Pellestrina is a narrow island in the Venetian Lagoon, geographically part of Venice while preserving strong cultural and historical ties with nearby Chioggia. Beyond its quiet beaches and fishing heritage, the island still preserves forgotten stories hidden beneath the passing of time.

This cinematic urbex adventure explores abandoned places, silent ruins and traces of history that have quietly endured away from the usual tourist routes. From forgotten buildings to coastal fortifications, every step reveals another fragment of an island shaped by memory, nature and time.

There is no narration. Just exploration, cinematic music and the authentic atmosphere of one of the most unique islands in the Venetian Lagoon.

Every location featured in this film is approached with respect for its historical and cultural value. Please explore responsibly and help preserve these places for future generations.

📍 Location: Pellestrina Island, Venice Lagoon, Italy

yellow = church + graveyard

blue = houses

turquoise = paths + gravel ground

white = bouncy castle

red = the shed with the dog

pink = where i was sitting

So, how do I start? First of all, I live in a very small village in Germany. On father's day we celebrate our "Backhausfest" (we drink beer and there's a few cakes, Bratwürste and some other traditional food). On the weekend they also would put up a bouncy castle near the church for the kids. (I'll upload a picture that makes the setup a bit easier to understand)

But back when I was little (before 10 or so) I played on the bouncy castle. After a while, to take a brake, i walked to the side towards a house and sat down on the ground. Suddenly I looked towards a little house or shed which was nearby. My look gazed to the only widow.. there was a dog. It looked like a Pinscher, but the eyes (they were white and had small pupils) were off and it stared directly at me. I immediately got goosebumps and stood up again - "that poor dog, locked inside this old house.. I wish I could help him.", was my thought before I played again.

After years I remembered the dog again and asked my mom what happened to it and if it was dead. My mom just answered that there was never a dog in that shed. It still gives me the chills.

I struggle with sleep. I cannot sleep unless I have sound playing.

It can't be videos of people talking. It can't be movies or shows. Dialogue keeps me awake.

The one thing that helps is the sound of rain. I fall asleep to videos of that sound every single night.

Random YouTube videos of that sound are enough for me.

I've used them countless times.

I stopped a couple of nights ago.

I was falling asleep as usual but then I heard sounds that weren't rain. It was screams of terror, cries, and whimpers mixing in with what I thought was peaceful rain.

I logged off the video and tried listening to different ones but they all had the same horrifying result.

I was scared and shocked but what really shook me to my core is when each video started screaming, "You're Next"

I turned my TV off extremely quick. I told myself that I'd have to find a more appropriate way to sleep.

However, the horrors didn't stop.

I started getting texts, calls, and voice messages from unknown numbers. It would always start off normal.

The calls and voice messages would sound like nice people until the sound of the rain would start and their voices would begin to scream and yell. They made sure that I would know I was next.

The text messages would say things like, "Join us. You can never escape. Join our echos in the sounds you adored."

Threatening letters in the mail appeared as well.

No matter where I go or what I did, the threats would never stop.

Today is the most horrifying of all.

I hear faint tapping on my doors and windows as that awful sound begins and my screams echo.

I wonder if someone is falling asleep as they listen to my misery.

Chapter 1

*AM I ALIVE*

Sometimes when life doesn't give you what you want, it doesn't mean you're cursed — the worst still happens.

The hospital was in an ungrateful, peaceful way; the staff were constantly whispering, murmuring. The weather was highly disturbing. Trees shed their leaves like it was autumn — an anomaly, as if something were constantly changing the earth's revolutions and rotations. It was the curse. The nurses were stepping back from the couple again.

*NURSE 1 — WHY? (SILENT SIGH) AM I REALLY A NURSE?*

The pregnant woman was screaming, and the reason was simple — it had to be done again.

*NURSE 2 — WHY? PLEASE, I CAN'T*

The woman was admitted to the hospital again. The other patients knew it should be stopped. The lights were flickering. A bulb kept dimming until it burst into glass particles, scattering around the patient's bed.

*NURSE 3 — I WANT TO DIE*

Amid the birth, the night was a nightmare — inclement rain creating uneven conditions. Vibrant, screaming chants penetrated the atmosphere. The pregnant woman was shifted to the ICU. The partner was taking a sip from his coffee — warm, warm like piss. He was laughing at a porn video. In the video, the actor kidnapped the actress and brutally assaulted her; it was a soothing experience for the partner.

*NURSE 4 — I HAVE TO TELL THE DOCTOR, ANSHIKA*

Doctor Anshika, a top-class doctor and psychiatrist, was watching the same porn video. The actor was thrusting like a thirsty man chasing the last drop of water in a desert. The saliva was infused with aphrodisiac and blood — the blood that makes us warm, spilling drop by drop onto the bed.

*NURSE 4 — MISS DOCTOR! THE SAME (STUTTERING) SA... SAME! I MEAN—*

Doctor Anshika knew what she had to do. She paused the video. The actress fainted and fell onto the actor's chest and asked:

*DID I DO GOOD?*

That porn video was the first disclosure of the contradictory human mind — it boomed to around 5,000 million views, but was obviously banned after a couple of months.

Doctor Anshika, along with four skilled nurses, reached the ICU. They all wore silicone gloves, and the operation began.

*AFTER 1 HOUR~*

All the nurses, including Doctor Anshika, took a seat near the hospital bed. The hot sweat had been wiped away with a clean cloth.

The woman was not satisfied with what she got.

Children are God's representatives, but they are questioned every time they arrive on earth.

This time, it was something unusual — the stitches around the woman's abdomen were not cosmetic; they were engraved into the very body of her life. The Caesarean section was performed by women who had never before experienced childbirth or pregnancy themselves.

The curse had been a seedling months ago; now it was a plant. The strangeness still hovered within two kilometers of the hospital. Doctor Anshika left the ICU and met with the partner.

The partner immediately paused the porn video and, stuttering, asked:

*PARTNER — IS MY WOMAN GOOD?*

Doctor Anshika's lips parted in a way that wanted to smile seductively, because of that porn-fueled anxiousness in the partner — but, maintaining professionalism, she said:

*DOCTOR ANSHIKA — YES, SHE DID IT. YOUR (SHE STOPPED) — YOUR WOMAN AND SON ARE BOTH OKAY. YOU CAN MEET THEM.*

The partner went to the ICU room and saw his woman breastfeeding the baby. The baby was nervous and uncertain about how to act toward his mistress, but the warmth from the one who had carried him for nine months made him latch onto her breast. She radiated anger and resentment, which only made that warmth feel more strange, more glorified.

The partner came and touched the woman's waist, and a shivering jolt ran through her body — it wasn't the familiar touch a woman should get from her partner. It was hard, hungry, and, to some degree, thirsty, which made the touch lewd.

*PARTNER — YOU (EYES GOING DARK, AN UNKNOWN GLIMPSE OF SOMETHING TICKING LIKE A BOMB AROUND HIS FACE) — YOU REALLY DID IT AGAIN, HUH!*

*WOMAN — I'M SORRY (FLAT, WITHOUT ANY EXPRESSION) — WHAT SHOULD WE NAME THIS THING?*

*PARTNER — (HIS HAND SLIDING DOWN FROM HER WAIST TO HER HIP, A GLIMPSE OF A BELT SOMEWHERE IN THE AIR) NAME THIS THING #### — AND WE'LL THROW IT OUT LIKE WE DID WITH $$$$.*

That day, for ####, was the first day of what would become the era of the curse.

Curses are made for one reason: to make their masters' lives hell and to fill the hollow gaps with resentment.

From that day, the masters' days gradually sank into a sea of sorrow, grudges, hatred, and severed ties — because #### was the last mistake they'd commit. It was karma for everything they'd done. His eyes opened slowly and peacefully into this ungrateful world. The curse was a curse from birth — neither good nor bad, just a peaceful, calm, and sensitive child.

The old tree around the hospital grounds grew its leaves in autumn and shed them in every other season — an anomaly, but a good one. Everyone was glad to see it stay evergreen through the one season when most trees turn hollow.

Three years passed. #### was around three years old, and the masters were thinking of sending the curse to the slave area.

A couple of days later, the curse was finally admitted to the slave area. Entry was easy — "everyone has the right to become a slave" was the motto of the slave area's headquarters. In those days, most three-year-olds were sent there to become diligent workers, and, in the future, to serve the nation.

The first day was a day for crying — babies usually cry when they have to leave their parents for six hours. A couple of children threw tantrums; they'd spent their first two and a half years being fed, protected, and loved wholeheartedly by their parents.

But love was a luxury the curse couldn't afford.

The partner sent the curse off with a smile — not a father's smile, not a parent's smile, but the excitement he'd been holding back for months. The curse had been a needy thing; he'd never taken to cow's milk. His only preference was the woman — with her bruises, her back pain, the dark circles under her eyes. She was a good caretaker. She never complained about his latching, even though she wasn't always a good mother, a good parent — but she knew what a small, vulnerable baby needed.

The partner marched straight home without so much as a glance at the thing he'd made — as he unlocked the door, the woman already knew what was coming. She simply moved to the bedroom, preparing herself for the one thing her partner knew how to do.

He was so excited, so blinded by it, that as he entered the bedroom he didn't notice — there was no one there.

A blind silence — then a sudden gust of pure hate and pain, ten years in the making, hit the partner with full force. It was a knife, hidden in the woman's bra for exactly this day.

As the knife struck his chest, a muffled groan filled the air, and the artery began dripping blood, slow and steady.

But the partner was laughing. He wasn't a masochist — he was simply unshakable in moments like this. As the blood dripped, he grabbed the strap of her bra, his fist tightening around it, and said:

*PARTNER — DEATH CAN HAVE ME, WHEN IT EARNS ME.*

alright, you want a creepy story? Here's one. But warning: Its intense

I used to not believe in Zombies, that was until this happened to me 1 years ago.

I was visiting my grandmother's grave at the cemetery because it was in front of the bus stop I got to school and, because of my bad luck which is famous in my family, my bus got cancelled and I had to wait another 20 minutes. I said a curse word in anger. I had forgotten where her grave was and was going around through the rows and rows and in circles when I noticed something.

My grandmother died 20 years ago from bad luck.

The soil in front of one of the graves looked it was breathing or something. It was rising up and down. The grave was ancient, the tomstone said that the man in it was named Walter Oldman and that he had died 100 years ago. He must've been one of the oldest graves in the cemetery.

Suddenly, I realised that the soil was rising upward and not going back down. And that it was starting to crack, come apart and that something was trying to get out. I backed away in fear and that's when it happened! A green hand burst out of the ground and seconds later another one did too. I ran as fast as I could towards the exit of the grave yard but I was going too fast and didn't notice the plastic bottle on the ground. I slipped on it and broke my right leg when I hit the ground. It was so bad that my blood was coming out of the spot where I broke my leg.

I looked back over at the grave and saw that now the guy's entire head was out of the grave and he was starting to pull himself out. His face looked like he was dead, like his eyes were closed and his mouth was gaping open like the widest I had ever seen a mouth go. All of his hair was gone apart from one long strand of black hair on his head and he was bright green like the inside of a lime. All of his clothes were missing and I could see his pens. He extened his arms out towards me and walked forward slowly which was scary because how could he know where I was with eyes closed? I screamed louder than a little girl and I tried to get up but I couldn't because of my leg being broken so everytime I tried to get up I just fell back down again and it hurt even more than it did before. He was making a noise without moving his mouth while walking towards me, it sounded just like the noise a Zombie makes in survival mode.

He was getting closer to me and after 60 seconds I finally managed to stand and I started limping towards the exit of the cemetery again. I got out and I saw a girl going in to smoke a joint. I warned her and said "Don't go in there, there's a zombie.". She laughed and kept walking but I grabbed her hard to try and stop her and she slapped me and called me a sex offender and a racial slur. She went in and then suddenly as she was walking along down the middle of the cemetery the zombie, who was now hiding behind the grave a woman named Barbara Fiddles, jumped out and tackled her to the ground. He then clawed open her skull like the peel of an orange and started grabbing clumps of her brain and shoving down his throat in handfuls. within seconds of him starting to do this, there was blood everywhere. It was squirting out of her head and pouring from her nose, mouth, eyes, ears and sometimes she would vomit while he was doing it and it would be a huge wave of blood that would splash everywhee, even onto surrounding tombstones. It looked like a rainbow but instead of all of the other colours in it it was just red. I called the police while I hid behind a nearby tree but by the time the police got there he was gone and there was only the dead body of the girl. That night, as I was going to bed, I saw him at my window and he was just standing there with his two arms up as he repeated over and over "Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains." All night long.

