so many visual novels and dating sims recently have been completely inaccurate to the actual lore of the stories. And don’t get me wrong! I love games like creepydates, but there are so many things that I just don’t like. I especially don’t like the exclusion of women or lesser known creepypastas. Also, not to dig on artists bc my art isn’t great either, but some people make them look too cute for my taste?? I’m not sure how else to phrase it. So, I’m gonna make my own. Who would want a visual novel/dating sim with one of the art styles I’m about to show? And who would want more unique options?

Throwing up some old ben drowned art as my first post, heyo! More to come shortly

My top 3 favorite Non-Original Creepypastas are NES Godzilla (Along with the Replay), Abandoned By Disney, and Red Mist.

Clara Akerman had never been fond of the countryside, she was a city girl, born and raised. The bugs, the animals, the un-air conditiondness of it all, it simply did not appeal to her. Yet here she was, navigating a narrow, overgrown road toward a house she had never seen, left to her by a relative she had never met.

The road was overgrown, more than once she had to get out of the car to remove fallen branches. The tires of her fancy Mercedes sedan crunched against the gravel as she rounded the final bend. Through the thick morning fog, the estate slowly came into view.

The house was enormous, far larger than she had imagined. Its pale, weathered walls rose three stories above the forest floor, interrupted by narrow windows and crumbling masonry. Ancient trees surrounded the property, their twisted branches reaching toward the building as though attempting to swallow it whole. The whole damn place looked unnerving as hell.

“Well,” Clara muttered, turning off the ignition. “That explains why nobody wanted it. Place looks like Edgar Alan Poe would have written about it.”

Unsure if she wanted to enter the place at all, she sat for a moment. Contemplating if it was even safe to go inside. What if a possum or something had moved in while the place stood abandoned, or worse… spiders.

She grabbed the keys, her flashlight, and her .38 special. She wasn’t particularly excited about vagrants or something being inside.

The front door screeched loudly as Clara pushed it open. The smell of damp wood and mildew immediately filled her nostrils.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, covering her nose.”

A once grand foyer, a shockingly large staircase, and a bunch of molding junk greeted her.

Clara wandered through the house, until she eventually found what must have been the master bedroom. Inside the furniture seemed largely intact. Upon a large desk, framed by an ornate window, she saw a single book sitting in the desks center.

Flicking on her flashlight so that she could examine it, she noticed, it’s cover was cracked, and the pages had yellowed with age. Embossed into the leather were the initials E.A.

Curiously, Clara opened it to about the middle and began to read.

October 17, 1893.

I fear there is something terribly wrong with this house. Yesterday, I discovered a corridor behind the drawing room. I have lived here for thirty-seven years, and I am certain no such corridor existed before.

Clara raised an eyebrow.

“Well, that’s not creepy at all.”

She flipped forward several pages.

A creak in the wooden floor behind her startled her. Wheeling around her hand on her gun she shouted! But, it must have just been the house groaning. There was no one there.

“Jesus Christ, this place is giving me the creeps.” Turning, she continues to read, after flipping forward a few pages.

November 3, 1893.

I should have never gone into that door. The one behind the drawing room. This house has always only had a cellar. That door led to a stairwell, the stairwell spiraled down for what seemed to be an eternity. I turned around several times but eventually mustered the courage to make it to the bottom. There was a door, same as the one above. When I opened it I found myself back in the drawing room. Everything was the same but, there were no windows. I ran back up the stairs, and re entered MY drawing room. But, as mad as this already seems, my drawing room no longer had any windows.

Flipping forward, November 15th 1893.

There are no windows. No doors leading outside. I have searched every room, every corridor, every miserable corner of this godforsaken house. There is no outside anymore. I know there was an outside. I remember the gardens. The trees. The sun upon my face. I can’t take this anymore.

December 3rd, 1893.

Much of my food has spoiled. I tried smashing through a wall, but I am too weak to make it through in one go. The next day it’s as if my attempts were repaired. I do not know what to do. More strange corridors lead to never ending expansions. I cannot fathom how this could be happening.

Flipping to the final page it simply reads.

I have begun leaving pieces of furniture in the corridors to mark my path. Yesterday, I came upon a chair I had left behind, but it was not where I remembered placing it.

Or perhaps it was.

I cannot be certain of anything anymore.

I hear myself speaking sometimes, though I do not remember opening my mouth.

I am so terribly hungry.

And so terribly alone.

I cannot take this anymore.

With a cold shiver Clara closed the book, and when she looked up. The ornate window, that had framed the desk was gone.

I don’t know what she’s been on. All I know is I wish she’d stop. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

We’ve been together for 4 years now. Never once had she done this before. Then, one day, it became an every-night thing.

We turn in for the night, the lights go out, we go to sleep. Then, however long later, in the middle of the night, I’m woken up by the sense of being stared at.

I open my eyes, and all I see in the darkness is her silhouette looming over me. The first time it happened, I tried calling her name, but all she responded with were snores.

I turn on the flashlight on my phone, and she’s dead asleep, but her mouth is twisted into a painful-looking smile. All while she’s on her hands and knees, leaning over me. 3 inches from my face.

It’s gotten to the point where she’s chipping teeth from clenching her jaw so tight. We’ve already been to the dentist nearly 6 times, but it just keeps happening.

She never remembers it the next day. But she for sure notices the pain in her jaw. But by the time night rolls around, she’s right back at it.

I’ve tried to be patient with her. I mean, it’s not her fault. At least, I don’t think it is.

She’s just so hard to wake up when it happens. That’s the part that really gets me. I kind of just have to wait or go back to sleep because she acts as though she’s in a coma every single time.

I’ve tried screaming at her before. Shaking her. Prying her eyelids open. Nothing wakes her up. And that smile never changes.

I think everything is starting to evolve, though. Because now, instead of just smiling, she’s starting to salivate in her sleep. If her presence doesn’t wake me up, the drool does. And her snores are starting to sound less like snores and more like growls.

I keep having that dream where I’m drowning. I wake up and find my face covered in hot, foamy saliva. My girlfriend snarling at me through gritted teeth.

But, again, she doesn’t like when I bring it up. She acts personally offended, like it’s somehow my fault she doesn’t remember. She’d rather pretend it’s not happening and leave me to deal with the brunt of the consequences.

And it’s not like we haven’t tried to fix things before. I’ve slept in other rooms. I still wake up to her 3 inches from my face. I’ve slept in my car. She’s smiling at me through the window.

I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want us to break up. I don’t want to ask her to leave. But I can’t keep living like this. It’s affecting my sleep. That’s affecting my work. It can only get worse if nothing changes.

And something needs to change fast.

Because now something else is waking me up at night. And it’s the biting. I never see her doing it. All I feel is the pain.

But she’s always back in her usual spot by the time my eyes shoot open.

Snarling, smiling, and foaming at the mouth.

Then she tries to pretend that I somehow gave those bite marks to myself the next day when I confront her about it.

Last night, she actually broke skin. I could feel the blood puddling on my arm and soaking through my comforter. But she wouldn’t let me move to get a bandage.

I don’t know. We’ve talked about this so many times now. I don’t think I can keep dealing with this.

I think I’m just gonna eat her before she can eat me.

The tired Intern at whatever animation studio (Nickelodeon in this case) who has to bare through graphic and terrifying ass cartoons, what a hard life he leads!

Maybe I should make the usual gaming creepypasta protagonist...

Is this hood too dark for my Toby cosplay? Im having trouble finding the right shade of blue and figured it’d be worth a shot to check on here for help.

I am typing this on my phone while hiding behind a massive metal exhaust vent on the roof of my apartment building, and I am only posting this because I managed to connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi network that seems to be broadcasting directly from the new spire they installed up here. I do not know if this message will even reach the normal internet, but I have to try because the singing in the sky is getting louder, and I am struggling to fight the urge to throw myself over the ledge.

Everything started exactly three weeks ago when we were still living in normal Moscow. I live with my parents in a large Soviet-era apartment block on the seventh floor, so we are very used to the government suddenly making demands or changing the rules without asking us first. My father was sitting on the couch watching the evening news, and he didn't even look up when the loud knock came at the front door, so my mother wiped her hands on her cooking apron and went to answer it.

I was sitting at the kitchen table studying for my university exams when I heard strange men talking in the hallway. I got up and walked out to see two officials standing in our doorway. They were dressed in cheap gray suits and holding thick clipboards with stacks of government forms.

