I’m not sure where to start. Do you know what the Primordial Soup is? A veritable ocean of elements, all floating around randomly. And through millions of years of time, eventually the right set of random circumstances came to pass, and the elements were able to connect together and form the worlds first single cell organism.

Now that’s a really boiled down version of it but I’m sure you get the gist of it. Fast forward a few billion years to the early 1990s, when internet use began to rapidly accelerate. Every home had a computer, and new connections between computers were opening on a by the second basis.

Trillions of bytes of data began to transfer around the world at the speed of light, music, text, sound, and most importantly; pictures. Now if, when you take a picture of someone and capture their soul, what happens when that picture is converted to data and placed on a hard drive? Does the soul follow? 15 years later we believe so. We believe that when you take a picture of someone and upload it onto your computer, alongside the image data a blueprint of the person’s soul itself is imprinted on the file itself.

Look at your pictures folder. How many souls reside in that folder alone?

That’s just the beginning though. These soul blueprints each retain pieces of a puzzle, parts of the soul itself as well.

Recently a group of hackers, who referred to themselves as the Cardinals, took an interest to this theory and began experiments. They found anomalies within the binary sequences of images based on similar features of the person they had taken a picture of. A binary DNA if you will.

Now these hackers had come to posses a set of three extremely important data files. One avi, one jpeg, and one .mp3, each of which possessing interesting unexplainable qualities.

The first, cradle.avi, depicts what appears to be a group of teenagers with a low quality video camera, exploring the basement of a house. The quality of the video is distorted completely beyond any comprehensibility, and the video is very low quality. For most of the video the camera is passed around the group, handed back and forth and jerked around too much to make anything noticeable out.

But near the end the camera turns at an odd angle, and you can semi clearly make out a young girl standing in the corner facing the wall. Her hair is long and black and she is wearing some form of white dress. You only see her for a split second but many people who have seen the video claim there just seems something wrong with her. A bit deformed but not in a way anyone can explain.

But the truly peculiar property of this video is what happens to the users computer at the end of it. On the last second of the video, if not already so the video will force full screen itself. Along with this you are left with a one second looping clip of a window in a wall. It loops 15 times, and then the girl is seen again, standing on the other side of the window with her back to the viewer, slowly wavering back and forth. After a few moments the video ends and the user’s computer permanently shuts down.

Inspection has shown that the entire registry becomes completely corrupt, requiring the user to do a total wipe and reinstall.

The second file is known as needles.mp3. This sound file, when played, plays for about 3 minutes. It is extremely distorted. One can occasionally make out some form of voice talking, but most of the sound is some form of growling, rolling crackled roar.

Users who listen to this file often experience extreme nausea and loss of balance for a brief period of time.

The final file is known as burningman.jpg.

The file name has nothing to do with what the actual picture depicts. Instead it just displays a haphazard mess of overlayed and meshed images of dolls and a hallway. There also seems to be an image of a man standing with his head cast down in the background, but the image is too distorted to make anything out, much like the other files.

The image, when downloaded and opened on a users desktop, will proceed to stay permanently open on whatever program it is opened through. Not only that, the program becomes disabled. Nothing else happens, the image just permanently sits there on your desktop, unclickable, unminimizable, and your just left there with the mans invisible gaze staring at you.

From what the group of hackers were able to discern, this file seems to have precompiled into the data something along the lines of Cmdow. Yet, as complex and intricate as the program is (it works across all OS platforms) no one knows who the original creator is. In fact, few people have heard of it as the file is uncopyable nor sendable.

This in fact further adds to the mystery, as often receivers of this file will obtain it from random anonymous emails, posted on forms on a download link. Posing the question, how was that poster able to upload it?

If you ever see any of these files, refrain from downloading ANY of them. They all have varying detrimental effects on your computers, from practically taking out your whole registry, corrupting system 32, freezing your mouse or crashing your computer.

Now onwards:

This group of hackers, the Cardinals, took to analyzing these 3 files and comparing their odd behaviors. They had heard of other such odd files, images, data, etc, but were never able to get their hands on them. At least as far as we know, though rumour states they in fact were able to locate and collect all of the known files like the original smile.jpg, barbie.jpg, even suicidemouse.avi. Not even the grifter was able to escape their grasp, rumour states. But rumour also states the grifter video even exists, but thats another story.

Nonetheless, all these files in hand, the group lined the files up and begin to meticulously work through the binary one 0/1 at a time, checking for similar strains and series of binary that matched.

And they did manage to successfully do so, at least legend states. The result were 7 individual execute files that did nothing. Simply a gibberish pile of 0s and 1s. They endless puzzled over the files, each tackling an execute each. They decided to name them after themselves, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, and Pride.

At last they attempted to line the files up. Remarkably, something odd happened. The copies of the files quite suddenly meshed together. The result was a single complete Execute, already named.

“BarelyBreathing.exe”

And what of this file? Well not much else is known after that point. They were too smart to just execute it. They analyzed the file every possible way. Hex, binary, conversions, anything to figure out what this odd file would do.

To no avail, even after forming together it was an even bigger jumble of 1s and 0s and made no more sense than the separate executes.

They backed the file up on a flash drive and proceeded to run it. That was the last command found run on their destroyed computers a week later. Their corpses had been disfigured beyond recognition. Description of the corpses stated that it almost seemed as if they had been brutally slashed across their faces and arms. Every square inch of skin that had been bare had been mutilated. Almost microwaved and then sliced repeatedly by a micro thin razor.