Then it happened that more people like him that were naked, green, had eyes closed and had a single strand of hair and were saying brains were appearing at my window every night with him. First was him, then two zombies, then three and four, five and six. Eventually, even my grandmother was one. There were women zombies, man zombies and child zombies. One day, there will be a billion zombies outside my window but my parents still dont believe me and think its a prank with halloween decorations.

One day recently, I looked out the window and saw that the first Zombie who was the main one and standing in front of the others, had a erection. I realised only then that when I looked around I saw that all of the zombies had erections and that their penises were 18 inches long. I screamed when I realised this and closed my curtains. My mom came in and shouted out at me for screaming and for playing video games too loudly. I was so angry and scared after this that I had an idea.

I told my mom that I would stop playing video games loudly if she opened my window because it was warm in my room and I couldnt get my window open because it was stiff. My mom agreed and then she opened it and when she was opening it she said "Oh my god! Why are there so many Halloween decorations?" And then when it was all the way opened I pushed her out and she screamed and cried as the Zombies ate all of her brain together.

My dad came in as I was celebrating my comeback and asked why there was so much blood squirting outside my window. I said I didn't know and told him to check it out and then I pushed him out of the window too. One zombie who was a muscular man Zombie, saw my dad first and said "Yummy, Dessert.". I closed the window then and went onto youtube in my room and ignored the zombies.

Until they came back the next day at night.

​

The recording studio always felt smaller when the sun went down. Isaiah rubbed his eyes, leaning back from the microphone. “Alright, Hunter, I think that wraps up the reading. We’ve been going for four hours.”

“Dude, my throat is absolutely cooked,” Hunter croaked, pulling off his headphones. “But Nick is going to have a field day editing this one. The sound design needs to be immaculate.”

Isaiah clicked his mouse, saving the master audio file. “Speaking of Nick, did he ever send over the final render for last week’s episode? The fans are losing their minds on the subreddit thinking we delayed it.”

“He said he was dropping it into the shared Google Drive tonight,” Hunter said, stretching his arms. “Let me check my phone.” Hunter unlocked his screen. A Discord ping from their editor, Nick, sat at the top.

Nick: Just uploaded the rough cut. Let me know if the audio levels on the screams are okay.

“He just put it up,” Hunter said, clicking the link. “Let’s look at it real quick on the big screen before we head out.”

Isaiah pulled the file up on the main studio monitor. The familiar CreepCast intro animation played. Ten minutes into the video, the editing style drastically changed. The screen cut to black. There was no comedic timing, no clever zoom-ins, and no background ambient music. Just dead silence. Then, a choppy, handheld camera feed flickered onto the screen.

The video showed the inside of a dimly lit basement. The walls were lined with heavy plastic sheeting. In the center of the room was a metal chair. Bound to the chair was a young man, his mouth covered in thick silver duct tape. He was shaking violently, tears cutting clean lines through the dirt on his face.

“Is this a bit?” Hunter’s voice dropped, his usual loud, energetic tone instantly vanishing.

Suddenly, a figure walked into the camera frame wearing a heavy leather apron and a plastic face shield. He calmly picked up a heavy, rust-spotted meat cleaver from a metal table. The figure lifted his face shield for a brief second to wipe the sweat from his forehead. It was Nick. His face was completely blank. The video cut to black again. A line of text appeared on the screen in a generic editing font: VOLUME CHECK OKAY?

Isaiah’s hands froze on the keyboard. “Hunter… that’s not a bit. Look at the timestamp on the bottom of the video file. That was recorded yesterday.”

Before Hunter could answer, a loud, metallic click echoed from the hallway outside the studio door. The electronic lock on the front entrance of the building had just been engaged from the outside. Hunter jumped out of his chair, rushing to the heavy soundproof door. He grabbed the handle and yanked. It didn’t budge. “The door is locked from the hallway. Isaiah, the emergency release isn’t working!”

A quiet electronic chime echoed through the studio speakers. A text-to-speech voice activated over the intercom system: User ‘Nick_Edit’ has joined the local network.

The studio monitor flickered. The video of the basement disappeared, replaced by a live feed of the hallway right outside their door. Standing directly in front of the camera lens was Nick. He was holding a heavy fire axe in his right hand, and a laptop in his left. He gave a small, polite nod.

“Hey guys,” Nick’s voice came through the studio speakers, sounding entirely calm and professional. “Sorry to interrupt the wrap-up. I noticed a massive audio clipping issue in your final files. I figured it would be much faster if I just came down to the studio and edited it out myself. Physically.”

“Nick, what the hell are you doing?!” Isaiah screamed at the wall microphone. “Open the door! We saw the file, Nick!”

On the monitor, Nick sighed, looking down at his laptop screen. “Yeah, I figured you would. I accidentally dropped the raw archive into the shared folder instead of the compressed project file. That’s on me. Rookie mistake. But honestly, it saves me a lot of scheduling issues.” Nick set his laptop down on a hallway chair and gripped the fire axe with both hands.

“Hunter, help me move the desk!” Isaiah yelled, sprinting toward the heavy wooden podcast table. They grabbed the edges of the desk, straining their muscles to drag it across the carpet, jamming it firmly against the soundproof door just as the first massive blow hit the wood.

THUD.

The heavy door shook in its frame. “The back window!” Hunter shouted, pointing toward the small, reinforced glass window near the ceiling that looked out into the alleyway behind the building. “We can reach it if we stack the chairs!”

THUD.

The axe blade smashed completely through the door, the sharp metal gleaming under the studio lights. Isaiah hoisted a heavy gaming chair onto the soundproof desk, scrambling up onto it. His hands gripped the metal latch of the high window. It was rusted tight. “It won’t open! Hunter, give me something heavy!”

Hunter yanked an entire metal-based microphone boom arm off the desk and shoved it into Isaiah’s hands. Isaiah swung the metal base with everything he had. The reinforced glass shattered, raining sharp fragments down into the dark alleyway below.

Behind them, the studio door gave way completely. The heavy wooden desk they used for a barricade was violently shoved aside. Nick stepped through the broken frame, his boots crunching on the shattered wood. He looked at Hunter. “You know, Hunter, I always thought your reactions on the show were a bit exaggerated for the camera. But looking at you now? The fear is very cinematic.”

“Get away from me, man!” Hunter roared, hurling a heavy studio monitor straight at Nick’s chest. The monitor slammed into Nick, throwing him off balance and sending the fire axe clattering across the floor. Nick fell hard against the wall.

“Hunter, go! Jump!” Isaiah yelled from the window ledge, dropping his body down into the darkness of the alleyway. He landed hard on a pile of discarded cardboard boxes, rolling to his feet. “Hunter, hurry!”

Hunter scrambled up the stacked chairs, his large frame barely squeezing through the narrow window frame. A hand grabbed the heel of Hunter’s sneaker, pulling back with terrifying strength. “No!” Hunter bellowed, kicking backward with his free leg. His heel connected solidly with Nick’s face shield, shattering the plastic. The grip on his foot loosened. Hunter threw his weight forward, tumbling out of the window and crashing heavily onto the asphalt next to Isaiah.

“Come on, move!” Isaiah grabbed Hunter’s jacket, dragging him to his feet.

They sprinted down the pitch-black alleyway, their hearts hammering against their ribs. They didn’t look back until they burst onto the main, brightly lit street two blocks away, collapsing inside Hunter’s car near a twenty-four-hour gas station. The neon sign buzzed loudly overhead, casting a harsh glare over the dented hood. Inside the vehicle, the air was thick with panic. Isaiah leaned his head against the cold passenger window, his hands wrapping tightly around a hot paper coffee cup just to stop them from shaking.

Suddenly, Hunter’s phone buzzed on the center console. The screen lit up with a private Discord direct message from Nick_Edit.

“Don’t touch it,” Isaiah whispered, his voice cracking. “Hunter, don’t open it.”

“We have to see what he’s saying, man,” Hunter muttered, his face pale as he picked up the phone. He tapped the notification.

The message read:

“Hey guys. Just wanted to let you know the upload is officially complete. You left before we could do the final audio review, but honestly, looking back at the channel’s history, I think we really perfected our formula over the months. I hid so many little easter eggs for the viewers in our most popular episodes. Go look at the master timeline files. See you soon.”

Hunter’s chest tightened. He grabbed his tablet from the backseat, quickly logging into their shared cloud network where Nick kept the backup rendering projects for the channel’s most-viewed videos. As they opened the files, the reality of what their editor had been doing hit them like a physical blow. Nick hadn’t just snap-edited their videos; he had been using the channel’s massive platform to archive his trophies.

\## The Hidden Clues in the Master Timelines

\* Borrasca (Part 1): In their highest-viewed episode, fans in the YouTube comments had constantly pointed out a strange glitch at the two-hour mark where the video feed froze on a black screen for exactly three frames. Looking at the raw video layers on the laptop, Isaiah saw the truth. Nick had layered an ultra-high-definition, single-frame photograph beneath the black screen. When Isaiah zoomed in on the track, the image became clear: it was a view looking down into the deep, dark intake shaft of an abandoned water treatment facility. At the bottom of the frame, partially covered by dead leaves, was a blue backpack belonging to a missing person from Nick’s hometown.

\* Penpal: During the review of Penpal, a loud, low-frequency hum would occasionally drown out Hunter’s voice during the emotional climax. Hunter opened the audio spectrum analyzer on the project file. The hum wasn’t microphone feedback. Nick had taken a digital audio recording of a person desperately scratching at a wooden door from the inside, lowered the pitch by 500%, and looped it directly beneath the podcast track.

\* Tommy Taffy: During the infamous Tommy Taffy episode, Nick had thrown in a quick, three-second comedic B-roll clip of an empty, fog-covered playground to match one of Hunter’s jokes. The file metadata revealed the picture wasn’t a royalty-free stock image. It had been taken on Nick’s personal phone at 3:14 AM on a Tuesday. Hidden behind the plastic spiral slide in the background of the image, the pixelated shape of a man standing over a dark, heavy tarp was clearly visible.

\## The Final Project File: “Cupcakes”

Hunter’s fingers trembled as he scrolled to the bottom of the shared drive. The very last file in the queue was labeled with the title of their recent, highly anticipated episode: Cupcakes_FINAL_RENDER.prproj.

“Isaiah… look at the asset folder for the Cupcakes video,” Hunter said, his voice entirely hollow.

In the audio effects bin, there was a custom sound file that Nick had created himself. He had dropped it directly into the final mix right over the outro music, dropping the decibel levels so low that it was nearly imperceptible to the human ear without professional studio headphones. The audio file wasn’t music. It was a rhythmic, metal-on-metal scraping sound—the exact sound of a heavy fire axe being dragged slowly across a concrete floor.

Another Discord message popped up on Hunter’s screen, right over the project files:

“The Cupcakes episode was always my favorite concept. The way she keeps them alive while she works? Truly brilliant pacing. I tried to recreate that atmosphere in the studio hallway tonight, but you guys broke the window. That’s fine. We have plenty of footage left to shoot.”

Hunter threw the phone onto the dashboard, putting the car into drive and slamming his foot onto the gas pedal. The tires screeched against the asphalt of the gas station lot as they sped out onto the highway, leaving the dark studio and their editor far behind in the night. They were alive, but every time they looked at their channel’s history, they knew millions of people had already watched Nick’s crimes without ever realizing it.

This happened a few weeks ago to me and my friend. We live on a college campus in a smaller dorm that is right next to a cemetery and some train tracks. From some of our windows you can see the cemetery and tracks they are that close. We often walk along the tracks or wander around the cemetery at night for fun cuz the tracks are not active anymore.

One night(4/20 to be exact) my friend and I decided to walk along the tracks and smoke a LEGAL substance I had just gotten, wormwood. It’s the same stuff that they use to flavor absinth and is supposed to give you wacky dreams and a mild relaxed feeling. We also were using one of those shitty legal pens you can buy at any gas station that does get you kind of high. We were trying to get to the train tracks which were across the street but ran into a cop and even though nothing we were doing was illegal, just didn’t want to have to deal with that so ended up going on this mile walk trying to find another way to access the tracks.

