nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BuddhaTheGreat on 2024-10-30 12:33:14+00:00.

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Nothing makes sense? Maybe you missed a few instalments. Check out the index to catch up.

Weird title again, I know, but there is a reason.

Honestly, nothing much could be done on the preacher front for today, so once Naru had finished rustling his files, we decided to head straight home. The rest of the family was bustling about preparing for whatever ‘ritual’ they needed me to do tonight, and my grandmother was smoking up the whole kitchen with her culinary black magic, though I must admit it did smell good. She was finally using the goat; apparently, keeping it in the freezer any longer would destroy the flavour. I wouldn’t know anything about that, but she wants me to eat before I go out. That was probably a bad idea, given that I am definitely going to overstuff myself if it’s her cooking. But there’s no arguing with Grandma.

Either way, since I had no idea what to do to help, I decided to give the journal another go, focusing on the entries I could read. I hadn’t intended to go very in-depth for the moment, but the very first entry caught my attention. Reading through it, I could not help but notice how much it related to our current situation. Almost as if it had been placed first for a purpose. What’s more, I could have sworn a different entry was in those pages when I checked it the last time. There was no way to prove it, but the book had apparently shifted its contents around.

Anyway, as the title says, there is no church in Chhayagarh. There is an old mosque, though it’s crumbling and abandoned now. There are lots of Hindu temples, including our family temple on the estate and the old, crumbling temple on the top of the hill, built many centuries ago by our ancestors and then abandoned when we moved our holdings to the plainland. But no church.

This was rather surprising since Bengal was the lynchpin of the British Raj, and we know that the government was aware of this village and, to some extent, its peculiar situation. Surely, they would have concluded that building a house of god, the ‘true’ god, on this land was a sure way to rid it of ‘evil’? But there was never any evidence to show they had tried.

But I now had the evidence in my hand. You see, until 1813, the East India Company was reluctant to allow missionary activity in India, as they felt it would anger the local populace and damage their business interests. However, the Charter Act of 1813 passed by the British Parliament made the Company take responsibility for the ‘education’ of the Indian people, which included allowing missionaries to preach in the EIC’s territories. Following this, a missionary priest was dispatched with the permission of Governor-General Francis Rawdon-Hastings (the other Lord Hastings) in 1816 to Chhayagarh, with the goal of “addressing its menacing relationship with devilry and establishing the law of god in the province”.

The diary entries of this missionary, named Charles Eden, have been meticulously copied by hand into this journal. Or rather, a part of them: the portion covers his entries from his arrival in Chhayagarh to what would be, for reasons that will soon become clear, his final entry. Instead of transcribing them exactly one by one, which would both pose trouble due to the archaic language and be incredibly boring, I have decided to use my incredible literary skills to compress them into a single, continuous account that will cover the entirety of his experience over the two days he spent here. For continuity’s sake, I’ll be writing them in the first person as well, but you’ll know when it’s me speaking and when it’s Charles.

All right then, here goes nothing:

It was raining when I first arrived in the village of Chayagore (Chhayagarh). It is a hamlet in a miserable state, built on hard, infertile land where almost nothing grows, and absolutely nothing grows well. The local zamindar seems to have a reputation for being a good friend of the Company, and the Governor-General has assured me he will cooperate, even though he neglected to furnish me with a letter of recommendation. I am not aware of the persuasions of this Hindoo fellow towards me, but his subjects are decidedly not entertained by my presence. Even in the brief time I have spent in the streets so far, I have caught two dozen glares, one or five frowns, and even a few sneers. It is evident that my black frock and starched collar are both an unfamiliar and unwelcome presence.

On the way towards the zamindar’s admittedly extensive estate, I glimpsed a prayer hall of the Mohammedans, identifiable by its dome even in its state of disrepair and neglect. I found it rather galling that even that beastly religion, responsible for so much of the sufferings of the natives if scholars are to be believed, had found purchase here when a bearer of modernity and rationality like myself should have to struggle for heathen approval.

But the Lord had only been too clear that spreading his Word would not be easy, and that was especially true amongst the unwashed and the illiterate. I had no choice but to soldier on.

At the gate, I was met by two very immodestly dressed guards, presumably of the lower castes. After all, such is the lot of the dark-skinned races in this country. They searched my luggage quite thoroughly with their grubby hands before letting me through. I suppose the idea of hospitality that the zamindar has does not extend to the trust one must place in guests.

(I feel compelled to clarify here that the racism is not my own, but his. I debated whether to leave it out entirely, but it is necessary to understand Eden’s worldview. As it is, I have already softened the blow by editing out the numerous slurs he seemed determined to hand out like candy.)

To add insult to injury, upon reaching this landlord’s sprawling and frankly obscene property, I was informed by a fresh-faced manservant that his most vainglorious master, not having the civilized decency to receive me, had instead embarked on some sort of ‘hunt’ in the vast forests of his property. He would not return until late at night.

Truly, much work is required to make gentlemen out of these natives. Thankfully, a few members of his family, including mostly women but gratefully a man or two in the form of his brothers, did receive me. However, I turned down their offer to attend with them some sort of nautch girl’s performance scheduled to take place in the evening, and instead asked to retreat to my quarters and have my dinner in seclusion. I have no patience for the vulgarity of those garish prostitutes, pretending to be something refined while flouting all God-given laws of modesty and submission to the social order.

Thankfully, they had at least heeded my sensibilities in assigning me simple and modest quarters, featuring none of the arrogant opulence that the local rich man seemed accustomed to. As a man of God, I do not seek nor condone excess in anything.

As I was rather peevishly scribbling this entry into my pocket diary, the same young servant brought in my food: a generous serving of rice along with some lentils, vegetables, and a thick, oily meat curry: this last one, I returned untouched, having adopted vegetarianism a year or so earlier. As with all the cuisine in these parts, it was heavily seasoned and immensely, overpoweringly flavourful. The abundance of spices in our Indian possessions has made even the poorest serf the owner of what would be a treasure trove in English kitchens, to say nothing of my hosts. Perhaps one of the few positives of their culture.

Nevertheless, I was careful to eat in moderation: besides my earlier disdain for luxury, my stomach was not fully accustomed to this clime. The servant waited at the door while I ate, squatting on the ground in a thoroughly unseemly manner while his eyes burned holes into my skull. When I returned my half-finished plate, he wordlessly bore it away, returning with a copper plate and a jug of water to wash my hands: the custom in these parts. I decided to cause no further aggravation by refusing.

This is where the first entry ends. As you can tell, nothing interesting really happens in this part, but I felt it necessary, nevertheless, to include it, as it tells you a lot about the basic character of Mr. Eden. These traits will be important to explain his choices and fate on the second day, which is where the matter comes to a head.

The entry begins as follows:

I did not sleep well. Despite my caution, my stomach betrayed me, tossing and gurgling all night in rhythm with me as I thrashed on the uncomfortable, thin mattress. I must have been half-feverish from indigestion, for nothing else can explain the dreams I had in those fugues, stuck between sleep and waking.

I dreamt of the forest, its canopy closing in an embrace that grew tighter every minute, snuffing out the light of the full moon above. I dreamt of a man clutching a rifle, his back turned to me as he stalked through the shade of the trees. I dreamt of a portal of quicksilver, gleaming and shifting with a light all its own, spread out in a fan, like a wave frozen just as it breaks upon the shore. I dreamt…

I dreamt of myself, laughing and pointing. Giggling. Dancing.

Beckoning.

Calling out.

That was when I snapped awake, roused by the rays of sunlight that streamed through the curtains and hit my eyes. Judging from the posi...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/spnsuperfan1 on 2024-10-30 11:47:27+00:00.

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Funnily enough, I never believed in the supernatural up until a couple months ago. Hell, part of me still doesn’t believe in it, even with the things I’ve seen.

For example: just this past week the division detained its first mermaid. Correction, sorry, siren. The two entities absolutely loathe being mistaken for the other.

I’m still new to the job and am in the process of learning to disregard everything the media has told me. So if any Elders are reading this, I truly meant no disrespect.

For those of you that aren’t aware of who Elders are, well, they’re elder. Beings that inhabited the Earth way before we came along. Some places around the world have different names for them: Fae, Sidhe, Neighbors, Diwata, Yōsei, Dokkaebi. Around these parts of Winchester, Michigan though, we call ‘em Elders.

The very first thing I was taught is that long ago, us humans pushed them out of the lands they once ruled, so the least we can do is be respectful towards them.

Thankfully, I’ve yet to encounter a real nasty Elder. I hear things can get pretty ugly if you upset one well enough. These beings can be quite powerful, seeing as Elders can harness and tap into an ethereal energy that is invisible and mostly inaccessible to us- magic (no I’m not shitting you, magic is real).

Elders are also very clever and can look like anyone or anything whenever they want. You never know when you might unsuspectingly engage in a conversation with someone that is eons older than they look. So, as a reminder, respect everyone. Especially your Elders!

Getting back to our latest catch (pun intended), she was a real pain in the ass to track down. It’s not often you come across a fresh water siren. They’re more difficult to deal with seeing as they can go from one body of water to another. Sure the oceans are big, but in the event a siren comes ashore to feed, they tend not to stray far from the salty sea. It’s a completely different beast when your suspect can travel pretty much anywhere on land as long as there’s a fresh water source nearby.

Our Lieutenant personally requested that Detective Dustin Davidson, my partner, and I bring our fish friend in after a news segment about local missing men aired. The only thing left of them were their empty wallets- which had been found either by a creek, river, or in one instance, a pool.

In the segment the reporter also interviewed an old man who claimed to be a victim that survived his brush with the party responsible. There was a large bandage on his cheek and he had a pretty bad black eye. He definitely survived something alright.

The next two minutes of the broadcast consisted of a detailed rant about him encountering a luscious looking she-devil with claws, razor-sharp teeth, and a glimmering green fish tail in a pond while on his evening hike at a local trail. Poor guy had accidentally stumbled upon a feeding session. Siren’s are known to be territorial and very protective of their feeding grounds, kinda like resource guarding with dogs. Seeing him as a threat, the “she-devil” lunged out of the water and attacked him, screeching out a horrible song as she did.

He only got away because her prey in the water was still alive and started trying to run. The siren wanted her meal more, so she hissed at him then slithered back into the water to finish what she started. When he went back the next day, the only evidence he found that proved something had happened was a man’s empty wallet sitting by the edge of the pond.

Our survivor reported the incident to the authorities, but our counterparts didn’t believe him and called the guy a crackhead. Those lazy fuckers didn’t even bother to file a report. If they had, the case would’ve been flagged and sent directly to our division where we could start an investigation immediately. But, because this didn’t happen, and we found out from the news, Lieutenant Dawn was pretty pissed.

A guy ranting about lunatic mermaids on tv wasn’t exactly a good look for us. You see, civilians and the other half of Winchester PD don’t know that our division exists. The division’s purpose is to bring in supernatural perpetrators that make a lot of noise. We want to keep the general public from getting suspicious about the things that go bump in the night being real. The expression “ignorance is bliss” is an expression for a reason.

Anyway, the news crew probably included that interview as an attention getter to the case, dismissing his testimony all together and deeming him insane. But to us in the know, he gave us valuable information and a great tip. Now we knew what creature to look for. The fish tail and horrid singing were telltale signs of a siren.

“Davidson, Rookie,” Lieutenant Dawn addressed Dustin and I after the segment ended, “track down our witness and get a proper statement. Then get a profile on our siren. We need to bring her in before she causes us even more trouble. The last thing we need are some siren hunters snooping around.”

“Yes, sir.” Dustin and I nodded in unison, graciously accepting the assignment. It had been a slow day and we were eager to catch some action. Not even twenty minutes later we were leaving to speak with our witness, Paulie Rutledge.

Dustin grabbed his coat off his office chair then shot me a devious grin as he put it on. “Ready to go, Rookie?”

With a huff and roll of my eyes, I grabbed the rest of my things and walked off. I hate being called rookie. It’s so stupid because that’s what I am and he was just trying to be playful, but at my old department it was used derogatorily and wasn’t a good thing to be called. Plus being called a rookie brings up bad memories…

My therapist says I should try to reclaim the word, and I’m trying my best to, but as of now you can call me Lucky. She also said it might help me process my trauma a little better if I kept a diary. So think of this as a two for one special. I get to vent to the internet and make my job a little easier by giving life-saving advice on any supernatural’s that might cross your path.

“Officer Hale,” Dawn stopped me on my way out of the precinct, whispering in my ear, “prove them wrong. Show me you’re a good cop. Show me why I recruited you.”

My body went rigid. “Y-yes sir,” I barely managed to stumble out. He pat my shoulder firmly and shot me a reassuring smile. Dawn left as soon as Dustin caught up with me. The two of us then left the precinct without saying much about the encounter. I could see he wanted to pry but left it alone instead. I appreciated that.

When we interviewed Mr. Rutledge, he said the same thing as before.

Paulie was on his evening stroll on a local trail when he heard a woman’s hums and intense splashing coming from the pond. Concerned, he went off-trail to see if he could help. That’s when he spotted the siren and she attacked him.

The good news is he was able to give us a better description other than the one on the news. Right before she jumped out of the water and revealed her true terrifying siren features, Paulie said the woman had pale skin, long curly black hair, hypnotic blue eyes, and a tattoo of an anchor right above her right collarbone.

Armed with that new description, Dustin and I got ready to leave. But before we could, Paulie asked if we believed him since we were there following up on his account. He looked at us with a glimmer in his eye, happy that somebody was finally listening to him.

Dustin straight up told him no. Said we were doing a mandatory routine follow up, and if he was being honest with himself, the visit had been a complete waste of everyone’s time. All the while, I stood behind Dustin with my lips pressed shut. Our parting words with the man were to stay off the drugs or the next time we came back it wouldn’t be pretty. The last thing I saw as the front door closed were Paulie’s soul crushed eyes on the brink of tears.

Needed to take a breather after that. I had almost bitten my tongue off back there.

“It’s all part of the job,” Dustin reminded me, gripping the steering wheel of his brown ‘78 Corolla liftback, staring blankly into the distance. “It sucks, but it’s a necessary evil.” Clearly it had affected him too, judging by how white his knuckles were.

Pulling out into the street, he turned the dial on his radio and an old rock song came on. Dustin happily hummed along as we drove, energetically tapping on the steering wheel along to the beat.

It was almost uncanny the way he could switch from his usual happy-go-lucky self to bitterly ice cold in an instant. It freaked me out, but being dually personable and serious are good qualities to have in a detective.

Back at the precinct, we started putting a case file together. Here’s what we knew about our siren: she was young and beautiful looking (all siren’s are), she had long curly black hair, and a distinctive tattoo of an anchor on her collarbone. And, for some reason this one really liked snacking on unfaithful men. That’s what our profiler, Jane, said anyway. She gathered all that after sifting through the files we pulled on the missing men.

Friend and loved one testimonies weren’t worth shit, unfortunately. Jane only figured out the siren’s type after hacking into one of our bachelor’s phone records. And before anyone says anything, since we’re an unknown legal entity, the supernatural’s division is like the Wild West out here. Pretty much anything goes. Including magically aided hacking....

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CQ-Erickson on 2024-10-30 13:00:00+00:00.

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Nobody writes about the Grinning Prince.

The thing about urban legends is that while they are supposedly an oral tradition, people love writing about them online. You can pretty much trace the whole Polybius myth from one message board post to dozens of podcasts over the course of 25 years.

Not the Grinning Prince.

And not even the show. Not really.

Everyone who was a kid in the New York area in the 70s and 80s remembers this tv show. It was the most popular kids program on a local channel (the one that showed baseball). But somehow it never went to other markets, and even weirder, nobody in the area recorded it. By the time it went off the air in 84 plenty of people had VCRs, but no matter how much you search YouTube, you only find short clips of the garden full of psychedelic puppets being herded by singing hippies. You never see a full episode, so you never hear The Roster. You also never hear the puppets say the one thing they absolutely said at least once in every episode:

“ALL THINGS SERVE THE GRINNING PRINCE”

The Roster was the end of the show, when the hippies would put down their guitars, and sing (a cappella and off key) four names. For example “We see Jordan and Kyle and Kerry and Julie and… YOU!”

Everyone remembers the roster, and everyone remembers the rules. At some point, an older sibling or a friend would warn you: when they said your name in the roster, you had to place the thing you loved the most on the the ground in your yard, with a letter asking The Prince for a gift. If you did, you would get your gift. If you didn’t, first the Grinning Prince would warn you in your dreams that night. If you still disobeyed, the Prince would visit your bed the next night. If you disobeyed again… nobody knew. Something bad.

My name, the real one on my birth certificate, is uncommon. My nickname was (and is) marginally less weird, but still unpopular. So I never got called on The Roster.

My cousin Davey wasn’t that lucky. He tried not to cry when I asked him where his Wayne Foundation playset was. He had just gotten it for Christmas and I was incredibly jealous. If any of you collected Mego superheroes you would understand. He solemnly explained that he ignored The Prince when he dreamt of him.

The next night, Davey woke up to a withered, six fingered hand rising up from the side of his bed, reaching for him. He spent the rest of the night in his parents’ bedroom, screaming. In the morning, while his mom was doing laundry, he went in the yard and dug into the frozen ground. I was four. He was six. That conversation is my earliest, clearest memory.

There is no reason why I should have cared so much about finding this show as an adult. But I am stubborn and nosy. Being stubborn and nosy aren’t the worst flaws you can have, but they have cost me most of my relationships over the years. This gives me a lot of free time.

I have been selling stuff - mostly original comic art- at horror and sci-fi conventions for twenty years. Twenty years of pestering the other vendors for a copy of an episode of this show. Usually conventions are amazing for “lost” media like this. I have a 4k print of the unaltered versions of the Original Trilogy, and a VHS with what appears to be an authentic 20 minutes of London After Midnight. But I could never find a copy of this show.

Three months ago, at the big con in San Diego, a pink haired girl in her mid 20s came to my booth. She was holding a disc with the show’s name on it. I didn’t have a DVD player with me(or at home, not for ten years), but she only wanted twenty dollars for it. I don’t know how she knew who I was or that I was looking for the show, but she looked incredibly familiar. Which made no sense. I didn’t know any women her age, pink haired or otherwise.

When I got the disk home and finally found a laptop to play it, I understood where I knew her from. She was the girl without the guitar. Her clothes and hair were obviously different, but she hadn’t changed in 40 years. When the Roster came around I was sort of expecting it, but it still felt like there was ice going down my spine when they said both of my names.

Obviously at this point the logical thing to do was just put my guitar in the yard.

But I’m stubborn. And nosy.

I woke up screaming on my bathroom floor. I don’t know how I got there. Even immediately after I woke up I couldn’t remember The Prince’s face. Only his hand. The six fingers ending in long nails that burned like candles.

So the next night I put a 1974 black Fender Telecaster Custom(same model that Keith hit a fan with on The Stones 81 tour) outside in the yard with my letter. I live alone, and was more freaked out than curious. I left the television on for company.

Around 3AM I woke up with the sense that I was being watched. The TV was an old school snowy screen, like we would get when the cable went out.

Then the hand rose up from the side of my bed. I don’t know if I screamed. I only know that I froze. It came up slowly, no particular hurry, the fingernail candles casting shadows against the wall. It stank of soil and decay.

It didn’t move like a person. It didn’t move like anything in this world.

Even in my terrified state I was able to recognize it.

It was claymation.

I didn’t bother getting dressed before running for my keys and wallet and bolting out of the house. I ended up at White Castle(the only place open), frantically doing an image search. I was filled with cosmic dread. But I was still stubborn. And nosy. I found it right away. I was right.

The thing that was in my bedroom was the old intro animation from the Saturday night horror movie on the same channel that aired the show. A six fingered hand rising from a creepy swamp.

When the sun came up, I went home to find my guitar exactly where I left it. My offering had been rejected.

Of course it was. I had tried to cheat.

Later, I would go into the yard dragging the thing I really loved the most. The only painting my dad ever finished: a lighthouse at the cusp of a storm, guiding the ships in. I have had it on my wall my entire life.

The following morning it was gone, along with my note. That night there was a package at my door. I opened it and found three photo albums.

Once I knew that the whole thing was real, I could have asked for anything in the note I left. If The Grinning Prince could appear in my dreams, and the host of the show could appear ageless, then I could ask to be rich, or young, or immortal or whatever. That’s not how I’m wired though. For my gift I wanted three answers:

• what was the point of the show?

-why did it stop?

-what happened to the kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t

leave the offering?

I sat on my couch and opened the first album. 1970s pale gold and olive tones shine in the pictures. I saw the hosts, their names, their real names, not the ones from the show, were handwritten above them: Carmen and Patricia. I touch the picture and suddenly I’m not me. I’m Carmen.

We are puppeteers. It is 1971, and we are in NYC trying to get a job with the public television kids show that has somehow become a huge hit. Our manager gets us an interview with a local channel. Station management pitches us on our own show. But there are rules. Very specific rules. We have to prove our loyalty to station management. We have to pledge ourselves to the smiling presence lurking behind everything. It seems like a game. Patricia and I sacrifice the puppets we made ourselves in sixth grade. We promise each other that we will ask for the same gift, for our show to go on forever. I don’t know what Patricia really asked for. It wasn’t to stay young: at her wake she was an old lady, and I was the same, like always. My mind is as fresh as my body. I can’t forget anything we did, I hear every kids name that I called. I see the ones that didn’t listen…

I snap the book shut, and open the second one. This one isn’t just pictures, it is a collage of 80s and 90s photos, newspaper clippings, magazine articles. They swirl into a vivid montage of what happened after the show stopped. It wasn’t needed any more. One generation of kids in one city was enough. Four names called a day. Five days a week. For ten years. Every kid grew up to serve the Prince in their own way. They gave him other names and made up party games to summon him. They put him in 80s album covers and 90s comic books and 2000s creepypasta. They even backwards masked a worship service into a Philadelphia based teen dance show(also not on YouTube). Every bit helped. All things serve the Grinning Prince.