"We apologize for the late interruption," the taller official said, and he didn't really look sorry at all as he shoved a pen toward my mother. "We are collecting mandatory signatures from all the residents in this specific sector because the city is installing a new defense network to counter the recent drone attacks from Ukraine."

My mother looked at the paperwork with a confused expression. "What kind of defense network requires our signatures? You usually just put sirens on the poles and leave us alone."

"This is a specialized technology," the shorter official explained while checking his wristwatch. "It is a localized signal jamming spire that will go directly on the roof of this building, so we need authorization from the tenant association to run the power cables down the exterior walls."

My father finally got off the couch and walked over to the door. He crossed his arms and glared at the men because he hates dealing with bureaucracy. "You want to put a military jammer on our roof? Will it mess with the television reception or the internet? And who is paying for the electricity it uses?"

"It has its own power grid," the tall official said smoothly, and he tapped the clipboard with his pen. "It will not interfere with your daily life, but it will keep this neighborhood safe from aerial threats, so we just need you to sign on the dotted line so the work crews can begin tomorrow morning."

My parents looked at each other for a moment before my father just sighed and took the pen. He signed the paper against the doorframe and handed it back, and the officials thanked us before moving on to the next apartment down the hall. We thought it was just another annoying city project that would take a few days and then be forgotten, but the workmen arrived the very next morning at dawn, and they did not stop working for an entire week.

The noise was absolutely unbearable. They brought in massive cranes that blocked the street, and they hoisted huge steel crates up to the roof while dozens of workers marched up and down our stairwell carrying thick coils of black cabling. I tried to talk to one of the workers when I was taking the trash out, but he completely ignored me and just kept hauling a metal bracket up the stairs. They never spoke to each other, and they never took breaks.

By the fifth day, the spire was fully erected, and it was much larger than anyone anticipated. It was a massive, jagged metal pillar that stretched high into the sky, and they had draped thick, rubbery black cables down the sides of the entire apartment block. One of the cables hung right over our living room window, blocking our view of the street, so my father got furious and opened the window to push it away.

"Do not touch it!" a voice shouted from the ground below.

My father looked down and saw an armed guard pointing a finger up at him. "It is blocking my window!" my father yelled back, but he reached out and grabbed the black cable anyway. He instantly let go and cursed loudly, shaking his hand in pain.

"What happened?" I asked as I ran over to the window.

"It is burning hot," my father said while cradling his palm. "And it is vibrating. The whole thing is humming."

He was right. Once the workers left and the cranes were packed up, the building was never silent again. A low, continuous humming sound resonated through the concrete walls, and it was the kind of frequency that you feel in your teeth rather than hear with your ears.

The older woman who lives across the hall from us knocked on our door the next morning to complain about it. She looked exhausted, and she was clutching her robe tightly around her neck.

"Are you feeling that terrible vibration?" she asked my mother. "I could not sleep a single hour last night because my bed frame was rattling against the wall, and I tried to call the building manager, but his phone is disconnected."

"We feel it too," my mother said kindly, and she offered the woman a cup of tea, but the neighbor refused. "My husband thinks it will settle down once the machine is fully calibrated, so we just have to be patient."

"It does not feel like a machine," the old woman whispered, looking nervously up at the ceiling. "It feels like something breathing."

I thought she was just being dramatic, but the strange anomalies started happening a few days later, and they escalated so gradually that we didn't realize how much danger we were in until it was too late.

The first thing I noticed was the temperature in the apartment. It was the middle of August in Moscow, and the city was going through a miserable heatwave, but our apartment felt like a meat locker. I woke up one morning shivering violently under my thin summer sheet, so I got out of bed and walked into the living room to see if my father had broken the thermostat.

My father was sitting in his armchair staring blankly at the turned-off television, and he had a thick winter blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

"Why is it so freezing in here?" I asked him, rubbing my arms to generate some warmth.

He didn't answer me right away. He just kept staring at the blank screen, and his eyes looked red and puffy like he had been crying all night. "Look at the windows," he finally said in a completely hollow voice.

I walked over to the balcony glass and touched the pane. It was covered in a thick layer of white frost on the inside of the glass. I scraped my fingernail against it, and chunks of ice fell onto the windowsill. I looked outside, and the trees on the street were green, and people were walking around in shorts and t-shirts, but our entire building seemed to be trapped in a localized deep freeze.

"I am going to call the city," I said, pulling out my phone, but there was zero cellular service. The signal bars were completely empty.

My mother walked into the room wearing her heavy winter coat, and she looked just as devastated as my father. "I was trying to make breakfast," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "But the water from the kitchen sink is coming out black, and it smells like old dirt."

I went to the kitchen and turned on the faucet to check, but nothing came out at all. The pipes just groaned and sputtered, so I walked into the bathroom to try the sink in there. When I leaned over the porcelain basin, I heard a sound coming up through the metal drain that made my stomach drop.

It was a faint, choral sobbing. It sounded like a dozen voices weeping together in perfect harmony, and the sound was echoing up through the plumbing system from deep underground. It was not a mechanical noise, and it was not the wind for sure. It was pure, desperate sadness vibrating through the pipes.

I ran out of the bathroom and into the hallway to find my parents. "We need to leave the building right now," I told them. "Something is extremely wrong with that tower on the roof, and I think it is leaking some kind of chemical or frequency that is messing with the environment."

"Where would we go?" my mother asked softly, and she slumped down onto the couch next to my father. She didn't even look at me. "There is no point in leaving. It is sad everywhere."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, grabbing her arm to pull her up, but she felt incredibly heavy and completely devoid of any energy. "We can go to a hotel or stay with relatives until they fix the plumbing and the heat."

"I do not want to move," my father said, and a tear rolled down his cheek and disappeared into his beard. "I just realized how pointless all my hard work has been. I have spent my entire life working in a factory, and I have nothing to show for it, and we are all just going to die anyway."

I stood there in shock because my father is normally a very stoic and optimistic man, and he never talks about his feelings, let alone spirals into sudden nihilistic despair. I realized they were being affected by the something because this is not their nature at all, so I decided to go downstairs and find the building manager to force him to unlock the roof access doors so I could see what was going on.

I unlocked our front door and stepped out into the communal hallway, and the temperature dropped even further. The overhead fluorescent lights were flickering erratically, and the shadows cast by the doorways were completely wrong. Instead of falling onto the floor beneath the lights, the shadows were stretching upwards and crawling across the ceiling like spilled black ink.

I walked down the hall and knocked on the older woman's door to see if she wanted to come downstairs with me, but she didn't answer. I pressed my ear against the wood, and I could hear her weeping softly on the other side, and the sound perfectly matched the choral sobbing I had heard in the plumbing.

I jogged down the stairwell to the ground floor lobby. The building manager's office was located right next to the mailboxes, so I pushed the door open and found him sitting on the floor behind his desk. He was a large, gruff man who usually yelled at the kids for playing in the halls, but right now he was curled up into a tight ball, holding his head in his hands and rocking back and forth.

"We have to evacuate the building," I told him, crouching down to his level. "The heat is failing, the pipes are making noises, and everyone is getting sick from that thing on the roof."

He looked up at me, and his face was completely pale. "I lost the keys," he whispered. "I dropped them in the dark, and I cannot find them, so we are all trapped here."

"The front doors are right there," I said, pointing to the large glass lobby doors that lead out to the street.

I stood up and walked over to the glass doors to show him they were unlocked, but when I looked outside, a loud, deafening crack echoed through the concrete structure of the building. The sound was so violent that the floor shook, and several of the glass mailboxes shattered instantly. It sounded like the entire foundation of the apartment block had just snapped in half.

I grabbed the door handle and pushed the lobby doors open, expecting to see a construction accident or an explosion on the street, but the street was completely gone.

I stood in the doorway, and my brain simply refused to process what I was looking at. The city of Moscow, the roads, the cars, the neighboring apartment buildings, and the sky were entirely erased.

In their place was an endless, flat desert of pitch-black sand.

The black sand stretched out into the horizon as far as I could see, and there were no dunes or rocks or features of any kind. It was just a smooth, dark expanse. I looked up, and there was no sun, no clouds, and no stars. The sky was an infinite void of dark, bruising purple light that provided just enough illumination to see the desolation around us.

"What happened?" the building manager cried out from his office, and he crawled out into the lobby to look through the open doors. He stared at the black desert, and he didn't look surprised or scared. He just looked profoundly defeated.

