Them

I've always lived inside the walls.

I asked the big people, including my mommy and daddy, but they always told me they would let me know when I was old enough. I listen, though. I often hear weird sounds and bangs. When people go missing, it is often because of "them."

On a hot day in my tenth summer, my daddy told me it was time. We walked towards the wall and they dropped a ladder. We climbed up.

The weird sounds were really loud, now. I looked over the wall to the large world outside. What I noticed was the gray skin, the gnashing teeth, and the wounds in their skin.

It was then that I realizd that the "them" were once us and they were hungry.

(This story is credited to a person called Richard.)

Black Widow

When I was twenty-four, working as a teaching assistant at my alma mater, I met her. She was the girl of my dreams, gorgeous and smart and sweet and funny. She was one of those rare girls, no skeletons in her closet, no weird habits, was comfortable in her own body, and I fell for her - hard. She was a student in my class, and every Tuesday was just heaven because she even signed up for my lab time. I wanted to sing when I saw her come in the first time, her glossy black hair in a neat ponytail (if you cared, she was of Asian descent).

So I talked to her, got to know her, and started dating her at the end of the semester. All through spring we got closer, though we never slept together, and I knew by the time summer came that this was the girl I wanted to marry. So, because my mother raised me right, I set it up that she'd come back home with me for a week to meet my family - I assumed that we'd go and meet hers later in the summer.

At the end of the week (my family loved her, thanks for asking) I mentioned meeting her parents. She paused for a moment and said, "Well...I guess, but my family's a little weird."

I didn't think anything of it - she was probably worried about culture-clash. "Babe, you just spent a week with my crazy redneck family, I'm sure I can deal with yours."

She shrugged and that was that. She went back home for the rest of the summer, and we would meet at least once a week just to hang out.

And near the end of July, I went to spend a week with her family. As I thought, she'd been over-exaggerating. Her mom was a real polite lady,with a habit of covering her mouth when she smiled. Her grandma was one of those tiny little old Japanese ladies who didn't seem to speak English. Her little sister was very shy around me and barely spoke, usually looking down and away from me. Her dad, as far as I could understand, was often out on business and I didn't meet him.

We slept in separate rooms because, well, her mom was pretty strict about that. And this is where it gets weird - the first night, I heard a weird...scuttling noise. There's no other way to really describe it. It bothered me, so I got up and locked the door and turned on the light - nothing in my room. I laughed it off and went back to sleep.

When I asked them about it in the morning, her mother seemed discomforted by my question. She reluctantly told me that there were some rats in the attic, and they didn't have the money to get the exterminators. I laughed and let her know that I could deal with a few rats. For the next few days, we all went out to visit the local sites, and though my girlfriend looked concerned at times, all I did was laugh off any weirdness. Like when her grandmother creaked out something at the zoo at the kangaroos and I asked her about it - she told me that apparently her grandmother thought they looked tasty. Or when her sister refused my offer of ice-cream because she was lactose intolerant - though my girlfriend had enjoyed desserts with me before. Stuff like that seemed more or less the standard level of weird for cross-culture relationships, though, like the stewed fish with the heads still on.

The scuttling about never stopped, and I guess I should've gotten used to it, though there was still something about it that bothered me. I couldn't put my finger on it. So at the end of the week, I finally decided to sneak out and check out the attic. I'm no fool, so I brought a good flashlight, told my girlfriend (who frowned and told me that this was a bad idea and that she didn't want me to get bitten), and found a nice sturdy stick in the back yard. I quietly pulled down the attic stairs, shining my light into the darkness. Nothing.

So I climbed up and took a look around. It was weird. There wasn't really much in the attic, just some boxes labeled with whatever was in the - "Christmas Decorations," "Stuffed Animals," etc, but in the corner there was a small cot. I knew right then that I should've left well enough alone, but I'd already gone this far, so I moved towards it. There was no one on it, just a blanket and a pillow, and I was a few feet away when I felt something bite my ankle. I swept the flashlight around, panicking, and saw a fleeting shadow at the edge of the beam.

My mother didn't raise any idiots, so I got out of there right then. I hobbled down the stairs as fast as I could, down the hallway to my room, and closed the door. My ankle hurt like hell and was swollen. Whatever it was, I wasn't about to wake everyone up because I'd been poking around their house, so I figured I'd try to sleep it off.

The scuttling.

I woke in the dark. My leg was on fire. The pillow was damp from my sweat. I felt sick. I turned the light on, and there she was.