I haven’t opened the last album. Not yet. I can just leave it. I don’t have to know what happened to the other kids. The ones who wouldn’t listen. Nothing good can come from seeing this.

But I’m stubborn. And nosy.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/LanesGrandma on 2024-10-20 21:18:42+00:00.

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The theme for r/nosleep's 3-Day Halloween event is TRAPPEDOWEEN.

Each story must feature your Main Character trapped in one (1) location and unable to get out of that location, no matter what or how many times they try. Maybe your main character went to a Halloween party at a friend’s place and is trapped in their basement; maybe they went to an office Halloween party and can't seem to leave the parking lot. Maybe they're trapped in a ski lodge or a cottage or their own apartment or an elevator or a bathroom stall at the Halloween costume store. The choice is up to you!

Here's a 15 second Youtube clip from Matrix Revolutions as an example of the looping location.

• Stories must be written in first person and must be scary personal experiences — no found media stories OR time loops.
• The location must be on our present-day Earth, in our present-day reality and posts are made to r/nosleep in real-time: if you post your story on October 29, 2024, your character is posting on October 29, 2024. They're not posting in July 1973 or in the year 2356, etc.
• For this event ONLY, we're suspending the Main Characters: Incapacitated, Incarcerated rule which means your Main Character doesn't have to have an internet-capable device with an internet connection to post; they can also be in jail/prison, a hospital, locked in a cage, at the bottom of the ocean, etc. This rule will be back in effect for every post after the Trappedoween event.
• Mods won’t review removed event posts so if your event post is removed, it stays removed. r/nosleep repost guidelines are still in effect for Trappedoween, which means no unauthorized reposts.

 

Trappedoween runs from 12:01 A.M. EST Tuesday, October 29th through to 11:59 P.M. EST on Thursday, October 31st.

 

If you're not sure about timezones, try Dateful.Com's Time Zone Converter.

 

EVENT DETAILS.

• You don't have to participate in the event but any non-Trappedoween stories must follow all of r/nosleep's guidelines, including Incapacitated/Incarcerated.
• To participate, you MUST flair each of your r/nosleep entries with the appropriate flair (announced closer to the 29th) AND comment with the link to your entry/ies on the official event post which will be made in r/nosleepooc on the 29th.
• REMINDER: This is not a time loop; your main character is trapped in one (1) location and always ends up in that same location no matter how many times they try to leave but time can move on as usual. The character can escape at the end so long as the majority of the story has the character trapped.
• The location is up to you but it must be primarily one (1) place, fully- or semi-enclosed. It also shouldn't literally be "Hotel California" or based on the song’s lyrics.
• What happens to your character, aside from being trapped, is up to you — maybe they're more concerned about whomever they're trapped with than the fact they are trapped — but there still must be an Event and a Consequence to your Main Character.
• All properly-flaired submissions will be collected in a post after the event.

 

Remember to modmail any questions to the r/nosleep mods!

 

Good luck, have fun and happy Hallowe'en!

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/11velociraptors on 2024-10-30 05:36:35+00:00.

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I live in Middle-of-Nowhere, Great Plains—aka, northwestern South Dakota. It's not the worst place to live I guess, if you like corn, but as you can imagine, not a lot goes on up here. Not much changes in my static little world, but when something new emerges from the monotony, I take notice, as in the case of the sign I saw about three years ago.

It was a Friday night in late October, and I was driving home from a party at around 10 P.M. I had just reached the most isolated portion of my drive, a winding forest road that has more deer than cars using it on any given day, when my headlights illuminated a flier posted to the trunk of an elm tree. As I passed by, I saw the words "LOST DOG", along with a photo, presumably of the animal in question.

Now, the location of the flier was already strange enough to give me pause, but from my brief glimpse, the photo was even stranger. Maybe I was tired from a long day or maybe the printer had messed up that particular flier, but the picture hadn't looked like a dog at all, moreso like a random assortment of shapes. 

Like I said, not much happens in my town, and the flier was probably the most interesting thing that I'd seen all month. There was a turnout just after the elm, so I slowed down, pulled over, and stopped my car. I grabbed the flashlight I always keep in my console and got out to take a look. 

The flier was even stranger up close. For one thing, there was no contact information, and the reward seemed exorbitant for another. The photo itself was also bizarre. Do you remember that AI-generated image shared on Twitter a couple years back with the caption "name one thing in this photo"? That's what the so-called "dog" reminded me of—a bunch of colors and shapes that looked like they should've been recognizable, but weren't. It had a short description of the dog beneath the photo: 

JOHN

SHEPHERD MIX

WHITE COAT BROWN HOOD, BLUE EYES

$10,000

Weird name for a dog. I chalked it up to an art piece, which helped dispel some of the unease that'd begun to build in me upon staring at the photo. A part of me wanted to take the flier, but I didn't want to be selfish with the artist's work, so I contented myself with a photo. Just as I slipped my phone back into my pocket, the sound of snapping twigs made me start. Maybe the deer want a look at the art too, I thought, shining my flashlight into the trees. I waited for a moment, scanning the forest with bated breath, but even though it had sounded like there was an animal right behind me, I saw nothing. I returned to my car after that and continued home. 

The next day, I gave my buddy Eric a call, hoping to catch him for drinks at our favorite brewery. Halfway through the call, I remembered the photo I'd taken of the "LOST DOG" flier, and opened my photo gallery so I could send it to him. To my disappointment, the photograph I'd taken was completely black. Either I'd had my thumb over the lens or the photo had somehow gotten corrupted. It was a little strange, but I've never been very tech savvy, so I dismissed it as a glitch and told Eric where to look if he was ever returning to town from that direction. 

As it turned out, I didn't have to wait until my next out-of-town drive to see the flier again. The following evening, Eric and I were walking back to our cars from the brewery. Across the street, stapled to a telephone pole, I noticed a familiar flier, and quickly pulled him over to point out the artwork. I was all smiles as I showed him, excited that someone was using our town as a canvas for their project, and even more excited that I'd been one of the first to notice it. This flier was just as devoid of information as the first and featured the same abstract mess of shapes for its "dog." Eric's always been more cultured than myself—more inclined to be interested in art history and that sort of thing—so I was interested to hear his take on the piece. When I turned to get his reaction though, he looked more unsettled than amused. 

"What up?" I asked him. Instead of answering, he just shook his head. 

"Nah, man; you'll think I'm crazy." 

I tried pressing him a bit more, but when it became clear that he wasn't going to divulge the source of his apprehension, I let it go. Before I continued towards my car, I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo of my shoes, which showed up in my photo gallery without issue. Then, I pointed my phone at the flier, aimed, pressed the capture button, and … 

Nothing. Again, the photograph was completely black. When I got home that night, I went down a rabbit hole of anti-surveillance patterns, a.k.a. designs created for the express purpose of confusing cameras and facial recognition technology. Apparently, "anti-surveillance fashion" is already a big thing in some parts of the world, so it's likely that the "LOST DOG" artist used one of those patterns in their piece, explaining why I can't get a good photo of the flier. It didn't explain Eric's reaction though. I fell asleep wondering if my friend was seeing something that I wasn't. 

For the next few days, more "LOST DOG" signs continued to appear around town, never in high-traffic areas or obvious places. I found one behind the bleachers at the community soccer field and another tucked behind a different flier on a public bulletin board. Whoever this artist was, they were no Banksy—they seemed more keen to set up an Easter egg hunt than to make a bold public statement. 

On the following Saturday, while on a hike, I was surprised to find a "FOUND DOG" sign taped to a picnic table in a quiet clearing off of the main path. I was pleased at the sight; I was starting to think that the art project was meant to encourage the residents of our town to better appreciate their surroundings, and that my attention to detail was paying off as a result. Even more pleasing was the fact that this sign had a phone number to call on it. The sign had no picture, just the words: "FOUND DOG: JOHN" along with the number. Out of curiosity, I gave it a call. 

After three rings, someone picked up. I said nothing at first, wondering if I was about to speak to the artist themself, or simply hear some kind of pre-recorded message. After a moment, I heard a very strange voice. 

"Looking for a dog?" It said. There was some kind of heavy filter on the voice. It was staticky and guttural, and seemed like it had been pitched down considerably. In a strange way, it reminded me of a large dog growling. 

"Yeah, I'm looking for John."

"What's the word?" Asked the voice. 

The word? I thought, looking over paper in front of me and trying to remember the exact phrasing of the "LOST DOG" flier. Presumably there was some kind of keyphrase I had missed. 

"Shepherd?" I guessed, and the person on the other end of the phone hung up. I tried calling back, but they didn't answer again. 

I put my phone away, disappointed, and took a seat atop the picnic bench. The sun was beginning to set and a cool breeze had begun to sweep in from the north, whistling as it wound its way through the trees. I lowered my eyes from the pink and orange sky, staring into the treeline at the far end of the clearing. There was an animal peeking out through the brush. It was difficult to tell what exactly it was at such a distance, but it looked like a coyote (which my state has no shortage of.) It was standing eerily still. I raised my hand slightly and waved at the creature as a joke to myself. 

And then, the thing stood up on two legs. 

It wasn't an animal at all, I realized, but a person, clad head to toe in black and wearing a dog mask over their face. The person turned their back to me and walked deeper into the trees. 

Needless to say, that was not a comforting thing to witness. I left quickly after that, half-jogging back to my car and glancing over my shoulder every few minutes. If I'd seen a person in a dog mask traipsing through the forest a week ago, I would've laughed. I would've assumed they were some kind of LARPer, rare as those might be in rural South Dakota. After my strange phone call though, the sighting felt more sinister than funny. Was that the person I'd just been on call with? If so, had they seriously just been standing there waiting for someone to see their "FOUND DOG" flier? 

The next day, as I visited my usual weekend haunts, I realized that the "LOST DOG" signs had been torn down. I guessed that the art project had reached its end, even though it seemed like a remarkably short run. I was disappointed that nothing more had come of it, and that I would never get answers regarding who was behind the fliers, but I probably would've moved on with my life and forgotten all about it if it weren't for the visitor I received that night. 

It was around midnight. I was at my computer, playing video games and trying not to think about work in the morning when I got a text from Eric. Oddly enough, he asked if he could come over, and it was such an uncharacteristic request that I figured there was something wrong. I said yes and he showed up at my door twenty minutes later. He looked a wreck—his hair was disheveled, his eyes were red, and his whole demeanor was nervous and fidgety. When he walked into my house, he held his phone in one hand and a rolled up piece of paper in the other. 

"You're not gonna believe me man, you're gonna think I'm going crazy." He said after declining both my offers for a glass of water and ...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/bloodoftheforest on 2024-10-29 02:28:49+00:00.

---

"What do we do?" Mark asked.

Assuming that Karen had left the new dead person with the doctor straight away this time and had managed to get to the intercom under a minute after they'd died, we still only had seven minutes to change course or another person gets killed. I hadn't meant to waste any time and in fact as soon as we'd been told that there'd been a second death I had leapt to set up a ten minute timer. Unfortunately that was the only useful thing I'd managed to do before the full impact of what was going on had hit me and my brain had spiralled into panic.

"Are we changing course?" Mark asked, shaking me slightly.

I thought about it.

"I don't think we can. Anyone who's willing to do this, whatever they want us to do has to be bad, right?"

Mark nodded but his eyes flicked towards the timer.

"But if we don't then we might all die."

I tried to work it out in my head.

"If we change course to the closest airport and he kills someone every ten minutes then that'll be ten maybe? If he sticks to his own rules."

"No." Mark said quietly.

"You think he can kill us faster?" I asked.

"I don't know. But the letter said it's random. If both of us are randomly selected to die then do you think the plane's gonna land safely?"

Somehow I hadn't even considered that. The numbers on the timer were only getting smaller and no matter how terrible I beleived the intentions of the man in the suit were, trading the lives of everyone on the plane to oppose him didn't feel much better. Even if I stood firm, would Mark do the same if I died next? And then if he was fourth...

"He needs us." I said suddenly.

The man in the suit wanted the plane diverted and so he needed somebody to be able to fly it. As my thoughts raced, the timer was getting closer and closer to zero and I wished I'd never set the damned thing.

"He needs us to fly the plane," I said to Mark, "so it can't be random, not really. So he's choosing people?"

Mark disagreed.

"The letter said that people will still die if he's been knocked out. He could be lying but..."

"Then what makes us safe?"

Mark reached the conclusion a split second before I did and made an announcement to the plane.

"Nobody read the yellow books! Nobody read them!"

A wave of relief crashed over me only to turn to cold sweat a second later.

The timer had hit zero. One more person down.

_____

We didn't need Karen to come and tell us that another passenger had died this time but she did anyway. I asked her how many people had read the yellow books. She didn't know. Neither her nor Ava had been offered one so they were safe but it was impossible to guess beyond that. Some people had flicked through them and so it would depend whether that counted as reading or if the whole thing needed to be read cover to cover. Hopefully some people hadn't even looked at them.

I almost expected retaliation from the man in the suit for warning the passengers about the yellow books but as far as I could tell, the rules hadn't changed. I wasn't too sure that was something to be happy about. It could be that actually couldn't kill people faster than he had been doing but it could just as easily be that our guess as to what made us different was completely wrong or that enough people had read the yellow books already that the warning was pointless.

"Will he really know if we contact someone?" Mark asked.

"Yes." I said, though I didn't know any more about it than he did.

"What about the passengers?"

Shit. Three people had died on the flight and we'd just made an incredibly weird announcement -- it would be foolish to assume that of all the passengers on the flight absolutely all of them had kept their phones on airplane mode and told nobody what was happening.

"I don't know."

I'd reset the timer as soon as it had run out, though the constant pressure to make a choice was crushing me.

"So we have three options." Mark said, "We do what they say, we continue on our normal route or we divert to the nearest airport."

Mark looked physically ill and I knew that he didn't like the list of options any more than I did.

"The way the note was written... will people die faster if we divert to another airport?" I asked.

"I don't remember."

I could have asked Karen to come back with the note but I was willing to guess that both her and Ava were having to calm an increasing number of panicked passengers behind us. It didn't seem worth it for a note that could be unclear or even outright lies.

"Do we think he'll let us go if we do as he says?" Mark asked.

My heart sank.

"I don't know. So I guess we can assume the worst and that we're doomed that way too."

Diverting to another airport seemed like it might be the smartest move but we weren't near another airport. As far as I knew there was nothing but grassland below us and we'd have to travel a decent way before we even got close to a decent population centre, nevermind one that had an airport. The timer ticked to zero and Karen's voice came onto the intercom shortly after.

"Tyler died." she said simply.

It took me a moment to remember the name, even though we'd discussed him earlier. Ava's boyfriend.

"Oh, fuck this!" I yelled and for the first time my brain wasn't searching for a solution but simply a way to make the man in the suit pay.

He'd said this would continue if he died and the fact his companion had sacrificed himself suggested that death was more acceptable for him than it is for most people anyway. I'd thought that the only thing I could do to oppose him was to not refuse to go in the direction he'd asked me to but my sudden anger at this whole situation made me realise something. I could refuse faster.

"Where are we going?" Mark asked, still trying to get me to decide from our three earlier options.

"Nowhere. We're going to land."

"You've got to be joking," he said, as if he couldn't see me already making moves to adjust our altitude, "do you even know what's below us?"

"I think fields." I replied unnconvincingly, "Nice, soft fields."

"We're not going to land in one piece."

I shrugged.

"People have died, we're already not in one piece."

It hadn't escaped my attention that the timer was still running. Even if the ground below us was suitable to land on and everything went on without a hitch, avoiding one more death was impossible and even avoiding two was extremely unlikely.

"Are you annoucing this or am I?" Mark asked.

"Nope. Any annoucement gives that bastard a chance to react. We're just going to have to go for it and hope for the best."

"You're mad."

"You aren't stopping me."

The ground came into view and for the first time in our flight the gods had smiled upon us and the ground was as flat as we could have hoped for.

"I'm glad I got to fly with you." Mark said.

We aren't that close and I can see now, looking back on the whole thing, that he said this because he thought we might die. At the time I was too focussed to read a single thing into it though.

"You too."

_____

There's a reason that crash landings aren't called 'nice and pleasant landings.' I remember how shaken everyone looked once we were all outside of the plane and just staring at them, dazed by what had happened. I remember watching Karen lead Ava out of the plane and how fucking empty her face looked. But most of all, I remember how little the man in the suit seemed to care.

"You need to stop this now." I screamed at him and pointed at the broken plane, "Look at this. We can't fly you anywhere anymore so there's no point killing any of us! There was no point to any of this."

I heard a scream and expected the worst but it was Ava, launching herself at the man in blind fury. It was my last statement that had set her off, I think, the idea that her boyfriend had died for no reason. She hit him over and over before Mark and Karen could tear her away. She hadn't knocked him out but his face wasn't the same shape anymore.

I still had my timer, I realised. The last ten minute turnover had been only seconds ago but everyone who had made it out of the plane was still alive. Whatever the suited man had set in motion he had finally stopped.

"I want to know what he fucking brought." Mark said and headed to the cargo hold.

I watched the man in the suit, Karen stayed with Ava and Mark pulled the suitcases out for all of us to see. Even though nothing else about the flight had been normal, I think I'd still expected to see drugs as the precious cargo of the suited men. Guns, maybe, perhaps something explosive? Something that made some sort of sense to be smuggling.

"It's just books." Mark said as he opened them both.

He opened the first page of one and I yelled for him to stop. He had a strange look on his face but he stopped. Nothing else happened. These books weren't the same as the ones on the plane but I didn't trust them.

"Let's burn them." I said.

Mark nodded and began to pour them onto the ground.

"No..." the man protested.

"We collected the yellow ones. I can go and get those." Karen added.

Watching Ava was no longer a concern, she'd slumped to the ground in the same absent manner that she'd been in when she'd left the plane.

"Don't burn them." the suited man said, "They're important. I'll make it worth your while. I can give you anything....

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Voodoo_Clerk on 2024-10-30 04:05:29+00:00.

---

For the past few months, my department has been gathering evidence and witnesses for the creator of a new drug that has appeared on the streets. It’s small in scale, and we had hoped to nip it in the bud before it spiraled out of control. Ruby Milk comes in syringe needles and is bright red, as the name suggests. The main problem with this narcotic is the side effects. 

The few addicts that have spoken to us and are coherent describe a high the likes of which you’ve never experienced in your life. A rush of euphoria and complete tranquility washes over you. It makes you want to have more, but therein lies the problem. If you are exposed to doses higher than 1 mL, your body begins to decay around the injection sight rapidly. I’m sure most have heard of the Russian street drug Krokodil, imagine that but amplified a hundred times. 

We’ve come across decayed bodies in alleyways and under bridges, and all of them have a needle full of Ruby Milk not far away from their dead bodies. The worst ones are the ones we find that are still alive. I remember the first time I encountered an addict and an entire chunk of her neck was just gone. Puss was leaking out from her neck and she didn’t seem to care at all. It only got worse from there, and soon this task force was formed to search for and find the source of Ruby Milk. 

My partner Susan and I were assigned to the task force as detectives. We knew the streets well, I grew up on them and Susan’s sister was unfortunately an addict who lived on them. Her sister, Marie was one of our informants. Being a methhead she was lucky to have the scoop on plenty of her fellow addicts.

“Marie thinks she has something,” Susan told me as she looked over at me as I had just sat down to drink my six day old coffee. I looked over at her and winced at the bitter and crappy taste. She hung up her desk phone and stood up to get her jacket. “She wants to meet her at that abandoned house on 9th Avenue.” 

“You couldn’t have told me before I sat down?” I groaned as I placed down my coffee and stood to grab my jacket. “You’re driving.” I pointed at her and tossed the keys to our car at her. She caught them and flipped me off as I followed after her. Our city isn’t the worst in the country but it has its seedy parts. Pulling the car up to 9th Avenue I scanned around at the row of abandoned houses that lined the neighborhood. 

“So, which exactly is she in?” I looked over at Susan as she parked the car in front of one of the houses. She flicked her head over toward the house we were parked in front of. Unbuckling her seatbelt and leaving the car I could tell that she was apprehensive about seeing her sister. I would too if my sister was in the state that Marie was in. 

“She better be here,” Susan sighed as she waited for me to exit the car. I closed the door and stared at Susan. She was a bitch most of the time, but it's what I enjoyed about her. She was confident in herself and I admired that about her. But now here she was, nervous and just a little bit afraid. 

“Chin up, Suzie,” I smirked as she turned and punched me in the arm as hard as she could. If there’s one thing in the world she hates, it’s being called Suzie. As I nursed my possibly broken arm I followed after Susan as she walked up to the decrepit house. She knocked on the door and quickly backed up. As I rubbed my arm I looked at her a little confused as to why she backed up so quickly. My confusion was quickly vanquished when the door flew open and a baseball bat was swung in the direction of where Susan had been. 

“Get the fuck away from…oh hi Suzie!” Marie went from wanting to kill someone who had dared to trespass on her ‘property’ to excited to see her sister. I could tell that they were related by the simple fact of how similar they looked. They weren’t twins but they’d been confused for twins in the past. Even being a meth addict, Marie was almost the spitting image of Susan.

“Do you wanna get punched too?” Susan asked as she raised her fist toward Marie and then gestured toward me. I walked over to her and pulled out my notepad. “Alright, what did you call me over here for, Marie? Do you have the info I asked for?” Marie quickly nodded and placed her bat against the doorframe. 

“Yea! One of my dealers tried selling me that red milk shit. I said I wasn’t interested and he said that if I was, I should go to this address.” She quickly started patting her pockets to see where she had left the note she’d been given. “Shit, where is it? One sec.” She quickly walked back into the house and left us standing in the autumn wind. 