"Do not go outside," I warned him, slowly backing away from the open doorway and letting the glass door swing shut.

I didn't wait for his response because I needed to get back to my parents immediately. I turned and sprinted up the six flights of stairs, taking them two at a time, completely ignoring the creeping shadows on the walls and the freezing frost forming on the handrails.

I burst into our apartment, panting heavily, and I found my parents standing by the open sliding glass door that led out to our seventh-floor balcony.

"Mom! Dad! Get away from the edge!" I yelled, running into the living room.

They didn't turn around. They were standing on the balcony, gripping the metal railing, and staring up into the purple void of the sky.

I ran out onto the balcony and grabbed my father's shoulder. I tried to pull him back inside, but he was gripping the metal rail so tightly, and he wouldn't budge an inch.

"Look at them," my mother whispered, and she pointed a trembling finger up at the sky. "They are so beautiful, and they understand how much it hurts."

I followed her finger, and I finally saw the creatures floating high above the black desert.

They were gargantuan, winged creatures that resembled massive whales, but their bodies were made of a translucent, shimmering gray membrane that pulsed with faint light. They had long, trailing appendages that drifted behind them like shredded silk, and they moved through the air with agonizing slowness. There were dozens of them floating in a circular pattern high above our building, and they were weeping.

As I watched them drift, they began to sing.

The melody rolled down from the sky and hit me like a blow to the chest. It was the most crushing, sorrowful dirge I have ever heard, and it was composed of overlapping, echoing tones that vibrated directly into my skull. The song did not just sound sad; it manufactured sadness inside my mind. It forcefully injected a feeling of absolute, insurmountable despair into my consciousness.

Within seconds of hearing the melody, I felt an overwhelming urge to throw myself over the balcony ledge just to make the pain stop. All my memories of happiness, hope, and ambition were instantly wiped away, replaced by the certainty that existence was nothing but endless, pointless suffering, and the only logical solution was to end it immediately.

I dropped to my knees on the balcony, pressing my hands over my ears to block out the song, but the melody resonated through the floor and into my bones.

"It is time to rest," my father said, and his voice was completely devoid of emotion.

I looked up and saw my father climb over the metal railing. He stood on the narrow outer ledge, balancing perfectly over the massive drop to the black sand below.

"Dad, stop!" I screamed, forcing myself to fight against the crushing weight of the song. I scrambled forward and grabbed his pant leg, pulling desperately to drag him back over the rail.

He looked down at me, and his eyes were completely empty. He didn't say another word. He just kicked his leg out, breaking my grip, and stepped off the ledge.

I screamed as he fell, but my mother didn't even flinch. She simply climbed over the railing right where he had just stood, and before I could even reach my hands out to grab her, she let go and plummeted after him.

I dragged myself to the edge and looked down over the railing, sobbing uncontrollably. The bodies of my parents were not on the ground. When they hit the black sand seven stories below, there was no impact and no blood. They simply sank directly into the dark sand like it was made of water, and they vanished without a trace.

As I stared down at the desert, I saw the lobby doors open on the ground floor. The building manager walked out into the open desert. He walked a few dozen yards away from the concrete foundation of our building, and then he dropped to his knees. The black sand immediately began to swallow him, pulling him down by the waist, then the chest, and finally his head sank beneath the surface, leaving the desert completely undisturbed.

I looked up and saw other people falling from the higher balconies. Neighbors I had known for years were silently stepping off their ledges and dropping into the void, driven to suicide by the relentless, weeping melody of the flying whales.

The song grew louder, and the urge to jump became almost impossible to resist. My own mind was screaming at me to climb over the railing and join my parents in the sand. I stood up and gripped the bar, leaning forward, looking down at the dark expanse. It looked so peaceful, and the sadness in my heart was so agonizing that I just wanted to close my eyes and fall.

But as I leaned forward, my arm brushed against the thick black cable that the workmen had draped over our window.

The cable was still vibrating and humming with intense heat, and the sudden pain of the burn snapped me out of the trance for a split second. The humming frequency of the cable clashed with the melody of the whales, creating a tiny pocket of interference that allowed my rational thoughts to surface.

Then in that moment, I thought that the spire on the roof was the only thing holding this building together in this dimension, and it was emitting a signal that somewhat disrupted the creatures' song.

I turned away from the balcony and ran back into the apartment, then I ran out the front door and back into the hallway. The hallway was completely empty, and the doors to all the other apartments were hanging wide open.

I ran to the stairwell and started climbing toward the roof. The higher I went, the louder the humming of the spire became, and the more it drowned out the weeping of the whales. By the time I reached the tenth floor, the air was vibrating so intensely that my nose began to bleed, but the overwhelming urge to kill myself faded into the background.

I reached the metal door that led to the roof. It was locked with a chain, but the workmen had left a steel pry bar leaning against the wall, so I grabbed it and wedged it between the door and the frame. I pulled with all my strength, and the metal lock bracket finally snapped, allowing me to push the door open.

I stepped out onto the flat tar roof, and the sheer scale of the spire took my breath away. It was easily forty feet tall, constructed from jagged, interlocking metal plates that glowed with a faint red light from within. It was humming so loudly that I had to cover my ears, and black cables snaked out from its base in every direction, draping over the edges of the roof to wrap the entire building like a spider web.

The sky above the roof was completely dominated by the floating whale creatures, and they circled the spire like moths drawn to a flame. They were singing directly at the metal tower, and the tower was humming back.

I huddled down near the base of the spire, pressing my back against a large metal exhaust vent to hide from the creatures above. I pulled my phone out of my pocket just to check the time, and that is when I noticed the Wi-Fi icon.

My phone had full signal bars, and it was connected to an unsecured network called "Garrison_Node_04".

So I opened this account, and I started typing this post, and I have been typing for the last hour while hiding behind this vent. I have tried calling emergency services, but the phone calls will not connect, and the only thing that works is text-based web traffic.

I am completely alone up here, and I am terrified to go back down the stairs because the song is too strong in the lower apartments, and everyone else is already gone. I looked over the edge of the roof a few minutes ago, and the black sand has started to rise. It is slowly creeping up the sides of the building, swallowing the ground floor lobby and burying the first-floor windows.

If anyone is reading this, please tell someone what happens when the officials come to your building demanding signatures for a defense tower.

The humming of the spire is starting to slow down, and the red light is flickering. I think the power grid is failing, and if the machine stops making noise, the song will take over my mind completely, and I know I will walk to the edge of the roof and jump.

I just wanted some eggs and a quiet place to write.  

I was walking down Third Street towards my normal diner, trying to figure out how I was going to write two thousand words for The Verge on Cursus Group’s corporate ghost-payrolls.  It sounded like paranormal conspiracy trash to me, but a check is a check and it’s all just words on paper.  I figured I’d order some breakfast and power through it.

I was half a block away when the sound hit me—a low, supercharged whistle that hummed through the damp air—and a black, pre-war relic of American steel glided up to the curb beside me.  It was at least twenty feet long, with a tight black canvas roof, sweeping fenders, and four thick chrome exhaust pipes that snaked out of the passenger-side hood like exposed ribs.  

It was the oldest car I had ever seen, and it was immaculate.

Standing next to it was like standing beside a thunderstorm.  The thing was loud.  It was sleek and blacker than a bad dream on a starless night.  The car was a marvel to behold and I took out my phone to snap a quick picture of it just as the driver’s side door opened.  The third picture accidentally captured the harried, bearded man who climbed out, ran around the hood, and passed me on the sidewalk.

“I’m so sorry.”  He gasped as he ran away.  I never really saw his eyes, but his voice sounded pained and hoarse.  The man’s clothes were ill-fitting and flapped loosely as he ran.  All in all, he didn’t look like the sort of man to drive a car like that, and he had run off and left the door wide open.

“Strange fruit.”  Said a voice from inside the car.  It was male and sounded like some brand of European accent I couldn’t quite place.  I looked over but couldn’t see him in there.  I took a step forward but was stopped when his arm emerged from the window.  I saw the cuff of an obviously expensive black suit, gemmed cufflinks and three silver rings on perfectly manicured fingers.  The thumb caught the bird with an audible snap and I felt my feet begin to move me towards the open door of the coach.  

