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raewritestales · 2 years

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I Was Paid to Stay Awake for 15 Days. Here’s What Happened.

Nothing.

Nothing Happened.

I don't mean that metaphorically nothing happened... As in, there were no consequences, good or bad, for breaking the previous record by 4 days. No, I mean literally nothing happened. Time stopped. Reality became empty and meaningless.

According to the researchers, I fell asleep for 15 minutes at exactly the 15-day mark but for me, that moment lasted much longer. It's hard to explain but my body and my mind didn't experience the nothingness. It's something I felt inside of me. Deep down in whatever makes up my existence. It was as if the rules of reality that we all abided by broke down and everything stopped... and then I was awake again.

As if the agony I endured to reach the 15-day mark wasn't bad enough, what came after is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.

I guess I should explain. About 6 weeks ago, I was approached by a trio of researchers on my college campus. They were graduate psychology students who were studying the effects of no sleep on the human body and mind. They were recruiting volunteers for a new study in which the subjects would undergo treatment to help them stay awake longer. Their ambition was to create medication that allows people to stay up weeks at a time without any negative consequences.

It was a grandiose goal and perhaps dangerous for the people volunteering but they were paying $400 for each full day we could stay awake. As a broke college student, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Tuition was due soon, I was already months late paying it, and I already had $50,000 in student debt.

A few days later I was scheduled. I would be staying in their lab while they monitored me 24/7. The first couple of nights weren't anything special. I've pulled all-nighters before at LAN parties with my high school buddies. It wasn't until the 55-hour mark that I started to slow down. I was given a few pills that would help me stay alert. They told me I'd have to take them every six hours for them to be effective and with life-changing money on the line, I was willing to do anything.

The rest of the study was a blur. It's hard to remember the details, what I did to stay awake. Did I do any experiments to test my cognitive ability? Did I even interact with anyone? It's too hard to remember now and it doesn't matter anymore. I'm too tired to think about it.

I don't remember the nothingness but I can still feel it. The emptiness won't go away. It flows through my soul. It's not something I can easily explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. It feels as though I'm no longer connected to myself as if I've moved beyond my physical body but it's hard to tell what reality is. I haven't slept for quite a while now.

Eventually, the experiment came to an end and my experience left me delirious and confused. A doctor checked my vitals and thanked me for volunteering. I was handed cash, $6,000 right in my hand. If I hadn't been awake for 360 hours, I would have done a little more than a small smile and nod. I was then escorted back to my dorm room so I could finally rest.

I fell asleep the second my body touched my bed. The sleep deprivation hit me hard.

I had the worst nightmares since I was a child. I dreamt of ethereal beings stealing my very existence. They came from somewhere beyond this world to ours to fill their own. I woke up at 9 am drenched in sweat. Dreams were always weird and this was no exception. I thought it was just a coincidence that I had the same feeling when I awoke that morning that I had at the end of the study. I'm not so sure it was a coincidence anymore.

I couldn't stop thinking about the nightmare for the rest of the day. I've always heard that we dream of experiences we've already had. Sometimes it might be a movie you watched, a book you read, or maybe a random encounter with a stranger. There was always a familiarity to dreams; although, they always seem absurd and completely illogical. That dream, that nightmare, felt too real. It was hard to stay focused.

The next night I went to sleep early. My roommate was getting back late from a weekend trip and I wanted to get a head start on sleep before his rustling kept me awake.

I had the same nightmare. This time, the ethereal beings seemed hungrier, as if they had a taste for a new, exotic meal and wanted to dine on it once again. I could feel myself being ripped from my sleeping body despite my attempts to wrench myself free.

I became aware of a shadowy figure staring at me beside my bed. I tried to move with every ounce of strength I could muster until finally, after what felt like minutes, I was able to pull myself from a deep sleep. It was my roommate. He told me that I was screaming in my sleep and flailing. I even put a hole in the dorm room wall.

I used to have night terrors as a kid so I didn't put much thought into it, after all I had just recently been awake for 15 days straight. There were bound to be some lasting side effects. I pushed it to the back of my mind. There was nothing too abnormal about it.

