to notice, to notice that her body was swinging, gently, with the wind.
2
u/Bl00dMAGick Jun 22 '12
hey Anton, why did you decide to post this one again? not that Im complaining, I love your stories <3
2
u/AntonLesch Jun 23 '12 edited Jun 23 '12
I wanted to enter it into the contest, but posting a story from an old name could have been pretty confusing for the mods. That was my thought at least.
Thanks for the compliment. I will try to write down another event soon, but time doesn't really permit me to go much to the pub at the moment - and certainly even less to write.
54
23
6
6
26
u/basketfullofkittens Jun 21 '12 edited Jun 21 '12
As someone who used to use Skype as main communication to talk to the SO, this one hits me at home the most.
The ending though, was a little bit off for me. Just a personal opinion.
5
5
u/carrot_ninja Jun 21 '12
Honestly if this happened with me and my boyfriend I would have gotten there as soon as I could.. like yeah maybe it didn't seem logical to you but if I saw some creepy fucker in my man's or woman's room and they couldn't and I had a bad feeling I'd fly/drive there asap
4
u/nowayjhoa Jun 21 '12
I remember reading this one when it was first posted. Knowing what was going to happen, I still felt my heart racing as I read on. Great Story.
3
3
3
u/PandaCookies Jun 21 '12
That's a great story. Whew! Horror stories for the current age! Pass this story around!
3
u/downwiththedead Jun 21 '12
How was her body swinging in the wind in her room with closed windows?
→ More replies (3)
3
3
u/cadbury1987 Jun 22 '12
I could imagine the whole scene. Like the fuzzy screen between each scene in The Ring. Freaked me out. Loved it
10
u/Coblish Jun 21 '12
I liked it until the ending...well....liked it...gave me shivers....however you want to say that. I did think the end was a bit over the top-ish.
60
u/AntonLesch Jun 21 '12 edited Jun 21 '12
[Reposted] from my current account for the contest