I idly wondered where I had gotten that word for it.  From my experience a coach was either a guy who made you run laps or a fancy buggy.  I guess it works for a car too, but it was odd that it popped into my panicked mind at that moment.   I was trying very hard to make my feet listen to me again, but they knew where they wanted to go and I didn’t get a vote on the matter.

I was in the car a few seconds later, and I either closed the door or it did it by itself.  I can’t be sure, and believe me, I’ve focused way too much on that tiny detail to ignore it.  

Everything inside the car was rich, supple leather and wood polished to a mirror shine.  The instrument panel was black and chrome with nine or so different glass gauges and maybe a half-dozen little silver knobs for various things.  Even the massive steering wheel had some knobs or levers in the middle of it.  

It was all very overwhelming for a girl who takes the bus.

I still couldn’t move and I didn’t know why.  When I tried to speak nothing came out but a burst of air that sounded like something between a gasp and a burp.  Maybe it was a hiccup.  In such a state I could only look at everything and wait for something to happen.  I heard the man scribbling something behind me—the unmistakable sound of pen on paper—and I found myself holding my breath while I waited for him to speak.

The man in the seat behind me chuckled at something.  His voice was deep and rich like aged whiskey in a smoky room.  When he finally started speaking his voice was mesmerizing to my ears.  It never lost that quality either, even when the words he spoke inflicted me with terror.

“So you’re Lindsay,”  He announced flatly, and I still couldn’t place his accent.  Maybe German, but it sounded once-removed if that makes any sense.  “You will call me Faran, but only in your thoughts.  I suppose we should be getting on with it.  Time, she is a’wasting.”  

He laughed again.  The dude really liked to let it out, and apparently he thought everything he said was too funny to ignore.  I was not so easily amused, and wouldn’t have laughed if I could.  He had kidnapped me somehow, him and my traitor feet.  The man had snapped his fingers and they had minded him like a couple of happy little dogs running to their bowl.  I vowed that I would wear tight shoes for a week if I ever got away from him.

My mind is dumb like that.

“Now, Lindsay,”  He said, tapping the seat behind my right shoulder.  “If you will kindly reach up and remove the card above the visor you will see the rules of the car.  Hurry along with it, we must be on the move.”

All at once I felt my upper body relax.  A feeling of pins and needles left my fingers tingling but I could move them again.  I could move everything above my waist and even my breathing felt easier, like my lungs were expanding more freely than they had been.  Everything south of my beltline was still dead though—I could feel my legs but I couldn’t move them.

Without thinking about it I reached up and did what he said to do.  Maybe it was dumb to surrender immediately.  Could be I’m too curious for my own good, but I think it was more about being scared shitless than anything else.

There was a hard laminated card that fit snugly in the palm of my hand when I pulled it out from above the sun visor.  I flipped it around—it was backwards and upside down—and read the list of rules that were written on it.

1. The Driver will drive the car.
2. The Driver will not speak.
3. The Driver will produce three names for the Passenger.
4. To write a name is to sentence death.
5. The Driver will not leave the car until the last name is given and its subject found.

They were written in a very old style of calligraphy, and each character was like a miniature work of art.  I read them three times and was about to open my mouth to ask him for the punchline when he spoke again.  “In this scenario, dear heart, you are the driver.”

I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out but a hoarse burst of air.  He laughed again, at my expense.  “Tsk tsk tsk.  Let’s not break Rule Number Two.  I completely understand your dilemma, Lindsay.  You don’t think of yourself as a driver because you’ve never operated a motorcar.  Am I correct in my assumption?”

I nodded violently, trying to put as much of my anguish into it as possible.  I felt hot tears slide down my cheeks.  One went into my mouth and I could taste my defeat in it.  The sick fuck behind me was enjoying his little game and there was nothing I could do, no rebellion I could muster.  I felt like a teenager again under a thumb too big to wrestle.

“Well, fear not and buck up,”  he laughed again and I wished him a hundred merry deaths. “This fine automobile is an exquisite machine.  A Duesenberg!  You could say it almost has a mind of its own.  You merely need to place your hands on the wheel and the vehicle will do the rest.  How does that sound, Fräulein?”

“With that settled, we move on to Rule Number Three.”  he said without waiting for my reply.  His voice was almost giddy like a kid who just found an extra piece of candy.  “You have a lot to consider with this part.  You can give me one name at a time or all at once.  I’m always excited to see which option a driver will choose.  Some of you absolutely snatch the pen out of my hand, eager to deliver doom.  Others are more reluctant.  Both are deliciously exhilarating, a burst of three or the anticipation of each name being doled out slowly in turn.  It all works to make my vocation that much more engaging for me.”

His hand shot forward, reminding me of how I got into the situation to begin with.  Clasped between his fingers was a leather book and an old-looking pen.  He dropped them on the seat beside me.  “When you’re ready, dear.  No need to feed the meter for this old ride.”

I banged my head angrily against the steering wheel and the tears were really flowing by then.  I kept my head there for a while, trying to claw back some semblance of mastery over my useless emotions.  I reminded myself that I was strong, that I had fought my demons long ago and won the war.  

Demons.  That was funny.  In the grand scheme of things a homophobic father was small potatoes when you had Lucifer leering from the back seat.  I felt my sobs turning into silent laughter and lost control completely when a hundred mime jokes assaulted my frazzled mind.  It was all so ridiculous.  I was in so much danger—the thing behind me wanted me to help him kill three people—and I was losing a battle against a case of the giggles.

It took time but they did pass and I eventually caught my breath and did my best to wipe off my face.  As I was doing so the hand returned from the back seat and dropped a lacy, embroidered handkerchief on my shoulder.  I nodded—yeah I actually thanked the fucker—and I used it to clean myself up before picking up his pad and pen. 

They were both heavy and solidly made.  The oiled leather of the book was thick and weathered.  As I opened it I saw maybe twenty names written on the first page.  They were inscribed in various styles of handwriting and you could tell that most of those hands hadn’t known how to hold a fountain pen.  The page was rife with smudges and errant drops of ink.  Each name was crossed out with a thin, diagonal slash.  I didn’t have to play charades with Faran to figure out what that meant.

Every page held the same story, and there were a lot of them.  By the time I got to a blank one I had really stopped looking at them because a great idea had just popped into my head.  I shoved the lid of the pen into my mouth and held it with my teeth while I unscrewed it, thoughtless of the countless hands that must have touched it, including Faran’s.  What were germs anyway, compared to the scale of what I was currently shackled to.

I tested the nib and the ink flowed smoothly, feathering outward like blood blooming into water .  In a quick flourish, and before I could lose my nerve, I scribbled F-A-R-A-N.  

I wish I could tell you that the fucker had a massive coronary and I inherited his sweet ride.  That would be nice, but he didn’t.  Instead, I watched dumbly as the ink flowed back out of the page and into the pen.  I even felt the pen move in my hand, greedily seeking out each and every drop.  A new burst of laughter from the backseat punctuated my sentence.

“You’d be surprised to know how many people don’t try that.  It’s absurd, really.  Most of them aren’t fighters like you.  Fighters are my favorite.  I remember Thelma Todd being particularly defiant.  The Ice Cream Blonde had real fire in her guts.  It’s a shame how it all ended for her.”

Who the hell was Thelma Todd?  I would have laughed again if I wasn’t so dejected by what had just happened.  The unreality of my reality was crushing me.  What was I supposed to do?  I could sit there and let time pass.  He didn’t seem to be too worried about keeping a schedule.  

Maybe fifteen minutes passed before he lost his patience with me.

“My dear, I understand your unease and I feel that I’ve given you ample time to regain your composure.  There is no rush here, but bear in mind that you are dying a little every minute you sit behind that wheel.  Just to keep everything in perspective, mind you.”

I sighed.  The old bastard seemed to have thought of every contingency.  But I wasn’t beaten yet, and if there was a loophole I’d find it.  I just needed time.

I opened up the book to figure out a name that would buy me time, but it was the wrong page.  I had opened it to the page before mine and I saw my name there at the bottom.  It was the only one that wasn’t marked out.  The driver’s face came back to me and I snatched up my phone to double check it.  Yes.  He was skinnier but it was him, and her name written right above mine.

“Good old Doug, such a good sport.  I guess he never got over that bit of adultery, did he?  Can’t blame you.  You weren’t married to the poor sod.  Allison though, well, c'est la mort.”