She was a middle-aged lady, naked and unkempt, with long tangled black hair. She was thin to the point of being skeletal, with a strangely round abdomen, kind of like what you see on starving people, with a thick red welt in the middle. It scared the living daylights out of me to see her there, but it scared me more when I could see her face, because she was smiling. Her eyes were dark, black from corner to corner, with no trace of a pupil or white, and her mouth was unusually wide, and her teeth were missing. Well, mostly missing. Two close-set black fangs poked out of her gums.

I screamed bloody murder and scrambled back against the headboard.

She lifted her lips at the sound and raised her arms. I noticed with horror the crusted grime around her fingernails. I was going to die. She was going to cut my throat with those ugly talons and I was going to bleed out and then I was going to die.

The door slammed open and my girlfriend grabbed the monstrous woman by the arm, speaking rapidly in a foreign language. Her mother came in right behind her, and I couldn't believe it when they dragged the thing out of the room. I sat alone for a few minutes, sweating from pain and fear.

Her little sister peeked in around the door, and when I didn't start screaming again she came and sat down at the foot of my bed. We sat quietly and listened to the attic stairs slam upwards. She sighed and smiled in either hope or relief - it didn't matter, because I felt my heart stop in my chest - right in front of her bright white, human teeth, there were two small, sharp black fangs.

"I guess you met Auntie Lacey, hunh?"

(This story is credited to a person called Yuki.)

The Dying Soldier

Has anyone heard of the dying soldier from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time?

Many simply pass by him in Back Alley of Hyrule Castle's Market Town, but in the finished game he appears right after you get the Ocarina of Time and tells you to go to the Temple of Time. After telling you this, he stops moving and is presumably dead.

However, in an early build of the game he played a very different role and led you to a different place.

Just like many who played the finished version, many testers passed over the dying soldier. Those who found him were treated with a surprise. For finding him, they were given a key to Hyrule Castle. Some testers thought this key would lead them to the Triforce, as the key had the Triforce symbol engraved upon it.

They followed the tip the soldier gave and entered the path leading to Hyrule Castle. When they entered, they noticed something was off. There were no guards protecting the grounds from tresspassers. The gate was open. The sound was mute.

As this was an early build of the game, the testers thought this was a simple glitch or bug.

They eventually found their way into an all-new section of Hyrule Castle and continued until they ended up at a locked door. They used the key given to them by the soldier to unlock this door.

Link opened the door very slowly after unlocking it, as if he didn't want to enter, but eventually the door was open and Link walked into the darkness.

A new environment opened up; it was the hall you could see through the window when you first met Zelda. Ganondorf wasn't present and guards were nowhere in sight. But there was...something...that the testers would never forget:

On the other side of the room, they saw the bloody remains of the King of Hyrule. Most testers screamed and some even stopped playing. It was quite a horrific sight. They assumed the king was dead, but when Link walked up to him, a text box opened up.

"He said he would bring help, not a child..."

Knocking on the Door

(THERE WERE A LOT OF IMAGES AND I DECIDED TO USE THE IMAGESHACK EMBED PLAYER TO PUT THEM UP HERE. SOMEHOW IT DIDN'T WORK. BRB.)

When I was about twelve, my friend Kayla told me her parents had bought a second house in Sommerville, Texas and a few weeks later, she invited me along. It was a small neighborhood, so her parents had bought a golf cart to travel to their neighbors if needed, and a lot of people had them, so it seemed liked a good idea.

One day, we charged it up and headed out with a sack lunch, determined to find a nice park or picnic spot. Kayla’s parent’s had gotten the golf cart for her birthday, June 21st. So we had mostly been swimming and we hadn’t seen much of the neighborhood, but now it was a crisp December weekend, we had our cardigans on and were expecting to find something interesting.

I grabbed my camera I had brought with me and we headed out. We drove into a secluded part of the neighborhood we hadn’t noticed before and were horrified at what we saw... and smelled. It smelled, to say the least, like dog shit. We covered our nose but were determined to keep going. Then we saw it, I turned on my camera and took several pictures.

We got up super close (still holding our noses) and the dogs were laying on something; we couldn’t tell what it was. Then the neighbor came out, his eyes that creepy blue like in horror movies and his face written in pain. His eyes locked on mine and he was hobbling towards us on his cane as fast as he could. Kayla screamed and sped away; all I could remember were those horrible blue eyes, burned into my skull.

As I try to remember those blue eyes I get a massive headache. But I must continue. We drove and drove for about thirty more minutes in silence until we were deep in the neighborhood. It was now getting really cloudy and I was about suggest to go home when suddenly, the golf cart broke down. The charge should have lasted about 8 more hours and the battery was fine.