“Can we trust her? I know she’s your sister, but she isn’t exactly the most reliable witness.” I turned to look at Susan. She was standing and tapping her foot against the pavement and tapping her finger against her arm. Seeing her sister in this state was bothering her. 

“I think we can. She’s been doing better lately. And at the very least she isn’t using Ruby Milk.” Susan sighed, perking up when her sister came running out of her abandoned house with a sticky note. 

“Found it!” she said happily, handing the note to her sister and smiling. Susan took the note and read it, her eyes went wide and she looked back up at her sister. She handed me the note, I took it and looked down at it, and my own eyes went wide. 

“Are you sure, Marie? This place is…in a nice neighborhood. Are you sure your dealer told you the correct place?” I wrote down the address on my notepad while I let Susan question her sister. Marie nodded quickly and stuck her hands in her pockets. 

“That’s the place. I trust Freddy, he’s never given me shit product before.” High praise coming from a meth addict. Susan looked over at me and sighed. It was going to be a risk, but it was one we were going to have to take since it was our only lead to the source of where Ruby Milk was coming from. Susan reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, walking over and placing the cash in her sister’s hand. 

“This is for groceries only, you understand me? I find out you bought more meth, and I’m cutting you off. Understand?” Marie looked down at the money in her hand and quickly wrapped her arms around her sister and gave her a tight hug. One which Susan gave back to her. It was a touching moment between sisters, while I just stood there kicking rocks. 

Once we were back at the office we quickly ordered a steakout of the house in question. It was in a gated community and we had to jump through plenty of hoops just to even be allowed inside the community. We set up a plumber van on the street that the house was on and several days went by where not a living soul left the house. 

We were beginning to think that maybe Marie had indeed fed us fake information. Or that Freddy had just been fucking with her. Susan and I were in the van on the last day of the steakout. Our permit from the community was set to expire at the end of the day and we were hoping and praying that something would happen on this day. 

“Susan! We got something.” I nudged her awake. She snorted and nearly punched me in the face before I quickly pointed at the house. She turned her gaze toward the house and quickly pulled her binoculars out. A few poorly dressed people suddenly exited from the house. They were quickly dragged back inside by someone unseen by the door. 

“What the hell? We’ve been here for six hours, how did we not see anybody go in there?” Susan asked as she lowered her binos. I wondered how we might have missed someone entering the house. When I suddenly remembered something about this gated community. 

“Isn’t this backyard connected to the forest preserve?” I asked, quickly pulling out my phone to check. I pulled up Maps and was quickly confirmed in my suspicion. This house’s backyard was connected to the forest preserve, and not far away from this house was the parking lot for the forest preserve. 

We sent a squad car to examine the forest preserve’s parking lot, and my hunch was proven correct. Several Ruby Milk addicts were found milling around the parking lot. It was flimsy evidence at best, but it was just enough to get a judge to sign a search warrant. Soon our task force was granted a SWAT team and were we given the green light to raid the house. 

The name of the operation was called Operation Milkman which I came up with, and which Susan hated. We made our way back to the gated community and Susan took great pleasure in showing our warrant to the security guard who had made us jump through so many hoops to be able to set up surveillance here in the first place. We surrounded the house, and we made our way towards the front door. 

I knocked on the door and took a step back. Both me and Susan were wearing bulletproof vests and had our pistols drawn. We waited a few more seconds before banging on the door again. “Police department! Open the door or we’re breaking it down!” I ordered. And when still no one answered I motioned for the SWAT team to take the lead. The officer with the battering ram reduced the door to splinters in mere moments and soon we had gained access to the house. 

I immediately wish that we hadn’t. The moment we set foot in the house, the smell of death and decay hit our noses like an out-of-control semi-truck. Susan and I have pretty strong stomachs, but even we were almost brought down to our knees by the stench. A couple of the SWAT guys spit out vomit from their mouths but kept moving through the house. It ...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/wakingup_withwolves on 2024-10-29 21:31:52+00:00.

---

I’m from the American Southwest, in what was once the Navajo Nation, and that’s where this story takes place. 

I was dating this girl, Gigi, at the time. We’d been dating for a little over a year at this point, and had both just graduated high school. One weekend, Gigi’s grandparents asked her to house-sit while they were out of town. You see, they had a cat named Jake that her grandma absolutely adored, and they lived out in a secluded area 30 minutes from town, so it would be hard for someone to drive out there to check on him every day. It was an extremely rich neighborhood called Kayenta. Every home was a multi-million dollar estate built on several acres of private property. So when Gigi asked if I wanted to stay over the weekend with her, I excitedly said yes.

The first night her grandparents were gone, Gigi and I drove to the house, out in a gorgeous, fertile part of the Great Basin Desert. We followed the narrow road, weaving between dunes, until we came to the end of the pavement. From there, we drove another 10 minutes up a winding dirt road, and then, we caught sight of the house. 

I was in awe. 

It was a beautiful adobe home, with Mexican ceramic tile floors, and Navajo tapestries decorating the walls. The first thing I did was wander through all the rooms, of which there were many. The front door opened into the living room; a spacious room with high ceilings, a fireplace, and plenty of seating. Just to the left was the dining room, kitchen, and bar area. Through the living room was her grandma’s library, a couple bathrooms, and the guest bedroom. And finally, across the hallway was the master suite, decked out with a bedroom, a bathroom, a shower room, a sauna, and a den leading to a private porch. The place was built like a maze; every room forked into two more, with multiple ways to get to anywhere. But my favorite thing about the house was how many windows there were. The walls of the kitchen and living room were entirely made of windows so you could always take in the gorgeous desert view.

We found Jake curled up on a couch in the den of the master suite. He was a large black cat with green eyes, and was very friendly. 

“Hi, Mr. Handsome!” Gigi greeted him with a scratch under the chin, just where he liked it. “Did you miss me, Jakey?” He stretched out his neck and purred, enjoying the attention. I chuckled. Pets having human names was always humorous to me. “Oh, who’s a sweet boy?” Gigi said in a cute sing-song voice. We must’ve disturbed him, because as soon as Gigi stopped scratching him, he got up, stretched his legs, and walked out the cat flap in the door.

“They just let him come and go as he pleases?” I asked.

“Yeah, he knows his way back home,” she said. “We just can’t let him out after dark.”

After putting out some food and water for Jake, Gigi and I decided to follow his lead, and we set out adventuring in the sandy red hills that surrounded the house. Being an experienced hiker, Gigi had a path she liked to walk in the early mornings when she stayed out here. She guided me through the washes and ravines, and we talked and admired the beauty. We were about 20 minutes away from the house. I didn’t know whose property we were on, but we had surely crossed out of Gigi’s grandparents’ by now. After a few more minutes of walking, once all the houses were out of sight, Gigi started climbing up a hill. 

“Up here,” she said, “this will be perfect.” The sun was just starting to set over the western mountains. If you’ve never been to the desert, let me tell you, the sunsets are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The sky turns into a painting palette. Red, orange, pink, purple, and blue, fading to black as you look east, with millions of bright stars speckling the void. It was breathtaking.

“You see that valley over there?” Gigi asked, “Right at the slope of the mountain?”

I nodded.

“How many people do you think could fit in that valley? Like, if they stood shoulder-to- shoulder?”

I thought about it for a second. “Probably, like, the whole country.”

“What?!” She exclaimed, “You know that’s like 350 million people, right?”

“Yeah, but people are, what, 2 feet wide on average?” I reasoned, “And probably less than a foot deep. If everyone got crammed in, I think we could do it. Shit, we could maybe do all of North America.”

Gigi wasn’t having any of it. “You had to retake algebra; there’s no way I’m trusting your math.”

“Algebra isn’t real math; it’s a puzzle with numbers, and I suck at puzzles.”

Gigi didn’t respond, just kept staring off into the desert. After a moment, she said, “The whole country, huh? And this valley is only a fraction of the whole planet. There’s so much out there I bet no one’s ever seen.”

“And been forgotten.”

Again, she just stood there, staring at the beams of sunlight behind the mountains. It was starting to get dark. “We should go back to the house,” she stated. “The coyotes are gonna come out soon.”

We were on the way back to the house. The sun had completely set now, and darkness crept in fast. About halfway there, I felt the hairs raise on my arms. I got chills. It was a strange feeling. I hadn’t heard anything unusual, but my brain was screaming at me: ‘You’re being watched.’ Before I could say anything, Gigi turned around and stared behind me.

“I think there’s something following us.” She said softly. She felt it too. “Stay quiet, but act calm.” I wanted to start booking it back to the house. Gigi had to tell me that’s a bad idea. “You don’t run from predators,” she said. “Right now, it’s just curious, but the second you start running, you become prey.” So we walked. The minutes felt longer at night. The feeling of being watched grew stronger with every step. Like it was getting closer. Surrounding me.

A chill wind blew through the air, soft as a whisper. “Gigi…”

Dread opened its eyes.

“Did you hear that?” My voice trembled. Every inch of my body went cold. It was 70 degrees, yet the wind cut to the bone. Strange, for October.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Gigi insisted, but there was fear in her voice. “We’re almost there. Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back.”

Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back. I kept repeating it to myself. It became my mantra.

We were walking up the last hill now. My heart was pounding. I don’t know what was following us, but it wasn’t just a coyote. Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back. The sand was loose beneath my feet. I prayed I wouldn’t slip. If I fell backwards, the night would consume me. I knew it. Keep going. Slowly. Don’t look back.

Finally, we were peaking the last hill. Once at the top, under the light of the porch lamps, I turned around and looked.

But there was nothing there.

I had to laugh at myself. My mind had tricked me, let paranoia run rampant. It was only a coyote, I’m sure, if it was anything at all.

Gigi and I walked into the refuge of the kitchen through the sliding glass door. In an instant, the warmth returned to my body, and a feeling of safety washed over me. We looked at each other, sharing a moment of peace, then we started laughing.

“No more night hikes,” we agreed, happy to shrug the whole thing off. While we stood there, laughing at each other, I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful she was. Her long, curly, black hair, brown almond-shaped eyes, and freckled brown skin. Seeing her laugh and smile made me feel safe. Maybe it was the adrenaline still pumping, but she never looked more beautiful to me.

“Want a drink?” She asked. That was exactly what I needed. Perfect opportunity to check out the in-home bar, I thought, but Gigi declared those bottles off-limits. “That’s the expensive stuff. They’ll notice if it goes missing,” she explained. “My grandma used to keep some in the library, though. I’ll see if it’s still there,” and she walked around the corner. I went to the den to check on Jake, but he wasn’t on the couch. He wasn’t in the living room or kitchen either. Probably not a big deal; cats have places they like to hide, and this was a huge house. Plenty of spots to choose from. Still, it’d been a while since we last saw him; I figured I should let Gigi know.

 But upon entering the grand library, I instantly forgot what I went there for. Enormous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, built into the walls, lining the entire room, filled left to right. No space was left unoccupied. There must’ve been a thousand books in this room. I walked right past Gigi as she searched a cabinet to look at the selection. Many of the books were about the Navajo people, about their traditions and beliefs, and about their superstitions. One in particular caught my eye; a book about ‘Yee Naaldlooshii’, or skinwalkers. Shapeshifters in Navajo folklore. I picked it up and opened it. Half the text was in another language, and what was in English was analyzing the parts I couldn’t read. I kept turning until I came to a picture of a frightening mythical creature, unlike any I’d ever seen, like a feathered wolf with antlers, and human eyes. Quite an unsettling drawing… 

“A-ha!” I heard Gigi exclaim. From deep in the cabinet, she pulled out a perfectly cheap bottle of Bacardi. “This won’t be missed.”

“Probably been forgotten about.”

She walked over and noticed what I was reading, and visibly cringed. “Ugh, put that away. I have nightmares about that book.”

“You’ve read this?” I was surprised. Gigi wasn’t superstitious, or all that into Navajo culture like her grandma. Never mind that ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gf64c9/theres_something_in_the_desert/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Soulless_windows on 2024-10-29 18:44:37+00:00.

---

“Hasn’t this ride gone on for a bit long?” I asked my coworker Eric. He was sitting next to me on scratchy hay bales as we bumped along on this haunted hayride.

We had all shown up to the farm and cider mill a couple of hours earlier on this Tuesday afternoon. It was supposed to be a “team building” outing, but honestly, I was just glad to get away from my computer for an afternoon. After gathering at our meeting spot we went into the building to get some fresh apple cider and donuts. It was a crisp autumn day in Michigan; the leaves had just started to fall to the ground and their bright colors got me into the Halloween spirit. Even more than the sweet taste of the apple cider.

I thought about that cider now, wishing I had thought to bring some for the ride. We’d been on the hayride for quite a while when I brought up the question to Eric. He turned with a confused look and said “aren’t you having fun?” I smiled sheepishly back and agreed that I was, dropping the matter. He had been one of the team members that planned the trip and I didn’t want him to feel bad.

I tried to join in on the boisterous and laughing conversation between coworkers, but my mind kept wandering. I started paying more attention to the props and decorations that we passed as part of the “haunted” experience. They were your run of the mill (no pun intended) plastic skeletons performing various farm tasks: one had a straw hat and was hoeing a field. There was a skeleton couple in flannel shirts picking apples. Another one was in a pumpkin patch holding a lantern. One was peeking out from the corn stalks.

As we passed scene after scene of whimsical skeletons I couldn’t help but sigh internally. I was expecting a haunted hayride more of the jump-scare variety, like a haunted house on wheels. This was frankly underwhelming, and I’m sure that didn’t help with my anxiousness to get off the ride.

We’d gone around the bend where I expected to see the skeleton peeking out from the corn for what felt like the millionth time. A strange sense of dread came over me when I noticed that the skeleton was missing. I shook off the feeling. Maybe we weren’t where I thought we were, or the skeleton had fallen. Not anything to get freaked out about. I probably lost track when Christine made her candy corn joke and we’d already passed it or something.

It’s starting to get dark. We got here mid-afternoon, so I don’t know how this is possible. My phone says it’s 6:30. That can’t be right, or that means we’ve been on this ride for over 4 hours. No one else seems to notice or care, the conversation carrying on like nothing is wrong. Why am I the only one concerned?

All of the skeletons are gone. I don’t know if some worker came around behind us and packed them up for the night. If that was the case though, wouldn’t they stop the ride? I’ve asked the group multiple times if we shouldn’t get off the ride now. They just laugh and ask if I’m having fun. I’m not having fun anymore.

I don’t know why I didn’t consider it sooner, I’ll talk to the driver!

There was no reply, maybe he can’t hear me over the rumble of the tractor.

I’m starting to see the skeletons in the trees. This brought a moment of clarity, and I started laughing. This is all part of the haunted hayride. Of course it is! I wanted a thrill and here I am getting it and all I’m doing is complaining. What artistry, what commitment this farm has put in for us. My coworkers get it, of course they do and that’s why they’re all laughing, laughing because I’m new. They probably do this every year. Our collective laughter picks up volume as I join in, I’m part of the team now after all!

When I come to from my laughing fit, tears streaming down my face, I realize It’s pitch black outside now. Everything is quiet, but I can still see the silhouettes of my coworkers in the moonlight. I tried jumping off once, as the hayride has shown no sign of stopping. But I just end up back in the wagon. In fact, it seems to be speeding up as we go around and around. I can’t see the skeletons anymore. I’m afraid.

As I sit here and think about what this means, an even more intense panic starts rising in the back of my mind - I forgot to send that final draft to my boss.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Kosmic_Scribe on 2024-10-29 18:41:06+00:00.

---

I had been thinking about picking up a part-time job for a while now. The semester was over and I got a bunch of free time on my hands. Might as well make a bit of cash in the meantime. And so my search on Linkedin began. I was looking for something simple and stress-free. Preferably something I could do with minimal effort whilst staring at my phone to pass the time. I spent hours browsing through the sea of options. The majority of what I found were graphic design commissions, tutoring, and waiting tables, which I either lacked the skills for or just found unappealing. Just when I was about to give up, I stumbled onto a post, requesting for a babysitter. The post was vague, only including an address and a phone number. Typically, I would have just scrolled past this post and not given it a second thought. But I immediately noticed that the address was conveniently close to where I live. I decided to at least find out more. The call was answered before the first ring could finish.

“For the last time, I don’t want to answer your stupid surveys!”

I could hear in the background a chaotic symphony of the TV, the sound of a vacuum, and a child crying. 

“Um…I’m calling about the babysitting job?”

I feared for what I might be getting myself into. I had no prior experience taking care of children and it sounded like I was throwing myself into the deep end of the pool with this one.

“Oh? OH! Yes, the babysitting job. Yes, thank god. It’s been a nightmare trying to find one. Look. I’m running late and I’ve got about a hundred errands I need to get to. If you can get here in half an hour and look after my kids for three to four hours, five max, I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

A part of me felt bad for how desperate this man sounded. The other part of me was worried about the shitstorm I might have to weather for the next five hours. The other other part of me kept replaying the words “I’ll pay you whatever you want” in my head. 

“I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later I found myself in front of apartment 4H. The entire complex seemed old. Likely built in the '80s. Yet the red wallpaper, mahogany accents, and soft carpeting gave it the feel of a luxurious hotel. I could hear the same chaotic storm I had previously heard on the phone brewing inside. I felt hesitant but I already came all this way. I raised my hand up to knock, only for the door to fly open as I did.

“Oh. Hello. You're the babysitter, right?”

The man didn’t look like how I pictured him at all. He wore a clean navy-colored suit and had a tall, muscular build. He was mostly well put together besides his deep sunken eye bags, messy curly hair, and unevenly shaved stubble. Despite it all, he was actually quite handsome.

“Yep. That's me,” I confirmed.

“You’re a fast one. Caught me by surprise,” he chuckled. “Please, come in.”

I walked into the small apartment and followed him into the living room. There, I witnessed two small boys, who both looked to be about seven or eight, fighting over a small green figure of a toy soldier. The entire living room was littered with hundreds of these soldiers and tanks scattered haphazardly across the carpeted floor. I almost didn’t notice the little girl in a black dress on the couch. She sat motionless staring at the TV. MasterChef was playing. Junior.

“Hey guys. Settle down please,” the man ordered sternly.

The three children stopped their antics and simultaneously jerked their heads around to stare at me.

“Daddy is gonna be gone for a little while, alright? This nice lady here is…”

“Emily.”

“Emily is gonna look after you guys. While I'm gone she’s in charge. So be on your best behavior. I don’t want a repeat of last time.”

The children collectively gave a silent enthusiastic nod.

“Good.”

The man then turned to me.

“Emily, meet con…” the man caught himself mid-sentence.

“Silly me. I meant to say, meet Zelos, the one in the white shirt, and Martius, the one in red. They’re twins. And Limos, the girl.”

Strange names I thought. The three children waved their little hands at me as their names were called. I awkwardly waved back.

“Perfect. Bathroom is the door on the left,” he said as he gestured towards the connecting hallway with four doors. One on the left, two on the right, and one at the end of the hall. “And you can help yourself to anything in the fridge. Make yourself at home. Just…don’t go into the room at the end of the hall. That’s off limits.”

“Yeah, no problem,” I assured him.

“You might hear something inside and—"

A buzzing noise interrupted him as he frantically fished around his pocket, pulling out a phone.

“Shi-oot. I really need to get going.”

He took his wallet out and without taking his eyes off of his phone, handed me a thick wad of cash.

“Here. Order some takeout with this if they get peckish.”

Before I could think of asking questions the man disappeared out the door. I could respect an exhausted single father trying to make it through the day but he seemed awfully irresponsible leaving me, a stranger, with his kids.

I turned back to see the three children, staring at me with blank expressions.

“Looks like I’m outnumbered, guys,” I joked, trying to break the ice.

They remained silent. The girl, Limos, lost quickly interest and turned her attention back to the TV. The boys craned their necks upwards, studying me. Somehow, I felt as if they were looking down on me.

“So… how’s the battle going fellas?” I asked, attempting again to rid the awkward tension.

“Would you like to play?” Martius asked.

“NO!” Zelos began to protest.

“Father said she was in charge.”

Zelos glared at Martius, furious for even suggesting the idea that someone join their campaign. I thought it best that I remained neutral. After all, I was trying to take the next few hours as easy as possible.

“No it's alright. Thanks though. You guys carry on.”

I stood straight, furrowed my brows, and gave them a salute, doing my best impression of a soldier.

“Very well,” said Martius, as he saluted back.

I joined Limos on the couch, who upon a closer look, appeared thin and skinny. It was to the point where I was genuinely concerned that she had some kind of illness. Perhaps anorexia.

The small girl piped up with a soft quiet voice. “Can we eat? I’m hungry.”

“Of course we can sweetheart,” I told her, trying my best to show how concerned I was for her. Pizza ought to do some good.

We waited for the delivery to arrive. During that time the boys played on their battlefield and Limos lazed on the couch next to me. Her only presence being that of sharp breaths.

I found it rather cute that the boys weren’t smashing the tanks together and throwing toy soldiers at each other like I expected children their age would do. They looked as if they were competent generals of the great apartment war, and had to send their loyal men to die on no-man’s carpet. They paced around the battlefield, stroking their chin, careful not to step on any of the small soldiers.

I looked over at the little girl sitting next to me. She stared wide-eyed at the TV, mesmerized by the food.

Although pizza would be arriving soon, I thought I might as well rummage around in the fridge and cupboard for some snacks. I got up from the couch which alerted Zelos.

“Where do you think you're going?” he questioned.

“Just gonna see if you guys have any snacks.”

“They’re not for you, stranger. You think you can just come here and take what you want?”

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t conduct myself with the maturity of my age. But something about this disrespectful little brat got on my nerves.