The government attempted to hush up the event, but there was some media leakage, and because the Cardinals had been keeping a blog amongst themselves and a few close friends (its closed down and deleted now so don’t go trying to find it) it quickly spread out as per what they had been attempting to accomplish. And if it was or was not related to their terrible deaths.

And what of the flash drive? A friend, who knew of its existence, later checked the home of the group and was unable to find it. According to reports the drive was found in the pocket of one of the group and had been taken into custody by the police, and then simply vanished.

The trail continues on, far more though. The file resurfaces every few weeks around the globe. Governments attempt to cover it up but some media leaks out, of course. Look to the news for people mutilated in their own homes by a “murderer”, their computers stolen, etc.

And if you ever get a cryptic email with an attachment labelled BarelyBreathing.exe, for fuck sakes DO NOT OPEN IT!

a

Binary DNA

Written below are the journal entries of Christopher Young, brother of Daryl Young, found saved as individual files on his personal computer, with file names Prologue.doc, Ch1.doc, Ch2.doc, etc. Apart from being compiled into one document, they have not been altered in any way.

—

Prologue

Two weeks later, there was a sound. There was a humming. It came from that place on the carpet, the spot near the corner. His spot.

Ch 1

I’m getting concerned. I guess I was a bit distracted before, but my mind is clear now. They’re gone, and I am frankly growing more concerned by the minute.

A chalk-white amorphous thing. A hideous, absolutely hideous thing. I saw it. I saw it on the rug, and it scared me. It looked at me, grinning with half-formed white eyes filmed over. It writhed towards me. A heat, some sort of sickening heat radiated from it, and it saw my disgust and thrived upon it.

I had hoped it would live in one of the closets, but it was content to ooze about my home, leaving trails as it went. I am quite sure that if I had not put the towel under the bathroom door it would have tried to come in and join me while I bathed myself.

Ch 2

Today it has appendages. I am not sure if they existed before, but now they most certainly do. It has two, with one on either side, and it crawls haphazardly along like some sort of horrid lopsided insect. It tried to follow me out through the door, but I kicked it and it did not try any longer.

It thumps around as I try to sleep, dragging its body everywhere and leaving residue all over the house.

I took my cat to Daryl’s. The thing didn’t follow me. I’m glad. It may get me, but it will not get my cat.

Ch 3

It now has four appendages and is beginning to form a skull-like dome under its pulsing skin. It has a mouth, a crooked little mouth, and I am afraid it will begin to make sounds at me. Three of the appendages are longer than the fourth, so it mostly wobbles around in crooked little circles. It is getting bigger, and it never stops changing. I was hoping it would stay and become some sort of indiscernible monster, but now I am sure that it is becoming a person, or at the very least something similar. I would like to kill it. I wonder if I could.

Ch 4

The appendages are even now. It’s disgusting, with abhorrent little limbs forming perfectly. They’re currently flippers and nubs, cartilage and bright blue veins under translucent white skin. It sits and stares at me as the cat did, but instead of curiosity it looks on with a hunger and a disquieting energy. Just as the cat’s did, however, its eyes reflect the slightest light in the darkness. They’re omnipresent and wide and green and yellow as I try to sleep. The eyes are not (yet?) the same size, which only serves to make the thing more unnerving.

Ch 5

It sits at the top of the stairs, waiting for me, smiling down at me with crooked reflective eyes and a small mouth full of small black teeth. My bedroom is upstairs. I am afraid to go up.

It also has hands and feet now; the nubs gave way to small, slender fingers and toes. It is beginning to walk and climb about, and there are small white hand prints smudged on all of the doorknobs. I think at this point towels will do me no good.

Ch 6

It can open doors. I’m sure of it now. It’s androgynous in anatomy, but for him I think it male. It still smiles at me and stares, but says nothing. A small mercy.

Ch 7

Last night I picked up a favorite old anthology and decided to read it while resting in the rocking chair next to my bedroom window. In response, the accursed thing stood in my doorway, leering at me, intent to ruin any escape. It succeeded. Frustration and fear gave way to rage, and I pushed up the window, ripped a hole in the screen, and flung the book outside into the night.

The thing ventured down the stairs, in and out the front door, and brought the book back- an arm snaking against and over the arm of my chair, depositing the small book in my lap, complete with bony hand print. That was the closest it had ever gotten to me. I became frightened.

I stared at the thing and then tossed the old book to the carpet. To think; to only have to deal with a beating beneath the floorboards! This thing mocked me and tormented me and lived and breathed and watched. It looked at the book for a moment, then curled up in the corner and stared at me, large uneven eyes with skin pulled back around. It stared at me and smiled with its little teeth.

Ch 8

The thing has started polluting my food or hiding it or both, and I found that shampoo burns my scalp and razors jut from the pages of my books. No longer content to mull around and lurk in corners, it is now actively making my life miserable.

Ch 9

Eventually, I had no choice but to venture out to the local supermarket and replace my now useless toiletries and food. I had become accustomed to it staying at my home, content to violate my private space, but I always held a suspicion it would begin to follow me. My fear was confirmed.

I drove to the store, did my shopping, and checked out. Nothing unusual happened. I walked outside. Nothing! I approached my car and believed to have seen it, but had not. I then glanced up and saw it.