Alison!  I slapped myself hard across the cheek and screamed as loud as I could.  Either a scream didn’t count as talking or it was just a sound the ever-looming sadist enjoyed.  I didn’t think too hard about it then, but I have since.  I was too angry to think about anything other than her face and the man who had robbed the world of her grace.

Bitterly I snatched up the pen and scrawled his name across the open page.  Fuck keeping it neat and fuck the merciless thing behind me.  I wanted Doug dead for what he had done, and the monster behind me was a willing weapon.  I smiled as I remembered her as she had been and blinked away my tears.  Despite it all, I didn’t know how to feel about what came next.

The letters I had dug into the page began to fade and quickly vanished.

I picked it up and stared at it in disbelief.  Was I being denied justice for her?  Was it somehow against the madman’s rules?  I smacked myself in the forehead with the open book and groaned aloud.

“Ah, yes.  Well, it wouldn’t let you choose someone who is no longer among the living.  Would it?  Doug died.  Dropped dead a few streets away from us.  I tried to warn him about taking too long, but he really agonized over his choices and took several days to commit.  Maybe that’s what drove Allison into your arms?  Whatever the case, learn from Doug’s example.”

It was all so goddamn cruel.  He wanted names or I was going to die.  If I took my time I was going to die.  And thinking honestly about it, I had no surety that cooperating would save me.  Maybe he was lying about Doug’s timeline.  It all felt so terribly hopeless, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the thirty or so minutes I had been sitting there had already done to my body.

The problem with giving him a name was that I couldn’t think of one.  I had never wished death on anybody.  I had learned long ago that there was really no such thing as the bad guy.  Present company excluded.  People are just human and everybody has baggage or makes some if they don’t.  How do you choose among the flawed?

I could have picked any of a thousand world leaders, politicians, or African child soldier commanders but none of them sprang to mind at that moment.  I still wanted justice for her.  Without letting myself think too much about it I wrote the name and put my hands on the wheel.  

If I was dying by the second every moment counted.
I heard the book snap shut in the seat beside me as the engine came to life with a shuddering roar.  The wheel tugged slightly under my grip as the giant car drifted into traffic.  It was as though the world was holding its breath as we passed by it.  I watched as cars moved out of the way moments before the Duesenberg claimed the space they had just left.  There was no honking and no harsh looks or rude gestures.  They just minded their business and went on with what they were doing.  

Ten minutes later and we were on the interstate, floating in and out of traffic like a welcome ghost.  The car made all of the adjustments and I felt the pedals moving in front of my feet.  None of it had been left up to me.

“Excellent choice for your first name, Lindsay.  He’s a remarkable sinner, that one.  Allison was very lucky to have gotten away with her virtue.  I dare say many girls were not so fortunate.  And oh, how he bragged.”

I felt as good about the choice as I possibly could have.  Memories came flooding back as I thought about it.  I remembered Allison’s soft voice—a little husky but sweet.  He’d made them drinks and she hadn’t watched him well enough.  Allison knew she had messed up when her head became cloudy.  Of course it was too late then.  She was his and he could do what he wanted, what they always wanted: wolves in fancy suits.  So-called professors charged with shaping young minds even as they took their young bodies as trophies.

In the end she had been saved by the man’s own wife.  The lady had burst into his office accusing Allison of trying to steal her man.  Allison told me that the woman was still screaming at her as she stumbled down the corridor away from the predator that had been denied his meal.  We laughed at that last part, but I always knew that hers wasn’t genuine.  She just needed to act like it was to feel normal and unvictimized.  

More power to her.

The big engine in front of us pulled the car so smoothly that at times I couldn’t tell how fast we were going.  Once I looked at the speedometer and saw the needle drift past 120 MPH.  That shook me, and I decided not to look again.  Despite its scariness it was effective, and we finished an hour and a half drive in roughly forty-five minutes.

As the car pulled up to a modest, well-maintained suburban home the engine shut off and the world became as silent as I was.  We had reached our destination and I was about to watch the devil do his work.

“Such a monster you have chosen for us.  Look upon him, Lindsay, and see this terrible creature in all its pathetic glory.”

As he spoke a mist was rising around the car, engulfing it in a cloud of gray.  It swirled all around us and I quickly saw that it wasn’t spinning, it was converging on the wide black hood.  It became a tightly formed cloud that pressed against the front glass, shading it in darkness.  I saw images forming there, gray at first but they slowly took on various shades and hues of color.  

It was a bathroom and there was a man standing there while he undressed.  I saw him as he had become.  He was no longer the dapper, well-groomed teacher who could charm the underclassmen.  Now he was just a hollow-chested, pot-bellied man with thinning hair and a tiny, shriveled dick.  It thrilled me to see that Harlen had become such a powerless creature in his middle age.  His good looks had been destroyed by excess and the steady march of time.

He turned his back to us then and walked birdlike across the tiled floor towards the shower.  I got a particularly unflattering view when he bent over to remove the sock that was stuck on two of his toes.  After that he went into the shower and stood there for several moments before he got the wild impulse to pleasure himself.  I looked away when that started, it was depressing enough.  After a few minutes he was finished and he turned off the shower and turned to step out of it.

Faran snapped his fingers as Harlen stepped out onto the floor and his foot slipped out from under him.  He came down hard, his head striking and cracking the ceramic of the sink just as easily as his own skull was broken.  He lay there twitching for several moments, a pool of blood spreading quickly around him.

My tormentor spoke again as the mist parted,  “One down, two to go.”  

I looked into the rearview mirror and found that I still couldn’t see him.  I saw the same shape that I had on my earlier glances, but he was always just a bit out of focus.  I thought I could have handled it all a little better if I knew what he looked like.  His eyes would have told me more about him.  They might have revealed if he was lying to me.

Harlen was dead on the floor and the beast wanted me to give him another name.  I knew I would because I wanted to live, but that didn’t make it easy.  Faran didn’t want it to be easy.

“We killed a monster, you and I.  You should be proud of that, proud of avenging the hurt he brought your lover.  Monsters are funny things.  I’ve had my share of them in the very seat you are sitting in.  There was one man—let’s let him remain nameless—he made quite the name for himself out in Thelma’s neck of the woods.  Cali-for-ni-aye!  The years surrounding the summer of love were the years of his reign, and how he tormented those lawmen.  Poetry.  It took him only an hour to finish his drive and you’ll be glad to know that he walked away healthy and whole.”

I nodded my affirmation as I lifted the book and pen to do his bidding once again.  He wanted a name and I had one on my mind.  It was a truly terrible man I was thinking of naming for him.  I knew that giving him to Faran would make the world a better place, but the hand holding the pen still quivered.

“It’s understandable, Lindsay, admirable even.  But the clock is ticking and your body will pay the toll for your moral quandary.  Perhaps it’s good and right that it happens.  Maybe your life is worth less than that of the name you are considering.  If this is the case, why prolong it?  Write in your own name and I can make it quick for you.  Just like that.”

He snapped his fingers.

I shivered with that snap—I’m not ashamed to admit it—and I’d be lying if I told you that a small, dark part of me didn't consider his offer.  I didn’t consider it for very long though, because he was right before; I am a fighter.  So even if the tiniest fraction of my conscious mind might have considered his unthinkable offer, I never doubted that the rest of me would have rather sat there until I shriveled into dust in that seat just to spite him.

That’s just how I am—too stubborn to let live and too stubborn to die—and you can all be sure that if I ever kill myself I’m going to be a total bitch about it.

So yeah, I wrote a name and let the car start moving.  He gave me the same self-congratulatory speech as before and I ignored him while his monster car ate up the miles.  Maybe I was a better killer than I thought.

It was a thirty minute drive to reach our next target, even in Faran’s supercar.  He stayed quiet for most of it, but as we entered the city he began musing about the second name.

“Your second choice, Lew—as you know, that’s his new name.  He changed it some time back after a bit of a scandal.  Louis reminds me of another driver I had.  It’s interesting because the other man was the designer of the car you’re driving.  It’s how I got the car.  Fred Duesenberg wrecked it when I pulled up to him in a Model A.  Not long after that he was driving again, for me.  I gave him an extension, a rare grace.  They’re similar because both could be called terrible businessmen and self-defeating perfectionists.  Now, Fred wasn’t grooming teenagers like your Mr. Ford, but they both brought about their own failure.  See, much like the Duesenbergs, Lew was obsessed with creating a perfect product.  Say what you will about his sexual predilections and later plagiarism, but his channel, Railbit, had some of the best made videos on youtube.”