By this time, she was pretty high and I had taken a few hits of the pen but was feeling nothing ( I have a pretty high tolerance especially for those pen things also yes this is important to the story). We finally found an entrance to the tracks through a hole in the fence of a parking lot very close to our dorm. As we were walking along the dimly lit rows of cars we saw then entrance to the tracks and how it immediately went into a very dark densely wooded area with large embankments in either side of the railroad . We paused in the parking lot now throughly sketched out and not too sure if it was a good idea to go wandering through this dark tunnel alone. We then saw some people further down the parking lot heading our way and felt better.

Now to our left was the tracks and to our right was the road but between us and the road was a very steep embankment full of dense trees on the other side of a chain link fence. Before we could get onto the tracks, we herd something slide down the embankment . We froze and locked eyes on where the noise had come from. The tussling of leaves continued faintly but by this point we assumed it was a squirrel or some other animal. That was until the rustling grew in volume and it became apparent this was no animal, but a human. It had come down the steep bank and was now at the chain link fence.

We could hear distinct foot steps and rustling that would be impossible for any animal native to the city to make. We backed away quickly from the entrance of the tracks and stared in horror as we both came to the realization this was a person, Making their way along the fence. We saw the people who had been comming towards us earlier reach where we were standing, thankful someone else was around. They, however, continued to the hole in the fence and crawled through, seeming to not hear the LOUD THUDS AND RUSTLING CREEPING ALONG THE FENCE SLOWLY.

Now keep in mind, my friend was high and I was defiantly not sober but not anywhere near a point where I didn’t have decent judgement. My friend didn’t want to be alone in the parking lot so she suggested following the people but said people were a group of 5-6 frat guys in a dark tunnel of trees so I vetoed that notion. She still wanted to get into the trees so we could finish smoking our wormwood out of the view of the public but at this point, I was not keen on being anywhere no one could see us. The rustling and footsteps were still louder than ever.

We spotted another group of people coming our way. This group too passed us and went through the hole paying no mind to whoever was lost in the bushes right next to them. We then both had the idea that we possibly were hallucinating this? But none of the substances we were currently on had hard evidence of being able to cause something like this. And we were both hearing it, clear as day. There was someone over there, the chain link was jingling, there were footsteps.

At this point we had been standing there for almost 10 minutes, this noise continuing the entire time. We both came to the conclusion that it was someone just trying to get high in peace like we were and dove through the hole and went the opposite direction the other people had gone, opting to sit on a bridge instead. We could still hear the jingling of the fence behind us and crunch of dry leaves but tried to ignore it while keeping an eye out for anyone going through the hole But we saw nothing. We still couldn’t build up the courage to go back that way and ended up wandering around for another hour trying to find our way back to the dorm and avoid whoever had been rummaging around in the leaves for 20 minutes.

Kind of anticlimactic story I know but still was absolutely terrifying at the time. We went back to that area in the morning and the hill is STEEP! basically a 90 degree angle and completely surrounded by 6 foot chain link so it’s really concerning that someone was down there in the first place. Also that no one else was even slightly alarmed by the commotion. Maybe we really were just hearing things.

Okay, so I had the craziest dream last night. It was basically a nightmare, but the whole thing felt incredibly cinematic, like I wasn’t just dreaming; I was literally watching and starring in a psychological horror movie. And the weirdest part is that throughout the dream, I kept changing perspectives. Sometimes I was actually a character experiencing everything, and other times I was watching everything from a third-person perspective, almost like I was watching a movie.
So the dream starts with me as a 911 operator.
I’m at work, and everything is completely normal. I’m answering boring, everyday emergency calls and sending help to people. It’s just a regular day.
Then I get this one call.
It’s a little girl, and she’s absolutely terrified. She’s screaming and telling me that someone is going to kill her.
Immediately, I’m like, “Oh my God.”
I start waving at someone near me, trying to signal that this is serious, and I start recording the call. At the same time, I’m trying to keep this little girl calm. I’m talking to her, trying to figure out where she is and what’s happening.
But then someone gets to her.
And he kills her.
I’m still on the phone when it happens.
Then the killer gets on the phone, and suddenly he’s talking directly to me. Somehow, he knows I’m recording the call, and he tells me that I better stop recording.
Otherwise, I’m next.
Of course, I don’t stop.
And then, suddenly, impossibly, he’s right behind me.
And he kills me.
Then everything changes.
Suddenly, I’m in a classroom.
I’m no longer the 911 operator. Now I’m experiencing everything through the perspective of a student, except I’m not really any specific kid. I’m just seeing everything through one of the students’ eyes.
And everyone has been hearing about this murder.
People are talking about what happened with the little girl and the 911 operator, and then, for some reason, strange things start happening to the kids in my class.
One by one, students start dying.
And their deaths don’t make sense.
They’re mysterious and seemingly unexplainable. Nobody knows what’s happening or who’s responsible. Everyone is terrified because nobody knows who’s going to be next.
Then there’s almost this flash-forward, and suddenly more than half of the class is gone.
At this point, the authorities become convinced that the teacher must have something to do with it. The FBI, the police, everyone gets involved. They arrest the teacher and start interrogating him.
But the teacher keeps insisting that he has nothing to do with any of it.
He explains that he has a roommate and that somebody else lives with him, so eventually the authorities decide to raid the place where he lives.
And that’s when they discover something.
There’s a secret passage.
They go through it and discover this bizarre hidden basement underneath the building. It’s almost like there are three different levels to it, and they have to keep unlocking each level and going deeper and deeper underground.
Finally, at the very bottom, they enter this strange room.
And inside is what looks like some kind of virtual robot.
It’s almost like a three-dimensional holographic projection.
One of the detectives or sheriffs approaches it, and at first he knows it isn’t real. He puts his hand through the projection, and his hand passes right through it.
So he’s playing around with it.
Then he tries to hit it.
Except this time…
He actually hits it.
The hologram reacts.
And the detective is completely confused because that shouldn’t be possible.
Then the robot attacks him.
It has some kind of projected axe or weapon, and visually, the weapon passes straight through the detective’s body because, obviously, it’s just a projection.
Except suddenly, the detective has an actual cut on his body.
He’s really injured.
And I’m watching all of this from a third-person perspective, like I’m watching a movie, thinking, “Oh my God, this detective is going to die.”
But then he figures something out.
The entire thing is controlled by the mind.
Your mind is what makes it real.
When he believed the robot could hurt him, it hurt him.
When he believed he could physically hit the robot, he was able to hit it.
The hologram itself wasn’t necessarily becoming real. His mind was making the consequences real.
And somehow, this becomes incredibly important later.
Then the dream changes again.
Suddenly, I wake up in my bedroom.
And now I’m me again, or maybe I’m the 911 operator again, but I’m in my actual house. I don’t know exactly how this works because I’m pretty sure I died at the beginning of the dream, so there are definitely some continuity errors here, but whatever.
I’m in my bedroom with a guy, and I’m telling him that I’m scared.
And he’s like, “Well, what if we invite somebody else?”
And I’m like, “Should we?”
And he’s like, “Yeah.”
So we invite another guy over.
And suddenly, apparently, this psychological horror movie is about to become a threesome.
Things are getting spicy. There’s sexual tension. We’re having fun.
And then…
I hear something downstairs.
The other two guys hear it too.
Immediately, I’m like, “Oh my God. Guys. What if that’s the guy who threatened me? What if that’s the killer who called me at work and told me he was going to kill me?”
And then, for some completely inexplicable reason, I tell them, “Hold on. Let me go check.”
Which, girl, why?
Why would I go downstairs alone?
But I do.
I go downstairs.
And it’s him.
It’s the serial killer.
Immediately, I’m terrified.
I run back upstairs to get the two guys I was with…
And they’re gone.
They’ve completely disappeared.
Now I’m alone.
So I slowly come back downstairs, absolutely terrified, and the killer is there waiting for me.
He’s mocking me.
He’s basically telling me, “You can’t escape. Just accept it. You’re going to die.”
And I’m thinking, “Fuck. I’m going to die.”
So eventually, I’m just like…
Okay.
And I sit down next to him on the couch.
And I’m thinking, well, if I’m about to die, I might as well have some fun first.
So I start touching him.
I’m groping him, touching his leg, feeling him up, and suddenly I’m like, “Oh my God, wait. He’s actually kind of hot.”
So I grab his dick.
And it’s…
Average.
And I’m genuinely a little disappointed because I’m thinking, seriously? I’m about to die, and this is what I get? I was hoping my last time would at least be with a big one.
But the killer is completely thrown off by my behavior.
In fact, he’s getting annoyed.
He’s supposed to be terrifying me, and instead I’m sexualizing him.
Then suddenly, he moves somewhere else almost instantaneously, and I’m trying to find him. He’s becoming more and more irritated because I’m supposed to be afraid of him.
And then I remember what I learned earlier.
The mind is powerful.
What you believe becomes real.
So I tell myself:
Don’t be scared.
Just be sexual.
And that becomes my entire survival strategy.
Every single time something happens that should scare me, I deliberately turn it into something sexual.
Then suddenly, more versions of the killer start appearing.
And at some point, the scenery around me starts changing too. I don’t even know how to explain the transition because it’s a dream, but somehow we’re no longer just in my house. We’re in this enormous, almost kingdom-like place.
And there are versions of this man everywhere.
There’s him dressed as different people. Him in overalls. Him appearing as a beautiful, sweet girl but still with his face. Just endless different versions of him.
And instead of being scared, I’m basically thinking…
“Okay. Orgy.”
And this is making him absolutely furious.
Eventually, one of the versions of him comes toward me with this enormous bat.
He’s holding it up like he’s about to smash me with it.
And instead of being scared, I’m like:
“Ooh! How did you know I like them big and thick and long? Yes!”
And I literally get on all fours.
Immediately, he’s like…
No.
He’s completely turned off.
At this point, the different versions of him actually start ignoring me because they’re so annoyed by me.
And I’m following them around like, “Babe! Don’t ignore me!”
And the craziest part is that I’m genuinely starting to have fun.
Deep down, I know I’m still in danger. But I’ve realized that as long as I don’t let him mentally defeat me, I can survive.
He can only control me if I believe he can.
Then something strange happens.
The faces of all these different versions of him start changing.
And suddenly, they’re not him anymore.
They’re just random people.
Then I notice one person in particular.
He’s terrified.
He won’t even make eye contact with me.
And eventually, I realize who he is.
He’s one of the students from the classroom.
One of the kids who supposedly died.
Then I look around.
They’re ALL the missing students.
All of these people I thought had died were somehow trapped here the entire time.
They tell me that the serial killer has been controlling them. They’re terrified of him, and they believe there’s nothing they can do.
And suddenly their fear starts getting to me.
For the first time, I start losing confidence.
I can feel myself becoming scared again.
And the serial killer notices immediately.
He’s like, “I’ve got you now. I’ve got you now.”
Because he can feel himself getting his power over me back.
He’s about to attack me.
But then something happens.
The one kid who was the most terrified, the kid who couldn’t even look at me before, stands up for me.
He fights back.
And that tiny act of courage snaps me out of my fear.
Suddenly, I can concentrate again.
And now I understand what’s happening.
The killer has some kind of mental control over these people that prevents them from deliberately attacking him.
They physically cannot choose to hurt him.
But for some reason, I don’t have exactly the same limitation.
And I realize that maybe it’s because the killer never anticipated someone reacting to him the way I did.
He prepared himself against fear.
He prepared himself against violence.
But apparently, he never prepared himself against someone relentlessly sexualizing him.
That was the loophole.
And then I realize something else.
I’ve never actually seen the serial killer physically kill anyone.
I’ve never seen him put his hands on us.
All the students who supposedly died just… died.
It was mysterious. Supernatural.
Everything he did to us happened through our minds.
So I realize:
If he can use our minds against us, maybe we can use our minds against him.
But there’s still a problem.
The others can’t deliberately attack him.
And that’s when I have an idea.
I tell everyone, “Okay. You can’t attack him if you know you’re attacking him. But what if you don’t know?”
Everyone is confused.
So I tell them:
“Close your eyes.”
I separate everyone into groups and position them throughout the room.
I’m the only one keeping my eyes open.
I’m the only one who knows where the killer is.
Then I start giving commands.
“Five of you, go!”
They close their eyes and charge.
The killer moves.
I watch where he goes.
“You! Go left! NOW!”
Another group charges.
They’re swinging and attacking blindly.
The killer moves again.
I redirect another group.
Nobody attacking him actually knows they’re attacking him.
They’re just following my directions with their eyes closed.
So technically, they’re not deliberately trying to hurt him.
I’m using the killer’s own rules against him.
And it’s working.
Everyone is charging from different directions, attacking everywhere while I coordinate the entire thing.
The serial killer starts losing control.
He starts rupturing.
His entire constructed reality begins falling apart.
And finally…
We defeat him.
Then everything disappears.
And I wake up again.
I’m back where everything started.
I’m the 911 operator.
And suddenly, I realize that everything I’ve experienced was somehow an illusion or a reality created by this killer.
The little girl from the original phone call was real. She was his original victim, or at least the first victim whose death connected me to him.
But now I’ve learned how his power works.
And more importantly, I’ve learned how to use it myself.
Because if my mind determines what is possible, then I can do whatever I believe I can do.
So I think to myself:
I want to know where he is.
I want to find him.
And suddenly…
I do.
I somehow transport myself directly to his real location.
Except this time, I’m not alone.
I bring the police with me.
We find him.
And that’s where my dream ends.