Unfortunately, I had an exam coming up and I wasn't prepared. The terrible sleep from the previous two nights and the sleep study left little time for me to learn the new material. I decided I was going to pull an all-nighter or two since I didn't want to fail this class.

My study session started off normal but as the day came to an end I became increasingly drowsy. I was fighting off sleep when I started to hear soft whispers coming from the hallway just outside my door. They were loud enough to disrupt my studying. I wanted them to stop. I would get up to see who was standing outside my dorm but each time there was no one there. I would go back to studying and soon after the whispers would return. I tried to put on headphones but they only grew louder.

I began to hallucinate by the following morning. At first, it was just inconspicuous shadows in the very corners of my vision. Just visible enough to be mistaken for a fly or some dust floating in the air. As the day drew on, the hallucinations worsened. Small shadows turned into figures hiding within the dark recesses of my room, whisperings amongst themselves. I thought it was just sleep deprivation. That I just needed to get some sleep. I wish I listened to my instincts. I wish that the feeling of my hair sticking straight up would have alerted me to the danger I was facing. Maybe it was the lack of sleep clouding my judgment. Instead, I slept. I needed sleep if I was going to pass my exam the next day.

Another nightmare. This time I was in my room. The ethereal beings hovered over me with ghastly smiles as they began to steal whatever it is that makes me, me. I fought to move. I poured every ounce of power into my body. I commanded every fiber of my being to wake. My eyes opened and I was met with the familiar sight of my room. I laid there paralyzed, only able to move my eyes.

I watched as a shadow in the corner of my room began to grow, swallowing the light that passed through it. A void of nothing devouring its surroundings. It felt too real to be a dream... It was real. I could tell - somehow. When it reached me, I could feel it penetrate my skin. I felt it pressing against my body, suffocating me with the weight of nothing. I tried to scream but I couldn't. My lips were sealed and my words compressed in my mouth, unable to find a way out.

And then as quickly as it started, it stopped and I awoke.

I haven't been asleep since then. For a while, things seemed to get better. The whispers and hallucinations went away within the first couple of days. I began to think it really was my sleep-deprived mind playing sadistic tricks on me.

I let my guard down.

They came back... the voices. The hallucinations too. Whispers and laughter turned into screams and cackles. I was engulfed in a cacophony of wails and guffaws, a relentless torrent of suffering. The shadows grew nearer until I could feel them crawling along my skin, itching for a way in. They were always looking for a way in.

I'm trying to fight it but every hour I stay awake I get weaker and they get stronger. I know that if I sleep now, I might not wake up again. My only choice is to never sleep again.

I don't know what's happening but I do know that you shouldn't follow my path. If you stay awake too long, you'll experience nothing, just like I did. Don't experience nothing. Because when you experience nothing, nothing experiences something. It won't stop until it has something. It won't stop until it has you. It won't stop until it has me.

I'm writing this as a warning. Whatever I did, it broke the barrier between our world and theirs. When I'm awake I drift into the realm of nothing. When I'm asleep, they invade the realm of something.

It's been 14 days, 13 hours, and 42 minutes since I last slept. I don't know what will happen to me if I stay awake any longer. I just want it to stop. I can't sleep anymore. Not unless I want them to come back and steal my existence... I just hope nothing will be better than this.

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I write horror, fantasy, and sci-fi and will be posting multiple times a week!

Oh, and don't forget to reblog this and follow me! I want to share my writing with as many people as possible. :D

Hope you enjoyed it!