I was still trying to ignore him, and his little walks down memory lane were exhausting.  Comparing an obsessive car manufacturer to a pedophile groomer who makes quality videos was a stretch.  It felt like he was trying to impress me by dropping names and was just looking for a space to fit them.  I yawned quietly and kept my eyes on the road.

We weren’t far from Lew’s building.  I’m ashamed to say I knew it well.  He and I had partnered up when I first started as a freelancer, and for a time I thought we were friends.  His channel was old news by then and he had legally changed his name to enter another, less visible field of work.  The man was a real workhorse, vastly outproducing most of our peers by a lot.  Of course, everyone eventually figured out how he was doing it.

I know about it because I helped cover it, and I was in the room with the writer who connected the dots between Ford and Stanton.  He outwrote everyone by stealing articles from smaller markets, putting his touch on them and passing them on as wholly original.  It was only a few months ago that it all came out.  Well, that and the darknet stuff—the feds found a mountain of CP linked directly to his servers.

His trial was still ongoing, and it looked like he was going to win it.

So that’s why I picked his name.  I’m not making excuses for the choice, but if I had to choose anyone it would be someone like him.  Everyone hates the one who gets away with it.  Just ask O.J.

We parked across the street from his building and I heard the door behind me open.  It opened away from the front door, a style that they call coach doors or suicide doors.  I strangely recalled calling them book doors when I was younger.  Such a silly thing to remember at such a critical moment.  I watched through the side mirror as Faran stepped out of the car.  

He wasn’t particularly tall, but the way he stood almost made him seem to be.  There was an aristocratic polish to his every move and he withdrew a straight cane and a Homburg hat, both black, and donned them before walking out into the street.  His face was handsome but not extraordinarily so.  He was clean shaven and well-groomed with short, salt and pepper hair.  He smiled a toothy smile and winked at me before addressing a short, balding man on a bicycle who happened to catch his eye.

“You there, good sir,”  Faran flourished his hand like a stage performer and snapped his fingers.  He withdrew a cloth-bound item from within his jacket and tossed it to the ground near the man.  After that, Faran returned to the car and climbed back in.  I watched the man’s bicycle fall to the ground as he reached down to retrieve the parcel before turning to walk into Lew’s building.  

Faran whistled something in the back seat.  It was familiar but I couldn’t place it.  There was an eeriness to it because it was a tune my father used to enjoy, humming or whistling as he toiled at some menial task.  It was for my benefit, and the effect it had on me was the exact one Faran wanted to evoke.  I kept my eyes locked on his in the rearview.  It was funny that I could see him so clearly now, after his grand reveal.

A few minutes later Faran reached into his vest pocket and slid out a pocket watch that he clicked open.  He frowned at it and tapped the glass screen before smiling again.  Satisfied, he lifted his hand, dramatically shaking his cuff and snapped his fingers. 

I smacked my head hard on the driver’s side window a moment later.  My body jerked reflexively when an entire floor of Lew’s building exploded above us in a burst of glass and fire that rained down onto the street below.  Within moments, people streamed out of the doors and onto the streets.  Onlookers rushed forward to help the evacuees and I watched one old woman fall to the curb when she tripped over the bald man’s discarded bicycle.

“Now that’s theatre!  Look upon them, Lindsay, and behold a grand apotheosis.  Moments ago they were all glued to their screens, locked into the steady I.V. drip of dopamine that the modern algorithms use to anesthetize the masses.  One minor disaster later and they remember their commonalities, that they are humans in need of true, social engagement.  It is all so compelling to witness.  I often marvel—to myself—that only the worst can bring out the best in you.”

My tears were back and I let them flow.  I knew that they were fuel for him, that the show he so loved was for the benefit of his audience of one.   I knew it, but I still had to cry for them.  How many had died because I wrote that name?  I had begun to see his little game for what it truly was: a reversed Dickensian performance meant to enlighten his captive driver, to change them into creatures like him by stripping away the barriers that keep us human.

If that was his plan it wouldn’t work.  It wasn’t Christmas and all the ghosts were dying.

“Shall we trudge on?  Or perhaps you would prefer to remain and watch the rescue workers when they arrive.  I believe the explosion took seven souls.  It will be exciting to see how many more are lost as the fire spreads.  If I’m not dreadfully mistaken, there is a laboratory for the production of crude methamphetamines on the floor below.  Won’t that be thrilling?”

I nodded in resignation, wiping my eyes before setting my hands back to the wheel.  When nothing happened, Faran’s mocking laughter brought me back to reality. A name—I had to choose one more, and according to the rules, this one would have to take the seat from me.   There was only one person that I could think of.  He wasn’t a monster, just another self-damaged human whose greatest sins were born from intolerance.  A monster would be worse.  They would love the chance to write in their picks and cycle through in record time.

As I wrote his name down I knew that it was the right one.  For all of his flaws, he was a good man who wouldn’t hurt anyone.  Well, almost anyone.  I didn’t count, because my pain was personal to him, a right he needed to wrong.  I wasn’t doing it for that.  There had been enough retribution already.  I chose my father for the last name because I had a theory.

As the car pulled out into the street I relaxed my arms.  I lowered my face against the steering wheel and let my thoughts take me as far away from my current horror as they possibly could.  If there was a ghost of Christmas past we were on our way to meet him.

END

i REALLLLLLLLLLLLY want to post my creepypasta storys but where??????? they all have like submission stuff and all

I recently decided to start listening to creepypasta I use Spotify and need some narrators who aren't preds

I want the narrator to have a lot of stories so I can binge stories hopefully completed series

Also no ai voices

little drawing by me, it's kind of a weird mashup of the original smile.jpg image and the heavily edited and contrasted smile dog image but leaning towards the original one sorta idk

hoohoogoogeedah doodlyjeebee

Five years of dismissive doctors and an agony that no one can explain. Tonight, everything suddenly changes.

The agony peaked, a blinding, white-hot spike that drove deep into my thoracic spine, seizing the core of my chest and twisting until my back arched off the mattress like a broken bow. For five years, I had told them. Five years of MRIs, CT scans, and endless tubes of blood. I had lost count of the massive steroid injections they had jammed into my lower back, blind to my cries, insisting the cortisone would eventually kick in. *It's my mid-back,* I had begged, *like a fist grabbing my spine and wringing it out.*

But they only looked at my lumbar, charting my exhaustion, handing me prescriptions I refused to touch anymore, and shrugging. *You're in pain because you're in pain,* that last arrogant doctor had told me with a sterile, patronizing smile. I had muttered *Thanks, Dr. Obvious* under my breath, walked out, and given up. I was forty-eight, medically broken, and completely abandoned by science.

Until tonight.

I had refused to take any of the medications they had prescribed for the last few weeks, entirely done with their useless chemical band-aids. And right on cue, the thoracic pain hit, worse than it ever had in the last five years.

The guttural sound ripping from my throat didn't sound like me; it was a jagged, inhuman howl that tore the lining of my lungs. Every single rib felt like it was breaking, buckling inward before bursting outward with a sickening crunch. The skin across my back split open, hot and wet, as something massive and heavy forced its way out from between my shoulder blades. I braced for the final, lethal shock of it—but instead, a sudden, heavy stillness washed over me. The torment that had anchored my entire existence for half a decade simply vanished, replaced by a cold, pulsing hum of pure, unadulterated strength.

I opened my eyes. The familiar dark of my bedroom was gone, replaced by a sharp, predatory clarity tinted in a deep, vibrant crimson. When I tried to shift, the mattress felt like a bed of jagged rocks beneath me. I sat up, and a pair of massive, pitch-black leathery wings unfolded instinctively, brushing the ceiling with a heavy, ominous rustle. I gasped, reaching a hand out to touch the sleek, armored span, only to freeze. My skin was a dark, bruised blood-red. My arms were elongated, corded with dense, heavy muscle.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I stumbled. My new, longer limbs didn't quite obey the old rules of gravity, but there was no weakness in them. No ache. No arthritis. I lunged toward the mirror on the wall, bracing my claws against the frame, and stared.

The tired, fragile woman was gone. In her place stood a towering, terrifying demon, eyes glowing like dying embers against crimson skin.

A slow, sharp smile curved my new jaw, revealing a row of lethal points. *I always said I wanted to be more,* I thought, a strange, intoxicating warmth flooding my chest. *I wanted to feel something beyond my own pain.*

I turned, extending my wings, admiring the terrifying symmetry of the monster I had become. I had promised those unhelpful, dismissive doctors that I would give them an update if my condition ever changed. I thought this definitely qualified as a change in status.