“I recall your dad saying I was in charge and to ‘help myself’ to whatever I please,” I mocked, putting on a posh accent, mimicking that of royalty.

“Bitch.”

I was appalled to hear such a young boy be so vulgar and rude. I wanted to discipline him. I wanted to let him know that he was to respect me. That he should listen to what I say and learn to quickly apologize. In hindsight, this didn’t feel like me at all. I came here to make a quick buck. Why did I care so much about enduring insults from children? At that moment, I very much did care.

I straightened my posture to look as imposing as possible and stomped my foot down as hard as I could, just to try and make him flinch. As I did, I felt a sharp sting of pain shoot up my leg. I fell back onto the couch and lifted my foot onto my knees to inspect what had caused the pain. It was a toy soldier’s bayonet. The soldier’s arm was half torn off, only attached to the torso by a thin strip of green plastic. I slowly pulled the sharp plastic piece out of my foot, leaving a small stain of blood on my socks.

“Shit,” I blurted aloud.

I looked up to see Zelos and Martius staring at me. Zelos, as expected, looked livid that I had broken his toy. Martius on the other hand, looked at the broken soldier that now laid on the carpet. The tip of its bayonet now covered in a dark tint of red. He had a mournful look on his face.

“Guys…I’m so sorry,” I apologized, the anger I had felt quickly fading away. “I’ll buy you a new one I promise.”

“THAT WASN’T HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO GO!” Zelos exploded.

“Zelos please. I’ll replace it for you the next time I come over, okay?”

“He can’t be replaced,” said Martius, as he got on his knees and gingerly picked up the soldier.

He brought it to a small jar that rested on the coffee table. The jar was half filled with green plastic soldier part...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gf20n6/i_spent_an_afternoon_babysitting_the_four/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Real_Thalabyss on 2024-10-29 16:34:09+00:00.

---

I don’t know how much time I have left. My phone’s battery is almost dead, and I’m using it for light while I type. If you’re reading this, I either made it out, or… someone else found my phone.

I’m trapped in a meat locker. This isn’t just me freaking out or being dramatic though—something is seriously wrong.

It started as an ordinary maintenance job.

I handle repairs for a bunch of old buildings around town. Yesterday, I got a call about a butcher shop that’s been closed for years. It’s an old relic with worn bricks and peeling paint, like a ghost from another era. A group of investors wants to turn it into something new, keep the old-world charm but make it useful again. My job was to give it a once-over, make sure everything was up to code.

My first stop was the meat locker, lurking at the back of the shop. The steel door looked ancient, practically rusted shut. I figured it would be routine—just check for structural integrity, see if the freezer was still sealed, things like that.

I should’ve taken it as a sign when the temperature gauge on the outside of the locker was busted. The damn thing was supposed to be sealed off, no power running to it, but when I walked in, I could feel that bitter cold slap me right in the face. A chill that felt almost… alive.

It shouldn’t have been on.

As I stepped inside, the size of the room struck me. It was vast, and surprisingly, some of the old carcasses were still hanging there. Old, half-rotted slabs of meat, swinging gently in the shadows, like ghosts of the shop’s past. It was eerie. The butcher shop had shut down so long ago, it was a wonder anything was still intact. But there they were—massive, frozen, half-decayed hunks of meat, swaying in the air.

That’s when the door slammed shut behind me.

I ran back, slamming my fists against the door, but it was as if something had locked it from the outside. There wasn’t supposed to be a lock on the damn thing!

The cold hit me hard. Panic clawed at my chest as the cold seeped deeper into my bones, the air heavy and sharp. My breath hung in clouds, mingling with something else.

The carcasses… moving.

At first, I thought it was just a draft—old places like this are bound to have air currents, right? Considering they’re built to contain them and all. But the chunks of meat were moving. Not just gently shifting, but really swinging, as if someone had given them a good shove.

I told myself it was my imagination. I was cold, freaked out by the door locking, and in a place no one had been in for years. My mind was playing tricks. But as I stood there, trying to figure out what to do next, I noticed something that made my stomach drop.

The carcasses weren’t swaying at random, they were moving towards me.

Slowly, rhythmically, like something was taunting me. I took a step back, and one of the slabs of meat suddenly jerked violently, crashing into another, sending a hollow echo throughout the freezer.

I don’t know how to describe what happened next. The meat—God, the meat—started… twitching. Not like muscle spasms or random jerks. It was deliberate, controlled. Limbs, heads, muscles were shifting inside the meat. It was as if something inside those carcasses was trying to break free.

I felt like I was going to be sick. I backed away until I smacked into the far wall. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do but watch as those hunks of meat began to twist and writhe on their hooks. One of them jerked so hard it broke free and fell to the floor with a sickening thud.

I wish that was the worst part. I wish it had just stayed still after that.

But it didn’t.

The slab of meat started crawling, the flesh spasming as though some unseen force was animating it, pulling it toward me.

More slabs dropped from their hooks, thudding heavily on the floor, and each one started moving, crawling toward me with those horrible, jerking motions.

I fumbled for my phone, its light casting long, jagged shadows over the crawling mass. And then I saw them—the creatures.

They were small, insect-like things, like some kind of hellish fusion of beetles and centipedes, burrowed deep within the rotting meat, wriggling and squirming inside like parasites. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, each adorned with long, spindly legs that pierced the flesh, stabbing and tearing; controlling it like a grotesque marionette. Their bodies twisted and contorted in a sickening dance, all packed tightly under the skin. Their carapaces glistening with viscous fluids that oozed from the decaying flesh.

These things weren’t just living inside the carcasses; they had become one with the meat, animating it as if it had always been their host.

And now, they were coming for me.

I backed up, breath quickening, and spotted a narrow compartment behind a row of dusty shelves. This was it, my only chance.

With my heart racing, I hurriedly squeezed into the confined space. Just as I settled in, a searing pain lanced through my arm. I gasped, pressing my back against the wall as an unsettling chill began to radiate from the spot where something had just made contact with my arm.

No, not just contact.

Bitten.

My vision blurred, and when I blinked, I received an overwhelming sense of vertigo. When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in the compartment anymore. I was standing right back in the centre of the meat locker, facing the steel doors.

Somehow, I had looped back to where I started.

My pulse thundered in my ears as I turned and saw the carcasses, advancing on me again. I ran, frantically darting back to the compartment.

I tried again.

Pushing into the compartment, only to find myself looping right back, that strange cold throbbing where the fresh mark was, only increasing in intensity after each pass through. Each time, the chill grew sharper, pressing deeper into my skin, filling my lungs with a strange, bitter numbness. The hooks creaked above me, more carcasses dropping with heart-wrenching sounds, scraping across the frozen floor, crawling closer.

I don’t know how long I can keep going. The hooks swing ominously, and I can hear more carcasses dropping each loop, their heavy thuds echoing through the meat locker, followed by the sickening sound of those things crawling across the ground.

If anyone finds this—if anyone knows what’s happening—please. Send help.

The cold spreading through my veins… it isn’t just from the air anymore. I feel it surging from the wound on my arm, crawling under my skin. It pulses, as if something is moving inside me, inching through my veins, keeping rhythm with the slow drag of meat along the floor.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/02321 on 2024-10-29 17:13:38+00:00.

---

First

Previous:

When you hunt monsters for a living there are two hard facts. You'll die young, and you’ll ruin all your clothing. My new jacket had been shredded during my last job. I learned how to sew and to mostly remove blood stains. My old jacket was going to be for hunting only. I wanted a new coat. One to wear outside of my contract work. Since I moved around a lot I kept what I owned down to at most two boxes. It was a little sad that a new jacket was a highlight in my life.

A somewhat high-end store was closing and having a big sale. The weather that day was awful. Wet and cold. It hadn’t snowed yet, but it was so unpleasant not too many people were out. When I walked inside the store, I found it to be nearly empty. I had expected it to be busy with others trying to scoop up deals.

A lone cashier stood behind a counter counting down the minutes to the end of her shift. Another woman was browsing the discounted sweaters. Her face was covered by large glasses and a massive red scarf. I passed by a man wearing a long trench coat waiting by the door. He didn’t look to be shopping but rather looking outside as if seeing if the weather might clear up.

There was a bit of everything in the store. Since the sale was just announced the clothing hadn’t been picked over yet. If I played my cards right, I could afford a new jacket and a sweater.

I ended up near the girl with the scarf as she added another sweater to her pile. I felt eyes on my back causing me to turn to look over my shoulder at her. She was squinting behind her glasses as if she recognized me but didn’t know from where. I glanced at her then went back to shopping. She was cute but her half-hidden face didn’t ring any bells. She ended up behind me at the cashier after I picked out my two items. She didn’t try to speak with me so she must have been staring at me for some other reason.

I wish my life was simple. I wanted a day where I went shopping, made dinner, and got to sleep early. I had no such luck. When another person entered the store, we didn’t pay any attention. The newcomer hunched over; his face mostly covered by his collar. When the cashier opened the register to hand over my change, the new man dressed in black startled us all.

“Phones and cash now!” He ordered.

After you’ve faced giant spiders and other nightmares, a gun pointed in your direction is a little less frightening. I let out a sigh disappointed in the day. I just wanted a damn jacket. Still, I was thankful this was just a robbery and not a supernatural threat.

The cashier froze in fear at the sight of the gun. The woman behind me acted in the same way. I didn’t want to put my hands in my pockets for my phone to give this guy any ideas about shooting. If he wanted to go through my now empty pockets, he could come over here and do it. I kept my hands raised more upset over losing the new coat funds than over the possibility of getting shot. A roll of thunder sounded outside as heavy rain started to hit the windows.

The newcomer had walked by the man by the door. He took no notice of him even after he calmly made his way over behind the gunman.

“Enough of that noise.” The other man said as he raised his hand.

The thief froze, clear fear in his eyes. I saw him struggling to move his body without success. My stomach sank as it dawned on me this was turning into something far more complicated than a simple stick-up.

My fears were confirmed when a new pair came in from outside. At first, it looked like a person had come in with their dog. They dripped cold rain onto the tile floor, panting as if he had run ten miles. Blood mixed in with the water. One raised his face to show four deep claw marks across it. His clothing had been torn. He appeared to have lost a fight with a large cat.

The cashier screamed as she made a run for it. The gun went off near her head. She stopped studying, too scared to move again. The woman with glasses rushed over to quickly wrap her arms around the other girl using her body as a shield. Their reaction was normal considering what the mystery man brought with him wasn’t a dog.

A thin creature hunched on the floor dripping rainwater. Its skin was light grey, and it looked like a mixture between a human and a bat. The face had a mouth far too large for its skull and tiny eyes. Large bat ears darted back at the sound of the scream. As it shook the rainwater from its body, I noticed a black ring tattoo around its neck.

“A hunter caught me. I got away but we need to move.” The bleeding man said as he caught his breath.

Seriously, what are the chances? A botched robbery and now these creatures? I just wanted to buy a damn coat.

“You certainly got yourself in a mess. It appeared we were in luck. You can heal yourself by eating one of these three. By the looks of it, we have one for each of us. We just need to leave enough for the police to assume this man had done the crime.”

The man who spoke was tall. He adjusted a wide-brim hat on his head. He was the leader of the small group. He also used some sort of power to control the gunman. If we tried to run, we would get shot. If we stayed, we would get eaten. The man with the hat directed his attention in my direction. His eyes shone yellow to study the people in front of him.

“You don’t appear very worried about the change in events.” He said in a dangerous tone.

Crap. If he thought I was a hunter or someone who knew about supernatural threats he may take me seriously.

“You’re a cop, do something.” The girl in the glasses said from behind me.

I knew her voice from somewhere but not her face. Her lie helped me out. I’m sure most police could handle the weaker creatures. However, you needed specialized information to truly stay alive against the supernatural. That one statement made this man think I was just a person who could stay calm under pressure.

I looked between the four of them. The man with the hat didn’t look worried for the wellbeing of his partner when he arrived bleeding. They weren’t friends. Just working together. The smaller creature was being controlled by some sort of contract and wouldn’t attack without an order. The gun was also being controlled. These two wanted a fresh meal, so no sending the monster to kill us or shoot us unless it was necessary. I worried about the girls. I needed to keep the attention on me to give the girls a chance to get away. Three against one wasn’t ideal though.

When I first got into this job, I got some good, yet simple advice. You should be afraid of monsters, just don’t let that fear control you. Your greatest strength is your head, use it. And always stay on your feet.

“I don’t want to die a virgin...” I muttered under my breath, but loud enough for those two to hear me.

I wasn’t one, but they didn’t know that. For some reason, virgin blood gave a great deal of power to creatures when consumed. Because of that, it was coveted. The injured man took the bait. He needed to be healed up, so he didn’t let himself consider I was lying. He charged forward, his face changing into something with bat-like features.

Since he was already injured, I was able to sidestep his first attack. He stumbled and then regained his footing just as my hands landed on a weapon. I took hold of a small table with a few items on it to hit him with it as hard as I could. He got knocked back and to the floor, his already beaten body refusing to work.

The hat man came next, yellow eyes glowing in amusement. I’d already grabbed my next tool for this fight. He came at me with a set of claws out. I expected this and spun in the ball of my foot. My heart pounding in my ears. If I slipped up it wasn’t just my life on the line. As I got behind him, I guided a pair of jeans across the front of his chest so both legs were over his shoulders. I then kicked his legs out from under him and grabbed a hold of the bottom of the legs before he fell. By some miracle, I had him on the ground, my knee in the middle of his back and the jeans around his neck. I crossed the legs to tighten the material. With my knee pushing down, I pulled up choking him with a pair of skinny jeans.

That pissed him off. A lot. I was tossed off as a large pair of bat wings burst from his back, ripping his long wool jacket. I fell hard against the ground, a jolt of pain racing from my elbow to my brain. He frantically gasped for air, his hands fumbling to remove the pants from around his neck. I used that time to get over to the still-frozen thief to grab his gun.

Normally guns didn’t do much against creatures. It only pissed them off. I only wanted to buy time. Not win.

The hat flew from his head, his body a blur of motion. A set of fangs sunk deep into my shoulder. It hurt like hell, but I wanted this to happen. Sort of. I needed him as close as possible so I wouldn’t miss him. I pressed the gun directly into his now large, pointed ear and fired. He jerked back, screaming from pain.

Blood came from the wound splattering against the ground. He rolled, shrieking but not dead. The first attack got up since, claws out about to finish the job. I emptied the gun in his direction. Who knows how many shots I landed. I’ll admit, I’m very bad with guns. At least that slowed him down.

“Fucking kill him already!” O...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MouseCurtains on 2024-10-29 12:47:09+00:00.

---

When I was around six or seven (maybe even eight), I had a next door neighbour, called Mindy.

I had moved to a small town just north of El Dorado, Kansas, and was waiting for the new school year to start. Mindy was my age, and, on one warm summer morning, she’d knocked on our door to ask if I would like to come over and play. She said she’d seen me moving in, and was delighted that another little girl had moved in on the street. She’d wanted to be my friend.

After my parent’s divorce, I had moved in with my Dad. He was a quiet, meek man, who didn’t do much but garden and watch old reruns of “All in the Family.” My Mom lost custody because of her drug abuse, and I suppose that he hadn’t really known what to do with me when I’d first moved in. I hadn’t lived with him in my formative years, and it was only once my grandmother got wind of things that he’d pushed to be a part of my life again, having been disillusioned that I was living in some stately house up north. I think, in the beginning at least, he wasn’t prepared to start raising up a little girl, particularly one he’d last seen as a toddler, and so the option of letting me play with the girl from the nice family next door must’ve been a relief. A way for him to get his life in order to step in as the Dad he needed to be. And I’m grateful to say that he really, truly did.

Mindy was a bit spoilt, but a good kid. From what I recall, she had long, blonde hair that her Mother always tied into pigtails, and a sweet, chocolate-box pretty face. Like Shirley Temple. I’m afraid there aren’t many more details I can give on her appearance—my memory is hazy. Even when I try my best to recall her face, all I can see is a blur, but that initial feeling—that impression, still remains.

She always wore the nicest clothes, and despite my reserved jealousy that she and I were not cut from the same cloth, she nevertheless tried her best to make me feel like her equal. She’d ask her Mother to teach us how to bake, and her Father would always let us stay up late to watch television. She’d give me her old dresses and shoes so that I’d have nice things to wear for the first day of school, which seemed to be an eternity away at that age. Although we only ever knew each other for several weeks, her memory is something I would never forget. I can’t forget it.

The best thing about Mindy’s home was a little playhouse she had, tucked right at the end of the backyard. It was big enough for the two of us to be in, but any adult would have a hard time bending down and minding their head on the doorframe. Her Grandfather had built it for her when she was just a baby, and it was truly a gorgeous thing; cream painted wood, with a coral-pinkish roof, clad with real tiles. Painted ivy and roses adorned the outdoors, and the duck egg green door held a sweet, heart shaped doorknob. The windows had proper glass, and matching green shutters on the outside.

Inside were two wooden stools, and a toy box filled with make-believe kitchenware. A faux-stove, completely covered with painted appliances, and a rocking horse in the corner. Floral curtains to draw out the light. It was every little girls’ dream. And Mindy let it be mine as much as it was hers. Ours.

Sometimes we’d have sleepovers in there. The door had a hatch key lock on the inside, so it felt like we really were adults; pretending to be roommates in our own grown up apartment. Telling each other stories over make-believe tea, and leaving the curtains open to star at the stars in the sky. The warm, summer nights left us comfortable in our sleeping bags, and I truly thought I’d never be happier.

My therapist says trauma can hide a lot of things from you. It’s a tricky thing; leaving you with the dread and anxiety without ever revealing the extent of it all. I suppose PTSD is the phrase I should be using. My fond memories of Mindy’s house are still there, untouched—untainted. Maybe my own childhood experiences with my Mom didn’t allow me to realise the cracks that were forming in Mindy’s home.

I never thought Mr Howard was a bad man. He was nice, and looked all cleaned up. He had a white-collar job, and I never considered that, with his income, he shouldn’t have been living in our rundown neighbourhood, let alone be my next door neighbour. He always came home from work with a smile on his face and a kiss for his wife, and treated me as he treated Mindy. In my eyes, they were the perfect, nuclear family. Compared to just me and my Dad, who—bless his heart, was trying to make ends meet, they seemed so comfortable. So cosy.

It was only years after that I’d come to understand the lengths some people will go to keep up a facade. What I had perceived as a healthy, happy lifestyle was nothing more than a perfectly practiced production; a play put on a stage where the actors couldn’t leave. They couldn’t stop playing pretend, as Mindy and I had done so many times in her playhouse. The real playhouse was their own home, and despite their food and water and appliances all being very real, they’d manufactured themselves to be nothing more than puppets on a stage; marionettes controlled by the overwhelming desire to not let a tear slip, or issue be revealed. A waltz of souls tethered to an unattainable dream.

Mr Howard was a gambler. His savings whittled away down to mere pennies in his pockets. But he never stopped his grandiose spending. Mindy always got a new gift whenever he went away for ‘business’, and Mrs Howard was always presented with some fabulous flowers. Sometimes, she’d send me home with her bouquet, telling me that she’d not need them with all the wonderful flowers he’d bought her before. She’d seen my Dad gardening on the small, shameful plot of land we called a garden, and he’d always been grateful to try and plant them back there.

It really was strange how it happened. Mr Howard, despite all his flaws, loved his family. He loved them so much. But perhaps love confused him.

It was only a few weeks before school when Mindy invited me around for a sleepover. It was the usual routine; her Mother made a fantastic meal, and we stayed up a bit to watch the television, laughing at whatever risqué scene was portrayed past 9pm. Then, around 10pm, her Mother ushered up to get ready for bed, having set up our little camp in the playhouse outside. It was all the same. The same old passage of events. Mindy and I were tucked away in the playhouse, and as we grew sleepy from chatting about god knows what, we heard a large bang.

Mindy shot up, and looked concerned. I was extremely tired, and, whilst rubbing my eyes, I asked her what the matter was. She didn’t speak, but put a finger to her mouth, beckoning me to stay quiet. She said she’d go in and see what was happening. She left, and then whispered a final few words.

“Lock the door, Kelly. Don’t let me in unless I say the password. Promise?”

I did as she said, and waited. Then; screaming.

There’s not much else to remember from that. My Dad said that I refused to come out of the playhouse, even when the police had tried to calm me down and tell me I was ok, that I was safe. I screamed and wailed that I couldn’t leave until Mindy gave me the password. That I needed to wait for Mindy to come back.

A child’s brain is such a fickle thing. Once I’d heard my Dad’s voice, I’d forgotten about any promises sworn to Mindy, and leapt out of the playhouse and into his arms, sobbing from a concoction of fear and comfort that felt oh-so crushing upon the weight of my tiny shoulders.

Although I was young, I wasn’t stupid. I’d known what the implications of those screams were, and those sounds. I knew why I was carried out through the side gate and not through the house. I knew what the men in white overalls were doing, moving in and around the property. I knew that my participation in the Howard’s charade was over, and that my friend wouldn’t ever come knocking on the front door of her playhouse again.

Even if we wanted to, my Dad and I couldn’t leave. We had no money, and we were forever cursed to live next to the house of the tragedy. I started school without her, and I cried on the first day when I walked into class with an old pair of Mindy’s shoes and a dress she’d given me. It never looked as nice on me as it did her.

I came to learn that Mindy’s grandiose tales of her popularity amongst classmates was a fairytale. She was a nobody to them; a sad, lonely girl with no one to talk to. Perhaps that’s why she’d latched onto me—someone who had it worse, or at least, she’d thought they did. Someone she could continue to spread the plague of perfectionism passed down so unceremoniously onto her. And I wondered if her parents thought the same thing. That I wouldn’t be able to see the chipped paint on the walls of their home, because mine ran so much deeper.