It took us awhile but we finally managed to push it to the side of the road as to not abstruct passing cars. Kayla took the key and walkie-talkie that we had in case we needed help, (signal wasn’t so good out there) but it was dead too. She turned it on and off but it wouldn’t let us talk, we could only hear the other side, what her mom would have been saying.

She put the walkie talkie in her pocket and banged her head against the steering wheel, and stayed like that for a good four minutes. I sat next to her, just staring at something up ahead in the road.

“Kayla.” I said, shaking her shoulder, telling her to lift her head. She lifted her head and her orange hair whipped my face as a gust of wind hit us from behind, it was so hard I turned to see if the wind brought something else, like a piece of cardboard or maybe wood. But there was nothing behind me, so I faced Kayla again.

“What’s that?” She asked, looking straight ahead where I had. She got out of the golfcart and I followed her.

“I- I don’t know, it looks like-“ She shushed me as we were close to it. It was a broken mirror. I attatched a lot of pictures of the mirror, and I took so many because it had writing on it, I took pictures of some of the writing but here is all of what it said. (misspellings included)

“Derek James Cotton!! You are so lame, Steven says your a fagget, (unintelligible) Dick, Derek is Gay, You suck a big cock. Derek, Steven, Loues + Kacy”

By now, we were pretty freaked, but only kind of. Why would someone leave a mirror here? What we thought happened was the mirror must have fallen out of the back of the truck, but wouldn’t you here it and go back to clean up the mess? Another thing we were shoving into the back of our mind was maybe it was there on purpose. That whoever put it there meant to, or maybe they smashed it and just dumped it there.

We tested our theory with a piece of glass, we figured it didn’t just drop because when we threw the glass in the street as hard as we could; it didn’t break until hit it against the ground a few times. It also looked like this Derek fellow, or perhaps someone else, had smashed the mirror before dumping it here, as the frame and cork that held it up behind it, was hanging on by the glue, which was pretty new looking despite being dry and crumbling.

We tried to think reasonably but we kept thinking that Derek did this, and we had to find Derek. Kayla asked what we should do; I said we should clear the glass so as not to cause any cars tire’s to pop. We quickly picked up the pieces of glasses we broke and put it in the ditch next to the mirror. We headed back towards the golf cart but realized it was fucking pointless considering it was broken down and we had no way of getting home or communicating.

“Why don’t we knock on someone’s door?” I asked, but then I realized, besides the house with the dogs and the horrible stench and the man with the blue eyes, there weren’t any houses that actually looked like someone would be there. We walked up to houses that might have people in it and knocked on the door. Each time, I snapped pictures of the houses.

Kayla asked why I was taking pictures, I laughed nervously and said something about wanting to document it or look if it had anything we hadn’t noticed before. We got to this one house that was surrounded by a chicken wire fence, but we took pictures anyway, there were these two creepy masks on the fence that creeped us out and Kayla even pulled out her camera and took some pictures.

We moved onto a trailer that was obviously abandoned but at this point we were looking for anything we could use, or at least ask for directions because we were so deep in this weird part of the neighborhood we couldn’t remember the way we came. There were some cinderblocks that were stacked on top of each other so I stood on them and peered into the trailer, there were a pair of crutches and a wheel chair in a back room. After staring into the room for a long time, I felt a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and ran to the next house.

We ran to another house that was obviously abandoned, by this time, Kayla was almost in tears, and I was trying to keep a straight face, but I wanted to cry too. This house creeped us out also, it had the door wide open, and even when a big gust of wind hit us, the door stayed perfectly open, I could hear bugs and snakes hissing and clicking, making their normal sounds, but it was amplified by the emptiness of the house. Kayla grabbed my hand as I took pictures, her grip arounds my fingers tightened and I dropped my camera.

Then we heard a voice that still makes me get chills whenever I think of what it could have been, I hear it in my head every single night, even more now since I’ve had to dig up all these pictures and remember it all. I can’t remember what it said, I just remember when Kayla heard it she burst in to tears and ran, her hand still latched onto mine, so I had no choice but to run with her. For a long time we ran, and Kayla was crying. I remembered that I dropped my Camera but Kayla wouldn’t go back, I asked her if I could atleast go,but she said she would never let any of us go back. Ever. Again.

And this is where my half of the story pretty much ends, Kayla and I ran to the golf cart, which was now working fine, and turned on the walkie talkie (which was also working fine) I looked at the time on it and realized it was 1:36 only thirty minutes after we had set out. But it had felt like hours. I tried to show Kayla the time but she refused, she said we were going to drive home and never talk about this. Kayla and I went back to the lakehouse and didn’t talk about it, as soon as we pulled into the driveway, Kayla was all smiles, saying how fun it was, and that the golf cart worked fine, and when they questioned me about where my camera was,
Kayla persisted I hadn’t brought it on this trip. We went to bed early that night, well Kayla did anyway, and with nothing else to do, I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning my camera was in my hand, I thought maybe Kayla or her parent’s had found it or something , so I turned it on and saw the pictures I had taken, and new ones, these are the ones I found that I was SURE I hadn’t taken.