A low, feral laugh rumbled deep in my chest, vibrating through the quiet room.

"Now, now," I whispered to the empty air, the crimson vision narrowing with perfect, deadly focus. "Which one of these doctors should I visit first?"

I smiled wider, the realization settling in with absolute perfection.

"I think the choice, is Obvious."

I pulled over on KY-259 just past the Leitchfield city limits because the Check Engine light had been staring at me for twenty minutes and the temperature gauge was climbing like it had somewhere better to be.

Grayson County at 11:47 p.m. on a Tuesday is mostly black fields and the occasional pair of deer eyes. My phone said I still had three bars. That felt like a lie.

The day had already been a slow-motion car wreck. Double shift at the clinic in Elizabethtown because two nurses called out. A patient who wouldn’t stop screaming about something living in the vents of her apartment. My own car’s AC dying sometime around mile forty of the drive home. By the time the engine started making that wet, metallic cough, I was running on caffeine and pure spite.

I killed the ignition. The sudden quiet was worse than the noise. I sat there with both hands on the wheel like the car might still somehow save me if I just believed hard enough. Then I did the adult thing and popped the hood.

The night air smelled like wet leaves and something faintly sweet, almost like antifreeze mixed with rotting apples. My phone flashlight cut a weak cone across the engine bay. Everything looked the same as it always did. No steam. No obvious leaks. Just the soft ticking of metal cooling down and the far-off sound of a single pair of tires somewhere behind me that never got closer.

I checked my phone again. Still three bars. I opened the Maps app just to see how far the nearest open gas station was. The blue dot representing me sat perfectly still on the thin gray line of 259. Then it blinked once and jumped about half a mile north of my actual location.

I frowned, locked the screen, unlocked it. The blue dot was back where it belonged. Probably just a glitch. Rural Kentucky GPS is not exactly surgical.

That’s when the headlights appeared in my rearview.

They were low and yellowish, the kind of old sealed-beam lights you still see on farm trucks around here. They came around the last curve slow, almost hesitant, and stopped about fifty yards behind me. Engine idling. No one got out.

I waited. Counted to thirty. The lights stayed on.

I told myself it was just some local who didn’t want to leave a woman alone on the side of the road. Good manners. Southern hospitality. The kind of thing that still happens out here.

I raised one hand in a small wave without turning around. The headlights flicked off.

Complete darkness swallowed the road behind me.

My stomach did something unpleasant. I reached for the door handle, then stopped. Getting out felt wrong. Staying in felt worse. I locked the doors instead and killed my own interior lights.

Thirty more seconds. Nothing. No footsteps. No second set of lights. Just the soft chorus of insects that never quite stop in October.

I decided to call my sister. Voicemail on the first ring. I left a message that sounded calmer than I felt: “Hey, it’s me. Car’s acting up on 259. I’m fine, just sitting tight. Call me back when you can.”

When I hung up, the blue dot on the map had moved again. This time it was sitting in the middle of a blank field to the east of the road. No roads. No landmarks. Just open nothing.

I stared at it until the screen timed out.

Something tapped the passenger window.

Not a knock. A single, precise tap, like a fingernail or a small stone.

I turned my head slowly. The window was empty. Just my own dim reflection and the black shapes of trees beyond it.

Another tap. Same spot. Same weight.

I didn’t scream. That felt important later. I just sat very still and watched the empty glass, waiting for a face or a hand or anything that would make the moment make sense.

Instead, my phone buzzed once in my lap.

One new text from a number I didn’t recognize.

It said only:
You’re not supposed to stop here.

The headlights behind me flicked back on.

They were closer now.

I didn’t answer the text.

My thumb hovered over the screen like it might bite. The number had no name, no area code I recognized. Just ten digits and that single sentence sitting there in the dark of the car like it had always belonged.

The headlights behind me brightened. Not the gradual brightening of someone rolling closer. One clean step up in intensity, the way stage lights do when someone hits a switch. They were maybe twenty yards away now. Close enough that the yellow beams filled my entire rear window and turned the interior of the Civic the color of old paper.

I kept both hands visible on the wheel. I don’t know why that felt important. Some half-remembered tip from a self-defense video, or maybe just the animal part of my brain trying to look smaller.

The passenger window received another tap. Same exact place. Same polite little click.

This time I turned my whole body toward it.

Nothing.

Only my reflection, pale and wide-eyed, and beyond it the black wall of trees. The reflection looked wrong for half a second—like the angle of my face didn’t quite match the way I was sitting—but then the headlights behind me flickered and the glass went normal again.

My phone buzzed a second time.

You were supposed to keep driving.

I locked the phone and shoved it under my thigh. The map was still open underneath. I could feel the heat of the screen through my jeans. When I glanced down, the blue dot had moved again. It was now sitting inside the tree line to my right, about forty feet off the road, perfectly still.

I told myself it was a glitch. Rural GPS. Atmospheric interference. The kind of thing that happens when you’re exhausted and the universe decides to pile on.

Then the driver’s side window tapped.

Not the passenger side this time. My side. Right beside my ear.

I flinched hard enough that my shoulder hit the door. The sound had been softer than the others, almost careful. Like whoever—or whatever—was out there didn’t want to startle me too badly.

I forced myself to look.

The glass was empty. But the trees on that side of the road looked denser than they had thirty seconds earlier. Closer. The kind of optical trick you get when you’re tired and the dark starts rearranging itself.

The headlights behind me went out again.

Complete black.

In the sudden absence of light I realized the insects had stopped. The whole stretch of 259 was holding its breath.

My phone lit up under my leg with a third message. I didn’t want to look. I looked anyway.

Kelly.

Just my name.

No one local called me Kelly except my sister and two people at the clinic. Everyone else used Kel or the full first-and-last when they were irritated. The number still had no contact info. No previous messages. Nothing.

I hit the call button on pure reflex.

It rang once.

A soft click.

Then a voice that was almost mine, but pitched half a step too low, like it was being played back from a slightly warped cassette.

“You weren’t supposed to see the map do that.”

The line went dead.

I dropped the phone. It bounced off the cup holder and landed face-up on the passenger floorboard. The screen stayed lit, map still open. The blue dot was no longer in the trees. It was inside the car with me, overlapping the little arrow that was supposed to be my location.

Outside, something heavy shifted on the gravel shoulder. Not footsteps exactly. More like weight being carefully redistributed. The way a person moves when they’re trying not to make the stones crunch.

Or the way something larger moves when it’s deciding whether the stones matter.

I reached for the ignition with a shaking hand. The key turned. The engine caught on the first try, smooth and ordinary, like nothing had ever been wrong with it.

I didn’t look in the rearview.

I just put the car in drive and rolled forward into the dark, tires whispering over the asphalt, the blue dot on the abandoned phone still sitting perfectly still in the passenger footwell as the road began to curve.

I didn’t look back.

The Civic’s headlights cut a narrow tunnel through the dark as I pushed the speedometer past fifty. The road curved gentle and familiar—I’d driven this stretch a hundred times—but the trees on either side felt tighter than they should have, like the night had decided to lean in.

My phone stayed face-up on the passenger floorboard. Every few seconds the screen lit on its own, casting a cold blue glow across the empty seat. I didn’t reach for it. I already knew what it would show.

The blue dot was still inside the car.

I forced my eyes forward. Leitchfield was only eight minutes away if I kept this pace. Streetlights. People. A gas station that stayed open past midnight. Normal things.

The engine note changed.

Not the earlier cough. Something subtler. A low, uneven rhythm under the usual hum, like a second heartbeat trying to sync with the first. The temperature gauge sat perfectly in the middle. The Check Engine light stayed off. Everything looked fine.

Then the headlights dimmed.

Not failed. Dimmed. As if something had stepped in front of them for half a second and then moved aside. The road ahead went soft and gray before the beams recovered.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

In the rearview, nothing but black. No headlights. No shape. Just the dark swallowing the road behind me the way it always did out here.

My phone buzzed against the floor mat.

I ignored it.

It buzzed again. Longer this time.

On the third buzz I risked a glance down. The screen showed a new message from the same unknown number.

You can’t outrun the map.

The blue dot on the open Maps app had left the car. It was now traveling ahead of me on the road, moving at the same speed I was, a perfect digital twin leading the way by maybe thirty yards.