Dad and I never really spoke about it much after I turned 10 (I think). Years of therapy had taught me to repress those memories, but sometimes they pulled themselves out from the back of my scalp, and grasped hold in the front of my mind. I could never truly forget it. My first friend after such a traumatic time in my life, and how wonderfully crafted it had all been; how I, in all my naivety and desperation, had been so blinded by gratitude that I took part in the illusion without any inkling to help her back.

No one ever moved into Mindy’s old home. It lay there, derelict, and as did the playhouse at the back of the garden. I must’ve been sixt...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/DrElsewhere on 2024-10-29 12:42:02+00:00.

---

I shook my head in disbelief. “Wait, can you repeat that?”

My father rolled his eyes. “It’s not as weird as it seems, Maggie.”

I put on my socks, covering up the birthmark on my left ankle that was shaped like a heart. I was embarrassed about it while growing up before my father told me that birthmarks were kisses from angels. It made me feel unique and special. He always knew what to say to assuage my anxieties.

But now my father was the one who should be anxious. What he was proposing was crazy.

“Dad, people you haven’t seen in twenty years are giving you $25,000 to come to a dinner party. That seems weird because it is.”

My father slowly got to his feet from the chair in my room and leaned against my dresser. He was out of breath from the movement. He has been in poor health lately, especially since my mom died last year. My mom, Martha, had helped him during the initial phases of his decline but since her death my dad hadn’t been doing too well. I moved in with him to help out around the house and drive him to his doctor visits, not to mention keeping him company with jokes and stories. It’s the least I could do. As his daughter, looking out for him was my duty and that’s why I demanded he skip the dinner party hosted across the country.

He grabbed my hand and the warmth was reminiscent of all the fond memories I had of him. Knowing he was in ill-health, at only 58 years old, always made my throat dry and my eyes well with tears. He wouldn’t be around forever and this thought made me upset.

“Honey, I haven’t seen the Remberts in twenty years. Your mother and I were very close with them until we had to move to Florida. We had a tight-knit group of friends in California and it would be a delight to see them again. The Remberts know the only way to get everyone together is to entice us.”

“With $25,000?”

My father laughed. “Trust me, they can afford it.” He grabbed his suitcase and lifted the telescopic handle. “Wait until I send you photos of their mansion. You’ll understand how rich they are.”

“You don’t have to send me photos,” I said and disappeared inside my walk-in closet.

“Why is that?”

I emerged with my own luggage in hand. “Because I’m coming with you.”

He refused at first but I didn’t take “no” for an answer. My father was unhealthy and I wasn’t going to let him travel alone. He needed me and I wanted to help. Much to his chagrin, he relented as I purchased a plane ticket from my phone. He grumbled all the way to the airport.

---

Our Uber stopped at a wrought-iron gate that spanned the length of a wide driveway entrance. As soon as we approached, a buzz sounded out and the gates opened. Our driver continued. My father’s excitement was palpable. He rarely spoke of his time in California so I was eager to hear tales from his friends.

Once the mansion came into view I realized how correct my father had been. The Remberts were not only wealthy, they were ultra rich. Their Neoclassical mansion was massive and opulent. Lush landscaping turned the area into a beautiful oasis. Money certainly wasn’t an issue for them.

We exited the car and grabbed our luggage. My father mentioned how the house hadn’t changed a bit and I could only imagine all the wild parties that had happened here decades ago. I glanced at the eaves, wondering if banners hung during ritzy events. I caught sight of a gazebo in the side yard and wondered how many millionaires had conversed there. I was noticing the beautiful wooden front door when I noticed something strange about it. It seemed . . . too thick. Too industrial.

Then it opened.

A man and a woman appeared on the portico. They were well-dressed and had an air of class about them. They greeted us with wide smiles.

“Thomas!” The man said to my father. “So glad to see you after all these years! We’ve missed that electric personality of yours!”

“And I’ve missed your hospitality. It’s great to see you.”

The man became somber. “We heard about Martha. She was a sweet woman. We offer our condolences.”

My father nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s been tough but I’m getting through it.”

“And who is your guest?” The woman asked.

“This is my daughter, Maggie.” My father put a hand on my shoulder. “Maggie, this is Preston and Shea Rembert. Our hosts for the night.”

The couple regarded one another, then Preston said, “Thomas, we didn’t know you were bringing a plus one.”

My father gave a half-hearted laugh, understanding the faux pas we’d made. “I’m a little less independent now. My health isn’t what it used to be since Martha died and Maggie insisted she accompany me. Will this be a problem?”

The couple looked at each other again, then granted us their big smiles.

“No problem at all, dear,” Shea answered. “There is one rule though.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

He held up a small wicker basket. “No cell phones at the dinner table.”

Wow. This really was going to be a posh setting. I looked inside the basket and found several other cell phones. My father and I added ours to the pile.

“We don’t want those pesky notifications ruining our conversation this evening,” Preston said and took the basket.

“Come in,” Shea offered. “Everyone else is at the dinner table. We have a lot to get to so let’s get started.”

The splendor of the home’s interior was unmatched from anything I’d seen before. The inside of the house was extraordinary: elegant marble flooring, exotic wood used as accents, pricey artwork on every wall, towering ceilings. It was extravagant and made me realize how their $25,000 attendance handout was nothing to them.

We turned the corner to find the dining hall. The place erupted in celebration. Everyone who was already seated at the table got to their feet to hug, kiss, and banter with my father, who in turn introduced me.

A woman in a designer midi dress hugged me then kissed my cheek. Her styled gray hair poked my forehead.

“I’m Wendy. It’s a pleasure to meet such a beautiful, young lady,” she said, then snickered after she added, “You certainly didn’t get your father’s looks.”

A pair of men took turns shaking my hand. They were both in Armani suits and had slicked back salt-and-pepper hair.

“I’m Antonee,” the taller of the two said. “And this is my husband, Brenden.”

“Nice to meet your acquaintances,” I said.

“The pleasure is ours,” Brenden said, then he kissed the top of my hand.

A man donned in a three-piece suit approached me next. His white mustache wiggled as he spoke.

“I’m Lennox.” He hooked my arm in his and led me to the table. Everyone else followed, including my father who hadn’t stopped smiling since his friends’ greeting.

“You can sit by me, dear,” Lennox said. “That way I can tell you all the trouble your old man got into when he was young.”

My father rolled his eyes and laughed. “Oh no. Don’t listen to him, Maggie. He’s a kook.”

Everyone was jovial as they found their seats, just in time for the hosts to take their seats. Preston was at the head of the table and Shea was beside him. The table setting was reminiscent of a Michelin-starred restaurant. Luxury tableware sat in front of each guest. Crystal glasses sparkled from an overhead chandelier. Two windows flooded the area with natural light, which was supplemented by wall sconces. Everything was so lavish.

The opposite side of the room was grand as well. Blocks of granite stone formed a vast fireplace. However, there was no fire. The pit was charred from use long ago, but with modern heating systems it made sense the fireplace was mostly cosmetic now. Still, it gave a sense of friendly warmth to the area.

Wendy held up a glass. “Do tell one of your servers to hurry with the wine. My tongue is dry.”

“I doubt that,” Lennox quipped, gaining a laugh from everyone except the hosts.

Antonee pointed to my father. “No alcohol for ole’ Thomas. We know how wild he can get once a buzz settles in his gut.”

My father blushed but came back with a retort. “And how many times did I catch you and Brenden making out after a few cocktails?”

Brenden laughed and put a hand on his husband’s thigh. “Don’t put any ideas into our heads or this party might turn nostalgic.”

Everyone laughed again. Except the hosts.

Preston Rembert stood up and the conversation stopped. It was clear that something serious was on his mind. His demeanor was in stark contrast to the high spirits of his guests.

“My dear friends, Shea and I have invited you here for a very special occasion. The most consequential occasion of your lives. And of ours.”

I looked at my father and his smile was radiant.

Preston continued. “Our friendship with each of you has impacted our lives in many ways. Most positive.” He looked down at the table. “Some negative.”

Shea looked at her smartwatch. She held up two fingers to her husband.

How odd.

“Your memories of this occasion may have been lost with time, but today marks the twentieth anniversary of the disappearance of our dear Madeline when she was only two years old. Your sympathy and assistance during that first year helped Shea and I keep our sanity. We would like to say thank you.”

Shea held up one finger to her husband . . . like some kind of countdown.

“However, since that time the police have never found our child. The night of her disappearance we hosted a party, in which all of you attended. The police say she walked out of our home during the party and fell into the river located behind our backyard. All evidence pointed to the river as th...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Harbinger_51 on 2024-10-29 11:00:49+00:00.

---

The last vivid memory I can recall was walking across campus toward my apartment after my morning classes. I remember being in a good mood and had nothing to complain about. The weather was nicer than I would have expected in the middle of October. It was sunny as ever, warm, and calm save for a light breeze of cool and refreshing air carrying with it the comforting scent of autumn. 

The sound of crunching leaves was replaced by my boots meeting the concrete beneath them as I took my final steps from the sidewalk into the crosswalk, and then pain. Pain was about all I can remember after that, and it was everywhere. I can’t recall what I saw, where I was, or what happened. A few screams filled the air around me, but I couldn’t be sure if they were real or if they were a part of some twisted nightmare.

I can faintly remember voices here and there, between the voids of nothingness I can only assume to be me falling unconscious. What they were talking about is a blur to me. I perceived very little time passing, minutes at most. And for that, I am immeasurably grateful. At the time I remember being awake, my entire body was in pure agony. My legs, my arms, my back, you name it. I knew whatever happened to me had done a hell of a lot of damage at the very least.

To my surprise, when I had finally awoken, the pain in my body seemed to have subsided. The exception was the pounding headache that accompanied me into consciousness. The incessant buzzing of whatever light fixture must have been on the ceiling agitated me further. Now I could at least tell that I was in what I presumed to be a hospital bed. I let out a grunt as I unsuccessfully attempted to open my eyes in the brightly lit room.

I quickly learned I wasn't alone. Upon uttering my grunt, footsteps approached my bedside before the vision through my eyelids was darkened. A cold, fresh towel was gently laid over my face, somewhat quieting the annoying ambient noise of the lights.

“There you are, dear. Just relax now.”

An exceptionally calming, welcoming, and mature voice of a woman whispered to me, something that caught me off guard. I attempted to thank her, though my voice was so dry and coarse that only a sad incoherent groan escaped. 

I heard a few more footsteps move away, and then toward me again before the woman asked.

“Sit up for me, dear. Will you?”

I did as she asked while she gently kept the towel applied to my face with her hand so as to not let it fall. A paper cup met my cracked lips and tilted as cold water entered my mouth. The sensation was so blissful it caused me to reach up with my own hands to tilt the cup further, pouring the entirety of the water down my throat. I let out a long sigh of relief after the cup had been emptied. 

“Thank you.”

I uttered, lowering my head back to the pillow. My throat, though better, still sounded drained and worn as I spoke. The woman gently removed her hand from the towel on my face. I heard her walk away again, the sound of tools or medical equipment being moved following behind her footsteps. A moment later, she returned and gently grabbed my arm at the elbow.

“I’ll just need a little blood sample, dear. It won’t hurt a bit.”

She told me, raising my limp arm slowly off of the bed.

“O-Okay”

I replied, hesitant due to the cloud of confusion that still engulfed me rather than fear. Fear didn’t seem like a possible emotion right then. I didn’t know a thing about this woman, but her presence commanded trust and comfort. I felt the needle be inserted into my arm, and though it stung a little, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. This is when it finally occurred to me that I truly had no idea what was going on. 

“Wait, where am I? Am I in a hospital? W-what happened? Who are you”

I asked. The hint of panic in my voice grew with each question. I felt the needle exit my arm, followed by the woman wiping and bandaging it. Her soft touch alone was enough to cease my panic.

“Yes, you are in a hospital. You were hit by a driver who was going far too fast through that little crosswalk, it would seem. And I am doctor Wernicke. I have been assigned to care for you until your release!”

She answered. Her last remark was filled with excitement, a clear indication she felt happy for me being able to leave soon. I felt a bit happy upon hearing such news, though I couldn’t tell for sure if that’s how I should feel. Being in a hospital in the first place was just as new information. More than anything, I felt tired. Tired, and annoyed by my damn headache. Feeling a bit more comfortable with my now-supposed doctor, I felt inclined to tell her. 

“Doctor Wernicke, I have…I have a raging headache.”

I managed to squeeze out.

“Do you think I could…”

“No worries at all, dear.”

She cut me off. Once again, she had me momentarily sit up before placing a small pill in my hand which I swallowed, followed by another cup of water. 

“The headaches are to be expected, unfortunately, but if I’m being honest, I believe you’re lucky that’s the extent of what’s wrong with you. Hell, you might be the luckiest patient I’ve ever seen. When you first came in, you were banged up and bruised pretty bad, sure but we didn’t find a single broken bone in your body. No organs were damaged, no severe internal bleeding, nothing. Everything seemed to be just fine.”

Again, I didn’t know how I should be processing this. From the way she described it, it sounded as though the accident should have killed me. Before I could ask another question, doctor Wernicke spoke up.

“Now, that pill will help with the headache, but it’ll make you feel quite drowsy, quite quickly. All I need you to do is take a good, long sleep. Can you do that for me, William?” 

Her use of my name caught me off guard, but after thinking for a whole two seconds, it made sense that the doctor assigned to look after me would be familiar with my name. I simply nodded in response to her question. 

She let a light chuckle out before remarking.

“Good.”

I heard her footsteps leave my bedside and travel across the room. A light switch was flipped off, ceasing the annoying ambient buzz. A door was open and closed as she stepped out of the room, and I was left alone in the silence. Doctor Wernicke wasn’t wrong. The meds she gave me put me to sleep within a minute. I hadn’t even been given a waking moment to process everything I had just been told, but I didn’t mind that much. I slept hard. For how long, I haven’t the slightest idea.

The first thing I noticed upon awakening was the absence of my headache, and what a relief it was. I must have remained lying still in the hospital bed for half an hour or so before I decided to remove the now-dry towel, sit up, and open my eyes. I half expected my movement to be restricted by some sort of tubes or medical apparatuses but surprisingly, no. There was no IV, no catheter, and nothing taped to my skin to monitor my heart rate. The only unsurprising thing was the light blue medical gown I dawned. 

I twisted my hips to the side, dangling my legs over the side of the bed and turning to look around the room. I couldn’t see anything. I slowly pushed myself off the bed, letting my feet contact the cold, hard floor. Standing up, and walking especially felt odd, as if I hadn’t done it in a long time and, well, maybe I hadn’t. 

I carefully stepped in the direction I remembered Doctor Wernickie walking when she left the room, arms stretched out in front of me to feel anything I might run into. Eventually, I found a wall and followed it to a door. The handle refused to open. I traced my hands around the door until I finally found a switch, flipping it on with excitement. 

The sight before me, though familiar at first, seemed to become more uncanny the further I observed. Yes, this was a hospital room of some kind, but not like it should have been. It was both old and new at the same time. Old in the sense that almost nothing in there looked like it belonged in this century, save for the box of gloves and hand sanitizer, and new in the sense that it almost felt as though I was the one in the wrong century. 

The green and white tiled floors, bland stone walls, and mono-colored ceiling looked more like the kind you would expect to see in an abandoned building, one full of dust and mold, infested with roaches and rats. This room had none of that. Everything looked as new and clean as if it were built yesterday. Even my bed was perceivably of an older design, and an extremely minimalist one at that. Other than my bed, the room overall felt empty, even with how small it was. 

Right beside my bed was a metal table with several medical instruments, the names of which I would never be able to tell you, along with the very modern-looking box of medical gloves and a large bottle of hand sanitizer I had mentioned earlier. Additionally, there was a small prescription bottle of pills. Though unlike any prescription bottle I had seen before, this one was devoid of any labels or stickers at all. My initial thought was one of concern, though I trusted Doctor Wernicke knew what she was doing.

Next to the table was a small trash can, and a large sink with a faucet, and on its edge sat a stack of paper cups. The opposite wall to my bed had another door, the only other one connected to the room. Not having tried to open this one, I thought I should give it a shot. To my relief, the other side was a small bathroom.

Like my room, this bathro...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Verastahl on 2024-10-29 04:33:51+00:00.

---

“Are you sure you’re okay trick-or-treating alone tonight?” I could hear the concern in Mom’s voice, but I wasn’t sure it was real. She had to work late every night this week, and I knew she didn’t have an answer if I said no.

“Mom, no, I mean, yes, I’m fine with trick-or-treating by myself. I’m twelve. This is probably the last year I can even do it.”

A moment of quiet on the line and then: “But it’s only Monday night, right? Maybe if you do it later in the week I could get off early enough to drive you around.” Another pause. “Or do you think some of the neighborhood kids would let you go with them?”

I felt resentment starting to stir in my chest. I already gave her what she wanted, why is she dragging this out? I thought about just agreeing to wait for her to take me out of spite, but it would just end up with me going on Halloween by myself anyway. “No, none of the kids around here are my friends and most are way young. I’ll be fine. This is the night the town picked for trick-or-treating, which is dumb, but if I don’t go tonight I’m afraid a lot of the houses won’t have candy. I’ll be fine.”

Another pause. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I need to go. It’s getting dark.”

****

Laying under a pile of dead leaves two hours later, I thought back to that phone call. How I should’ve waited. Or if I went tonight, I should have stuck to just the roads I knew well. Instead, I got irritated that some of the houses had already given out of candy before I got to them. And instead of facing the idea of going home to an empty house, I decided to keep pushing on, riding my bike out to the state road and then down a side street that trailed off into another couple of neighborhoods before leading to a narrow paved path that could have been a small road or a giant driveway.

Either way, I figured there had to be more houses up there for it to be paved so well, and I had started getting better candy the farther out I’d went. I was still debating when I saw a killer clown coming toward me with his mother. They didn’t look at me as they walked closer, so I called out to them instead.

“Hey, do they have good candy up there?”

The woman turned and stared at me, letting out a big belch as she nodded. “Yeah. Good stuff up there.” She gave me a weird smile and then kept walking past without another word. I don’t think her little clown ever said a word.

I frowned after them a moment before giving a shrug. People were weird, but what did it matter? Turning my bike onto the road, I started heading up into the trees. It was much darker here, at least in patches, but periodically there would be a solar light dotting one side of the road or the other. I felt myself getting a bit more excited. This must be a giant driveway, which meant the house must be big and rich. As I went up further, most of the lights started having Halloween decorations around them—fancy stuff like you see on television. It was cool, but it was also weird. The trees were so thick and dark, and the lights were spaced out enough that it seemed like I was riding out to the middle of nowhere, but then I’d ride past this awesome zombie waving his arms from the ground next to one of the lights.

You would think that the sign wouldn’t have caught my attention more than the rest, but it did. Not because it was fancy, but because it wasn’t. Just a wooden sign made out of particle board and propped up on what looked like the original decorations for that light—an evil-looking pumpkin that looked like it had a twisted grin, but that you couldn’t really see for the sheet of wood propped against it to catch the nearest solar light. And across the front of the particle board were four spray-painted red words.

Beware the booger goblin

I had actually stopped and laughed a little at that sign. It looked like whoever lived up here had a kid that decided to fuck up one of their bougie decorations for something that looked like it belonged at a flea market or sketchy fair. Booger goblin. How dumb was…

I jumped as I heard a strange whistle from one of the trees above me. It was musical, but it didn’t sound like a bird. Heart pounding, I looked around for where it would have come from. A speaker maybe? Something to spook people when they got close to the house?

I heard another whistle from the other side of the road. Lower to the ground and closer than before. I had the thought that it was a deeper sound, like something else talking back to the first.

“Fuck that.”

I started pedaling again, harder now than I had all night. I considered turning around and going back down, but I was so scared that the idea of taking the time to turn and head back down that long stretch of dark driveway seemed worse than just going on, especially when I had to be getting close to the house. Sure enough, as I rounded the next corner I saw the house. It was even bigger than I’d expected, with orange lights and decorations covering most of its three floors. There were more decorations in the yard, but I just kept to the driveway as I searched the doors and windows of the house for some sign of life or help. Maybe it was all just part of the Halloween stuff these people had going, but it didn’t feel like a trick or a decoration. And…that little girl in the window…up on the second floor there was a dark-haired girl in the window, beating on the glass and waving at me, waving me away. She wasn’t fake. She was crying and screaming and I could almost make out what

That’s when the booger goblin jumped onto me.

I fell off the bike immediately, screaming and clawing at it as it crawled from my back up to the top of my head. It had hard claws that dug in as I reached up to it, screaming louder as I felt the hard, slick surface of plates of bug skin. It felt like a roly-poly looked, or a centipede. But it was smaller, rounder and fatter, and as I tried to rake it off, it just dug in tighter as two fingers or tentacles drifted past my eyes before curving and going up my nose deeply.

Everything went red and my brain felt like it was on fire. But that only lasted a couple of seconds before it all turned cold and numb as it started squirting something into my head. I felt my body slowing down, calming. I still wanted to fight, to run, to get it off and out of me, but I couldn’t anymore. I wasn’t screaming either, and for a minute or two I just laid very still as that numb feeling took over.

Then my hands started pulling me along the ground, away from the house and driveway and into a large pile of dead leaves a few feet away. My body pulled itself into that pile before going still, and using the last of my strength I managed to turn my head so I could still see out of the leaves, trying to get out a call for help from whoever might be out there. But no, I couldn’t make a sound. Just scream in my head as everything went very still except for the soft, squelching noise of more wetness being pushed into me.

**** A few minutes passed like that before I saw someone new. It was a group of five kids, most of them a year or two younger than me, coming up the driveway together. They didn’t seem terrified or like they’d been attacked—maybe the booger goblins only attacked people when they were alone—I thought about the mother and son I’d seen on the way up—or in pairs.