The last picture is the lake house, it was taken about the time we were eating lunch because when I woke up the next morning, Kayla’s mom had put away the chairs. I don’t remember seeing anyone out there at that time, (and I think I would have, I was staring out the window) but I do remember seeing broken glass and a tooth where in the street.

Shortly after the trip Kayla died, they said she swallowed her tongue after having a seizure. At the funeral I couldn’t bear to see her dead, it was too much for me, and I left early. I went to Kayla’s grave today, it was very nicely put together, and I was going to take a picture but my camera died as soon as I turned it on, I was able to take some pictures of the outside of the funeral home and around some smaller graves. It was a nice spring day, so despite the graves the cherry trees were in bloom and I had a feeling of optimism.

I got to Kayla’s grave and almost had a heart attack at what I saw; they were four items on the grave. One, the teddy bear from the picture that had mysteriously appeared on my camera, two, the larger mask that had been on the chicken wire fence, three, the smaller one with intricate red paintings on the eyes, and four, a note with a picture attached, “Kayla” it said, I turned it over to look at the picture, it was a picture of Kayla, in the hospital after she had died, there were red X’s over her eyes.

I dropped it in horror and burst into tears. Then I heard the voice again, this time its voice rang clear in my head, my mind. My name. The voice made me fall on the ground and pass out from shock.

Then I woke in my house, in the living room on the table it said one word “Lauren” and on the back it had a picture of me, the angle was looking down at me, my eyes were closed and I was sprawled on the ground of the cemetery, my eyes, though closed were X’d out.

BANG BANG BANG.

Someone is at the door. I’ll be right back.

The Dogs

The Sermon

You got used to the shouts and hollers and keening. You got used to the pleading and imploring and begging. Eventually you got used to the watching, and there was but one more step to the doing. So said our Guide. This much I have to confess - Hear me now!

When the Miracle happened I was a nobody. Even then, It was beautiful. I saw...

I grip my rifle. Not a proper grip, but an embrace. Oh how cold steel reminds me and cautions me on those times of blasphemy. Yes! Even I was once obsessed with precision. And the arbitrary order of things! How many times I have recanted I cannot recall - but now the time for undoing has come. I feel it now.

Hear! I saw men and women and children awash with fear. I saw the futile trappings and semblances give way to greater things. Harken Its tidings! I heard and I answered. I knelt and It told me to stand - I prayed and It told me to do. And I did. And all the Chosen did, and It neared. I was once a worker of cold steel but I heard and stood and did. We knew the bindings were futile and they knew, but they chose to resist. Resist It! They were the heralds, like I, but only fear filled their heads as they viewed their success.

Now I raise this neccessary evil. It clicks and clacks and already it sags. Repent sinners! Repent and rejoice! Our brothers are many and verily the sinners will know the true meaning of salvation.

 

Hear! I saw the Guides, the first prophets. They were unnamed, but they didn't need names - our Guides. Heads upon heads upon heads of equines and bovines and canines piled on amalgamated forms of innumerable maws and limbs and eyes, vestigial skins of their lesser existence clinging still upon rotting legs and repurposed hands of burden adorned in entrails, blind sentience betrayed while our enemies wait with bated breath. Evangelists of futility serving...

They spoke to me. Through no mortal means, surely - I was filled with mortal fear. Fear not! We are angels and prophets. Our mission is true and we ask only for earthly brethren. The unenlightened screamed and blasphemed and they were the first for the feast. I saw the Guides deliver and lo! They grew and salvation was at hand. We are your true saviors, oh mankind.

Oh order! Far too long has this devil oppressed and crushed!

Now I squeeze and feel deteriorating mechanisms punch and work. Work no more they will for either evil or good, as they too will be saved. As I see darkly our unsaved heathens I pray that their salvation be quick.

And now my turn has come! Lo and behold! My form crumbles! Soured and rotted is my visage as I approach It's grandeur! Molder and rot, putrify and decompose and degrade and spoil and pollute - my Guide! It devours!

IT cOmEs! it CoMEs! wE hAve truLy sErvd AnD BIrthEd ANd nOurIsHED oUr gOd. WHaT s a bTtTer ffAtte?? ITT coMeS!

H decy!

O cOrRrPtIn!

Or Gd o enTRpYy!

(This story is credited to a person called Slamet.)