It was far away. I do not know if it was making an attempt to hide, but it was there; it was there, looking at me, half-hidden behind a tree. Our eyes met, and I shivered. It appeared pleased, then it crawled its thin body back behind the tree, paused, and stuck its head out to continue watching me. The eyes were even, but they seemed to be getting larger, and darker, and more vacant; even from the distance between the two of us they stood out much against the bleached skin that surrounded them.

It smiled, but showed no teeth. I suppose it did not want to show them in public. I wondered what it had planned for me. I blinked and it was gone.

I paused for a moment, worried it would appear somewhere closer, but nothing happened. I then packed up the groceries and returned home. I stopped, retrieved my mail, pulled up, parked, got out, glanced up, and a light happened to catch my eye; I saw a foreign light my bedroom window. Faintly silhouetted against my window was the thing, staring intently down at me, shuddering against the glass, violating my room. I’m sure it had been watching the entire time, waiting for me to notice. In silhouette it looked so much like a person now, though was really little more than a lumpy childlike skeleton with enormous dark eyes.

If I killed it, would the authorities come back and blame me for killing a person, I wondered? I wondered. I wondered if it would try to snake a hand through the hole in the screen and reach for me.

Ch 11

Last night I sat on the couch flipping channels, desperate for any distraction or escape. The phone was next to me, but I was too afraid to call anyone for help, lest what happened before be found out. It must be said, though, that the pressure was becoming unbearable.

It sat in his corner again, sat in a sphinx-like position despite looking so human now, and just as I hit the one channel with static for the umpteenth time the thing in the corner began to whisper. I ignored it and changed the channel, hoping it would shut up. Its whispering merely grew in speed and intensity, and while it did not move, its eyes reflected the television screen and widened and its small chest heaved as it rattled off. I turned up the volume and began flipping rapidly, infomercial then sports channel then a cartoon, then suddenly his face was on the screen, tongue lolling out and blue face gasping for air and mercy and the thing was in front of me and in front of the television, facing me, gibbering and staring and I screamed over it and the television and the room went dark

Ch 12

This is too much, and I understand now the extent of blind terror the idea of certain death instinctively brings about in people. I have known the thrill of killing and the fear of being caught, but neither the idea of retribution nor of my life itself ending were ever real to me.

The mere thought of this thing, however, drives a black and bleak and cold and nearly unbearable fear to my core, let alone the feeling that I get when I feel it mulling about my room at night or when I awake to find small bruises, cuts, and white chalky smudges on my person.

I want to kill it, but I don’t know what would happen if I tried. I don’t know what to do.

Ch 13

I’ll say it here. Maybe it will help. It has been a while, but

I killed him.

It’s all clean, but I did it. He looked at me and looked at me and looked at me and would not stop. I should have known he would never stop. I knocked him down and strangled him until his throat collapsed under my thumbs and I dumped the body somewhere far away.

At first I had nightmares about him screaming then wheezing then his eyes and skin bursting like blood and confetti. I had them every night.

Then the police left, and I was left to read in my warm bed with my cat sleeping alongside me or pawing at the pages. The investigation ceased, the nightmares ceased, and I was at peace. Then the humming started.

The humming and the warmth all over and I can see its reflection in my computer monitor

Ch 14

My home, my bed, my person, and now my dreams. I’m having nightmares again, but they’re much, much worse. In my dreams it’s there. It has no eyes, but it stands tall and with its wide mouth and talks to me and laughs at me and screams and looks ready to devour me. Sometimes I understand its words and sometimes they’re incomprehensible, but whenever I wake up I cannot remember their precise nature. The dreams feel dark and hot and cramped and I wonder if anything worse could possibly happen to me if I die.

I wonder if it would depend on if it killed me or if someone else did.

Ch 15

Maybe I will do it. I have a pistol in a box in my bedroom closet, and if I were to fling the thing from its watching place down the stairs it would give me enough time to run and grab the gun.

I just wouldn’t be sure who to use it on.

I have worried about the thing reading these entries and figuring out my intentions, but I have not seen any evidence of it examining the keyboard or monitor. I comfort myself in regards to this matter by believing that its form of comprehension is much too primal and hunger-driven to allow for much complex thought.

Maybe I’m a fool.

Maybe it knows everything.

Regardless, it’s in my dreams and my brain and every waking moment and I am determined to end it.

Ch 16

I found my solution. I purchased a shotgun. If we’re both within range when I pull the trigger, it should do the trick. Wish me luck.

Ch 17

Why didn’t I die

Why didn’t it die

Ch 18

I don’t understand

I cleaned the carpet after before but now it’s soaked with blood

I

wonder if with the way my head is, looking at it is like a mirror because

I bled like a person and the thing bled black and it’s all everywhere and I haven’t looked in the mirror but I blasted half of its skull off and there’re bits of red and blue flesh everywhere and it’s still looking at me leering at me smiling at me spurting and bleeding at me

the keyboard is covered in my blood and I don’t know how long I can keep this up

I only have one idea left

I think I am going to go

far away.

—-

Written above are the journal entries of Christopher Young, found dead in a rock quarry next to the mutilated, partially decomposed, and recently moved remains of Shaun Dawes, his young neighbor and (former) friend. Dawes’s death was one of head trauma followed by strangulation, but Young’s cause of death is as of yet undetermined, though he was malnourished and his hygienic state was in vast disrepair. In fact, thanks to his physical and mental state leading up to his death, it is uncertain how he managed to drive the relatively great length from his home to the quarry in which he ended up.