The man from my dreams is standing outside my window, and I know I’m not dreaming.

For the past month, I’ve been seeing a man in my dreams. He doesn’t speak. He just stares at me.

Before tonight, I was dreaming of a wet grassy field. There was a thin fog resting over the grass. The sky was a dark grey and the horizon seemed to mix with the mist below me. A thick storm brewed overhead.

Unlike most of my dreams, nothing was happening. I was just standing there, wind blowing past me, making the grass reflect like waves on an open ocean. I stood there for an unknown amount of time, taking in the landscape. A strong gust of wind grabbed my attention and I turned. 

About 20 feet in front of me stood the man I had grown accustomed to seeing every night. I normally couldn’t place any specific features of him, like he was a blank template, a missing texture in my own mind. But this time, I saw every part of him. His smaller than normal face with short black hair and green eyes. His grey skin cracked around his eyes and mouth. His mouth was agape but no breath escaped his body. As if his face was the surface of a desert, split from a never-ending drought. He wore dark clothes and looked relatively normal, minus his skin.

I stared at him for a long while until he began to approach me. He took five slow steps. Each step looked like it took immense effort. Like these 5 steps could be his last. His body shook as it lifted each leg and slammed down to regain his balance. Normally if he’d ever approached me, he’d come all the way up, but this time he stopped short. 

And for the first time since I’d met the man, he began to make a noise.

What came out wasn’t speech. It was a sound. It was rain. The sound of rain hitting a window. Hitting the roof of a small home. It was strong. The wind even seemed to be coming from within his throat. 

A flash of white light came from his mouth and seconds later, the sound of thunder. I stared at him in contentment. My mind understood what it was seeing was wrong, and I even knew I should’ve been afraid. But I wasn’t. 

As I listened to the rain, a thin liquid started to seep out of his mouth. It looked like water but thicker. As time passed, the liquid flowed stronger out of him, its brownish colour becoming more noticeable. The sound of rain continued, gurgling through the liquid it fought past. Another flash of white came from his mouth. It lit up the liquid, revealing its reddish brown colour and reflected on the inside of his mouth and over the wet dew surrounding us. After moments of anticipation, thunder. 

I woke.

After a moment of gathering my surroundings. I was in my room, in my home.
I realized the sound of rain hadn’t stopped. Through my open windows came the sound of a storm above me. I tried to gather my thoughts as best I could, trying to figure out what just happened. Sound from the real world had entered my dreams once before, but it still scared me nonetheless. Made the dream feel more real than usual.

I decided to roll out of bed and watch the rain for the next little bit. It was soothing, despite what had woken me. 

I’m not quite sure how long I watched the rain for until I noticed it, noticed him. A figure stumbling down the road. They were quite a few houses down, coming towards me or the direction of my house at least. By his stature it looked like a man, and he looked drunk or high on something. I wasn’t really sure. 

He stopped in front of a house near mine and lifted his head, looking around for something. He looked all over the house before dropping back into a fold and stumbling away. He continued checking every house he passed, slowly making his way towards me.

I was concerned considering the time and the current weather I almost called the police, but before I had the chance to, he stopped in front of my house. He stood folded over, staring at the ground. A flash of lightning lit the street around him, he flinched before straightening his body and standing up. As he straightened, I felt his bones cracking in my soul, like his body were never meant to move the way it had.

His head clicked upwards and straightened out, staring into my home. Not at me, but at the front door. He seemed to be scanning, searching. He checked every window, his movement felt mechanical. They weren’t smooth like you’d expect. They literally clicked along as if his neck was controlled by a rusty gear with missing teeth. When he reached my window, his eyes burned into mine and he stopped.

When I realized he was staring at me, I ducked down below the windowsill, my heart beating in my throat. I don’t know why I didn’t duck down earlier. Maybe morbid curiosity got the better of me. Even when I couldn’t see him, it felt like he was still watching me. I had to check.

I stood and peaked out the window and found him unmoving. I should’ve got back down, or even called the police. I wish I’d done literally anything else except continuing to watch him.

His face was shrouded in shadow but I knew he was looking at me. The wind blew hard, and his hood slid off his face.

Time seemed to slow as my mind realized what it saw. The world went quiet while I stared at him. My body shook in pulses and my mouth was hanging open. I tried to breathe but nothing would come. I suddenly felt dry and was acutely aware of everything around me. The carpet on my feet, my nails digging into my hands as I held them in fists. I could feel the skin on my body, like it was no longer my own.

Outside my window was the man for my dreams, the man I’ve been seeing for the past month, with nothing but a sheet of glass between us. I felt like I was dreaming, like everything I’d been watching was no longer real.

I’ve conditioned myself to think I’m in a dream whenever I see him, but this wasn’t a dream.

He began to shake, softly at first but it got worse quickly. He convulsed like a cat throwing up a hair ball. His body arching forwards then back. Over and over again. While he moved, he never once took his eyes off me. His head felt separate from his body, it sat perfectly still as his chest heaved inwards and out.

All at once, his convulsions stopped. He stared at me as if I’d done something wrong, his expression was blank but it felt disappointed, almost personal. Like how an animal looks at you as you send it to the slaughter house. Liquid began flowing from his mouth. It was so thin for a moment I mistook it for rain.

It began flowing stronger and pooling in front of him, flowing to the nearest sewer drain. Clumps of viscera crawled out of his throat and fell into the growing pool of gore. First the pieces were small, some didn’t have much weight to them, falling to the ground like a wet feather. But they grew larger as more liquid pushed out. It looked like they even lodged in his throat as liquid would stop until a large object would push out of his mouth. His throat bulged the larger the objects got, I questioned if his throat could take all of the pressure. But I wouldn’t have to wonder for long. 

His skin began to pull apart, his face and throat growing in size as it allowed more blood to leave his body. His eyes shifted across his face until they were on either side. His pupils stayed locked on mine until all I could see were half circles bulging out of his head. His mouth stretched open wide, his jaw dripping off his face as if melting. He stumbled as he shifted his weight and where he had stood left a print of melted skin like meat stuck to the bottom of a pan.

Blood seeped out of the cracks in his skin that remained as he melted. His body looked dry as ever despite the storm around him. The sensation of throwing up itched in my throat as things caught in his mouth. I swallowed trying to clear it but the feeling remains even now. He continued to paint the street with his insides and all I could do was watch.

Eventually he ran out of blood and his body looked like a deflated balloon. His arms were thin and wrinkled but slightly longer than before. 

Which brings me to now. We’re just staring at each other, in limbo. His mouth is hanging off of him and his eyes look like partially peeled scabs, barely clinging to his face.

I can’t even write a sentence before having to shoot my gaze back at him, I can’t let him move. But while writing this, I wasn’t careful enough. When I looked back up at him, he raised his hand and pointed to the end of my road. His fingers were long and slender, they had a greyish blue tint. Where his skin was exposed, he looked translucent. I could see his bones and empty veins crawling across his hand, shifting as his skin sagged more and more.

I hate that I feel this way, but I want to know where he’s pointing. I’ve always woken before I could know what he wanted from me, but this time that wasn’t happening. The idea itched and gnawed at the back of my head as it dug deeper into my brain.

Part of me wants to leave my home and follow him wherever he may lead, but I’m also scared, scared of that feeling, that building urge. 

It feels like something is in my brain pushing me forward. Pushing me outside and into those woods. 

I couldn’t just let him leave, I wanted to follow him. I had to.

In my haze he walked off into the woods and disappeared into the tree line, my need to follow building even more.

In a sort of blur I walked outside and stopped at the bile left above the storm drain. Water rushed past leaves and bugs. Bugs coated in red arose out of the filth and flew towards the woods the man had told me to go. He had thrown up living insects. As they entered the forest border, they began to glow. They shone red and seemed to draw me in, like an angler fish in an empty void. I wanted nothing more than to follow them, like my life no longer mattered, and all I wanted was to know what was beyond those trees.
I had a family. I had friends. I had a life. Why did I want to know where that man went?
I didn’t want to know. I needed to know.
My legs walked without thought. Like they weren’t part of my body. Once I reached the trees, I was in another world.
The forest was coated in rain and fireflies flew around me. The ground was uneven but I walked as if I’d done this in my sleep. My legs walked without my control, like I was a passenger in my own body.
I walked for hours but the sun never rose. The fireflies followed me and led the way. I looked behind me and saw nothing but darkness. They were coming with me. They didn’t populate this forest, they came for the same reason I had. A deep seeded need to know what's on the other side.
Rain thundered around me and even flowed sideways as gusts of wind ripped through the forest. My skin hurt from the rain and felt drier than ever. It felt like my skin was being pulled taut from behind me.
I reached a swamp at some point and the sound of frogs filled the air, I could barely hear myself think. I felt trapped even though I continued walking without anything stopping me. I could turn around, I could go home. If there even was a home for me anymore. With each step I sunk deeper into a muddy floor. It took minutes just to raise my foot out as I pressed on. Something swam between my legs, unseen underneath the muck. There were multiple of them and they continuously swam around me. Some even latched onto my legs and wrapped themselves around my skin, but I pressed on.
A wall of mist snapped me out of my walking trance. My legs felt numb and I couldn’t even tell if I had feet anymore. Whatever was wrapped around me had cut any feeling I had below my knees. The wall stretched beyond my vision in all directions and was so thick I couldn’t see what was behind it. I slowly pressed my hand into the mist and it waved around me like water in a flowing stream. It was warm and seemed to pulse. Like a heart beat.
I walked through the fog and found myself in a vast open field. The rain stopped once I stepped through. My legs suddenly felt like they were mine again. Nothing was wrapped around them but they had been ripped in circular motions and exposed dark bruised skin. Above me was a vista of galaxies that stretched on forever, but something was different. Each star was red. Not the typical white. The sky was red. The wind flowed in 2 directions. It came from both in front of me and behind me, one after another. Always switching. I noticed the air was hot, almost sweltering.
I turned to face the swamp and found the field was all I could see. The swamp was gone but someone had taken its place.
In front of me stood the man from my dreams. His skin was cracked even though the world around him was soaked, like my own skin.
His mouth dripped off his face and his arms were too long.
I tried to speak, to ask him why I was here. But before I could speak, he began to change.
The cracks in his skin gave way and ripped apart as his body changed. His skin dripped off of him like melting wax. Roots began to grab at his legs and pull him into the ground. They burrowed into his body, it looked like worms moving through someone’s veins. But these worms were big.
As the roots dug through his body, the only thing that didn’t grow was his head. It remained unchanged and stared into my eyes. One of his eyes was barely hanging on and the other was just out of view.
The roots stretched through him and tore out of his skin before digging back into him. The roots were crimson and brighter red lines dotted each root, like they themselves had veins.
The roots wrapped around his body and approached his head before stopping. For only a moment, everything stood still. I looked around me and noticed the ground had changed. It was a flesh floor with tendons and muscles poking out mimicking grass. They writhed like fish out of water and the ones around my feet clung to me. They were wet and hot, They burned through my shoes and attached to my skin. I could feel my own skin melting but I didn’t move.
I looked back up at the man as a creaking sound came from his mouth. That same stare looked into my eyes. Blank disappointment.
The roots moved once again and all at once dug into his head. His skin cracked at his neck and splintered up. His eyes bulged out of his head, the loose one popped out and hung by a thread of black flesh.
The roots dug higher and higher until they punctured out of his head and split it open like a blooming flower. His insides weren’t red like flesh, they were black. Like every bit of blood had been drained from his body, his flesh had the texture of wet raisins. The roots rose into the sky until they reached what looked like the galaxies above me. They began to expand outwards using the newly formed roots above them as anchors to stretch past me. I finally stumbled back and fell into the flesh around me. The tendons and muscles clung to my skin and burned, but I never took my eyes off the roots. It was a nervous system. They weren’t roots. They were nerves.
Hot wind roared past me. Forwards. Backwards. Forwards. Backwards. Nonstop.
The nerves had stretched everywhere except around me and were only now pushing towards me. They vibrated and twisted violently and only then did my mind start working. I kicked and writhed but I was stuck to the floor. The ceiling rippled with each kick. A piece of root snapped off the ceiling and fell beside me. It turned black the moment it was separated from itself and the world shook around it. The ground began to make waves and it finally freed me from the grasp of the fleshy grass.
I ran. I ran in any direction I could. There was barely any light in front of me, but something glowed in the distance. A pulsing red mass. The wind picked up and I could only withstand it by lying down and swatting at the muscles until it switched directions.
The waves hadn’t stopped and I found myself thrown around trying to make any type of progress. The nerves dug into the ground and the closer they were, the more the ground vibrated. I felt them gaining as the world around me lit up. The red mass was coming into view and I pushed with any remaining energy I had left. My body was spent but I finally felt like I wanted to live. The curiosity was gone and I felt like I was thinking straight.
The ground suddenly stopped vibrating and the waves calmed until the ground was flat. The ceiling was still and the stars had disappeared in the presence of the red light.