Either way, it didn’t matter. These kids were just laughing and joking and having a good time, and while a couple of them glanced at my bike and candy bag in the yard, I could tell none of them could see me in the leaves. I tried again to move or make a noise, but there was no point. I could have been watching a video of all this for how not-in-control I was now. My only hope was that the kids was notice something was weird with the house. Maybe the little girl or something.

A pale, blonde girl with devil horns and a jack-o-lantern candy pail led the way up the porch and rang the doorbell. I wasn’t sure anyone would even answer, but within a few seconds a man opened the door. I couldn’t see him from my angle, but I could hear his deep voice, strange and detached as he told them Happy Halloween before letting out a wet belch. The kids didn’t say anything other than thank you as they got their candy, but I could tell they were creeped out as they left. They walked faster, and there were no jokes or laughter anymore.

Still, it wouldn’t be enough. They didn’t know anything was wrong, and if nothing got them on the way out, they’d probably go home thinking they’d had a cool, creepy experience close to Halloween. And I could feel myself being pushed farther and farther down some weird hallway in myself. I could still see and hear, but I couldn’t feel anything at all now, and when the goblin finally pulled its fingers out of my nose and left across the yard, I only knew because I saw its speckled belly as it crawled across my face.

A few more minutes passed I think. Then I was moving again, crawling out of the leaves and sitting up with a loud burp. My head and eyes moved up to the figure standing above me. The man from the door, maybe. He watched silently as my body stood up, and then handed me back my bag of candy as he wiped at his mouth with the back of his other hand.

“Happy Halloween.”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/YogurtclosetLong1397 on 2024-10-28 17:20:50+00:00.

---

A crashing sound that reverberated from outside startled me awake. I groaned to myself as I rolled over and reached out my hand, searching for my phone. I felt the cold surface of my phone and pulled it up to eye level. After double-tapping the screen, the time popped up. 3:47 am. I shook my head and threw the blankets off of me, slowly crawling out of bed. My feet hit the cold floor, making me shudder slightly as I made my way to the bathroom. 

As I was coming back to my room, another loud sound came from outside, causing me to jump. I entered my room and walked over to the window peeking out. I scanned the neighborhood, seeing nothing unusual. My heart stopped as  I noticed an uncanny figure standing at the top of my street. One thing I should mention is that I lived in a rather rural area, with only five houses on my street with quite a distance between each house. The area is slightly wooded, taking about fifteen minutes to reach the closest civilized area. I watched the figure carefully, and the panic sank in as it made its way down the street. Something was terribly wrong. The way it walked and held itself was off, almost inhuman. It walked slowly, its body contorting slightly as it did so and he was so tall, much taller than the average man. As he approached my house, a pit grew in my stomach. He paused between my house and my neighbors, then walked between the houses and disappeared. I crossed the room back to my bed where I picked up my phone. I unlocked it and called Remi, my fiance, who was staying at his friend’s for the night. After, the third ring he answered.

“Is everything okay, baby?” his voice was low and raspy and I knew I had woken him up.

“Can you come home? There’s someone walking around the neighborhood and I'm getting scared.”

I could hear shuffling over the phone and I immediately knew he was going to come home.

“Yes, I’m getting my stuff and I’m headed home in less than a minute. Can you still see him?”

“No. He disappeared between the neighbors and our house.”

“Okay, I need you to check all doors and windows, take the Glock with you.”

“Okay, please hurry.”

“I’ll be home in 10 minutes. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said before I hung up.

I walked over to the nightstand, opened the drawer, pulled out the Glock, and made sure that it was loaded. I went back to the window and looked out again but there was nothing there. I let out a shaky breath as I checked all the upstairs windows to make sure I locked them before slowly going downstairs. I went to every door and window, doing the same thing with them, then going back upstairs and to the bedroom window. I knew Remi would be home in the next minute or so and felt the panic subside. I looked down at my phone briefly and then back to the window. My body froze, almost screaming as the figure was now standing in front of my house, facing me. It didn't move as it stood there and I wasn’t sure if it was even breathing. It was hard to make out any details as the street was almost completely dark. There were no street lights in front of my house, only a few were scattered across the neighborhood. I wasn’t sure what to do, what was I supposed to do in a situation like this?  I watched and watched, praying that Remi would get home before anything happened. I quickly pulled out my phone and texted him.

‘He’s standing outside the house.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute, keep the gun on you at all times,’

I put my phone back down and returned my eyes to the window. What the fuck? The figure was now gone, no trace that it had ever been there. I scanned the neighborhood, hoping to see him. It would make me feel a hell of a lot better if I knew where he was. Nothing could possibly go wrong if I knew where he was. I kept looking outside until I saw headlights coming down the street and into the driveway. I ran down the stairs, almost tripping to meet Remi at the door. I placed my phone on the little table that sat by our front door and unlocked it as soon as his foot touched the porch and he quickly came inside, locking the door behind him. He pulled me into a hug and I let out a breath as I melted into him. He kissed the top of my head before lifting mine to meet his gaze. He looked tired, dark bags under his eyes nonetheless he still looked happy to see me. He had a dark red t-shirt on and a pair of black sweatpants that fit him perfectly. His blonde hair was pushed back off his face and you could tell he had rushed to get home. He looked gorgeous in every sense of the word. I wanted to go upstairs and lie down with him. He was my safe space and when I was with him, I felt like nothing could go wrong. He placed his phone and keys next to mine on the table.

“I saw nothing when I pulled into the neighborhood.”

“He disappeared when I was texting you. I have no clue where he is.”

“Let's go back upstairs. I’m sure everything is okay now.”

“I’m sorry for calling you so late, I know you were at Adam’s house and were excited to spend some time with him during the off-season.”

“Why are you sorry? Your safety comes first.”

I smiled at his response. With the gun in one hand, I placed my free hand on his chest and got on my tiptoes to kiss him. He kissed me back, his fingers tangled in my hair. He took the gun from my hand and placed it into his waistband, before wrapping his arms around my waist and hoisting me up. I wrapped myself around him, laying my head on his shoulder. He moved his arm and his hand lifted my head. I smiled at him brightly as I leaned forward and kissed him again. The kiss lasted for maybe a minute before we pulled apart for air. I let out a giggle as I looked into his eyes, his eyes filled with love. He spun in a circle, causing the both of us to laugh. I loved the little moments like this.

“Alright baby, let’s go get some sleep.” He whispered in my ear before placing a kiss on it.

“Sounds good to me, gorgeous. I’m tired as hell.”

He chuckled softly, as I placed my head back on his shoulder, kissing it gently while taking me upstairs. The relief I had felt when Remi arrived quickly vanished. The sound of breaking glass pierced the silence as we made it to the top of the stairs. It came from the back of the house which told us he had broken our glass back door. He placed me down on my feet; I froze and looked up at Remi who was reaching for the gun in his waistband. In a sudden movement, he was pushing me to the room closest to us and locking the door. We stood in silence, listening for any sound that would give us any clue as to what was going on. There was a crunching sound as the intruder stepped into the house. The house was quiet before we heard it started moving around the first floor of the house. 

I looked over to Remi who was deep in thought before he glanced over at me. He placed a finger over his mouth indicating that I needed to remain silent. He grabbed my hand, walked towards the door, and opened the door slowly. He led me out of the room, moving so that he was behind me and now pushing me forward. We silently but quickly moved towards the back of the house to get as far away as possible from the intruder. We made it into our bedroom, Remi locked the door behind him and then turned to face me. I didn’t know what to say to him at the moment, nothing but fear on my mind. He kept me close to him, pressing me into his side, while I stared blankly at the door with my head leaning onto his arms. My hands were shaking uncontrollably and my body felt like it was on fire. Something about this felt extremely off and I guess it would considering what was going on. My throat was dry and my heart was racing in my chest, so much so that it hurt. 

“Remi, I left my phone downstairs.”

Remi stopped and stared at me for a moment before patting his own pockets, his face contorting to shock.

“So did I.” 

“Remi? What the fuck is going on?” I whispered.

“I don’t know.” 

It was only a matter of time before my mind would shut down from the panic. It was unfortunate, but it's how I've always responded in traumatic situations. Remi was more levelheaded and logical, He could stay strong and take control in situations like these. Before I could say anything else, Remi was already at the window, tugging it upwards but it didn’t move. He tried repeatedly until he gave up in frustration, reeling back to punch the window but stopping himself before his fist hit the window. We had never been able to open that window, the paint had sealed it shut.  If he was getting nervous, it wasn’t showing. His face remained stoic which comforted me, I knew that as long as he was by my side I would be okay. We could hear the intruder making its way up the stairs, its footsteps heavy as he came to the top of the stairs. The sound of a door opening was heard, and we knew it was looking for us. It became very clear that whoever was in our house was not here to rob us. We were under attack. The intruder went from door to door and as he got closer; we needed to think of a plan. Remi gripped the gun tighter and held it so that if he needed to shoot, he could.

“Honey, I want you to stay with me as much as possible.”

“Remi, I’m scared.” I whimpered as I shuffled closer to him, latching onto him.

He ran his hand through my hair and leaned down to kiss my head which gave me some comfort. It was the little moments like this that Reminded me of why I loved him so much.

“I know baby, but I need you to be strong for me.”

“I will but what if something happens...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ge7ov4/until_dawn/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/myrasam79 on 2024-10-28 21:55:31+00:00.

---

It started with an itch, the kind you dismiss as a stray irritant or the side effect of a poorly washed shirt. Nothing serious, just a vague discomfort on my forearm that I could scratch away without a second thought. By the next day, though, that itch had spread, snaking its way up my arm in patches that seemed to appear and vanish like ghostly bruises. When I looked closer, I saw faint outlines, almost like impressions beneath my skin, lines that seemed too precise to be random.

As the hours passed, I became acutely aware of that crawling, tingling sensation, as if something was squirming right under the surface, trailing like whispered secrets I couldn’t ignore. I forced myself to laugh about it, though the unease was already beginning to curl in my stomach. My friends joked that it was probably a new allergy or the side effect of too much late-night junk food. But this wasn’t an allergy—I knew that. It was something else entirely, something I couldn’t easily explain away.

By the end of the day, I found myself instinctively covering the patches with my sleeves, hoping no one would notice how much I was scratching. There was no rash, nothing visible that should have made the itching so unbearable, but the irritation was constant, almost hypnotic in its persistence. And then, as I stood in front of my bathroom mirror that evening, rolling up my sleeve to inspect the strange marks, I noticed something far worse.

The skin on my forearm seemed… uneven. Beneath it, as I pressed gently with my fingers, I could feel tiny bumps, like grains of sand shifting beneath the surface. My mind instantly jumped to all the horror stories I’d ever heard about parasites, though I dismissed it as soon as the thought arrived. But I couldn’t deny the physical reality, couldn’t brush away the sensation that something was undeniably, horrifyingly wrong.

That night, as I lay in bed, trying not to scratch, I felt that subtle shifting again, like a ripple running through the skin of my arm. It was slight, barely more than a whisper against my senses, but it was there, undeniable. I lay motionless, eyes wide open, feeling the unwelcome activity beneath my skin, a silent protest against sleep.

In a fit of desperation, I’d slathered on every ointment I could find, hoping it might soothe whatever was festering beneath. But as I closed my eyes, willing myself to ignore the sensation, a single thought began to gnaw at the edges of my mind: What if it’s not just in my arm? What if it’s spreading?

The itch, I realized, wasn’t just an annoyance anymore. It was a warning—a signal that something within me had started, and I had no idea how to make it stop.

The itch had spread by morning. What began as a single patch on my forearm had now crept up to my shoulder and down to my wrist. Each area tingled with an unnerving sensation, like ants crawling just beneath the skin, tracing invisible pathways along my nerves. I spent breakfast awkwardly holding my coffee mug, trying not to let my family see how much I was scratching. I could still hear my sister’s voice from the night before, mocking me for “imagining things” and “being paranoid.” But this was beyond imagination. The bumps under my skin were real.

I tried my best to avoid mirrors that morning, but the bathroom one caught me off guard as I reached for my toothbrush. My reflection stared back with dark, hollow eyes, evidence of a sleepless night spent tossing and turning. The skin on my forearm had taken on a strange, dull tone, slightly bruised and sunken where the itch was strongest. I pressed down on the spot again, feeling the telltale grit of tiny lumps shifting beneath the surface. They felt more distinct today, as if they had grown overnight, settling into my skin with a sickening permanence.

During my lunch break, I finally gave in to the impulse to Google my symptoms. Each result was worse than the last—nerve disorders, rare skin diseases, parasitic infections. My stomach churned with dread, but I couldn’t stop reading, hypnotized by the horrifying possibilities. In the back of my mind, I tried to rationalize it away. Maybe it was stress? My job had been piling on the pressure lately, and I’d barely had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. But even as I thought this, I knew it was a weak excuse. Nothing about stress explained the feeling of something moving, something alive, beneath my skin.

By afternoon, the sensation had evolved. It was no longer just an itch; it was an almost rhythmic pulse, as though whatever was under my skin was slowly waking up, becoming aware. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was probing, seeking something within me. When I wasn’t scratching, I was pressing my fingers against the bumps, trying to understand what they were. But each time, they slipped and shifted away from my touch, evading me like shadows under the skin.

As the day dragged on, the anxiety began to bleed into every part of me. I found myself barely focusing at work, my mind consumed with the alien presence in my own body. Colleagues cast worried glances my way, but I ignored them, unwilling to explain. Who would believe me? That I felt things crawling under my skin? I barely believed it myself.

I left work early, ignoring the concerned expressions of my manager and the odd questions from friends. As soon as I got home, I headed straight to the bathroom, rolling up my sleeve with a trembling hand. The patches of uneven skin had spread even further, branching like the veins in a leaf. It was now unmistakably clear that they were following a pattern, some kind of system that only they understood.

Unable to resist, I took a needle and carefully pressed it to the skin of my forearm, hoping that a small puncture might release whatever was trapped inside. The prick stung, and a bead of blood welled up, but nothing more. Frustrated, I pressed harder, trying to dig deeper, feeling the pressure build as I forced the needle further. But instead of relief, I felt a sharp, searing pain rip through my arm, and the skin buckled under my touch, pulsing in angry protest. I pulled the needle away, horrified, realizing I was only making it worse.

I sank onto the bathroom floor, clutching my arm, my mind racing. Whatever was beneath my skin, it didn’t want to be disturbed.

I couldn’t go to work the next day. The moment I tried to put on a shirt, the rough fabric brushed against my arm, igniting the sensation into a maddening fury. Every nerve seemed on edge, every inch of skin prickling with the unnatural movement underneath. It was as if my own body was rebelling, each patch of skin tightening over the hidden lumps as they shifted and pulsed.

I spent the morning in bed, sleeves rolled up, staring in morbid fascination as the trails of tiny lumps spread across my arm, weaving along my veins. The sight was dizzying. The tiny, gritty bumps beneath my skin were following a path, creating a map only they understood. I felt helpless, staring at my own body as it transformed into something unrecognizable. I was no longer just “me”—I was becoming their host, my skin their shelter, my body their prison.

Around noon, I heard my phone buzz on the bedside table. It was a message from my sister, checking in after our conversation the previous night. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. How could I explain that what I’d tried to brush off as a skin irritation had become a full-blown infestation? I couldn’t even say the words to myself. Instead, I turned off the phone, cutting myself off from anyone who might try to reach out. This was mine to face, alone.

The hours dragged on, and the daylight began to dim outside. I lay still, paralyzed by fear and a morbid fascination, unable to tear my gaze from the gradual spread of the patches across my skin. I was half-caught in a trance, a waking nightmare that felt both surreal and inescapable. With every pulse, the bumps moved, shifting in sync with the beat of my own heart. They seemed to understand me in a way that was unnerving, as though each beat was their cue, each pause their signal.

The itching had dulled, replaced by something else—a raw, aching feeling as though my skin was being stretched from the inside. I ran my fingers along my arm, feeling the uneven texture beneath my touch, the lines and patches that had become almost a network. With a grim determination, I resolved to find out what they were, to confront whatever I had allowed to take root inside me.

Grabbing a small utility knife from my bedside drawer, I took a deep breath. My hand trembled, but I steadied it, pressing the blade just above one of the larger bumps on my forearm. A quick, shallow slice. Blood welled immediately, a thin line of red, but beyond the pain, I felt nothing else—no release, no dislodging of whatever was beneath. I wiped the blood away with a tissue, squinting as I tried to catch a glimpse of anything unusual within the shallow cut.

And then, as if in response, the bump under the skin moved. Slowly, it shifted just out of reach, retreating deeper, avoiding the light and the blade, evading me. My stomach turned, a nauseating wave washing over me. It was alive. A living thing, crawling just beneath my skin, aware of my attempts to remove it.

I stumbled back, clutching my arm, horror clawing up my throat as I realized the full extent of what was happening. Whatever was inside me, it wasn’t some random irritation, some easily excised intruder. It was somethi...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/banjofitzgerald on 2024-10-28 22:47:59+00:00.

---

Hollywood loves remakes. That's because Hollywood itself is a remake. Close your eyes and imagine a silent film. I bet you're seeing Charlie Chaplin in all of his black-and-white greatness, but what you might not realize is this movie you're picturing doesn't take place in Los Angeles. It's actually three hundred and fifty miles north in Niles Canyon. America's first Hollywood.

Niles is nestled between the base of sprawling foothills and sits at the outside edge of the San Francisco Bay's marine layer. It’s a quaint, little neighborhood. One that remained frozen in the era of its former glory. A classic Americana main street serves as an anchor to craftsmen and Victorian-style homes. At the end of Niles Boulevard is the silent film museum honoring the area's historic past life. And in the hillside that overlooks the retired train station, you'll see big white letters reading “NILES,” in the same style Hollywood made iconic.

Niles has always been connected with something darker, though. For how small the area is, there has been a surprisingly high amount of death. Mostly due to the winding one-way lane roads that run through the steep hills. Naturally, this has spawned a lot of urban legends. Like the one about a girl who walks the canyon road at night asking for a ride back home to San Francisco, only to disappear before getting there. Or the tales about the white witch in the woods, and the stories about mysterious societies that meet under midnight's obscurity. Hell, there's even sightings of Charlie Chaplin's ghost. This is my personal favorite because witnesses always claim to see him in grayscale and moving at sixteen frames per second. I think every town that is old enough, has this kind of lore. Where I figure Niles is a bit different, though, is that it is home to The Secret Sidewalk.

Deep in the foothills is what is known as The Secret Sidewalk. A long and mysterious stretch of cement that slithers through the hills for miles. It's hard to get to and is one of those kind of places that's passed down from one generation of young people to the next. A place that you hear your friend's older brother bragging about for years before they get too old for it and finally shows you how to get to it. Some of my favorite memories were the days my friends and I would ditch sixth period, fill a backpack with beer, and spend all day wandering the sidewalk.

What the quote-unquote, sidewalk, actually is, is an aqueduct that used to carry water from the bay to local reservoirs. Long dried up and out of service, it now rests covered in graffiti with multiple openings pried ajar. Turning the square cement structure into hollow tunnels for urban explorers or anyone brave enough to go in. I can't lie, there actually is a pretty weird feeling when you walk the sidewalk. An adrenaline boost. I don't know if it's the fact that you're legally not supposed to be there, or the suspended train track bridge you have to cross to get to it, or the silent absence of everyday bustle, but the feeling of vulnerability is palpable and hangs in the air. If you go at the right time of year, fog spills down the hill crevices like fingers reaching out for the lower canyon. Adding to the eeriness of it.

Earlier I said that it's what is known as the Secret Sidewalk. That's because it's not the real one. I know this because my friends and I regrettably found the real one a few years ago.

The guys and I were far removed from our teenage youth, and to be honest, at this point, we were too old to still be going there, but we were all together and feeling nostalgic. So, we decided to go.

We were about an hour or so into the hike and disappointingly, nothing too memorable was happening. The sidewalk was still there, as it always was, but now it was without our names adorning the sides of it in bright, obnoxiously bad, spray-painted fonts. Our names, now entombed under the brighter, more obnoxiously bad, spray-painted fonts of Generation Alpha, and Z before them.

The initial rush of adrenaline had worn off, and I forget who finally said it, but we all agreed to call it and head back. I think it was less boredom and more so that we felt a little embarrassed at how immature it all was. I mean, we were closer in age to being the people who say "Aren't you a little old to be trick or treating?" than the people who were a little old to be trick or treating. So, in a collective moment of clarity, we realized that we shouldn't have been doing what we were doing. My friend had to piss before we left, which didn’t help our immaturity rooted insecurities, but he went off to the side to handle his business regardless.

We had explored the secret sidewalk at least a hundred times and felt pretty comfortable knowing our way around. I say this because my friend came back and said he saw something that he had never seen there before. Being the aforementioned stupid men that we were, we couldn‘t resist checking it out.

Through the shrubbery, you could see what looked like a sidewalk on the other side. A real sidewalk, not an aqueduct. Overgrown and beaten, sure, but there was definitely cobble looking stones joined together forming a walkway. We joked and named it the Super Duper Secret Sidewalk.

We decided that we didn't invest years of our life exploring here to not see where it led to. We pushed the branches aside and started to walk it. Walking on this manmade structure in the middle of the wilderness felt unnatural, but the fact that it wasn't destroyed by asshole kids made it feel unexplored by anyone else. That excited us. We all were kind of giddy at the thought of actually discovering something. Usually, all you found out there was crushed Natty Ice cans and the occasional unwrapped condom. This was best case scenario to us because it was new, and also not an unwrapped condom.