It is also worth mentioning that neither fresh blood nor any of the firearms Young mentions in his writing were found in his home; all our forensics team found were older traces on the carpet and mantle corner that likely belonged to Dawes. We’re currently probing autopsy reports for any information they can provide on Young’s mental health from Dawes’s death onward and requesting further investigation by every department involved. All we have to go on in regards to Young apart from his cadaver’s physical state and these entries is virtually nil; as of my writing this, we haven’t come up with a single witness or piece of evidence outside of what I mentioned above, apart from an interview with “Daryl”, Christopher’s brother.

To be frank with you, even said interview with was fruitless; he was distraught at the death of his younger brother, but said that Young seemed perfectly content and had claimed he was going on a vacation and that his cat would only need to be taken care of for about a week minimum. The two bodies were found five days later in the quarry, meaning that if the older of the Young brothers is being truthful (and isn’t afflicted with his brother’s psychosis), Young’s physical and mental deterioration happened much more quickly than we had first assumed, and much more quickly than should have been possible.

I’ll keep you updated as we learn more, of course. It’s all very strange.

Thanks for the help.

Yours Truly, —– —–
—— Police Department

–
Credited to Strucci.

a

A Hands-On Approach

Call me paranoid if you wish, but the late 80’s in Europe was no time for an American to walk around alone. It seems the Nazi Party was not quite as dead as we had been lead to believe and chance encounters with young skinheads became a very real possibility and a very real danger as well. For this reason, I took to carrying a certain semi-automatic friend of mine under my coat on my left side to give a would-be assailant .45 reasons to rethink his position. I will not discuss my occupation at the time, or why I could get away with this, suffice to say that I could, and leave it at that.

I was walking around the largest of the abbey’s lakes late on a Sunday afternoon when I saw a woman about two hundred meters from me near one of the entrances to the tunnels. I could tell she wore a dress, but she had some kind of cloak over it hiding any details of the garment. I did noticed her figure, but few other details. There was no obvious evidence that she was in distress or needed assistance, it was just a feeling I got as I walked toward her, and she moved toward the catacomb door. Reflexively I adjusted the comforting chunk of finely milled steel under my left arm, reassuring myself it was still there even though I knew it was. By the time I reached the door to the tunnels she had disappeared inside with only one glance back at me as I approached. The late afternoon sun was casting many long shadows and I was too far away to see her face clearly, save for her eyes. Her eyes simultaneously bothered me and drew me to her. Loose stones crunched underfoot as I left the paved trail for the gravel road to the catacomb entrance. I did not notice at the time, but she had made no noise on the gravel. My approach to the door had been from the side and I did not actually see her open the door to go in. When I reached the door I had to grasp and engage the metallic thumb latch and swing the door wide on rusty hinges. It never entered my conscious mind that I hadn’t heard the hinges when she went in, but my subconscious was pulling double duty trying to keep me alive by taking over my right arm and moving my hand to the butt of the heavy Colt 1911A1 in my shoulder rig. I had been in these tunnels often enough to know where I was. The entryway beyond the door had two exits. The one on my right led to the greatest area of tunnels. The exit in front of me was little more than a rubble-covered stairway that branched to two separate short passageways that both dead-ended. As I paused for my eyes to adjust I heard a faint indeterminate sound from the direction in front of me. My eyes had not yet righted themselves, but I moved forward anyway… I knew these tunnels… she may need me!

As I moved my eyes cleared and I noticed a feint glow like a match up a tunnel that I knew stopped at some of the Fuhrer’s masonry. When I rounded the last bend I saw her. She had her back to me and she starred at the wall. Her hair was long and straight and the deepest raven black. Her curves were not the kind to get lost in a crowd either. As I stood there memorizing every inch of her she began to turn to me. Her face was a mask of death! There were no eyes in the sockets of her dried skull as she looked at me. There was no skin on the bones of her hands as she raised them toward me. What happened next I pieced together later. My instinctual reaction was to bring up the gun in a perfect weaver stance and dump the entire clip into… it. I also started to back away at the same time and fell. This must have been what I had done, for when I came to my senses I was laying on my back in the pitch dark. I fished a Zippo out of my pocket and surveyed the area. I found no woman, no blood, no appreciable time had passed according to my watch, no rational reason that I could see before and now it was dark, and no real desire to stay in the tunnels one second longer. I quit the catacombs before anyone came to investigate the shots and hurried home. At home I discovered some unnerving facts. I had cut my head when I fell. When I washed the blood out of my hair, I found the most startling gray streak over both of my temples that had not been there mere hours earlier. I really wanted this to just be some kind of horrible dream, but the more time passed; the more I began to remember. This seemed totally opposite to a normal dream that one would usually forget by the end of the morning coffee. This dream was getting more vivid as time passed.

I remembered a sharp pain in my gut and coughing or… no… choking! Yes, that was it… Choking! I was gasping for air! I could not breathe and my poor, sweet little girl, the child I clutched in my arms, dead… My husband… my husband had been taken away and must surely be dead also. My…

WHAT!?!?!?

I nearly fell. What was I thinking? I did not have a child, much less a husband?! Then I saw her. She was standing right next to me… in my own house! She was not the skeleton she had been, her smooth skin was the palest white and now looked as it must have… in life. A little shorter than me, jet black hair, even in death she was beautiful. She was pulling her hand back as if she had been touching my shoulder.