#author rec

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raewritestales · 2 years

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My First Hockey Game

I’ve always wanted to go to a Hockey game and when I moved to Canada it seemed like the perfect time. I didn’t and still don’t know much about Hockey; I did some basic research to make sure I knew the basics but further than that – I had no clue. The first game I went too was with friends and it was nothing like I was expecting; in fact I questioned many things I had read. Now, even though I…

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#Canada #creative writing #Creepy #for Otis Jiry #hockey #horror #original story #story

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raewritestales · 2 years

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I work hiding the existence of BigFoot

I work hiding the existence of BigFoot [story]

(more…)

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#BigFoot #campfire tale #creative writing #Creepy #creepy pasta #creepypasta #cryptid #horror #legends #myth and legend #myths #original story #Paranormal #Sasquatch #story

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raewritestales · 2 years

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calling all authors!!

i have just stumbled upon the most beautiful public document i have ever laid eyes on. this also goes for anyone whose pastimes include any sort of character creation. may i present, the HOLY GRAIL:

https://www.fbiic.gov/public/2008/nov/Naming_practice_guide_UK_2006.pdf

this wonderful 88-page piece has step by step breakdowns of how names work in different cultures! i needed to know how to name a Muslim character it has already helped me SO MUCH and i’ve known about it for all of 15 minutes!! i am thoroughly amazed and i just needed to share with you guys

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raewritestales · 2 years

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Warnings: sleep paralysis, nightmares/terrors, demons

A/N: based on some dreams I had; and padded out a lot.

Whenever I have tried to get my thoughts down and the events of the last god knows how many weeks or months… It’s like the thing I’ve been seeing is putting a block on everything… it gets foggy but… it’s not what I thought it was and now it affects my wife too and I have to get it out there.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. It sounds so silly and such a non event - I had nightmares. I’ve always had nightmares and night terrors. Not every night but enough that even when I was a twenty-something adult living at home my mother would wake me because I was screaming in my sleep and fighting off something from on top of me.

When I moved out and in with my girlfriend-now-wife, she would wake me when I was kicking and punching in my sleep - we’d joke that she isn’t a tree in one of our console games. The talking in my sleep was funny to us both because some of the things I would say made no sense; so we laughed when I was “in a boat” or “trading this fish” and even “just going on a trip to the moon”.

The nightmares were regular enough but became more frequent as I got older and even more so when I got news of my mother’s cancer diagnosis; too far along for effective treatment so she was given twelve months maximum.

The dreams were always the same. I would be running, not from anything at first. I was just running, not something I’d do for fun in waking life but dream-me wanted to keep fit apparently. I’d head into a wooded area and the trees would become thicker, taller, sharper. The bark would change colour from the natural browns to deep reds and sap would begin to drip out of splits in the wood. I could smell metal in the air and taste the same, the ground under my now bare feet was a mix of grass and sharp twigs and again I could feel the sharpness on my feet. The sap was no longer sap but thick blood, dying the trees as it now poured down the sides. The insects and birds were all kinds of wrong; butterflies with human skin as wings - as if just torn from the victim. Bees with large mandibles able to tear apart any prey including my skin. Birds whose feathers were made from muscles, tendons and cartilage. A snake was slithering on the floor seemingly skinned, leaving trails of blood behind it that were being licked up by lizards and frogs with exploded eyes and pus-filled warts. The flowers and other plant life looked like normal but surrounded by everything else they looked out of place and gave off an air of unease.

Now I was running from something… a thing. A being. An alien? An animal? A demon? I don’t see it but I know I must escape from it. I continue running but the strong smell and taste of blood in the air is making it hard for me to breathe. My chest feels tight, my arms heavy and my legs are decidedly not doing what legs should do. I fall to the floor on my hands and knees, screaming out in pain as the sharp blades of grass pierce my skin; it’s needles and glass, pins and bone splinters. I try to stand but I’m in too much pain and then it’s on my back and wrestling me so it can sit on my torso.

The thing that has been chasing me is dark like a shadow but I can see it’s sinewy. The skin is covered in the blood/sap from the trees which makes it sticky and slick. The eyes are large and black with a red ring around the outer edge; there are no eyelids or eyebrows. The teeth in its mouth are sharp and pointed, they’re blackeyed and brown and grey - there are no lips, it’s ears are just holes in the sides of its bald and scarred head. The thing sits on me with bent knees against its chest; crouched down in place. The arms are thin and boney, the hands are claw-like. The nails are long and sharp and easily scratch open my skin with the lightest of touch. It breathes heavily and it’s breath is like a rotten trash bin left in the sun for too long. It whispers and snarls something but it’s not a language I understand then it parts it’s knees and leans down between them placing it’s mouth over mine.