Every now and then we'd actually see signs that we weren't the first to walk this path. An occasional sweater, or a beanie, and even a single shoe could be found laying off to the side of the sidewalk. At first, I weirdly found comfort in the discarded clothes. It made me feel less alone that someone had done this before, if that makes sense. Like, trail markers reminding you that what's ahead has been formerly walked. But the further we got, the more that feeling changed.

I didn't clock it at first because of how smoothed down they were, but what I originally thought was cobblestone didn't actually seem to be. It was subtle, but every now and then I'd catch it. Etched in stone were letters and numbers. They were hard to see because the stones were laid out in mosaic fashion. If you just looked at one piece, you could assume they were just scratches, but when you looked at multiple, it became clearer. We were walking on a path made of shattered headstones.

At this point, I noticed that we were growing increasingly irritable. At first, I thought some of us were just tired or hangry, but it got to the point that it was what I would call irrational. Everything seemed heightened and annoying. I actually ended up snapping at one of my friends for dragging their feet and kicking up too much dust. That kind of thing never bugs me, but for some reason, it did in that moment and I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t the only one, either. Simple bickering turned into heated arguments and deep cuts. Our innocent day of nostalgia had become a chore to get through. In retrospect, it’s strange because we were clearly not feeling right, but not once did we talk about turning around and leaving like we planned to previously. Something was luring us deeper.

Finally, we rounded a bend that ended up revealing the last bit of sidewalk just faded away into a big empty field. It felt incredibly anticlimactic. You know the reaction some people have when a movie cuts to black and doesn't stick the landing? The "that's it" kind of feeling? That's how we felt. I think one of us might have even said that out loud. We walked who knows how far and all we got was a lousy field to show for it.

The hills surrounded the field, almost like a cove or a culdesac. Crunchy yellow grass carpeted the ground. In the middle was one, giant, lifeless tree. Which was weird because it was late spring after a really good rainy season, but this tree only wore rigid and empty branches. Once we shook the initial feeling of disappointment, we noticed what looked like pieces of old wood strewn about. Not like fallen branches but more so resembling posts or panels. We felt obligated at this point to investigate it. As soon as we stepped off the path, the air changed. Almost a subtle pressurized feeling.

The wood was clearly from some sort of shelter structure. I couldn’t tell if it was enough to be a house or a hut, but it looked extremely weathered and almost half of the pieces were charred. My friends were trying to puzzle the wood back together, but I couldn’t look away from the tree. One branch in particular. I can’t explain why I was drawn to it. I was standing right under it and almost transfixed. The harder I looked, the more I could hear a sound coming from it. Which didn’t make sense because it wasn’t a windy day, the tree wasn’t visibly moving, but I could one hundred percent hear a sound. Like, a back-and-forth type of sound. Like a swaying that was speaking to me.

A minute or an hour could have passed and I wouldn't have known. I lost track. I was so locked onto the tree, that I hadn’t even noti...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-10-29 02:01:40+00:00.

---

My name’s José, and I (49m) have been married to Kelly (42f) for 6 years. We met at Mexico City International Airport in 2014 — both of us were waiting in a bar for a late-night long-haul to London. She quickly clocked my black epaulettes, each bearing four yellow stripes, then swivelled in her barstool to smile at me. It was an unconvincing smile. I remember that. She looked like she’d been crying.

And I also remember her asking, “Are you flying somewhere far, far away?”

When I revealed my destination, this pretty stranger laughed and said that she would be on my flight. I don’t remember much of what I said, truth be told, but I quipped about her not needing to worry because I’d just read Flying for Dummies. I know. I’m not the first captain to make that joke.

In all honesty, as scummy as it seems, I wanted to impress this heartbroken wife. She captivated me. After all of these years, I still remember every last thing she said. On the other hand, my words and feelings are fuzzy memories. Have been from the get-go. My mother used to say Kelly had put a spell on me.

Anyway, without being prompted, the sullen woman told me her story. That she was enjoying a honeymoon in Mexico, but she’d booked an early return flight home. Kelly explained that her husband, Michael, wasn’t the person he’d purported to be. He was an abuser. A liar.

“And he’s making me tell lies too,” she said. “He emptied me.”

That bizarre and unsettling choice of words would ring in my head for the next 10 years. And only one day ago, after I found and watched that cursed tape, did I finally understand what Kelly meant. I think, at that airport bar a decade ago, she might’ve been warning me to stay away from her. I think that’d been a glimpse of the real Kelly.

But I’m not making sense. Let me explain.

It could’ve ended at the end of that conversation. We could’ve parted ways. I wish we had. But I was compelled to see Kelly again. I know that’s awful. It’s not a habit of mine — falling for a married woman. I just felt something indescribable. Something I now realise may not have been love at all.

I spent a week in London before the return flight to Mexico, so I frequently met up with Kelly at her hotel to check that she was okay. She was too frightened to return to her hometown in Cambridge, as she believed that Michael would find her. Kelly ignored my pleas to report everything to the police, which seemed strange even at the time.

To cut a long story short, we quickly formed a bond, and things didn’t end when I returned to Mexico. I visited Kelly every time I flew to England. She moved to Brighton, so I took the train to see her, depending on where I landed. I once took a short-haul flight from Paris to London just to see her.

A year later, when our relationship inevitably became something more, I’d already made the decision: I wanted to move to England to be with her. I’d been training to become an airport technician, and I secured a job at Heathrow in late 2015. By early 2017, Kelly and I had bought a house together. In 2018, we got married.

I’m obviously fast-forwarding through the ins-and-outs of our relationship, but Reddit isn’t built for essays, is it? I’m here to tell you what I found yesterday morning whilst tidying a storage cupboard.

Kelly’s clusterfuck of clutter, as I like to call it, came tumbling out of the open door and washed over my feet. A stark reminder that weekends shouldn’t be wasted on chores. If I’d been relaxing on the sofa, I might not have discovered what I discovered. Maybe Kelly would’ve disposed of her own clutter, and we would have lived a happy 50 years together.

But I was the one wading through the puddle of forgotten belongings. And what caught my eye during the tumble was a camcorder, surfing atop the junk-heap, which spilled out of its bag. Landed at my feet.

I picked it up and chuckled. I knew Kelly and I were old, but not that old. I had no idea she owned such a relic. And curiosity got the better of me, obviously. Who wouldn’t want to check the contents of a spouse’s dusty tape locked away for who-knows-how-many decades?

When I plugged in the device to charge it, an error message displayed on the ancient screen. I thought I’d been thwarted by tape or hardware degradation. But I fixed everything, unfortunately, by cleaning out filth from the tape slot. Then I rewound the recording and pressed the play icon.

The white, pixelated text read: 10/09/2014.

For Americans, that’s September 10th, 2014. And I quickly realised that was a week before I first met my wife. Everything slotted together horribly when Kelly stepped out of a hotel bathroom in wedding lingerie.

I realised what kind of tape I’d found.

Don’t think less of me for watching. It wasn’t like that. Even degenerates, I assume, don’t want to watch the person they love share such intimacy with someone else — let alone an abusive ex-husband. And Michael was abusive. Kelly wasn’t lying about that. But she’d only ever told me fragments of the story.

So, even though I expected a raunchy sex tape, I wasn’t watching for that reason. My eyeballs weren’t springing from their cartoon sockets. Well, okay, I was watching the video keenly, but fear rendered me wide-eyed. Not lust. I just knew that something was wrong with the hotel room. The only natural thing in the footage was Kelly.

And as I watched my wife sprawl across the bedsheets, waiting for her filming husband to join her, I eyed the room’s cream-coloured walls. I didn’t give a rat’s rear about the interior design, but something hidden in the paint made me sick. You wouldn’t understand unless you’d seen the video for yourself.

Then something in my head started to ache sharply, much like a migraine brewing behind my sockets. But it wasn’t that. It was a painful urge which prompted each of my squeaking eyes to twist. I looked, without even wanting to look, at the edge of the screen. Searched for something that was only just beyond both the border of the video and Kelly’s vision.

I wanted to scream at the younger version of my wife as she lay still. As she watched Michael with caving dimples and a provocative grin. I wanted to scream at her to run, though I didn’t know why I wanted to do so. That was the most terrifying thing of all. I didn’t fear the obvious horror of watching my wife and her ex make love. I feared something else in the room. Something I didn’t understand.

“Get rid of that camera,” Kelly whispered, before wagging her index in a come-hither motion.

Michael’s heavy breathing was not the breathing of a lustful man. It was the laboured breathing of something hungry. Hungry in a way that neither food nor sex could satiate.

“We need to preserve this moment,” Michael said.

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Is that right?”

In response, the man stopped breathing, and my wife’s face changed. Her sultry smile morphed into not a frown, but downturned lips. Lips hanging open in the same horrified expression that I must’ve been wearing whilst watching the tape.

Michael hacked, as if bringing up a hairball, then promised, “I’ll put it down.”

He placed the device on the dressing table and walked over to the bed, but Kelly did not thank him. She whimpered and recoiled. Not due to Michael leaving the camera recording — I don’t even think she’d noticed its red, blinking light.

No, my wife was still frightened because she sensed a presence. Not her husband. Not the room’s seedy atmosphere. Not even the claustrophobic nature of the walls. She sensed the same thing that I sensed, though neither of us knew exactly what we sensed.

“I’m not in the mood anymore…” Kelly whimpered as Michael climbed onto the bed.

He hushed her, stroking the backs of his twitching fingers against her trembling cheek. “Don’t be like that, darling. It’s time to consummate.”

Then Michael gasped like a punctured tyre and shot his head towards the empty corner of the room. He nodded slowly, but neither I nor the recorded version of Kelly saw what he saw.

“If I must,” he told the empty air.

Then came something I still don’t know how to explain.

The plaster rippled as something behind the wall pressed against it. Tried to get out. Like a hand forming a shadow puppet, something about the shape was illusory. It could’ve been a man. Could’ve been a monster. Its outline rapidly changed from a tall thing with arms and legs to a misshapen blob of indiscernible segments.

After less than a second or two of the wall bulging, its plaster flattened again, and the living shape was gone. Kelly screamed in synchronicity with me, but she hadn’t even noticed the anomaly. She was staring, unblinkingly, into her husband’s eyes.

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE, MICHAEL?” she cried.

What terrified me was that, even when the camera caught his face, I didn’t see any supernatural change in Kelly’s former husband. Didn’t see anything other than a very human man — one with an unkind smile and dead eyes, perhaps, but still a man. However, Kelly saw something. Something I didn’t.

Still, all of that pales in comparison to what happened next.

Michael thrust his hand into Kelly’s open mouth, prompting her eyes to open just as widely. Her husband’s whole forearm plunged into her jaws, muffling her series of screams. Then my wife wriggled and squirmed as Michael propelled his upper arm down her throat. Pushed deeper and deeper until his shoulder met her lips.

Another impossibility followed. One that ...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ezekiel_h_graves on 2024-10-29 01:42:20+00:00.

---

About a month ago, my five-year-old son Luke became obsessed with an old teddy bear. It was falling apart—one eye missing, stuffing leaking out—but he refused to let it go. He called it "Mr. Bear," though he never named it before. My wife and I decided to throw it away while Luke slept.

The next morning, he woke up frantic. “Where’s Mr. Bear?” he screamed, terrified. It wasn’t just a normal tantrum. Luke was pale, shaking, like something terrible had happened. He kept saying, “I have to find him. He’ll be mad at me.”

That night, things escalated. Luke didn’t sleep. He started whispering to someone, pointing at the closet, saying, “He’s here.” I found him wide-eyed and sweating, clutching the bear’s old ribbon. I know I threw that bear away, but the ribbon was back, dirty and frayed, wrapped tight around his little hands.

I tried to take it, but Luke screamed, “Don’t! He’s watching!”

Later that night, I woke up to scratching. I thought it was the wind, but the sound was coming from under my bed. I leaned over, heart pounding, and saw a hand—long, pale fingers with jagged nails—reaching out from beneath the bed. Before I could move, it grabbed my ankle, ice-cold and sharp. I've never felt anything so cold in my life - at least not anything living.

I yanked free, pulling Luke into my arms. Clutching each other's hands, we ran for the door, but as we reached it, something slammed against it from the other side—hard. The door rattled, deep breathing echoed through the room, and claws scraped against the wood. There was something so intense about the scratching, like whatever was doing it would stop at nothing until it broke through.

I turned to Luke, but he wasn’t scared anymore. His face was blank. “You shouldn’t have thrown him away,” he whispered.

The scratching stopped.

I finally opened the door, pulling Luke out of the room. We stayed in the living room that night. I didn’t sleep. The house was quiet, but I could still feel it—him—watching.

The next morning, Luke was different. He just sat in his room, holding the bear’s ribbon. His voice was barely a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’ll bring him back.”

And then I noticed it—dark, wet dirt, scattered across the floor, leading from the bed to the closet.

Luke looked up at me, his eyes dark, hollow. He squeezed the ribbon tightly in his fist.

“You can’t stop him,” he said, his voice cold. “Mr. Bear’s coming for you.”

I’m writing this from my study. The house is quiet now—too quiet. Luke hasn’t made a sound in hours, and I’m too scared to check on him. The ribbon, dirt, the hand… I can still feel the cold grip on my ankle. I’ve locked myself in here, hoping it’ll be enough, but deep down, I know it won’t be. The scratching has started again, faint at first, but it’s growing louder. I hear it coming from under the door, and I know what’s next. There’s no escape. I threw him away, and now he’s coming for me.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ChickenJeff on 2024-10-28 15:39:24+00:00.

---

I knew one day I would have to tell this story. It took me a year to finally sit down and do it. I’ve been told that doing this could help me move on, but that’s not what this is for. I don’t expect to move on. The girl in 402 will always be with me. I’m telling this story, simply, because I have to.

 

I lived there for two years. It was a tiny little unit, tucked away on the very right of the fourth floor. Bachelor is almost generous. It was the kind of dingy place that never looks bright no matter how many lights you have on, but I liked it. I’m good with a small space, I enjoy not having that much to take care of. I could do without the bug problems, the leaks, the electrical problems, and the rotten smells that just sort of happen, but it is what it is.

 

There was a level of comfort, as well, to living on the fourth floor. Nobody robs a random fourth floor apartment unit. Nobody can peek into your window. It’s unlikely to get shot at… Yeah, I lived in one of those kinds of cities. You didn’t walk around at night if you could help it. You just didn’t.

 

I got accustomed to noise there. The cars, the sirens, the dogs barking, the shouting, the occasional echoing pop of a gunshot. It all becomes a whirling auditory soup. I learned to tune it out fairly quickly. In fact, I learned to tune out a lot of things.

 

I was in one of those periods of life that I think some people call “the grind” but really it’s more like being beaten into submission. Working to live, living to work – not living at all, just continuing to exist. All of this to say, I wasn’t very perceptive or sociable at this time. I was sleepwalking and daydreaming through life.

 

I’d say I could do my routine blindfolded except for the fact that I would stub my toe in the same spot on the coffee table 4 times a week at least. Funny how that works. I guess that was part of the routine too. But that’s what I mean about not being perceptive. The building could’ve caught fire and most days I probably wouldn’t have noticed until I actually went up in flames. I didn’t retain any faces I saw or names I heard. It was all just a blur, each day blending into the next. Until one night.

 

I got home from work like usual in the evening as the sun began to descend past the buildings. I couldn’t afford a car, but thankfully my work was close enough to walk to. The days were getting shorter now so my walks home became more brisk.

 

The apartment still smelled of dust and paint as they had finally sent someone to replace a moldy bit of wall the day before. I could still feel the sensation of dust collecting on my tongue when I opened my mouth and it getting sucked into my nose with every inhale. The smell of paint was strong, but infinitely better than some of the other smells.

 

I opened the window to attempt to ventilate the place, I emptied the bucket of rust coloured water collecting in the bathroom (they couldn’t be bothered to fix that as well), and I collapsed onto my bed. This was my ritual. After every work day, I would always take 10-15 minutes to just spread out on my bed like a cat and decompress from everything. But tonight, after about two minutes, I heard a noise.

 

This noise stood out from all the outdoor soup because it sounded a lot closer, and it sounded like a voice. A soft, feminine voice; making some kind of subtle moan or whimper. I froze in place. It startled me. It sounded SO close. Like it might be in the room. I didn’t move a muscle; I didn’t want to make a noise. I wanted to hear it again so I could tell where it was coming from. For a second I thought it might be coming from under my bed.

 

After a few seconds, the sound repeated. A faint, girly whimper. A bit louder than the last one. This time I could tell where it was coming from. It was behind me. Specifically, the other side of the wall behind my bed. That gave me some relief. It was my neighbor.

 

But then I was confused. I didn’t remember EVER hearing my neighbor making noise before. If I could suddenly hear a noise that soft, that mild, why couldn’t I hear anything before? Did I even have a neighbor before? Is this person new? I felt a rush of shame at just how detached I had become.

 

I reached back into my mind to try and recall any memories I had about my neighbor. I couldn’t find a single one. I remembered some people being on my floor, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone enter or exit the door next to mine. I did, however, recall seeing people yesterday morning trying to move a couch up the stairs in the lobby. It was a fairly regular occurrence to see things like this. People rotated in and out of this place all the time. I suppose nobody else really wanted to stick around that long, and I can see why. But I guess that answers it. As peculiar as it is, I didn’t have a neighbor before - for two years - and now I do. And now they’re… whimpering? Why are they whimpering?

 

Slowly these sporadic whimpers become more defined sobs. A woman was crying. I didn’t know what to do. I just decided to be as quiet as possible and put on some headphones to let them have their privacy and spare myself from feeling any more awkward. It felt wrong to hear this, and I immediately felt bad for this person. I made sure to play some extra loud music.

 

About an hour later, I removed my headphones and the noises had stopped in the interim. I very briefly debated going over and telling them about how thin the walls apparently are, but I made the much easier decision to wait. Wait until they do something loud and not so private so I can use that as the excuse. Like the TV or something. I was weighing my options. But I couldn’t talk to them about THIS. I couldn’t say “Hey you were crying real loud over there.”

 

The rest of the night was quiet but I didn’t have the best sleep. This disturbance in the routine, and the thought of having to face this person at some point was giving me some anxiety. By the morning, however, the alarm kicked me back into the routine. I heard no noises from the neighbor, so life resumed.

 

I got back home from work that night, much later than usual because someone decided to no-show at work. Walking home in the dark made me paranoid and I hated days when this happened. When I got inside I was relieved, and the dust and paint were not nearly as oppressive to the senses this time. I did the window, the water bucket, and then collapsed on the bed like clockwork. What happened yesterday was still on my mind, so I made sure to be extra quiet when laying down. After a few seconds of silence, I was ready to try and remove the whole ordeal from my brain. Then I heard the voice.

 

I couldn’t make out the first word I heard from the other side of the wall, but I listened for the rest.

 

“It was a poetry book.” I heard in a muffled but distinctly feminine voice. Quieter than yesterday, I thought. She must be further away from the wall.

 

“I can’t remember exactly.”

 

“It always feels like we’re going somewhere.”

 

“Maybe that’s why we see them most at night.”

 

“I mixed up our glasses.”

 

There was a moderate gap of a few seconds between everything she said. Clearly, I was only hearing half of a conversation. Phone conversation most likely, or else the other person is just insanely quiet.

 

It was difficult to gauge her tone from how muffled the voice was, but there was a kind of melancholy in it. I wondered what was going on, and I kind of laughed at how random the phrases were. I thought about listening further but I stopped myself. It wasn’t my business. It’s not for me to hear. I once again thought about going over and letting her know about the noise, but it didn’t feel like a good time. I put on my headphones once again to try and enjoy the minimal amount of respite I had left in the day, and that was the end of it for that night.

 

The third night I got home on time. I was a bit surprised not to hear anything from her at first. I guessed that maybe she went to bed early or went out for the night. It was Friday after all, usually people do things on Friday nights. I still made sure to be quiet when near her wall just in case she was sleeping. I made a mental note to look up how much soundproofing panels cost. I probably should have thought of that earlier.

 

I got up from my 15 minute “work sucks” bed sprawling and headed over to my computer to do that important research, but – as I often did – I forgot my coffee table exists and I stubbed my toe. The heavy table shifted inches across the wooden floor and pain shot through me like a shockwave. I don’t remember which expletive left my mouth involuntarily that time, but it was definitely one of them. I was so annoyed. Every damn time. I could just move the table, why don’t I ever just move the fucking table?

 

“Are you okay?” My heart leapt in my chest. I physically jumped back on one leg. I thought she wasn’t home, and I forgot how close she could sound. It scared the shit out of me. She also spoke quite loudly, she probably assumed it would be harder to hear through the wall than it was.

 

“Oh. Yeah. I’m good. Sorry. I just stubbed my toe.” I responded back in a shaky voice.

 

 “Shit. That sucks.” I could hear a chuckle in her voice, she was clearly amused. Her volume decreased to match mine.

 

I laughed in return, “It happens ALL the time… So sorry to disturb you.”

 

“No no it’s fine, I’m just reading… You sure you’re good? That sounded violent.” She responded, ...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/sandboy810 on 2024-10-28 16:11:33+00:00.

---

I was born in Sunset Bay, Florida, or at least I thought I was born there. I thought I was raised there, spent seventeen and a half years of my life there, went to school there, had my first kiss there, and almost lost my virginity there, but now I can’t even be sure. You see, as far as the world seems to be concerned, there is no such place as Sunset Bay, Florida, and there never was.

Unfortunately, this story began with Hurricane Milton. As we’re all well aware by now, Milton was utterly devastating for many fellow Floridians this month, and let me just say that my heart goes out to them all, well and truly. Luckily for me, though, I’d moved out of Florida with my family in 1995, just a few months before I turned eighteen, and I now reside in British Columbia, here in Canada.