I understand now. The SS must have caught her and other resistance fighters in the tunnels when they walled them up. All she wants is a decent burial. This is not too much to ask. I’m leaving now with a pick and a shovel to do the right thing. The labyrinth beyond the walls is unmapped. I do not know where she died. I only hope she stays around long enough to lead me back out of the tunnels when my work for her is done. If she does not, however, I leave this testament to any who come looking for me that they may at least have a clue as to where my body may lay…

–
Credited to SFC_HeadShot.

a

A Ghost Story

The next morning, I found each and every one of my horses messily decapitated. The smell was what woke me up. Each one was slumped over against the side of its stall. There were no signs of the heads. I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess and burying the remains. It was only when I was done that I noticed the bales of hay had all returned to their positions from the day before, scattered far out into the fields. This time I left them where they were.

That night I sat on my porch with my shotgun in hand and a pot of coffee on the table beside me. I sat for hours, straining my eyes into the fields to catch a glimpse of who was moving my hay bales. Finally, I was beginning to nod off. I would have, but just as my eyes began to close I heard a clamor and a rustling of trees from the nearby woods. I leaned forward, my heart racing with excitement; I was going to catch the bastard. I fumbled with my gun and fidgeted in my seat, waiting anxiously for whoever it was to get close enough to ambush. It was only when the thing got close enough for me to make out its silhouette in the dark that I was frozen still. The thing that crept into my fields from the nearby woods didn’t seem to notice me sitting there. It stalked, hunched and deliberate, through the field with the posture of a tiptoeing thief. If not for the fact that it must have towered to over ten feet tall even in its crouched position, it might have seemed almost frail. The thinness of its arms and legs and the emaciated, caved-in quality of its chest reminded me of a starving animal. Still, this thing was undeniably strong, and I watched it hoist each bale up into its arms with ease, and set it down carefully a while away, taking only a few strides to cover the distance. I watched it work, moving each bale thoughtfully. Every once in a while it would straighten up to look around at the other bales’ positions in the field, before adjusting the one it was working on ever so slightly.

Before it left, it looked towards the house. I felt its eyes sweep over me in the dark, but whether it saw me or not I couldn’t tell. Then, it turned silently and crept back the way it came, disappearing into the dark of the woods. It took me an hour before I had the courage to move at all. I went inside after a while, but didn’t sleep that night. It was only when the sun rose that I dared step off my porch into the fields. The hay bales were where it left them. Strangely, it didn’t move them as far as it had in the previous days. They were approaching something invisible in the fields, and as I looked at them I realized that they seemed to be marking some line. Indeed, as I walked around the house, I saw the distinct circle that they formed with me at the center. At first I thought the bales were just being haphazardly moved away from the house, but now I could see that they were instead being moved towards some boundary. The thing was sending me a message. I slept uneasily that night, and only because I was exhausted.

The next morning the bales hadn’t moved at all. They didn’t move at all for the rest of that week, in fact. They were finally where the thing wanted them. I made myself sick trying to interpret them. Why would this thing expend so much energy moving my hay bales, and threaten me with such violence should I try to interfere? Killing my horses was just that - a threat. An intelligent threat, at that. It knew what would scare me, and it knew that I would understand the implications.

The sound of an automobile working its way along the road to my farm one morning gave me a little rush of excitement. I’d been planning to abandon the farm since I saw the thing, but I couldn’t hope to leave on foot without risking it treating me like it treated my horses. But, if I could get in the car with whoever was coming my way, I might be able to escape before it could stop me. I didn’t know or care who it was. I decided that the moment they stopped the car, I would jump in the passenger’s seat and tell them to get the hell out of here. I didn’t get the chance.

The car worked its way slowly along the road, trundling across the uneven ground. I urged it silently to hurry. It was when it passed between the two bales placed on either side of the road that I began to hear a booming clatter from the woods. The thing burst suddenly from between the trees, sprinting on all four of its terrible, gangly limbs towards the car. Within a few seconds it was there, pouncing on the automobile like a predatory cat. Within moments it was picking and peeling the vehicle’s steel frame apart, working to get at the driver. The man, whoever he was, screamed all the while and I could hear him even over the crunching of metal and the shattering of glass. It was only when the thing crushed him carelessly in its hand that the screaming stopped. It tossed him away, and straightened up to look at me once again. In the sunlight, I could see the inhumanity of it. It was composed entirely of something awful and alive which was lashed together in a messy semblance of a human form. Whatever it was made of looked so polished and hard, that if it weren’t for the minute writhing of the stuff, I’d think it was made of granite.

The thing retreated back into the woods, and I was left to my shock. My eyes wandered to where the car sat, the engine still sputtering, between two of the hay bales. Suddenly, I understood. The message was clear. I am this thing’s captive, and I am not allowed visitors. Nothing may cross the borders it has set. I’m trapped here, by the thing that stalks the fields, and it demands nothing except that I never leave. Still, I don’t know if I can handle being that thing’s canary. I’ve been thinking hard for the last few days since I saw it crush that man’s chest, and silence him before he could finish his scream. If I crossed the hay bale border, it’d probably do the same. It’d smash my skull before I could put my hands up to protect myself. It’d go and find a new pet, and probably keep looking until it found someone who could stand knowing that it was waiting just outside, watching it at all hours with its shiny, insect eyes.

I’ve been thinking hard for the last few days, and I might just make a run for it.