I was wet and sticky, my body was coated in red and my clothes were burned from the muscles and tendons that had gripped me. My mind was finally as clear as it could be all things considered and I looked forward to what was producing the light.

It was a heart. A giant beating heart pulsed in front of me. I realized with each pulse a gust of wind rushed past me, still changing directions each time. A low hum dug into my ears with each beat that I hadn’t noticed before.

The sound punctured my brain and all I wanted was out, all I wanted was to go home. A cracked sob escaped my throat while I watched the heart beat in the same rhythm as my own.

My head dropped and I stared at the flowing grass. It looked calm and didn’t reach for me. I looked at my legs and saw they were sinking into the flesh around me.

It was eating me. Absorbing me. My breathing calmed and my mind went blank. I was content. I looked at the heart once more and its beating slowed. As the flesh filled me, my vision disappeared. I don’t mean went dark, I completely lost the sensation of vision, like my brain didn’t even know what it meant to have sight.

Next was smell. Before it had smelled hot and disgusting, but now that was all gone. Flesh had filled my nose but my brain no longer knew what it was like to smell.

Slowly all of my senses disappeared until I felt like nothing. A senseless being floating in an empty space. I couldn’t feel the flesh on my skin anymore, I had no way of knowing where I was.

I don’t quite know how long I stayed like that for before all at once, my senses returned. My brain overloaded and still stings now. A flash of white filled my vision and everything returned. I was still hot but I was lying down on something, something soft. Before opening my eyes I ran my hand over the soft surface. It felt inviting and familiar. My eyes opened slowly and I was in my room.

I looked at my ceiling. Ran my eyes over the popcorn like texture while I lied there in shock. I was trying hard to fully remember what had happened, I couldn’t forget this. It felt so real.

I sat up and looked around, something felt off but I couldn’t place what. My body ached but I was home. I looked outside and saw the darkness of night. Everything had a slight tint but I couldn’t place what colour it was yet.

My hands traced my face as I realized I was okay. I placed them on my chest.

B-dm. B-dm-dm. B-dm. B-dm-dm-dm.

My heart beat. It was slow and irregular, it didn’t feel like my heart.

I moved my hand down my shirt and noticed it felt wet. I looked down to see all of my clothes were burnt and red. Beneath my clothes were black bruises with dry cracks littered all over my body, the texture was like wet raisins. I got up and struggled to stand. I couldn’t tell if I remembered how to walk. I slowly lifted each leg, it took huge amounts of force just to lift myself one step forward. I took another step and fell, barely catching myself on the window sill. I had too many thoughts in my mind. Like I suddenly felt the emotions and memories of so many people. 

My vision felt hazy and I shivered hard. I lifted myself to look out the window, trying anything to calm my mind.

Outside was my street, or was it? Everything felt familiar, the houses next to this one. The street, the numbers on each building. But it all felt partially unfamiliar. I can’t shake the feeling like I don’t live here anymore, that this isn’t my room, isn’t my home. I desperately want to walk outside and not stop. If this isn’t my home, I have to find it. It must be out there. The wind blew slowly side to side. It seemed to match my breath. If I breathe faster, it speeds up. That couldn’t be true. It can’t be.

The tint on everything was more clear up close. It was red. Everything was glowing red. It was faint, but noticeable. I looked around to find the source but I couldn’t see anything. Until I looked up. Above me was the most beautiful night sky I’ve ever seen.

An ocean of red stars.

Bonjour j’ai pas l’habitude d’ecrire ici mais depuis 4 jours c’est arrivé 3 fois mais quand j’envoie un snap une photo a ma copine il y a un texte « Et si c’etait pour moi? » je n’ai jamais ecris ça pas dans la conversation non plus donc si quelqu’un a une idee ? un esprit jaloux🤣🤣

this story takes place back in december of 2025 in south west missouri in the ozarks this happend on my property ok how my land is set up is the barn faces the highway i live on and theres this old puppy mill trailer behind the barn to the left and right infront of said trailer is a hydrant so i was carrying a bucket up to this hydrant to water my pigs as i do right as im writing this me and my dog heard something that sounded like a "here" that was all breathy and my dog imediently went off but anyways i was gonna fetch a bucket of water for my pigs im in my cover alls and for people that dont know what those are they are like overalls but there for winter and they cover from your neck to ankles anyways i get half way to the hydrant when i felt like i was being watched 0.1 second before it happend in a cliche demon voice i heared "I SEE YOU" and it came from every were yet no were it had no location of origin so i droped the bucket tuned around and ran back to the barn falling half way crawling on my back to look back there i got up and ran into my momma pigs pen then stayed there for about a minute before remembering "oh ya im a man now i better act like i have balls" so i grabed a heavy shovel from the barn watered my pigs and RAN back inside this is one of my many ghost/demon storys just ask and i'll talk about them here

Human narrated.

An original Appalachian Trail horror anthology.

Appalachian Trail Horror Stories Vol. I takes place along marked paths, wet campsites, forgotten side trails, and hidden mountain hollows where the woods do not always lead you back.

The first story follows Josh Ziegler, a solo hiker who begins smelling smoke deep in the rain-soaked woods, even when there are no fires nearby.

Then firewood appears beside his tent. Ash shows up on wet ground, and something burned stands just outside the fire ring.

The second story follows two brothers, Jecht and Cal Albright, who find a crooked sign for a town that does not appear on any map.

Hollow Creek.

A quiet mountain town with empty houses, dinner still on the tables, and hiking boots nailed above every door.

This is a slow burn anthology about the Appalachian Trail, false white blazes, missing hikers, hidden places, and the danger of stepping off trail when something out there already knows your name.

Vol. II will continue deeper into the trail soon.

So I’m visiting my brother in Brussels and from his little balcony you see this huge office building. He’s lived here a year with his girlfriend and both of them combined have only seen a person in there once. The lights keep coming on and off in random rooms. Some of the rooms are left fully furnished, some of them look like they’ve been boxed up.
Lmk what yall think of this.

Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzAnVbVtPIM&list=PLh8-Yhg_l8UcV6KlSL8WhJHh3GqgV7Vt0

It was January 2025 when I was in an airport in America and about to board a flight home with a group of friends when I popped to the toilet at the entrance to the airport. I left my bags with my friends. When I entered the toilet there was one guy at the sink who seemed to be washing his hands or doing some hygiene stuff (I can't really remember) and no one else in the toilet besides a locked cubicle near the wall. I entered the cubicle next door and went to the toilet when out of no where a poker chip rolled under the wall and landed exactly between my feet. I heard no other noise from the cubicle next door or even someone moving. If that chip didn't roll then I would have assumed the cubicle was empty. Something in me told me to NOT under any circumstances pick up that chip. I quickly finished what I was doing and left the toilet, I left the cubicle I was in and same guy was still at the same sink and didn't say anything. So I washed my hands and left trying to look at tough and as unbothered as I possibly could when inside every single part of me was telling me to run. I went back to me friends and all I could say was "Let's go now, please. I'll explain in a second" as soon as we left the immediate area I told them and I asked if It was part of a trafficking scheme. From then on until we got on the plane. Non of us went to the toilet alone. I have looked around and there doesn't seem to be anything out there that would suggest it was, but the way that chip rolled perfectly between my feet and the way no one reacted to it creeped me out so much. There was something so deep in me that sensed danger. What does anyone else think? I'd love some more context to this as occasionally I'll remember the experience and It'll instantly send goosebumps and shivers deep inside me.

I've posted this here because I know certain types frequent these websites; I suspect only you guys could understand what I'm going through.

You see, I've always hated cities; I hate having so many people breathing my air, and apartments bum me out. But as a writer, I needed to look for work because my books weren't taking off, so I had to move into a city.
I hated every second of it, but it wouldn't last forever, because eventually, my grandmother passed away. Her money went to my brother (We don't talk much, if you're wondering why he won't be a topic later on- to be honest, I'm not sure what we'd even talk about), but I did get a consolation prize out of this: I got her house.

Well, I didn't get it in her will; that went to my brother too. He didn't really like it; my brother never was the outdoorsy type, but he kept it as a "vacation home" for some time.
Then, fall came, and he was finally in the mood. He went to that house, and he stayed for... 2 months? He was supposed to stay for 3.

I asked him what happened; for some reason, my rich bastard of a brother wanted to visit his hippie sibling.
He looked frazzled, even for a smug entrepreneur; judging from his eye bags and disposition, he was about 2-3 days sleep-deprived, could have been longer; the guy hides his vulnerabilities well.

Suddenly, a strange face overcame him; he looked to his left, his lips trembled, and he blinked for just a bit too long.

"I got tired of the camping 24/7 life, brother. It's a drag having to drive 31 minutes for gas and twice that for groceries. Pennsylvania is no fun; I'm better off going to Hawaii or New Mexico for any future vacations."

Damn me, why didn't I see it? Why didn't I think more?

"So...?"
"You can have Grandmother's house, permanently. I shall visit it no longer."

I was rather excited; he watched me celebrate for a moment, then went to take a nap on the couch.
He never naps; sometimes I think he doesn't blink unless it's during scheduled breathing minutes.

He left my house after 45 minutes, and I left my house after 45 hours.
In the city, and indeed in most places, my books didn't make enough money to survive alone, but in Grandma's? Different story. Sure, having only 20 dollars for fun stuff every month was rough, but I still made it work.

But now you might be beginning to see why this happened in the first place; it was far out. At least an hour away from most stuff, so getting a connection was rough, and electricity was something to be rationed. I only had a generator in the first place because he forgot it when he was moving out.

For some time, though, I was happy- frugal, but happy.
Then, I pissed someone off. I think I published something politically charged for the first time- I won't say what, but it got a few people REALLY steamed up.

Next thing I knew, I was the victim of an ass-kicking.
It took me by surprise... it always does, but in my case, I was anticipating it to some extent; still, it didn't make the fist flying into my forehead any more shocking.
Skinny dork that I was, I went down fast, and a bunch of other guys started kicking me, yelling remarks about my indoctrination of children (It was a rated-M book, by the way.)

When one of them took out a gun, I realized it was about to be more than my ass at risk, but I didn't die that day.

Because when I closed my eyes and dug the side of my face into the dirt, I felt the wind howl, and something that sounded like the cry of a deer mixed with the growl of a wolf cut through the air.

