Waiting for the Scream

What do you think of when you imagine being cursed? The random elements of life conspiring against you? A horrible disease no one can treat? Everything you touch dying? The curse I've been burdened with may sound like nothing compared to those, but it destroyed my life just as thoroughly.

I had a normal life before this started - decent job, recently married, a nice house. It was a normal night. I was just looking around online when, out of nowhere, I heard a loud, deep, furious scream.

I had never heard anything so loud in my life. Needless to say, it scared the hell out of me. I screamed, myself, and nearly fell out of my chair. My wife was in a nearby room and came running. My heart pounding, I asked her what that scream was. She said it was me; she hadn't heard anything else.

She insisted she hadn't heard the scream I had. She said I must have been hit by a screamer online. I insisted that even if our computer could make a noise that loud, she would have heard it from anywhere in the house. After some arguing, though, I dropped it. Maybe I had only imagined it being so loud.

The next day, I was clearing the table after dinner. I was carrying a very sharp carving knife to the sink when it happened again. That same unbearably loud, furious scream. I was almost knocked off my feet. My hands violently twitched and I gave myself a deep cut on my other hand with the knife.

My wife was in the room; she was scared after seeing me nearly fall and cut myself. However, that wasn't what upset me. Once again, she said she hadn't heard anything. I was becoming terrified at this point. I made a doctor's appointment; it was scheduled a week later, but I would end up in a hospital before that.

Two days later, I was driving home after work. After going a whole day without hearing the scream, I was starting to feel better. I wasn't even sure I would need to see a doctor. I was a few blocks from home when it happened. I heard the scream again and the consequences were much worse.

As with the other times, I lost control of my body for a brief moment. However, that's a dangerous amount of time when you're driving. My spasm from the scream caused me to violently turn the steering wheel to the left, crashing into a streetlight.

I broke my hand and the car was trashed. I went to a hospital, but nothing physically wrong with my head was found. The scream started coming at random times, every day or two. Everyone thought it was post-traumatic stress from the crash.

It wasn't. I heard the screams. I know I did. I was a nervous wreck after the accident, but not because of what happened to my hand or the car. It was because of the scream. I lived in constant fear of it, afraid to to anything where losing my control could injure myself or others.

That wasn't the worst part, though. The anticipation of the scream was unbearable. No matter how many times I heard it, it scared me to death. Nothing my wife or psychologist said helped. Eventually, I started lashing out at people, angry that they wouldn't believe the screams I heard were real.

After one particularly bad fight, my wife left. She was crying; she said she still loved me and knew I wasn't being cruel on purpose, but she couldn't live with me anymore. I hadn't been able to work since the accident and, even with the extra sick time they had given me, I would soon run out.

The screams had ruined my life and I was willing to do anything to make them stop. I picked up a knife, the same knife I had cut myself with when I heard the second scream, and cut off both my ears.

The doctors didn't agree with my decision and I didn't expect them to. All that mattered to me was that I had done a thorough enough job to ensure they couldn't restore my hearing. I was held against my will in the hospital, restrained and monitored at all times, but I didn't care.

With the screaming gone, I was sure I could convince them I was sane in time. I felt better than I had since I heard the first scream, until the night after I removed my ears.

It didn't stop. I heard it. I hadn't heard a thing since what I had done to myself, but I heard the screaming every bit as loud as it had been before. I completely lost control at that point. I'll probably be put in a mental hospital, monitored and restrained to keep me from hurting myself, for the rest of my life.

I don't care about that, though. That's not the reason I say the screams ruined my life. It's the anticipation, the knowledge that no matter what happens, they will keep coming for the rest of my life. I never know exactly when, either. All I can do is wait.

(This story is credited to a person called KI Simpson.)

Vintage PC

I recently received some old PC from my neighbor. He said he didn't need it, along with something about not knowing he even had it. Apparently, he was looking through his attic and found it, but it wasn't there before then.

I've taken the PC home and cleaned it up a bit. Inside the case was some kind of note taped tho the hard drive. It was a confirmation lottery ticket with 7 numbers: 67, 85, 82, 83, 69, 68, and 46. However, these numbers aren't listed in any lottery I know of.

When I turned the PC on through the ON/OFF switch, I heard a loud cracking noise inside the case. After a few seconds, the BIOS showed up. I was relieved, as you can never be sure what happens when a PC cracks.

Anyway, it booted into DOS. There were a few files and folders, excluding system ones: CUR~1, TEST.TXT, 29A.ASM, README.TXT, OPEN.ME, FILE_ID.DIZ, VOLKOV.COM, LYNX.COM and TURN.OFF.

It looked like Volkov and Lynx were programs for general use. I opened the text files to see what was inside, but all I found was garbage. Some kind of virus or trojan probably attempted to overwrite files, no matter what was in them. However, FILE_ID.DIZ contained the numbers on the lottery ticket.