Credited to David Feuling at http://www.ss-comic.com/fiction.html

a

The Thing That Stalks The Fields

I figured it was some shitty prank from my “experimental” friends from down the street. We’ve tried nearly every reasonable drug there is, trying to get the most psychadelic trips, maintain the best highs..

DMT, E, Acid, some experimental shit this dude sold me for wayy too much. Shit fucked me up… I tripped I was dust floating down from the ceiling. Lasted like eight hours. Fucked… me… up…

Anyway, the pills had like an orange 17 on them… Looked them up online, and couldn’t find anything.

I threw it on my dresser and crashed for the night.

I called all my friends the next afternoon. They all “claimed” they had nothing to do with it. “Wasn’t them”. I figured one of them would fess up eventually…

Over the next week, I pretty much forgot about it. None of my friends said anything, so either they forgot, or it really wasn’t them. I didn’t feel like mentioning it, we had some concentrated Salvia, so we lit that up.

The next day, curiousity killed me, I picked up the bag. Glanced at the note again… “Do it”… I swore it said “Do try” but I was high when I picked it up, so I dont know. But it entrigued me even more. I examined the pill. I reasoned with myself. I just couldn’t take it, it could be anything, but I was so curious. What if it was THE best high, the MOST psychadelic trip. I talked myself out of it. I set it down again, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing out…

The next few days were hell… I had a fever, and I felt like literal shit. Probably strep. I slept most of the day, but I awoke from the sound of my own heartbeat. My thoughts went instantly to the pill… I picked it up. It was practically calling my name. What the fuck did I have to lose. If I die, I die. I felt like dying anyway. For all I know, it could be some fucking antibiotics. I hoped for the latter. I looked at it one last time.

I downed it.

I remember “waking up”. The world was in negative. I was strapped to a chair, and these dark pulsating lights were eating away at my vision. I had no Idea what was going on, but I wasn’t scared. I was used to fucked up trips, but this was different. I felt empty. Time was moving backwards. Light was inverted. These dark lamps pulsing energy through my brain. A bass tone vibrating my body. I couldn’t close my eyes… I needed these “lights”. They were blackening the world. My world. The world where I resided and wasted time in the light. I finally understood. I was in the dark.

I started seeing the figures after what seemed like an eternity. Black masses of energy crawling towards me from every angle. I was seeing them in strobe. As the dark flashed, they crept closer and closer. I recognized them as friend. They were to free me from the light. Take me away from this white hell we all know so well. I wanted to go to them, but I made no attempt. I focused on the strobe. I needed them to move faster. To rid me of luminescence. Once and for all.

The strobe frequency slowed. Time started to speed up. The figures were stationary. The light was coming.

My cornea’s burned as the trip wore off. My emptyness enveloped me. The stobe was near out.. The figures no longer visible. I finally closed my eyes. Such a pale dark compared to true darkness.

When I opened them, I was in my bed. I shut them back immediately. I hated light. I hated our world. I wanted nothing more than to return to the chair. I couldn’t live here anymore. I couldn’t open my eyes. I reasoned with myself for hours to get up, to open my eyes. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I didn’t. I prayed for darkness. It meant nothing. I was in the white. The only way I knew to return to the black was the pill. I had one left, but I had to open my eyes.

My luminous mind was telling me it was just a trip. Don’t go back. Forget the abyss and return to normal life. The darkness was in favor. I didn’t want to go back, I needed it. It was the realization the world needed. But I didn’t care about the world. Only the dark.

Night came. I finally opened my eyes. Not to let the light in, but to get the pill. The last pill. As far as I knew, it was the last pill on earth. My want for darkness convinced me I only needed one. The figures would take me this time. I would forsake the light for the wondrous dark. I cared not what was in the dark. As long as it was unlit.

My body was weak. My eyes so adjusted to our world’s pathetic darkness, I felt as though I was looking at the sun. I needed the eclipse. I grabbed the bag. And without hesitation, swallowed the capsule. I would be home soon. I closed my eyes.

I “awoke”

I was back. Again in the chair. The dark was so comforting. Time moving the way I remembered. My frail body energized by the tones. The strobe showing me truths. The darkness was truth. I waited for the figures. I was confident they would take me this time.

Finally they limped into view. I praised them. Every strobe showed promise that I would soon forget light. Their movements were choppy and slow. But promising.

I urged them closer. Watching intently between strobes for their presence. They were getting close. I could feel them. Their pulses heavy on my chest. Our hearts beating in unison with the strobes. They were here.

The saviours were had arrived. They circled me. Crippled creatures that would transform my world. They opened my eyes to the dark, and closed them to the light. They held out their hands as the strobe slowed to a near stop. Everything was speeding up. I thought they took me. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I was in complete darkness. Beautiful, astonishing darkness. Every direction, an endless abyss void of light. This was what I had prayed for. Where I belonged. I never had to see light again. To open my eyes to anything but black was impossible. I loved it.

I got up to walk around my uncontaminated world. The dark Eden.

I stumbled over something. Something in the void? I felt around. This overewhelming darkness contained something familiar.

My old world.

–
Credited to Pill.

a

Do Try

Nevertheless, when you break in–always through a back, ground-floor window; you must never touch the outer doors–you will see amongst the dust the signs of inhabitants long gone. A flattened cardboard box, an overturned child’s cot, balding patches on the carpet where the pile has been worn away. Invariably there will be an orphaned double mattress in the master bedroom. What you will not see, however, are rats and cockroaches, or animal waste. Vermin know better than to come here.