I wake unable to breathe or move and for a few moments I can swear I hear something running away out the bedroom; I assume it’s one of our cats. I inhale sharply and cough to the point of breathlessness. My wife jumps awake and quickly offers me water as she checks that I’m okay.

I can’t speak but I nod a little; it’s a lie of course. I’m covered in sweat and I’ll spend the rest of the night awake; scared to sleep. But I don’t want her to feel the need to lay awake with me. Why should both of us lose a night's sleep over a silly dream?

A silly dream that left me with bruises on my legs, cuts on my hands and feet, a black eye, a mild concussion from a hit to the head as I fell to the floor.

A silly dream that my doctor said was just a reaction to grief and mental pain and prescribed me some sleeping pills that had fun side effects such as “sleep disturbances”, “strange dreams”, “nightmares” and the warning stated not to take them if you suffered from anxiety or depression. But sure, I’ll take these things for three nights and hope nothing worse happens….

A silly dream that repeated itself for another three nights with varying intensity.

A river of acid that I run through to aid my escape but the creature is unaffected while I lose my feet and half my lower leg. Barbed wire and razor wire vines that hang from the trees and capture me, wrap around me, trap me; cut and pierce my skin…but the thing just swings from them as though he’s the embodiment of George of The Jungle. A large boiling-mud-filled sinkhole that I fall into; Every. Single. Time.

And still the creature captures me; I can never escape it and every time it will literally take my breath away.

With every dream I find myself more exhausted than before; my wife points out my skin is paler and drier, my hair starts to fall out.

“It’s just stress…I mean I do live with you, my love…” I smile and try to assure her, but she isn’t convinced and she can see through my ploy to alleviate her concerns with humour.

The night I received the news my mother had died; I drank myself to the point of passing out. It wasn’t unexpected but it was sooner than we had originally thought and we believed we had more time.

My sleep was realistic. The nightmares always felt real anyway but this was as though I went from HDTV to a crystal clear 4K.

It was different. I wasn’t in a forest or wooded area; I was floating in a large open lake. Every time I try to move towards the shore I would slip under water. A long-held fear simply because I couldn’t swim. I tell myself I’m dreaming, that I won’t be controlled by my fears, that it’s not real. And then I feel water enter my lungs, I sputter and choke when I rise above the water again to steady myself. Somehow I’ve moved further away from the shoreline and into the open water. Looking around I see figures on a dock not far from where I am treading water trying to stay afloat. I call for help and all three figures point to the same place in the water. I follow their direction and see what looks to be a dark floatie; I slowly and carefully make my way towards it, realising too late that it’s the creature pretending to be a floatie. It winds its long arms around me and tightens its grip; a vice on my chest and when I can breathe a little I get nothing but salt water into my burning lungs. I manage to take a breath and look to the people on the dock before it pulls me under into the vast blackness. My last sight before I wake with a start is my mother, my wife and my best friend, pointing me to my death.

My eyes open quickly. They open quicker than usual after a nightmare and I’m face to face with the creature sitting on my chest. I can’t move myself but I can move just my eyes and I see that with one of its hands it keeps my wife oblivious to its being here and she sleeps soundly beside me, unaware of my panic. It hisses at me and holds a long clawed finger to its lipless mouth as if telling me to be quiet. I gasp roughly and try to speak but instead it’s mouth once again is over mine and I pass out.

I awoke feeling hungover, but more than hungover. My hands are swollen and my feet are cut and bruised. I’m drenched in sweat but even my wife points out it’s almost too salty for that. My eyes are bloodshot, I seem to have pulled out my hair in clumps and my clothes are torn by something other than hands or nails and we’re both left confused and terrified.

I thought I was just having bad dreams. I thought that stress and grief can affect you in the weirdest of ways but…. When I say I have a demon; it isn’t just hyperbole. I have a physical demon that’s slowly taking all energy and life force from me and has been doing since I was a teenager.