Understandably, though, when I heard that Milton made landfall in Florida, I was concerned for my hometown. I’d never been incredibly attached to Sunset Bay, and frankly, it’d been years since I’d even thought of the place- I have two sons and a wife, so there are more important things in my life than reminiscing about my formative years down south. However, when I learned Milton had made a pass around near Big Cypress down by Ochopee, that got my blood pumping something fierce. You see, Sunset Bay is (or was, or maybe never was) only a handful of miles away. 

Naturally, I hopped on my computer when I got the chance and did some searching. I looked up ‘Hurricane Milton Sunset Bay’. At first, I was relieved to find I’d come up with zero results. I figured that meant there hadn’t been anything newsworthy there, which could’ve been good news in and of itself. But I was soon struck by the realization that I wasn’t seeing any news about Sunset Bay because the search engine had taken the liberty of assuming I was asking about Sunset Beach down on Treasure Island. So I tried rephrasing- ‘Hurricane Milton Sunset Bay, Florida, Ochopee’, but… Nothing.

All I got was a handful of irrelevant pages on Sunset Beach, Siesta Key, and even Tampa. I was hit each time with a prompt asking me something like ‘Did you mean Hurricane Milton Sunset Beach’? I found myself, like a real old man, sitting there while verbally beginning to chew out the computer.

“No,” I would say, “NO, not Sunset Beach, Sunset Bay.”

I found myself getting so fed up with what I took to be some sort of Abbot and Costello-style mixup that I ended up trying to soothe my seething self by simply typing in ‘Sunset Bay’ with the hope that’d get me somewhere, but to my shock and SEVERE annoyance, I found myself yet again redirected to Sunset Beach. For context, Sunset Beach is a whole five or so hours from where Sunset Bay should be, they are not the same place in any sense of the word. 

I found myself seething even further, typing in ‘Sunset Bay’ into my search bar with every sort of permutation I could think of. ‘Sunset Bay’, ‘Sunset Bay Florida’, ‘Sunset Bay, Florida’, ‘Florida Sunset Bay United States’, ‘Sunset Bay Ochobee Florida United States’, but never got a SINGLE result. 

By then, I was livid, but I was also determined- determined to beat the computer, as dumb as that sounds, to get the results I was looking for. Call me stupid, call me stubborn, call the endeavour pointless, I simply wanted it to work, ONCE. But it never worked, not even once. Not even a hint of acknowledgement that Sunset Bay EVER existed. Not even Google Maps would acknowledge its existence- believe me, I tried.

Eventually, it got to the point where I figured that the only way to get this damn thing working would be to stop looking up Sunset Bay itself and instead look up some specific place in Sunset Bay that may have some sort of website, maybe online reviews, maybe a blog post… something, anything.

So I took a pause, rolled back from the desk, furrowed my brow, and got to thinking. I tried to think of where the most significant, internet-worthy place from back home might be, but the moment the neurons began firing off in my mind I was struck with a pain so intense I can hardly even describe it. I’d imagine it felt like how it would feel if your skull was cleaved apart with an axe and then boiling pitch was poured into the gaping wound. I screamed my lungs out, grabbed my head with both hands and came careening down onto the floor, gasping and panting like a drowning man.

The world felt like it was going out of focus, but, my ear on the ground, I could hear the dull footsteps of my eldest son running into the room, followed shortly by my wife, as they hoisted me onto my feet as best they could. They asked me what was wrong, and why I had shouted, and I could only respond by telling them it was probably nothing, just a bad headache. Even so, my wife, who has some sort of sick addiction to these medical channels on YouTube, made me promise to see a doctor because she told me there was something called ‘Thunderclap Headaches’ and they could be a sign of something really dangerous. Before you ask, no, I haven’t gone yet, but I’m booked in for next week with my GP.

To my relief, it seemed as though as soon as the subject was changed and my mind drifted back from the vague memories of my home town, I felt good as new again, as though nothing had even happened. I gave my family reassurances as best as I could, gave my wife a quick kiss and my son a hug, and placed myself firmly back down in my chair.

I was back in the saddle, and I hadn’t been bested yet. 

“Piece of shit,” I murmured as I slapped the keyboard, looking up to see my wife, hand outstretched with some Tylenol for me, to whom I quickly clarified that the computer was the piece of shit, not her. She gave me a quick, understanding chuckle, and left, leaving me alone once again with my new arch nemesis, the computer.

However, it only took me a few more failed searches to get utterly fed up, and one “Ah, to hell with it…” later I was storming out of the room, throwing in the metaphorical towel.

I had better things to do with my time… Or so I thought. Because, that night, as I lay in bed, I found myself grumbling, huffing and puffing to myself like a candy-deprived child about the whole debacle. However, the more I ran over the whole situation in my mind, the more my frustration began to morph into unease, and the more thoughts like ‘Why the hell couldn’t I find anything about Sunset Bay?!’ to ‘Why couldn’t I find anything about Sunset Bay?’ Surely it’s an abnormal occurrence for a town with a public school, thousands of residents, and several notable businesses to simply disappear not just from the map, but from the veritable neo-library of Alexandria that is the internet, right?

I couldn’t take it any more. My annoyance had morphed into an overwhelming sense of dread, and I found myself in desperate need of SOME assurance that this was all some huge mistake. So I went digging- not through the computer this time- but through an old wicker cabinet by the edge of the bed full of keepsakes and mementoes. After a few moments of searching I found what I was looking for: my middle-school yearbook from Sunset Bay Public School- an incredibly creative name, trust me, I know.

To not wake my wife I slipped away with the book back into my office, cracked it open across the desk like some sort of ancient scroll, and found my dread quickly turning to terror.

There I was- my page was bookmarked- and to my right should have been Brock Tanner, but I found my greasy, pimple-pocked face next to a pale, grey square, and below, where the name should have been, was an amorphous black smudge like the ink had been nearly rubbed out with a cloth. 

A misprint, maybe? I thought so, but I became less and less certain the more laminated pages I turned, finding myself faced with an ocean of grey squares and black smudges swirling into a blobby mess like a horrifying Rorschach test occasionally broken up by a calm, unbothered young face on whom the horror of this whole ordeal was understandably lost. 

Eyes glued to the page, I found myself fumbling for the landline, dialling the school’s phone number as if from muscle memory from all those days playing hookey as a kid. It never even crossed my mind that even if this was all some huge misunderstanding, they’d certainly be closed in the dead of night. 

But the phone rang. It rang, and rang… and then it rang again, but a little softer… and softer still. The quivering sounds of the line grew faint and distant, quieter still, as though the phone were being dropped down a bottomless pit, falling away until it was entirely indistinct. I nearly screamed in surprise when breaking up the dead silence, a robotic voice boomed, crackling and monotone, telling me the call was unable to be completed as dialled, before booting me out, leaving me right back where I started, eyes wild, panting in distress, fists clenched on the arms of my chair.

“Mackenzie, Mackenzie…” I stammered to myself, in a fervour now, glancing down at the face of Mackenzie Connors, one of the few remaining human buoys in the ocean of nothingness which glared back at me from the page.I went right to the computer, booted it up, and typed in ‘Mackenzie Connors, Sunset Bay, Florida’, and to my surprise and delighted relief I was able to find what seemed to be her LinkedIn page which, while having no visible mention of Sunset Bay, did mention that she was from Florida, and she looked to be about the right build and age to be her.

...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/bloodoftheforest on 2024-10-27 19:43:38+00:00.

---

Of all of the living people involved in this story, I'm the only one who didn't see a single thing until it was far too late. Any of the others would be more qualified to tell it but here we are, over a decade later, and none of them really feel like talking. Can't say I blame them. But for reasons that will be apparent much, much later I feel like someone has to tell people and until somebody else writes something better, this account will have to do.

Being a pilot isn't like you imagine it'll be when you're a kid. It's stressful, the hours are weird and whilst the constant travel is exciting it also makes holding down a long term relationship incredibly difficult. It's common not to seek professional help for stress, bereavement or trauma for fears that you'll be diagnosed with anxiety or depression... a diagnosis that gives you a fun choice between being grounded for months at a minimum or lying on the next medical and facing a fine and jail time. You can go to beautiful new countries and be too tired and busy to even get a look around and whilst I don't think that flight crews are necessarily more prone to drama than any other profession it can can get intense fast.

But I loved it. It seems childish to say but if the flight I'm about to recount had never happened then I probably would have been flying until my body or brain were no longer up to the task, whichever gave up first. It just feels like where I'm meant to be. Not in some deep, spiritual sense but more the quiet kind of "ah yes, this is correct" that some people might get when clicking the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle or cooking a particularly satisfying bowl of pasta. That day was no different. I pushed the throttles forwards and everything felt fine. We picked up speed and everything felt normal, Mark called out to let me know we'd reached 80 knots and everything felt normal. Hell, not even normal -- things were good. There were no real crosswinds to speak of and whilst Mark had used aftershave he hadn't practically showered in it like the last guy I'd flown with so that was a welcome relief.

Given that I'm not meant to be telling you anything at all I can't afford to give away too many details about the flight itself. It was a smaller plane, I don't see any harm in saying that, and a route I'd flown before. The first hour of the flight was pleasant, Mark telling me about a greek mythology series I hadn't seen and me segueing this almost seamlessly (well, maybe a little seamfully) into a book I'd read last year that also dealt with mythology in modern times. We actually both wanted different food than each other so there was no awkward discussion as to who was going to get the 'better' option. Utterly nothing interesting happened but why would I need it to? At that stage of a flight interesting was just another word for bad and Mark was lively enough conversation that I wasn't gettting bored.

"I'm changing careers," Mark said out of nowhere, "I'm going to become a flight attendant. In fact, I think I'll start right now -- I'm going to go and trade places with Ava, I'm sure she can fly fine."

"Um, what?" I asked, utterly lost.

"I'm going to get Ava to come join you so I can go and take a piss."

"Oh."

Shortly after, Mark had disappeared and been switched with a woman who definitely wasn't Ava.

"I thought Mark said he was switching with Ava." I commented as Karen came to join me.

"Disappointed?"

"Not even slightly." I said, and I meant it.

"Ava's boyfriend is on this flight and so she wanted to keep chatting with him." Karen explained, "Young love. Isn't it just sickening?"

The warm grin on Karen's face made it incredibly clear that she didn't find it anywhere near as annoying as she was pretending to and probably wasn't even bothered.

"How is it back there?" I asked.

"Eh, fine. Talked with Ava's new boyfriend who has apparently 'heard all about' me from that landlord issue I helped Ava with a few months back and I had to pretend I knew all about him too so that's always fun. There's a couple of weird guys in suits who have handed out books. And I had to spend at least ten minutes figuring out who'd switch places with a guy who couldn't sit where he was because of the perfume of the woman next to him. Problem being that both him and the woman were making such a fuss that everyone around knew why he wanted to move and so it wasn't an easy sell."

"Was he allergic?"

"No, he just said it smelled to bad to be next to."

"Did it?"

Karen pulled a face.

"It... wasn't great."

Mark would undoubtedly be taking his time to stretch his legs and possibly even try to catch up with Ava before he headed back to the cockpit. Technically he shouldn't be gone any longer than needed but walking around to stretch out his legs could be argued as necessary and he was almost never gone so long that I actually begrudged him the break.

"What's weird about the suit men?" I asked Karen, "Are the suits odd or something else?"

"Well, they've given everyone on the plane a book, so that's pretty weird. The books are really small but even so their bags must have been stuffed with them."

"What's in the book?"

Karen shrugged.

"I didn't get one, they were just handed out to the passengers. There's nothing on the front of them and when I asked Tyler what was in it he said it looked like nonsense."

"Tyler?"

"Ava's boyfriend. Come on now k-"

Karen cut herself off as I moved to let Mark back in.

"What's with the yellow books?" he asked her before she left.

"No idea. I've already told Matt all I know."

Mark looked at me questioningly.

"So are the books a religious thing then?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

He had no further questions and so I thought that was that.

______

Karen came back to the cockpit ten minutes later, which was noteable in itself. For those who haven't flown much or have just never really noticed -- the cockput isn't somewhere that anyone can freely wander in and out of. Outside of certain very specific circumstances, the door doesn't even open from the passenger side of the plane without persmission from one of the pilots and Karen's claim that she 'had a letter' for us was extremely suspicious. It wasn't what she would say to us if she was being threatened though and so, perhaps against better judgement, we let her in.

To my surprise, Karen actually was holding a letter in her hands. Nobody was stood next to her to try and force their way in as I'd feared but she looked shaken.

"It's for either of you." she said as she went to hand me the letter only to jerk it back at the last second, "Actually maybe I should hold it for you to read."

"What, you think it's laced with arsenic?" Mark joked.

"Just don't touch it."

"Why?" Mark asked.

"Because I've read it and it's weird."

Karen isn't an easy woman to shake up. Being a flight attendant is her second stab at life, something I learned after admitting to her that I wished I gave as few fucks in life as she did. "Well, you try being married to a monster for two decades and maybe it'll sort you out too," was what she'd told me at the time and as we'd had time to talk she'd given me a cliffnotes of the whole sorry saga. As well as a relentless enthusiasm when it came to trying new things she also creditted being married to an abuser with her complete lack of patience with bullies. After the things that her ex husband had done to her when she'd felt utterly trapped and alone the things any future bully would do when she had the power to walk away or scream at them just seemed toothless in comparison. Or to quote her directly, "What're they going to do marry me?"

Mark and I read the letter in silence. I don't have a copy and probably can't remember it word for work but the gist of it was that the letter writer wanted us to divert the plane in order to move some cargo. If we chose not to, people would die. If we chose to land in a different airport, people would die. If we even contacted anybody on land, people would die. The letter writer said that the first person would die in ten minutes and as a show of good faith and their commitment to the cause, it would be one of their group. After that every ten minutes it would be someone new, chosen at random. If the letter writer was killed or knocked out then this would not stop new people from dying, the only way that letter writer would let us all live was if we fufilled his demands entirely. Then, at the bottom of the letter, a latitude and longitude.

"What the fuck..." Mark whispered.

Karen folded the note back into her pocket.

"It's from the men with the suits and the books."

Mark stood up.

"Well, I'm going to have a talk with them then. Tie them up and tell them not to menace people on our fucking plane."

"No," Karen said firmly, "you both need to stay here in case... well, in case. And they're both already tied up now."

"What, how?" Mark asked.

I don't know if I believe that Mark could physically restrain two men by himself. He's undoubtedly a strong man, he goes to the gym as often as he gets a chance to, but two against one doesn't sound like great odds. Karen however finds the gym boring and whilst she is fit enough to go on infrequent hikes and dabble in other physical pursuits she doesn't look particularly strong.

"They just let me," Karen said, seemingly taking no offense at the question, "I got some cable ties and they offered their wrists up and told me that they aren't armed anyway. They we...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Morris_Widdler on 2024-10-27 15:35:47+00:00.

---

The night I drove alone was alike any other, I was on my way home after visiting my girlfriend just a few nights ago, we had to move separately from one another recently and she now lives over an hour and a half away.

We have been semi-long distance in our relationship for a few months at this point. Since we both had newly upgraded jobs that we were becoming accustomed to, along with her schoolwork further burdening our schedules, I accepted the role of the commuter if we wanted to see each other and I became very used to it.

When our schedules just barely align, if the cosmos deems it fit, I’ll be able to see her before a workday. However, that also entails having to drive home the very same night once we’re satisfied with the amount of time we spent together. It’s a long commute just to see your partner for a short visit, but we’ve made it work without complaints.

It was around 1:22 in the morning on the lonely four-lane road in the middle of the desert, and I was well into my journey by this point. It had been dark for hours; there wasn’t a streetlamp or guiding light in sight. My headlights and the moon nestled high above were my only assistance in partially illuminating the road, while my only companions were a stray car along the highway every so often, joined only by the distant stars in the endless night sky.

Passing a nearby mile marker and judging by the information offered by my GPS, I should arrive home no later than 2:15 this night. After making a regular commute like this I’ve noticed that my eyes and mind will wander to fill the empty space when thoughts, music and podcasts are no longer sufficient to occupy my time.

To the soft opening guitar of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” I began to further dissociate while I was gazing through my windshield upward at the stars. It’s incredible just how many you miss by living in a city with light pollution; similarly, it’s amazing how many there are in general. However, I began to notice there were only a few very bright stars apparent tonight; the rest must have been far too distant or the moon too full, overshadowing the rest.

One of these stars in particular was far brighter than the others, resting steadily in the middle of a faint blanket that hung directly overhead. A planet? I pondered longingly as I continued to observe, while trying to decipher some hidden picture or constellation it may have possibly comprised.

Strangely and without any warning, the very same final, brightest star I was directly focusing my eyes on moved and began to fall.

It had broken my trance, it was seeming to drop right out of the sky north of me, in a slight curve disappearing behind the mountains. How odd- I thought, It was a little jarring to say the least. Of the few visible stars out this night, the one I was actively watching suddenly started to move and then rapidly descend right in front of my eyes?

I’m miles from civilization, did I witness a shooting star? Possibly, my thoughts even went as far as to ponder it being a real live UFO.

Thousands of stars.. Hiding a thousand million others behind vast Emptiness. it’s a strange feeling when you begin to think about just how small You are among them.

It didn’t make sense, but I dissuaded it. Maybe I had somehow witnessed the birth of a shooting star if that were possible? I should’ve made a wish.

Something strange began to happen moments later. The horizon beyond the mountains began to brighten in a red glow, which was steady, and rapidly growing. The color was vast, so vast that it made the environment around me wash over with a faint red tint, its beauty was lessened by the terror it ensued, as well as the imminent danger I then began to feel as I could now see even more of the darkened valley.

My head was on a constant swivel, I looked curiously in awe out of every window in my car. I was now certain what I had seen was a single great meteor that must have struck down, the terminal velocity followed by the massive impact caused the fire-like luminescence of the valley. The only problem however was that the red glow did not waver nor dissipate, and it had set in long after when I anticipated the impact should’ve been.

I could still hear my music playing, but it felt distorted and wrong. The lyrics seemed to come sooner, and sometimes later than I remembered in the song, even the volume raised and lowered as if it was traveling around me, both nearer, and further away, the verse even repeated itself halfway through. Simultaneously, my car began to change as well, it felt like I had lost what gear I was in and began changing acceleration without any alteration from the pedal.

Yet, nothing was actually different to my knowledge, aside from the constant dimming and brightening of the lights. My speedometer never changed, the time on my songs never differed, it was almost as if -I- was what had been out of sync with reality.

Suddenly the engine cut-out and my car slowed to a crawl as I tried my best to pull off the road onto the shoulder. Not even seconds later I felt a strange feeling, it was like a blink, not with my eyes but with… my mind. It was as if one moment shifted to the next in a blur and I was absent to all stimuli in between.

It is difficult to describe, but blinking is the closest description I can grasp as a tangible explanation. It felt closer to being locked in a small room with someone who had turned on an antique light switch that took a moment to power on, and when it did, suddenly everything was different.

I was now pulled over to the side of the road further up than I remembered. I was standing outside of my car with the door ajar, staring upward at the stars. I blinked rapidly while trying to take in my surroundings, the few headlights I could observe behind and in front of me seemed to have come to a halt as well.

I was mystified, but I still knew I had to get back in the car and make it home.

Why did my car fail, and why was I outside? How did I not remember?

I tried to start the ignition, after a few attempts ever slowly and sluggishly the engine finally turned over and roared to life, I quickly began to drive again, resuming my journey despite all was still not normal, my clock read 2:30 AM. My delirium and de-synchronization from my surroundings furthered.

I felt the world blink again not long after. I could see my hands on the wheel and the interior of my car, but the road and everything outside was now gone, the stars were all I could see. I could feel the rumbling vibration from the old road beneath me, yet it was no longer there. I was traveling through the air itself, there were no mountains, no road, no trees, or anything. It was as if I was driving a slow-moving plane through the enormous red-tinted night sky unbound.

I was equally terrified and bewildered. Had I fallen asleep and began to dream of the journey set before me? Surely I wasn’t stuck in the sky, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the inside of my car felt more like a cage than ever before.

This lasted for what felt like multiple minutes, but with another blink, I was suddenly returned to solid ground. I was standing upright and outside on the road again. I had been joined by multiple others closer by, as I now could see numerous vehicles paused on the shoulder, their cars running but vacant, the driver looming still as stone, gazing at the stars.

As we watched, more stars began to fall. Not just one like the first, I counted 3, then 5, then there were so many that I could no longer keep track. All of the stars were falling from the blood-red sky, all of them.

They were falling in different directions unlike the first, as if they were miniscule lightbulbs held on by strings that were cut, rapidly beginning descent in the distance beyond the mountains. The color of the sky had deeply saturated everything a crimson hue, I was convinced I now wore contacts with a blood-red filter.

I began to feel empty and more.. Alone than I ever was before in the vast absence of space. Reality as I know it was wrong. Everything was fading. the sky was black.

The blink came and I was driving again, but I did not recognize where I was. Every light in my dashboard console was on, warning lights and all. There was an alarm bell sounding as if the door had been left open, or my seatbelt unfastened. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” was playing still, softly repeating the line “How I wish, how I wish you were here” I could barely focus, my vision blurred. I felt as if I had recently polished a 6 pack.

There were fewer headlights on the road now, spread much farther apart. The beams they emit appeared as red spotlights casting a long silhouette of a lone driver gazing upward, the dim hue appeared as if they were shadow figures, standing alone unmoving, persevering through the night still as a stone guardian to await my arrival in joining their endless dreamscape.

“How I wish, how I wish you were here”

The road was repeating, the familiar drive I was so accustomed to was completely wrong. I had sworn I already passed the right leaning turn around the mountain before the immediate leftward curve straight into the plains a few miles from home twice before, yet now it twisted in an illogical pattern. I had no idea my speed, but I was steadily increasing it hoping to break away from this terror.

The clock read 3:40 AM. *That can’t be right...

---

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