These are Her sacred spaces.

The first time you visit, bring only what you need to help you enter the house. Then locate the master bedroom, stand in the centre, and draw an unbroken circle in the dust around your feet. Make it about a metre in diameter to be safe.

Face the doorway and say aloud; “I wish to make a sacrifice. Will you welcome the offering?”

Then leave as quickly as possible. You must not return until night has next fallen.

This time, bring nails, a hammer, an empty litre bottle, a sharp, sturdy knife, and a torch. Enter the same way you did last time. Remember the mattress in the master bedroom? Someone will be sleeping there. Don’t worry about waking them up; She has taken care of that for you. Turn the sleeper over onto their back and cut their jugular vein, making sure to collect as much blood as you can.

You will need to pour a little of the blood onto the floor of every room, including this one, but make sure you have some left at the end. When you’ve finished, leave by the same way you entered, and close up the boards again. (This is what the hammer and nails are for.) Walk home. Speak to nobody on your way. When you get there, tip some of the remaining blood into your right hand and smear it over your door handle before you enter. Then go to bed.

If there is any blood left, you must pour the rest of it onto any pavement in the city, but do not allow it to be poured down a drain. The knife you must never use again, and should bury. Do not trouble yourself with covering your tracks. When you next leave your house, the blood on your door will be gone, and the murder you have committed will have no repurcussions. From the moment you leave Her temple, DNA evidence will never again implicate you; law enforcement will creep around your footsteps without touching them. On cameras, your face will show up a blur.

You are under Her protection now.

Just make sure you get the right house.

a

Her Protection

You know, that particular silence that is so heavy, and so thick, it’s almost the equivalent of a loud noise itself? The kind of silence where you could hear a pin drop three rooms away in; the kind of silence that fills your ears with the sound of your own heartbeat as your ear presses against your pillow. That kind of silence.

The dull whirring is the only noise you can hear, a noise that typically goes unnoticed, until it is the only noise present. It’s comforting, whether you realize it or not. A sort of white noise. But suddenly, your room is back at the temperature specified on the thermostat, and the whirring comes to a stop, as the vent makes a dull clang. To your misfortune, you are not yet asleep, and the silence sets in.

You should be comforted by the knowledge that you could hear anything and everything in your surroundings; making up for the lack of vision provided by the darkness. But you aren’t. It’s this very environment that sets you on edge, causes your heart to beat a bit faster, makes your body tense without explanation, and that makes you aware when you are not alone.

But you are alone right? You’ve been laying there with your eyes closed for almost 15 minutes now, and you made sure everything was normal in your room before you turned off the light; you’re a smart one. All those Facebook quizzes you took have just reinforced what you already know, if you were in a horror movie, you’d survive until the end. You’ve even made a carefully laid plan of what you would do in any of the situations you’ve read about on creepypasta.com. But that stuff is just nonsense anyway, right?

You aren’t scared. Or at least that’s what you keep telling yourself.

But wait…what was that? Was that the rustling of fabric? But, you didn’t shift in your bed, or make any movement. Did you make that noise? No, you couldn’t have. You’re paralyzed your bed, stiff with an unease that was not present until these very moments. You must have imagined it…you must have.

You roll over to face the wall. Out of sight, out of mind. If there’s something in the room with you, it will just have to accept that you are much to tired to deal with it at the moment. You’re still stricken with uneasiness as you hear rustling again. This time, the rustling is accompanied by a soft thud on the ground.

Your heart seizes in your chest…did you really just hear that? No no, you’ve just gotten yourself worked up about nothing. You really should stop play horror survival games so late at night, it’s messing with your brain. You’re a rational person, stop acting so childish and just fall asleep already.

You close your eyes tightly, silently hoping sleep would whisk you away soon. You’re practically begging for the safety of the nonexistent dreamworld of your own creation. You’re running away in a sense; but there’s nothing there…right? You’re just tired. I know, I know.

As your eyes are clinched tightly shut, you become aware that no matter how much you want to, you can no longer move your arms and legs. Come on now, are you really letting this get to you? What are you? 12 years old? Suck it up and fall asleep already.

Now, more tense than ever, that unnerving sound echoes across the room again. The rustling of fabric, followed by a soft thud on the ground. Unwittingly, you’re holding your breath now, eyes shut as tightly as possible. You have childish urge to pull the blanket over your head. You’re imagining it all! It’s all in your head; I thought you were better than this.

You heart is pounding loudly in your ears now, but not loudly enough to drown out the now repetitive sound approaching from across the room. What’s that rustling!? Maybe you left some paper on the ground. That has to be it! And that thumping? Probably the cat, or the dog, or something. They probably ran in when you weren’t looking before you closed your door. Yeah, you’re just paranoid.

The noise is now within a foot of your bed, and with your back to it, you don’t dare turn around to investigate, not that it’d do much good; the only light in your room is the dull glow of your cell phone on the nightstand next to you, you plugged it in before crawled into bed remember? But you don’t dare turn around and look; there’s nothing there anyway.

Minutes that feel like hours pass as you face your wall, stiff as a board, unable to will your uncooperative body to move. You haven’t heard the noises in a while now, not since it reached the edge of your bed. You know there’s nothing there you silly. It’s this silence. It’s messing with you. You really should have turned on some music or something before you went to bed. Oh well, maybe next time.