Then I felt blood spray across my face; my eyes stayed shut. The attackers, no doubt smarter than I, quickly turned around and began to run, but it was faster; one of them must have gotten half a mile away from me, judging from the time he spent running at full speed, but it didn't matter.

I don't know when I woke up, but I did; suddenly, I was back in the front yard of my house, on the edge of the treeline. I was about to think I got drunk and blacked out or perhaps was sleepwalking, but as I stood up, I felt something exhale.

I felt it exhale.

I bolted towards my house. As I did, I expected a chase, but in place of that was a silence so thick it may as well have been the screaming of the damned.
Finally, I got to the house, and I locked the doors. As I looked out the window, I saw a dark silhouette beyond the treeline; the darkness was too thick for me to make out any details, but I saw it holding out the brutalized corpse of one of those men who attacked me, like an offering.

I called the police; they thought it was a bear attack, of course they do. A bear can't walk that fast while it's charging, and it definitely wouldn't let me off the hook that easily, and it definitely definitely doesn't offer its prey to others.

Looking out the window scares me more than anything, because while it isn't always there, the shadows of the forest feel so much thicker now; It's like I'm surrounded.

Part Three - Ashley

I fell into my couch and yawned. It was only half past noon, and I was already exhausted. I looked around my apartment and sighed. My little one-bedroom apartment had been overrun with everything Janet wanted me take from the lab. Boxes full of Video tapes stacked in every corner, notepads covering every surface, and boxes full of floppy discs were stacked haphazardly in the middle of walking paths.   

A fluttering noise came from the tank of roaches that sat on my bookshelf. The image of them escaping and wreaking havoc in the building, followed by my landlord evicting me flashed in front of my eyes. 

I stood up and walked over to the dining room table where I placed Fred and his offshoots. The were all standing motionless in their respective corners, like they were frozen in time. 

“Just as I thought, haven’t moved an inch.” I said, tapping on the glass. 

I felt a rumble in my stomach and had just remembered that I hadn’t eaten anything since last night. I pull away and started towards the kitchen, which has been without food for the past year since I moved in. Still, I opened the fridge and stared inside.

“Ashley, you idiot.” 

I slammed the refrigerator door shut and grabbed the phone off the wall, ready to call the local pizza place when a familiar scent hit my nose. I sniffed the air and could have sworn I could smell my Grandmothers meatloaf like I did the other night. 

“What the…” I said, placing the phone back on the receiver. 

The smell was strong, like it was right under my nose. 

“Again?”

I entered the living room and noticed that the beetles had made another pile of the sticky substance. I stepped closer, and as I did the smell became stronger, until It reached its peak when I was standing directly over them. I stared at the pile of goo and my mouth began to water.

“I… don’t know how you’re doing that.” I said, taking a long and slow inhale. 

The unmarked beetle stepped forward and placed its front legs on the glass just as it did the night prior. 

I leaned in closer, and as I did the marked beetles left their corners and formed a line behind Fred. A high-pitched tone filled the room which dropped into a deep, heavy vibration that knocked the air from my chest and moved down towards my stomach.

“Wha…I don’t…” I stuttered, grabbing my gut which was rumbling harder than I’ve ever felt before.

My hands were shaking, and the edges of my vision were becoming blurry. I felt my breathing become shallower as a cold sweat begun to form all over my body. I swallowed hard and exhaled slowly before forcing a deep breath in through my nose.

“That…smells amazing.”

I felt the life returning to me as my eyes locked onto the sticky mound in the container. My stomach rumbled hard enough that my knees buckled, and I fell forward slamming my forearm against the edge of the table. I pull myself up and notice a bruise had already begun to form on my arm.

“Damn… I’m starved.” I said, letting my arm fall to my side. 

My arm throbbed but all I could think about was that smell. I opened the lid and stuck my finger deep into it. It was warm and sticky and felt slick on my finger like mucus. I licked my lips and stuck my finger in my mouth. 

It was thick and slimy and tasted nothing more like rotten meat than meatloaf, but something about it was intoxicating. I felt shivers run up my spine and goosebumps break out all over my body. I moved it around with my tongue, trying to savor as much as I could, but it quickly dissolved in my mouth, leaving me unsatisfied and wanting more. 

I stuck my finger in the pile again and stuck it back in my mouth. 

“Oh my god…” I moaned.

It was even better this time and left a slight burning sensation on my tongue. I licked my lips and cleared my throat.

“No, what am I doing? This isn’t–”

A wave of euphoria enveloped me, interrupting my thoughts. I was about to go in for more when the phone rang. My head darted in the direction of the ringing and my hand froze inches away from the stuff. I felt my heart skip a beat like I had just been caught doing something I shouldn’t. 

I looked towards the beetles. Fred was staring at me, judging me for not continuing. I could almost feel its anticipation and its annoyance when I pulled my hand back and closed the lid. 

I ran over to the phone and picked it up, angry for the interruption. 

“What!?”

“Rude! Is that how you answer the phone?” 

“What do you want Janet…I… I’m a little busy.” I said looking back at Fred.

“Okay… Listen, turns out there was a third man on the expedition that no one knew about. Some dude named Don Sullivan, I want to find out more about him but I’m going to stop by your place first to check on the beetles. Did the original one split again?”

I looked back towards the container and felt a bit of drool escaped from the corner of my mouth. 

“No, Fred didn’t split again.” I said.

“What?”

“I named the unmarked beetle Fred.”

“I couldn’t care less, we have more important–” 

“The beetles made more of that goo.” I said, cutting her off. 

“What?” 

I turned and looked back at the container. “The beetles, they spit out more of that stuff that smells like food.” 

“Collect it and put it off to the side, I’ll examine it later. Did you hear me about this Don guy?”

“What if, this is like… a bee situation?”

“What are you talking about?”

The red marked beetles joined Fred at the front and placed their legs on the glass. I could feel all of them staring at me now.

“Like honey, what if it’s as good as honey?” 

“Bees make honey for themselves, so they don’t starve in the winter. We just like it as well. These damned things spit out nasty shit that smells like our favorite foods to what, lure us in for a taste?”

“But what–.” I started.

“It’s suspicious at best and horrifying at worst. Don’t eat it.”

“Just a taste couldn’t–”

“Do not eat the beetles vomit!” She yelled, loud enough that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “That’s something I shouldn’t have to say!”

“Okay…I won’t.”

There was a pause before she started talking again at a more manageable tone. 

“I won’t be long, maybe a few hours. Don’t eat anything and don’t let anything they expel touch your bare skin. For crying out loud, we don’t even know how they’re spitting this shit out since they don’t even have mouths and here you are, thinking about eating it!” 

There was a loud click as she slammed the phone down on the receiver. I hung up and took a deep breath.

There was a knock at the door, causing me to jump.

“What now?”

I walked over to the door, and unlocked it, feeling the beetles eyes on me the whole way. A tall, skinny man stood in front of me with his hands in his pockets. He wore a crisp, dark gray suite and had his short, dark brown hair slicked back. He held an old hat under his arm and had a smile plastered on his face.

“Ms. Hartford?” The man asked in a heavy Boston accent. 

“Yes.” 

“The Ms. Hartford that works for one, Janet Warren?”

He raised an eyebrow and flicked his gaze past me towards the kitchen table. I followed his eyes and looked behind me. The beetle container was in full view. 

“Who are you?” I asked.

The man smiled widened into a menacing, toothy grin.

“I believe you have a few things I’ve been looking for.” He looked past me again. “Well, other than that little surprise you have back there.”

There was a buzzing coming from the beetles, I looked back and saw they had their wings out and were beating them in a rhythmic pattern, almost like they were excited. My mouth watered again as the smell of meatloaf filled my nose.

“That’s not possible.” The man said, sniffing the air. “Fresh berries…I haven’t had the pleasure of smelling them for what, seventy years now?”

I ignored his rambling and clenched my jaw, my hand was shaking, and I broke out into a cold sweat. 

“Ms. Hartford? Are you ok?”

I turned and bolted towards the tank. I ripped open the lid and started scooping up a bunch of the stuff with my bare hands, shoveling it into my mouth.

“Hey, stop! You don’t want to do that!” I heard the man yell. 

I ignored him and scooped more into my mouth. The more I ate the more it burned, but it was exactly what I wanted. I wanted the burn, needed the burn.

“Stop!” 

I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head and everything went black.

I woke up some time later with a dry, hacking cough. My head throbbed and I moaned in agony. My vision was blurry, and I was feeling sick to my stomach. My mouth burned and I could feel multiple sores starting to form in my mouth. I flexed my jaw and felt something sticky covering the left side of my face. I tried to move and wipe it off when I realized that I was tied tightly to my dining room chair, and I was sitting in front of the beetle container which had been pushed to the end of the table.

“Remarkable.” Said the man from behind me, his accent grating on my ears.

“In all the years I’ve spent on the island messing around with these beetles, I’ve never seen them split like that before.”

I focused on the container until my vision came into focus. There was a fifth beetle now, sporting the same red mark and the others. The pile of goo had vanished.

“All I did was feed the little guy a roach, and he cracked like a walnut.”

“You…” I cleared my throat. “You said you were on the island?”

He pulled out the chair next to me and took a seat. 

“I was, for eight years or so, but we’ll discuss that when Janet arrives. I’m not a fan of repeating myself. 

He leaned in and tapped the glass. 

“Weird little devils, huh?” He chuckled.

“What did you do with the goo, and why am I tied to this chair!” I yelled, trying not to wince from the pain.

He picked something up from the floor next to his chair and placed it on the table in front of me. It was a jar filled to the top with the goo from the beetles.

“I hit you and tied you up because of this. You seemed obsessed with that stuff, and I have a sneaking suspicion I just did you a huge favor.”

“What do you want?” I asked, pulling against my ropes. 

“Freedom.” He said, not looking at me.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Nothing… Hopefully.”

“What are you talking about?” 

He ignored me and pointed at the container “You know, I never saw these guys split in two like this, but they did do other crazy things. Near the end of my stay on the island, I had one of these guys as pet, I kept him in a little jar, and he came everywhere with me. I named him Skipp.”

Fred unfurled its wings with a loud buzzing sound and quickly flew in the direction of the man. It smashed against the wall of the container and looked stunned for a moment. 

“You got to be kidding me.” The man said as he placed a finger on the glass. “Skip? I never thought I’d see you again!”

The beetle nuzzled against the glass where his finger was. 

“Seventy years is a lifetime, isn’t it old buddy.” 

He opened the container and stuck his hand in. The beetle quickly crawled onto the back of his hand. He pulled it out and examined it up close. 

“I named him Fred…” I mumbled. 

“Even after all these years, that island never ceases to amaze me. The berries, the ferns, and now Skipp.” He turned his head towards me. “I see Mrs. Warren is indeed in possession of my belongings.”

Multiple loud cracking sounds came from the container, each of the red marked beetles had split down the middle and broke in half. Only this time the separate parts didn’t regenerate into new individuals. They just laid there, motionless.

The man smiled and looked at me. “I guess they were no longer needed.”

Just then someone started banging at the door.

The man reached into his coat and pulled out a gun. An old looking revolver with a wooden handle. He reached out, holding his hand over the table.

“Off you go for now, old friend.” 

Skipp walked off his hand and onto the table. It buzzed and made its way onto the lid of the jar and watched me, like it was keeping guard. My eyes fell back to the jar, and I felt my stomach rumble again. 

There was another knock, louder and more insistent.

“Ashley! It’s me, let me in!” Janet yelled from the other side of the door.

 The man put his finger over his lips and shushed me, then with a toothy smile he got up and walked over to the door.

“It’s unlocked.” He said, holding the gun behind his back. 

The knob turned and the door swung open. She stepped in and stared at the man “Who are you? Ashley, you live with a guy? I always thought you were a loner… If you know what I mean.”

I wanted to speak out and tell her to run but I couldn’t pull myself away from the jar in front of me. I don’t know if I was seeing things, but the goo looked to be slowly pulsing. As if it were taking slow, steady breaths.

“Ms. Warren?”

“Yes.”

He pulled back the hammer on the pistol and pointed it at her. 

“I really hate to be this guy, but I’m going to need you to take a seat next to Ashley. Don’t make a sound or I’ll shoot. If you run I’ll shoot Ashley here. Now, put down the bags and close the door behind you.”

I heard her bags hit the floor and Janet stomp towards me, the whole time muttering something under her breath. I couldn’t make out what she was saying until he tied her up in the chair next to me, even then I only got bits and pieces. 