But now… Not only is it doing this to me but my wife has begun to have night terrors; something she has never had in her entire life; they’re scarily similar to my own but with a few other things thrown in and no matter how hard I try to stay awake to see this thing and try to stop it… I always fall asleep until she’s screaming and crying for help and there’s a skitter of feet out of our room.

#creative writing #creepy pasta #creepy #original #original writing #campfire #campfire tale

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raewritestales · 2 years

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It Wasn’t Just Sleep Paralysis

Warnings: talk of nightmares/terrors, sleep paralysis, demons. (more…)

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#campfire tale #creative writing #Creepy #creepy pasta #creepypasta #demon #horror #night terrors #nightmares #original story #Paranormal #sleep Paralysis #story

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raewritestales · 2 years

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Mostly Void

Warnings: BEK/BEC. Talk of deterioration, bad health, mental health implications. Narration by Otis Jiry for Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. (Opens in new tab.) (more…)

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#BEC #BEK #black eyed children #black eyed kids #campfire tale #creative writing #Creepy #creepy pasta #creepypasta #horror #original story #Paranormal #story

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raewritestales · 2 years

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The Angel Statue Stole my Soul

Warnings: paranormal, implications of religion and the devil. (more…)

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#campfire tale #creative writing #Creepy #creepy pasta #creepypasta #hometown #horror #legends #myth and legend #myths #original story #Paranormal #story

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raewritestales · 2 years

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I Went Camping On a Ranch

Warnings: light horror. strong language. talk of death. skinwalkers. (more…)

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#campfire tale #creative writing #Creepy #creepy pasta #creepypasta #original story #Paranormal #ranch #skin Walker #Skinwalker #story

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raewritestales · 2 years

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I Know I’m Being Followed

Warnings: talk of mental health in a derogatory manner. Paranoia. Drugging. (more…)

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#aliens #campfire tale #creative writing #Creepy #creepy pasta #creepypasta #men in black #MiB #original story #Paranormal #story #UFO

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raewritestales · 2 years

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The Minute Man

Warnings: mentions of ageing, death, maybe some existential dread. (more…)

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#campfire tale #creative writing #Creepy #creepy pasta #creepypasta #minute man #original story #Paranormal #story

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raewritestales · 2 years

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The Minute Man

A/N: random flash of pain induced inspiration. Sorry about formatting blah blah…

Plot: the rules to The Minute Man game. Would you survive?

Warnings: mentions of ageing, death, maybe some existential dread.

There’s a game that you can play which will see how well you can survive in a minute. But there’s a catch; if you do the ritual correctly it skews either your perception of time or time itself. Nobody really knows for sure which.

It’s called ‘The Minute Man’ and the idea sounds very simple; survive one minute. You turn off all the lights and sit in a quiet room and at exactly 3AM you light six candles and chant for one minute.

“Minute Man, Minute Man, won’t you play?

Come in, come in, won’t you stay?

Minute Man, Minute Man, we want to see,

How long it really takes for us to be free.”

Then you open a door. Any door of any size.

Each of the six candles represent 10 seconds in the minute. If The Minute Man has entered, the flames will turn an intense red and will stay lit regardless of any breeze; they will extinguish one by one after ten seconds each.

Again this sounds so simple but the game messes with time in some way. Nobody knows whether time actually changes or you just think it does. So during this one minute; starting at 3:01AM time has the chance of passing very quickly, if you’re really lucky, and the minute will be over with and you’ve won and you’re free - though the chances of this are almost nil.

However if you’re very unlucky time will pass excruciatingly slowly and you’ll be forever dodging traps, playing puzzles and working out riddles while working towards your objective.

Wherever you decide to play this game, and I hope for your sake you’ve chosen an enclosed space such as a house, it will go dark and the lights will intermittently short out, overheat or just cease to work. Flashlights are not affected by this as such but make sure you have batteries on hand in case it mysteriously runs out of power. The rooms of your house will seem to grow in size; your normal sized living room is now the size of a field, the stairs to your first floor are now never ending. Time and space are your enemy and friend - use them wisely and to your advantage.