Suddenly, a familiar clang echoes through the room, followed by that familiar whirring. You exhale deeply, your body relaxing as you are flooded with relief. Thank God that’s over, now you can finally sleep in peace. That silence was really getting to you. You roll over and open your eyes to check the time on your lit cell phone, it must have been at least an hour since you first went to bed.

You are greeted face to face with his ear to ear grin. Dimly lit sockets where eyes once resided stare intently at you.

Ah, I see you’re still awake.

–
Credited to Shadow Lovely.

a

You’re Not Scared, Right?

I AM A DEAD SKULL!!!

a

THE DEAD SKULL

The earth here is thin. I move about it so freely, and the ease of it is a delicious thing, but it is also frightful. I dig my inscriptions by feel and touch, and because I know the earth, I know that this will be massive for your senses.

Here in this layer of the planet, I am inbetween my people and your people. I float about in this soft soil like a drifting bubble, weightless and yet handled so delicately within my surroundings that my fragile dome will never burst. I am fit to drift along in euphoria. I would do this forever, if granted the chance, but I have responsibilities to my people, and to our Mother.

If I were to glide about, dreamlessly, in this infinite expanse of softrock, a few fathoms beneath your manmade pave-veins, I would lose myself in the arms of Mother, and she would love to have me lost. That exquisite moment will not arrive until your end-time comes. For now, I must finish the task I have been chosen for by our matron. She was born from the hardrock and the fire at the very core of Mother, and so I cherish and love her for choosing me to finish this map for our people.

If I were to abandon my quest and return home now, I could be in the heartfire of earth within two of Mother’s circles. Perhaps that holds no meaning for you, but because I have lurked just beneath the pave-vein in your greatest den and homestead of New York City, I know that the word I must use is “years.” You measure your core by a finite passage of time in units. We measure ours by Mother Earth herself, as you once did before in history, before you created the deathly grid and thought yourselves too intelligent to honor Mother. This is what saddens her, and this is the cause of the war between my people and your people.

It has taken me over one thousand of your years to reach the earth just below your pave-veins and grids of softrock. At first, I did not understand, and I would glide along through the thin places as your slow moving metal boxes with the rubber feet would adhere to the limited paths that you have provided for them. They are lumbering beasts, unable to dig, deaf and dumb constructs that are reflective of their creators. I do not pity you, because if you had used her gifts the way they were meant to be used, you would be as my people are now.

I traveled up from the heartfire at the core, and I learned your grid. I have traveled it, mapped it, and meticulously crafted the crooked places above the soil. They are illogical. Why you take the softrock from Mother’s ample womb and move it to create your own veins is beyond me. It is disgusting, and it gives me more purpose to fulfill what the matron has sent me to your thinplace for. Mother’s veins are designed to be flowed through, to be embraced and traveled as they were created. What you do to her is an abomination.

We hear her soft whimpers at night when we try to sleep, and it pains us. The core of fire at her heart is our resting place, and now it is plagued by the agonized wails of the planet. She hid her grief and pain from us, but the noise was too great for us to sleep. You have made us restless.

It took time for us to coax her in to revealing the source of her sorrow and anguish. That source is you and your people. You have assaulted the most beautiful of beautiful things, and for this, we hate you. You have brought this on yourself.

By the time one of your geologists finds this long message, riddled throughout the endless tunnels and archways within Mother that I have dug, it will be too late. The map is already almost finished. What I dig now is only superfluous to our real motivations. I dig this message now to provide an explanation, a reason for what we are about to do. We feel that we do not owe you this. Mother feels differently, despite her scars, and so we honor her wishes.

The dig from the core has been long. When I first began in the expanses of hardened molta, I moved slowly. Her screams chased me through the trenches of stone and furious flame as your years passed, and you continued to wound her further. Her pain was my pain, and so my progress quickened. Feeling the shudders of Mother, she caused me to burn bright, to blast through the hardrock and reach the thin places where I can move like one of your bullets.

The number of trenches and veins that I have burned through her is incomprehensible to your kind. They are all pathways for my people to travel from the core of fire to your thin place. I have mapped her for them, and so they need only unleash our message to you in the boughs of the clouds. You will see the sky burn as bright as our home at her center, and all of you will perish.

It will take us some time to overgrow your atrocious pave-veins with our earth, but we will help her. We will blast them in to oblivion as easily as we will blast from the map beneath your beasts on rubber. We will reap the cause of her pain away in one ascending windfall, and then her wails may soften. Eventually, she will be gleeful and throbbing with life once more, and we will fall fitfully asleep, as we should be now, if it were not for your people.

This map is my message, and I am growing tired of your thin place in the crust beneath your metropolis dens. They are an affliction on Mother’s perfect face, and because you have marred her beautiful cheeks with her own tears, we will rend you with the very fire that we were born from.

–
Credited to Violent Harvest, who also deserves some congratulations!

a

Core

“You want something?” he asked.

“The world’s ending,” said the hippie. “I need your help.”

He stepped around the hippie and kept walking. High as a kite, he thought to himself. The hippie started walking after him, and fell into step beside him.

“Please, I need your help,” said the hippie.

“Look, man, I’m really not interested,” he said, and kept walking.

The hippie leant against a wall, watching him walk away. The hippie wasn’t all that disappointed; lots of people gave this kind of response. Another skeptic, he thought to himself, fingering the ragged holes through the middles of his hands.

a

The End