29A.ASM contained some assembler code. I recall that 29A (666 when converted from hex to dec) was a virus developer group. The previous owner of this PC probably managed to leak something from them. There wasn't any ASM-compiling program on the computer, so he didn't look like he was part of that group.

I decided to copy the file onto a floppy, but it just didn't seem to work. Every time I tried to insert a floppy disc, it ejected itself after five seconds. I forced it inside and managed to get a copy of it, all 253KBs of it. I've given the floppy to a friend and he told me he'd take a look at it.

The day after, he said he never saw anything like what was in that code. It's supposed to play some kind of sound, which is nearly impossible on such an old PC, and some graphical effect, which is nearly impossible as well.

He managed to compile it into a working form, but there was one major problem: It's self-destructive. When it runs once, it takes over the whole PC. As the PC I got it from was just in DOS, I decided to run it anyway. Nothing happened, but I still wish I didn't run it in the first place.

I've notice something strange on my PC (not the old one where I just ran that program, but the newer one I've had). Where it would show the status of the PC, there was a little icon that looked like something burning. There was also some kind of fire animation on some windows.

I immediately checked the case, but there wasn't any fire or smoke inside (no, PCs don't have fire/smoke sensors, but I had to check anyway). I've rebooted, hoping it would boot safely. When it got to the desktop, I heard a program error sound (from the Windows 9x theme Underwater, for those who still remember. My PC was running Windows ME) and it repeated a couple of times.

I was shocked. Afterward, it played some kind of low quality screaming and showed something like pink bubbles (I have no idea why) and the man from the Underwater theme choking. After another reboot, I heard the PC's fan behaving like it was dead and the computer turned off.

I blacked out after that and awoke in my bed, as if I had just been sleeping (I was still in my clothes, though). It was around 4 or 5 AM, from what I could guess. There was a loud sound downstairs, so I went down there. It felt like the floor was wet.

When I got downstairs, my PC played a loud sound. I tried to turn it off, but all of the switches were gone, as if someone ripped them off. I went to the power panel to go from there, but those switches were ripped off, too. It was impossible to stop the sound that way, so I went to unplug the PC. However, I noticed something coming from the kitchen.

To get rid of the confusion, the path from my room to the PC was hall > stairs > entrance hall > living room > dining room > study. Another thing is that the living room, dining room, and study were merged without doors leading into them.

Whatever was coming from the kitchen looked human. No, it wasn't me, since shadows drop from a different angle and there weren't any windows beind me. It was holding a gun and pointing at me. It was kind of hard to notice in the dark, but I could tell it WAS moving. I wasn't moving at all.

It shot at me and missed, but there was no sound of a bullet ricocheting around. I panicked and ran to my parents room, though nobody was there. Again, the floor was wet. I locked the doors and began to hear strange murmuring behind it. It seems like that thing won't force open the door, however.

The only way to get out now is through the balcony. Even if it's possible for most, I was too weak to jump down to the other balcony below (we had two balconies and the second was right below). Though if I had to die, I reasoned, it was better to die by jumping than by being shot. So, I jumped. Luckily, I survived.

I ran away with an old bike. I biked to the middle of town to get a rest in whatever place had the nicest music and lights. I don't like it when there's no light; it scares me a little. Sure, I read creepy stories on the internet, but I get really freaked out if there aren't any lights on.

After some reast, I noticed something about my wallet. It was wet. How I didn't feel that before, I don't know. I checked inside it and found a small knife and some little bones. The bones were completely cleaned of all blood and meat. I felt kind of guilty about it, but I didn't even know if I had done anything or not.

Finally, morning came. I decided to get home before my parents woke up. However, when I got to the front doors, there were more bones. Just bones and skulls. I started to panic and immediately called the police department, asking what was going on and if my dad was there (he works there).

They told me he was 20 minutes late. They came and checked out the bones, but after an analysis they concluded the bones were too clean to find out who they belonged to. The police could only speculate at that point.

I tried to call my friend. No reply. I was kind of worried this affected him, too, so I went to his house. Again, I saw bones. This time, however, they weren't clean. They were full of blood. I got inside his house and checked his PC; he was searching online for some kind of satanic summoning rituals or something.

The webpages he was visiting were gone, with only the page titles available. However, there was a text file open that had those same lotto numbers. I realized it was actually a character key code. After a few moments of thinking, I came up with the letters that spelled one word: CURSE.

After heavily searching through my friend's PC, I noticed that all the cached images were of an image I hated a lot. Back in 2000, before we had a computer, I was in the study. That used to be my room, if you couldn't guess.

In front of my bed was a picture of a crying kid. I have to say that image is really creepy, but I don't know where it is. It might be possible that it's still in the attic. After finishing up, I went back to the door. I noticed blood on the carpet. Upon further investigation, I noticed my wallet had blood on it too. I took a look at the knife again.

It was bloody.

(This story is credited to a person called TomKTW)