Dead Drop

I only got about half way through one film. The fucked up thing is it looked like it was the layout of the old appartments that were here before these were built. Granted this was only a few years back when the buildings I currently reside in were built, I could still tell the difference. There was a time stamp in the corner and everything.

Basically it started out with a person holding a camera walking into their appartment. Everything was normal for about 15 minutes or so, the person puts their keys on the counter, makes a poptart, and goes back into his one bedroom the appartment has.

I'm gunna go out on a limb and assume this person was a male based on camera angles and actions, though I could be wrong.

So basically, he goes back into the hallway that leads to the bedroom (Two doors, one sep. the living room from hallway, and second goes to actual bedroom.) He shuts the first door behind him and turns on the light. the hallway is covered with old fashion polaroids. I mean COVERED. The walls close to him are a little skimpy but the closer the hallway gets to his room they multiply and get closer together. Almost as if he built a nest of them leading to his bedroom.

He makes his way to his door and unlocks it. flicking on the light, the room looks almost as though he just moved in. average size, 14" by 10" room, queen size bed in the middle, a desk, a tv stand with just a tv on it, and that was literally it. It seemed kind of off. He placed the camera on the ground next to his bed and dug around behind the covers before lifting the sheet to reviel what he was feeling for.

At that very moment, I begged and pleaded that this was all a film project of some sort as the camera focused on a woman, probably age 23-27. Blond short pixie hair, distraught blue eyes, bound and gagged, clearly frightened and alive, but not making a sound. The entire time I watched this I had the mentality that it was all fake, just doctored to mess with someone, but then it got worse.

My skin crawled as he reached and grabbed her by the neck. he very violently yanked her out from under the bed. the camera was idle for a second or two while he rustled around and a quick cut into her lying tied up on the bed. it is now clear why she wasn't making any noise. It looked as though her throat was cut and, as it appeared to me, crudely stiched back up and healed in a very odd manor. But something even weirder caught my eye.

Her fear was seemingly no longer there. She was still breathing heavily but she seemed almost as if she was smiling. This once again put me in a stage of relief, as it looked much more fake. Perhaps someones odd sex play or something. But as I said before, it got worse.

As the camera looked at the girl on the bed, naked, tied, bound, gagged, bruised and bloodied, a knife is shown on frame. almost as iif the man is showing the knife to the camera while still having the girl in the background. I watched in horror as he walked over and pushed the kife tip into her shoulder. She squirmed her hips in the air almost as if she was getting sexual gratification out of this.

I was convinced at that point that it was fake, until he gashed open her arm with it. she bled quite a bit all over the bed, but not as much as i'd expected. after this I skipped around a bit just to see what else was in store for me.

Basically, as I skipped around, shit got real. at one point, he cut off a nipple and forced it into a stomach wound, at another point, she is missing an arm that is wrapped up and bloody of a stump, but her own hand is being used to feel around her body. All the while she is getting paler and paler, and all the time she looks like shes in more and more pleasure. At one point, her stiched up throat wound is re-opened somehow and being tickled with the severed hand. I'm talking some of the most gruesome shit I've ever seen. And I thought I'd seen it all dude.

At the end, I could barely manage to even watch anymore. I skipped to the very end and watched as he pins up a polaroid of the girls eyes, but that was all there was in the picture. Just the eyes. Just. The. Eyes. Right next to a picture of the severed arm, and an eyeless severed head. I fucking ran to my car and spent the week at my folks house. I have never EVER ran so fucking fast in my life.

If I can find my old, unimportant laptop I'll go to it tonight and megaupload something. I'll look for it when I finish my tale. Its two buildings over from mine embedded into the concrete under the staircase leading to the third floor. I wouldnt have noticed it if it hadn't been for that white out back in febuary when we got blocked in for two days.

I'll tell you what, I'll grab my camera for proof.

Imma try and break it out of the step so I can study it more. Its only about a 2 inch thick step, so how hard could it be? The only problem would be looking odd to neighbors getting it out of there.

As much as I want to share this with you and prove to you all that this fucked up shit is real, I'm not using my nice laptop to even go near that thing. I have well over 16 gb of my bands info/music/etc that I have yet to back up. I'm not risking anything happening to those files. I'll find my old windows xp laptop and be back one around this time tomorrow night for more posts.

I'll go and either get the usb drive itself out of the step, or ill put it on my old laptop and bring it with me to band practice after work. If I can't get it up on any video sites, I'll post screencaps and such. I'm a vocalist, I ain't gunna do shit else. So be back here round this time tomorrow, if not a tiny bit later.

(This is credited to a person called Nikoli Bearcrusher. A day later he admitted it was a hoax.)