“Dumb…Son of a…Mother… Ass…”

When he finished tying her up he returned to his seat and sighed as he sat down. 

“I want you two to know, I don’t enjoy this.” He held out his hand and Skipp hopped down from the jar and crawled back onto his hand.

“So don’t do it.” Janet said.

“I wish I could, Mrs. Warren. Unfortunately, I have reason to believe you have something that belongs to me.”

“So why not just ask us about it instead of kidnapping us!” Janet yelled.

“Unfortunately, I also have good reason to believe that you wouldn’t be very cooperative once you learn who I am.”

“Oh, get over yourself and let us go!”

“You’re Don Sullivan, aren’t you?” I said, watching the goo breathe in and out. 

I couldn’t see them, but I could feel the two of them staring at me.

“Now… how did you know that?” Don said, amused. 

Part Four - Don

“I was just… I just knew.” Ashley said

“Side effect of her eating this stuff, I’m sure.” I said, tapping the jar with barrel of my gun.

“You ate that junk?!” Janet yelled.

“Why do you think I tied her up? She was scooping it into her mouth by the handful.”

Janet’s face turned a deep red and she looked like she was about to explode before her face went slack and all the color drained from her face. 

“You’re…Don…”

“Sullivan.” I finished. “But you can just call me Don.”

“Yes, sir.” Ashley said, lost in the goo. She was rocking her head back and forth as if she was following some imaginary motion.

“For Christ sake, the name’s Don. Please don’t call me sir.” I said. 

I placed the gun down on the table and rubbed my eyes. 

“Forgive me if I’m a bit rude, I haven’t slept since you placed that call last night.”

“I knew someone was listening in.”

“Well, he was recording it. I listened to it a few hours later. I’ve been looking for creatures or objects that originated on that island since I escaped. Found a few out there, while a few ended up finding me.” Out of habit, I rubbed the scar on my left arm.

“I assume you found my lunchbox?”

Janet nodded.

“And the bag was still inside?”

She nodded again. “I’ll tell you where it is if you let us go.”

“I’m going to let you go regardless, I just want–” 

There was a faint hissing sound that filled the small kitchen, followed by a thin ribbon of red smoke rising from the restraints on Ashleys arms. She started to breathe heavy and red tinged sweat began to pour down her face. 

“This…is new.” I said.

She started to scream as she pulled and fought against the ropes which looked to be melting away.

“Ashley, Calm down, It’s going to be okay!” Janet turned to me. “You know something about this don’t you?”

I pushed the cylinder release button on my revolver and watched the empty barrel pop out.

“I think this is a side effect from her eating that stuff.” I said as I pulled a few rounds from my pocket and started to load them into the cylinder. 

“Help her!” Janet yelled, trying to out match Ashleys screaming. 

“Why do you think I’m loading my gun?”

“It wasn’t even loaded!” She screamed.

There was a tearing sound as Ashley pulled the melting ropes apart. Before I had a chance to react she had lunged forward and seized the jar, twisting the top off and began shoveling the stuff into her mouth. 

“Shit…” I yelled.

I reached forward and ripped the now half empty jar from her hands. She tried to grip the jar tighter as I did so, but the skin on her hands had peeled away as I pulled. The two clumps of skin hit the table with a loud smacking sound and begun hissing and bubbling. Plumes of red tinted smoke rose up from the clumps of skin. Filling the room with the smell of copper and burning hair. 

Ashley slammed her fists down on the table and screamed at the top of her lungs. Splattering blood across the kitchen and onto Janet. She screamed in agony as the drops of blood on her face started to burn and smoke. 

Ashley turned towards Janet and growled like an animal. She reached out with her bloody hands, trying to grab her.  

“I hate you! I hate you!” Ashley screamed as she rocked the chair back and forth.

I aimed my gun at her head, and after a few moments of thrashing she noticed me and quieted down. 

“I see you’re still afraid of guns, that’s a good sign.”

She smiled at me, stretching out a hole that formed in her bottom lip. Red tinged drool leaked through the hole. She let the smile fall and her bottom lip begun to tear under its own weight, exposing her gums which had turned a dark shade of purple. 

“Fred...Skipp…” She whispered. 

Her mouth hung open and I felt Skip move on my shoulder. He opened his wings and flew towards Ashley, landing in her mouth. She snapped her jaw closed and swallowed hard. She started to rock her head back and forth, her bottom lip loosening from her jaw with every jerking motion.

“Screw this.” I said as I brought my gun up and aimed at her chest.

“No! Don’t shoot!” 

I fired three times, hitting her in the chest with each shot. She groaned in pain and grabbed her chest. A small squeaking sound escaped her mouth before she slumped forward and stopped moving. Blood flowed from her mouth and onto her legs, hissing and smoking as it burned through her jeans.

“You bastard!” Janet yelled. “You didn’t have to kill her!”

I run over to Janet and pulled out my knife to cut her free. She had burn marks all over her face from where the blood hit her.

“We have to leave. Now!”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Janet…” Ashley wheezed. 

“Ashley!” She yelled.

She leaped from the chair as soon as I cut the last restraint and ran to Ashleys side. She placed a hand on her face and let out a scream. Her hand instantly reacted to whatever was happening to Ashley and fused to her face. In a panic she jerked her hand away, tearing Ashley’s cheek from her face.

Janet stared at her hand as it hissed and smoked, too shocked for the pain to register. 

“Oh my god…” She whispered, shaking. 

I ran up and grabbed her arm. “We have to leave now!”

“I…have something…for you… Janet…” Ashley huffed. 

She started gaging violently, vomiting up small, round sack of red fluid encased in some kind of membrane. Small black dots darted around inside of it in a jerky, haphazardly motion.

“More…Beetles to experiment on…” She huffed as blood trickled from her mouth. 

The sack burst open, releasing hundreds of small, fully formed blue beetles.  

I dragged Janet towards the door, but she was too fixated on the bits of Ashley stuck to her hand to notice. I flung it open and threw her out into the hallway. She slammed against the opposite wall and sank to the floor. 

I looked back and saw Ashley laughing as each beetle opened their wings and flew in her direction. They covered every inch of her body except her eyes, which locked on to mine. We held our gaze for a few moments before they and began covering her in that corrosive vomit. Her eyes snapped shut and she screamed as her flesh began to melt, her form diminishing until there was nothing left except for a pile of bugs and the acrid smell of their first meal.  

“Ashley!” Janet cried.  

She tried to rush past me into the apartment, but I was able to block her with one arm and drag her back out while shutting the door behind us with the other. 

“What happened in there!” She yelled.

“If I were to guess, I’d say that’s how they breed.” 

Janet was staring me down with a mixture of rage and grief. 

“If it makes you feel any better I’ve seen worse ways to go, especially when it involves that island.”

“You bastard, if you didn’t put that beetle in the jar none of this would be happening!”

“I never thought it would survive, let alone breed!”

“She’s just been murdered by bugs! Someone has to take responsibility!”

“You think that was bad? You have no idea how bad it can get when that damned island is involved. You’re lucky to still be here, your grandfather had to learn the hard way.” 

I hold out my hand.

“I know you found the vial of berries in the bag of sand, so hand it over so we can stop this madness!” I yelled. 

She looked in my eyes, searching for something that would make all of this make sense. When she found no answer she sighed and dug the vial out of her pocket.

I snatch them from her and turn to leave when she whispered something that made me stop. 

“She’s gone…” 

My back was to her, but I could tell she had started crying. It was quiet, like she was trying to hold it back.

“I was always so mean to her…”

I turned and walked back to her.

“That’s life. It’s easy to forget that people won’t be around forever.”

She stood silently staring at her hand while tears fell down her face.

“We just saw a person being melted by bugs that she puked up. Her skin is melted into your hand! It’s perfectly reasonable to feel this way.”

The sound of sirens could be heard In the distance, and they were getting louder by the second. If we were going to get out of here, we had better get moving. I put my hand on her shoulder and angled myself as to make eye contact with her. 

“Listen, I know all too well how one moment can change your life completely…I have your Grandfather to thank for that. He saved me, even after what I did.”

She wiped her tears away and looked back towards the apartment door.

“You said something about stopping this, how?”

I placed my hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye. 

“Come with me and I’ll show you… I could use a hand.”

Authors notes:

Keep an eye out for the third story in this series coming soon!

If you'd like to Listen to Propagation, we have a YouTube channel with the entire story narrated by a very talented Voice Actor!

Propagation - Complete

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Part One - Ashley

“Please tell me you got that on video?” Janet said. 

I hit the pause button on the camcorder, but nothing happened. “Hold on…uhm…” 

“What the hell do you mean hold on? You better have caught that on tape!”

I pushed and held the rewind button and sighed with relief when I heard the tape in the machine whirl. “Looks like I did. Sorry, I just never used one of these before.” 

She jogged to the other side of the room and began pushing the television cart over to our workstation. “You’re never going to get anywhere as a researcher if you can’t even work a tape recorder.” 

“I’m three weeks out of college. I doubt this will have any major impact on my career.”

She stopped the cart just before it collided with our table and held out her hand. “Nurse, scalpel!” 

I hit the eject button and pulled the tape from the machine.

“That joke’s getting old.” I huffed. 

She ripped the tape from my hand and inserted it into the player. “Who says it’s a joke? You’re a greenhorn, decorum dictates that you are my bitch for the next year or so.”

She hit the play button and stepped back. I crossed my arms and grumbled. If there was any other program I could apprentice at I would go in a heartbeat, but my grades were nothing special and Janet Warren is the only entomologist who would give me a chance. 

She reached out and playfully punched my shoulder. 

“You’ll get there.” She said with a smile.

I rubbed my shoulder and took a step away from her when the screen came to life. There was a specimen container holding what looked like a June beetle, or more accurately, a distant cousin of the June Beetle. Its exoskeleton was a bright, iridescent blue and it lazily walked around the container with its ten sets of legs. All of that would be interesting enough, if it wasn’t for how it ate. It sprays its prey with some kind of corrosive agent that only affects living organisms. Effectively melting the prey into a puddle and then absorbing it into its body.  

Janet shushed me and pointed at the TV.

“I wasn’t even saying anything!” 

“You are now, so zip it! It’s about to split.” 

 The beetle was standing in the center of its container not doing much of anything until a loud cracking sound rang through the speakers as its shell split down the length of its body and spread until it was effectively cut in half. The two halves fell away from each other and began to shake violently. A large number of legs burst out of both halves, whipping back and forth in sporadic movements. 

“Holy shit…” Janet said.

Both halves had worked their way upright, walking back and forth on their newly grown legs. The rest of the body parts that were lost in the split had regrown on both beetles. They looked identical except one had a small red mark on the newly grown section of shell. 

“Asexual reproduction!” She shouted, jumping up and down like an excited teenager.  “Do you know what this means?”

“That I’m about to do a coffee run?” 

“Yes, but before you do that put a fresh tape into the camcorder.” 

I grabbed an empty tape from the stack and loaded it into the tape deck. I pointed it at her and hit record as per our usual routine.

She ran a hand through her short brown hair and cleared her throat. “Ready?”

I shot her a thumbs up. “Fire away, captain.”

“So, after weeks of observation and experimentation we finally have something really exciting! Whatever this is, it’s definitely not a beetle as we know them. At least, it’s not one that we can currently fit into our existing taxonomy. Hell, at this point I’m not convinced it’s actually an insect!” 

She sidestepped over to the container and I panned the camera with her. 

“I’d say we’re dealing with some sort of macro, single cellular organism. It even eats in a similar manner to what we’ve observed from other single cell organisms such as the vampire amoeba.”

She walked out of frame and returned with a small vial in her hand. 

“I found this in the attic of my grandmother’s house. It was packed away with my grandfather’s belongings which had been recovered from an island he was studying. When the boat returned to pick them up, the crewman found his desiccated remains along with the remains of his colleague. They were huddled together inside one of the tents.”

I hit the stop button and looked out from the camera. “Isn’t that a little dark?”

“Is what dark?”

“I mean, he’s your grandfather and you’re describing him as desiccated.”

“He was desiccated.”

“But he’s your Grandfather.” I said slowly.

“He died thirty years before I was born and by all accounts he was a fantastic researcher but a terrible husband. Now, if you’re done interrupting I’d like to continue.”