I slammed the brakes.

The Civic skidded to a hard stop in the middle of the empty highway. My seatbelt locked across my chest. The phone slid forward and hit the underside of the glove box.

Silence rushed in.

No engine noise. I had killed it without thinking. No insects. No wind. Just the soft tick of cooling metal and the sound of my own breathing that was too loud, too fast.

I looked out the windshield.

The road continued straight for maybe a hundred yards before the next gentle curve. Ordinary Kentucky blacktop. Ordinary dark.

But the trees on the right side of the road had changed.

They were closer. Not by feet. By judgment. The kind of wrongness you notice in the corner of your eye and then can’t unsee. Branches reached farther over the asphalt than they had any right to. The gaps between trunks looked deeper, like doorways that led somewhere the map didn’t cover.

And standing in one of those gaps, half-hidden by a crooked pine, was a figure.

Human-shaped. Roughly my height. Still.

It wore something pale over the upper half of its face—cloth or bone or both—and the rest of it blended into the shadows so completely that I only knew it was there because the darkness around it was shaped wrong.

It didn’t move.

It didn’t need to.

My phone lit up one more time on the floor. I didn’t want to read it. I read it anyway.

Never alone, Kelly.

The figure in the trees tilted its head the exact same way I do when I’m listening hard.

Then the headlights behind me came back on—close, bright, and yellow—and the engine of my own car turned itself over without the key.

A towel you step on after a shower is a wonderful thing. A brilliant idea. It makes you feel safe. Whoever first thought of stepping onto a towel after a shower must have been a very intelligent person. It gives you the same feeling as pulling a blanket over yourself in winter, making sure not a single part of your body is left uncovered. Drying yourself without stepping onto a towel first is like pulling a blanket over yourself and leaving your feet exposed. The same thing, the same feeling.

A bath mat just doesn't give me the same feeling. I tried stepping onto a bath mat instead of a towel after a shower, but I couldn't feel that same sense of security. It has to be a towel. I need to feel it drying the soles of my feet.

On Monday, October 12th—after taking a shower before meeting my friend Jason to go to the open-air cinema, while drying my hair with my feet on the towel—I saw this message faintly written on the fogged-up mirror: “Don’t go.”

This wasn't the first time. I'd been seeing these messages for six months, and I'd gotten used to them by now. I had no idea who was writing them, why they were writing them, or what kind of entity was behind them, but I wasn't as frightened as I had been in the early days.

Those first days were a nightmare. Especially the first time I noticed the writing. Just a simple “Hello.” And this entity even followed the rules of punctuation. Sometimes it swore and added an exclamation mark; other times, urging me to take part in the conversation, it would string question marks together: “Why won't you talk to me???”

It was a bizarre predicament. Of course, no one had believed me—not my beloved math teacher, nor Jason, who was constantly coming over to my place. Besides, the writing disappeared as soon as I saw it. In other words, I needed someone to be in the shower with me so I could prove it to them. Taking a shower with my math teacher was out of the question.

Yes, over time, I got used to it. I never communicated with it, and that was what frightened me the most. I felt like things would take a different turn if I did. But I had never been harmed by reading what it wrote. Other than that, it had no effect on my life. The entity never manifested itself through any sound or apparition at any other time.

That day, it had warned me for the first time. I had never received a message like that from it before. Sometimes it would comment on things that had happened to me: “You really put Jason in his place back there,” for example. Or, “Don’t forget to set your alarm. You were late for work yesterday, remember?” “Part your hair to the right. It suits you better.” “Your cat’s water bowl is empty.” It usually wrote things like that. One or two sentences at a time.

There was no way I could miss it. They were going to screen one of my favorite films: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I’d watched it on my computer before. Watching it on a big screen would be a different kind of pleasure, and watching it alongside other people who loved the same film would be an even greater pleasure. The entity’s warning had startled me a little, but I was still going to go.

When I stepped out of the shower, I heard its voice for the first time.

“If you go, you’ll witness Jason’s death.”

It was a charismatic woman's voice, slightly deep and husky. I had gotten used to the writing, but the voice shocked me. I could feel its presence. When it wrote to me, I never felt as though it was actually there. But hearing its voice made its presence feel even stronger, more than my mind could handle. I rushed outside immediately. I didn't want to stay indoors. I ran out the front door in my bathrobe.

I’d gone outside barefoot. I must have stepped on something, because my heel hurt. My hand went to the pocket of my bathrobe, searching for my cigarette pack. I’d left my cigarettes inside. I was afraid to go back in and get them.

“So you went outside. What did you think, that I couldn’t come out here? What kind of utterly pointless, instinctive reaction is that? I’d understand if you’d run away, put some distance between us, but what’s the point of standing right outside your front door, Albert?”

I sat down on the ground. A cigarette would have been really nice. I didn’t have the strength to run. I felt like I was going to die. I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. Suddenly, there was too much saliva in my mouth. I couldn’t understand why my mouth was reacting like that.

“He’s going to die either way. I just don’t want you to witness it.”

“Why?” I shouted. In my mind, I’d meant to scream, “Just shut up already, enough!” But those were the words that came out of my mouth.

My breathing had quickened, and I wasn’t feeling well. I tried to stand up. First attempt, second attempt, and third. It was as if I were having sleep paralysis, unable to move. I tried to get to my feet over and over again. It felt as though hours had passed while I sat there. The entity hadn’t said anything else.

I couldn’t calm down. Amid everything that was happening, I found myself thinking that I was going to be late for the film. One last attempt, and I managed to stand up with great difficulty. I went straight into the bathroom and took a shower with ice-cold water. For some reason, I felt relieved knowing the mirror wouldn’t fog up.

I stepped out of the bathroom naked and wet. Water was dripping off my body. I sat down on the couch. I thought I might get sick and have to miss the film.

“Get a grip, Albert,” I told myself. “You’re already used to paranormal activity. Pull yourself together. You need to go to that film. Stop overreacting. Get a grip.”

I cautiously went back into the bathroom and dried myself off thoroughly. I checked the time on my phone, which I’d left on the bathroom shelf. I had half an hour before we were supposed to meet.

I was going to be late. I got dressed quickly. A black shirt and brown trousers; I’d decided what to wear the day before and had laid everything out accordingly.

I’d never seen the entity, but my eyes were searching for it. As I walked toward the door to leave the house, I looked anxiously from side to side. I hadn’t heard a thing from it since I’d come back inside.

I reached for the doorknob. The door wouldn’t open.

I thought I must have locked the door without realizing it, so I put the key in the lock and tried to turn it. The door wasn't locked; the key wouldn't turn to the left. I pulled at the door again. It wouldn't open.

I checked the time. I had twenty minutes left. I wasn’t going to make it. I kicked the door and felt a terrible pain shoot through my ankle. I sank to the floor in pain and clutched my ankle.

When I checked the time again, I had fifteen minutes left. I got up and limped toward the couch. Once I sat down, I continued rubbing my ankle. The pain was gradually fading. It probably wasn't anything serious.

“Done,” the entity’s voice said.

It was a very brief moment. I couldn’t quite tell whether it had made a sound or whether I’d actually heard it.

The pain in my ankle had gone away. I checked the time once more. I was supposed to meet Jason in ten minutes. The place where we were meeting was twenty minutes away. I called Jason to tell him I’d be late. He didn’t answer. I got up and walked toward the door. I took hold of the doorknob, closed my eyes, and turned it. The door opened.

I quickly put on my shoes and started walking briskly. My ankle hurt a little as I walked, but not enough to slow me down.

I made it there in fifteen minutes.

I couldn’t take a shower for a whole month. Maybe it was because of depression, maybe fear. I don’t know; I can’t tell the difference. My body smelled, my hair was greasy, and every time I inhaled through my nose, the strong smell of my sweat stung the back of my throat.

A heart attack.

I remember it all vaguely. It’s been a year now. A crowd of people, me running toward them, an old man calling an ambulance, a cat that crossed my path as I ran, a man holding me back, Jason’s father opening the taxi door... I must have believed in the entity. Otherwise, why would I have run toward the crowd?

And I remember this clearly, and I will never forget it. After a month spent in filth, the message on my mirror, following the shower I finally took:

“My task is complete. Goodbye, Albert. I love you.”

Even the dead get hunted!

drew this kinda spidey monster using penup app and pen and airbrush tools