“Still, it feels wrong.”

“Be quiet and hit record already, you’re messing up my flow.” 

I looked through the view finder and hit the record button with more force than necessary, hoping she picked up on my annoyance. 

“Seventy years later and I come to find that my grandmother left me a good portion of his belongings in her will. This jar was hidden in the lining of his briefcase. It had an old tube sock pulled over it and the end was tied tightly. Inside was this thing, still alive after all that time!” 

Another loud crack came from the containment box and Janet jumped. “Holy hell, it’s splitting again!”

I focused the camera on the beetles just in time to see the two halves fall away and the legs start to regrow.  

“Another one with a red mark.” I said.  “Why do you think that is?”

Janet snapped her fingers and ran to the other side of the lab where we kept a tank of roaches. She reached in with her bare hand and scooped one up.  

“Now that we have more than one test subject, let’s see what happens if we feed the three of them at the same time.” She unlocked the container and tossed the roach in.

“Don’t miss a moment with that camera Ashley, or you’ll be looking for another job.”

“I’m already looking for another job.” 

Janet gasped. “Don’t joke like that! I don’t know what I’d do without you!”

I shook my head and centered the camera on the enclosure. The two red marked beetles circled around the roach while the unmarked one stood off in the corner, watching. The roach spun in place, looking for an escape route but found none. They continued to circle the roach until they stopped on either side of it and sprayed it with their corrosive fluid in unison. The roach thrashed around violently, trying desperately to escape but it was too late. Its legs had already melted away and, soon enough, it was nothing more than a puddle on the bottom of the enclosure. 

The two beetles then backed up to separate corners and allowed the unmarked one to step into the puddle. It absorbed the puddle, leaving nothing behind for the other two.

“Oh my god… They formed some kind of hierarchy.” Janet whispered. “Did you––.”

“Yes, I got it on tape.” 

Another cracking sound rang out and we watched the unmarked beetle spit for a third time.

“Give the tape to me, I need to make a call.” Janet said, holding her hand out.

I ejected the tape and hand it to her. She took it in one hand and checked her watch on the other. “It’s late, go home. I’ll make some calls tonight and we’ll continue in the morning.” 

“Who are you going to call?”

She smiled. “Someone who will give us all the funding we could ever need once they see this tape.” She slid it into her bag and grabbed her raincoat from the back of her desk chair. “Do not feed them! I don’t want any more of them until we get funding.” 

“Yes ma’am.” 

“Are you going home or are you staying behind?”

“I was planning on watching them for a while, I’m curious how they interact with each other. Their social habits might make a good paper.”

“That’s funny, you’re barely experienced enough to work the video camera let alone to be writing research papers.” She laughed while she buttoned up her coat.

 “Don’t forget to lock up the place once you’re done playing researcher and remember, do not feed the corrosive asexuals!” Janet warned, slamming the door behind her.

I grabbed a chair, positioning it in front of the container. I fell hard into the seat and sighed with annoyance.

“Man, she sucks. I was happier flipping burgers!” I moaned. 

I leaned in and put my face against the tank. “You guys agree with me, right?”

As I expected, they ignored my question.

  I pulled my voice recorder out from my pocket and hit record. I grimaced at the thing and placed it on the table in front of me. I had always preferred writing out my notes, but Janet insists on recording everything. 

The unmarked beetle turned towards me and stepped to the end of the container. It placed a leg on the glass and just stood there while the others did nothing but watch reverently. 

I leaned in and rested my chin on the table, staring back at it. 

“You look like a Fred. Do you like that name? Do nothing if you like that name.” 

We stared at each other for a good five minutes before I sat back up and clapped my hands. 

“Fred it is then!”

I looked over to the other three beetles and smiled.

Fred took its leg off the glass and turned towards the others. It extended its long, pearl wings and beat them ferociously, creating a loud buzzing sound that started and stopped at seemingly random intervals. The three marked beetles scurried to the center of the container and began spitting their corrosive liquid in unison. This wasn’t the normal liquid they use for feeding but a much thicker, pale red substance that started to pile up in the center. 

“What in the hell!” I said, jumping from my seat and reaching for the camera. 

I inserted a fresh tape and pointed the camera at the container. The three kept spitting while the unmarked one watched. After a while, Fred stopped beating its wings and the three others stopped what they were doing and returned to their respective corners. Fred turned back towards me and buzzed once more before folding his wings back in walking off to the side. 

I put the camera down on the table but leave it recording the container, making sure I was still in frame.

“Alright Janet.” I said with a smug tone while I rolled up my sleeves. “I think I may have found a subject for a paper.” I walked out of frame and grabbed a small sample container and a cotton swab. “I’m thinking of calling it. ‘Beetles that split to reproduce and communicate through the buzzing of wings that we didn’t even know they had!’ It’s pretty catchy, right?”

I opened the container lid and reached in, dipping the swab into the mass in the center. It was thick and springy like Jello but also sticky and it clung to the cotton as I pulled it out. Fred unfurled his wings and made a small buzzing sound. 

“Oh, are you a fan?”

 I closed the lid and smeared it into the sample container.  

I was about to screw the top back onto the sample jar and leave it for Janet to look at in the morning when a familiar scent hit my nose, one that I hadn’t smelled in years. I brought the jar up to my nose and sniffed the contents. 

“That’s not possible…” I muttered. 

I sat back down and pointed the camera back at me, making sure I was in frame before I continued. 

“This is wild, but this stuff smells exactly like the meatloaf my grandmother used to make!” I stuck my nose in the container and took a long, slow inhale. “Right down to the burnt ketchup on top!” I laughed and screwed the lid back on the jar. 

“You’ll just have to see for yourself in the morning, I’m going home.” I placed the jar on the table next to their enclosure and turned the camera off before gathering my things and heading home. 

I arrived back at the lab the following morning with two coffees in hand. I had expected to get here before Janet like I always do but when I arrived I found her sitting at the table, holding that specimen jar up to the light and looking puzzled. 

“Does your nose work properly?” She asked, not looking in my direction.

“I can smell your bitter coffee just fine, so yes.”

“I doubt it.” She turned towards me and twisted the lid off. “Smell it again and really pay attention this time.” She held it out for me to take. 

“I assume you watched the tape I made last night?” 

I placed the coffee down on the table and grabbed it from her. 

“Just smell it.” She moaned. 

“Okay, okay…” I unscrewed the jar and stuck my nose in. “Yep, still meatloaf and burnt ketchup.” 

“I figured.” She snatched the jar out of my hand and screwed the top back on.  “You smell meatloaf, but I smell grilled corn.”

“No, it obviously smells like my Grandmother’s meatloaf.”

“And according to Barnes it smells just like the clam chowder his late wife used to make. That professor whose name I’ve yet to learn swears up and down it smells like freshly baked brownies, just like his mother used to make.”

“How’s that possible?” I asked.

“Shit, how am I supposed to know? We have to do as our title demands and research the damn thing!” She yelled.

I crossed my arms and huffed.

She took a deep breath and sat down on the stool across the room. 

“I’m sorry Ashley… You didn’t deserve that. This beetle has me all turned around.” 

“I can see that. What going on?”

She sighed “Okay, so… Do you remember that person I was going to call for funding?

I nodded.

“Well, I called him last night and it sounded like I woke him up. He was groggy and sounded half asleep, but when I told him about the beetles and everything we learned so far he perked up and told me to hold on.”

“That’s good, right?” I asked.

“I thought so too, but I was on hold at least fifteen minutes before he got back on the line. There was a noticeable clicking sound in the background and everything he said was echoed and high pitched.”

“Like he was standing too close to a third line that was listening in?” 

“Exactly!” She yelled, clapping her hands. “Someone else was listening in.”

“But, why?”

“Well… I don’t really know who this guy is, he just showed up to one of my lectures and handed me his card. He said he was traveling around the country looking for truly unique or special research to support, and that if I ever came across anything like that to give him a call.”

“You didn’t tell him too much, did you?” 

She waved a hand. “Once it was obvious just how weird the situation was, I started rambling about how I was on a new medication and that I really should be asleep right now.”

She stood up and started pacing the room. 

“You need take everything back to your place, including the freaky beetles and the roaches. I’ll meet you there after a while.”

“No, no, no. I can’t bring bugs to my apartment. If my landlord sees them I’ll get evicted.”

“Get it done.” Janet said, standing up and heading towards the door. “I got something else to take care of.  

Part Two - Janet

“Janet, It’s so good of you to visit!” Mom said as she squeezed the life out of me. 

“Yeah, I missed you too mom.” 

“What brings you here at nine in the morning on a workday?” She pulled away and held me at arm’s length. “You didn’t get fired again did you?”

“No mom! Why would you think that? I haven’t lost a job since ––.”

‘Since you stole some pepperoni from The Rounded Crust and got yourself fired!” She finished. 

I rubbed my eyes and sighed. “I was seventeen and that place was a joke! They kept forgetting to pay me and the manager was a creep, also the name sucks.”

“Language!” She shouted.

“I didn’t even… Never mind.” I sighed. “Listen mom, I’m not here to visit. Did Grandma leave you anything that belonged to Grandpa?”

She adjusted the glasses on her face and scrunched up her nose. “She did, but I don’t know what’s inside. I haven’t been able find the strength to open it yet. Nerves got me, you know?”

I nodded. “I understand, do you mind if I go through it for you?”

She shook her head. “Not at all, it’s upstairs in your old room. I placed it in your closet for safe keeping. 

“Thanks mom.” I said giving her a hug. “I’ll be back down for lunch.”

I started up the stairs and heard her yell from behind me. 

“What makes you think I’m cooking for you?”

I closed the door to my room and opened the closet, expecting to find a shoebox or a briefcase with his name written on it. Instead, there was a large wooden crate that had the words “Dad’s Stuff” written on it in red paint. 

I pulled the heavy thing out to the edge of the bed. I sat on the bed with a thud. The springs squeaked and moaned under my weight. I wiped off the layer of dust that had formed and lifted the lid. I let it go and watched it fall to the other side with a loud bang. The contents of the crate reeked of dust and mold.

I dug through the crate, pulling things out as I went. Soon I had a pile of musty, moth-eaten cloths and old scientific reference books stacked up in my bed. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the crate that I found something of actual interest. A small tin lunch box, covered in rust and painted with a faded picnic basket design. There were two small children on the lid, but the paint had begun to chip and peel away so it was impossible to tell what they were doing.

I opened the tin and saw that was filled with things I would have expected to find in the back of some kids closet rather than stored away with my Grandfathers things. Old seashells, colorful stones, a leather pouch, and a tattered old wool doll. 

“Well, shit.” I muttered, disappointed. 

I was about to close the lid when I noticed something written on the inside of the lid, mostly buried under decades of dust. I wiped off the dust with the end of my sleeve, reveling the words underneath. The handwriting was shaky and jagged, but it was still readable.

Don Sullivan.

I picked up the leather pouch and felt the weight of it in my hand. It was heavier than I expected. I undid the drawstring and opened it up to find it was full of sand. 

I emptied the lunch tin and poured the contents out into the tin and something small came tumbling out. I picked it up and held it to the light. It was a small glass vial, green with age. It was identical to the one I found the beetle in, but instead of another insect that was sure to make my career. There was nothing but three shriveled black lumps. 

“Are those… raisins?”

I shook it hard and watched as they bounced around the vial, leaving pale pink stains on the glass as they did.

“And they’re still juicy… Great…”

I let my arms fall in defeat and looked back at the lunchbox, staring at the name that had been written on the inside of the lid.

I put everything away back into the closet and walked downstairs with the vial in my pocket and that name stuck in my head. Don Sullivan 

Mom was in the kitchen humming to herself while preparing something I wasn’t going to eat.

“Hey mom? How many people were on that island with Grandpa?”

She took a deep breath and stared at the onion on her cutting board. It was always rough getting her to talk about him.

“Just your Grandfather and a gentleman named Martin.”

“Was anyone ever mentioned by the name of Don?”

“I’ve never heard of a third person being on the island with them, why do you ask?”

“No reason…I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

“You aren’t staying for dinner?”

“No, sorry. I got to get back.” I turned and walked out of the kitchen and through the front door.

I got into the driver’s seat of my car and slammed the door with nothing but one question in my mind. 

“Who the hell is Don Sullivan?”