If you decided to start this game outside, then you may as well resign yourself to losing the overall game…

The objective, as well as playing his games, is to see the time.

You’ll look at your wrist because you always wear a watch and it will be able to tell you the time and hey presto done! But it won’t be there, your phone won’t be in your pocket, the clock on the kitchen wall will have no hands and the digital clock on the oven will flash with four zeros - no matter where you look; they’ll error or be broken, missing.

The only way to see the time is by looking at The Minute Man’s pocket watch which he carries inside his dark overcoat. He’ll be clever at keeping it hidden, so to see it will need you to be smart enough to trick him into showing you - which, I’m sorry to say is almost impossible, I don’t care how much of a child prodigy you are or what your IQ is; he is smarter than you. Or you have to find a way to view the face of his watch without him knowing; I’m not telling you exactly how to achieve this… but mirrors, projections and misdirection have been successful in the past.

The point of his games, his riddles and puzzles, is to keep you mentally busy enough that you don’t have a chance to see the watch face. He will give plenty of opportunities to you, they’ll be fleeting but many and he’s relying on your lack of mental capacity to multitask to that degree. He’ll give you riddles with multiple answers to make you second guess yourself.

“The ages of a father and son add up to 66; the father’s age is that of the son but reversed. How old are they?”

You may be panicking but time and space? They’ll help you with clues. They won’t be obvious clues; the clock on the kitchen wall has a 15 minute section filled in. There will be 24 swirls on the wallpaper pattern. 6 lights on the ground floor. There will be clues; all is not lost.

He’ll play hide and seek with you; a simple childhood game in theory but this is no normal game. To an entity who can see all and be anywhere; how can you truly hide from him? The idea is to be creative and to remember that space isn’t working the same way as it should; there’s no rules. That couch you’re standing by? Try crawling under what looks to be only an inch gap. The cupboard under the sink? The pile of dirty laundry on your bedroom floor? Think outside the box. However… try to stay away from refrigerators, freezers and ovens… for some rather obvious reasons. Of course you could always try to play the clown and hide behind a long curtain with just your feet showing; The Minute Man does have a sense of humour, of sorts.

During these games you will age at a steady rate; if they take you twenty years you will age twenty years. Ten seconds really could kill you.

If all your candles go out before you see the time; you win (however this could very well take an actual lifetime).

If you see the time from The Minute Man’s watch face; you win (and though not easy, this is guaranteed to end the whole game returning you back to where your candles have now melted down to nothing and it’s as if only that one minute has passed.)

What do you get for winning, exactly? The Minute Man will offer to tell you the exact date and time of death of someone you personally know. You can of course decline without prejudice and that will be the end of the game. If you choose to take him up on his offer he will simply give you a date and time. For example - Wednesday the 13th of September 2045 at 04:26 AM. He will tell you nothing more; no name or clue to who this date refers and then the game is over.

So what happens if neither of these things happen? What happens if you answer a riddle wrong? Don’t finish a puzzle? Lose too many games of hide and seek? What if you die in this place?

The Minute Man gets to keep you. You’re now going to forever roam in the place that was created for the game. It’s your prison now and there’s no way of buying yourself out or trading your place with someone else; your new reality features rooms that go on forever, stairs that never end, a hunger you can never fill, a thirst so bad you could drink a lake dry and nothing to make it go away. You will never sleep, never pass out into unconsciousness. Whatever state your body was in when your luck ran out is how you now exist in this place.

And before you can get too ‘comfortable’ - this state of being but not - the minute man will carefully and meticulously erase every trace of you ever existing from the minds, lives, photographs, videos and phones of those you know and love, any person you ever met or waved at. Not one person will ever remember you in any way.

He will make sure you watch his work before leaving you to your eternity with 6 forever burning candles that never melt and a blank watch face that will never tell the time.

So let me ask you; do you have a minute to spare…?

Riddle answer; 51 & 15 / OR 42 & 24 / OR 60 & 06.

#the minute man #creepy pasta #original writing #creative writing #campfire tale #campfire #creepy #creative #original

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raewritestales · 2 years

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I Know I’m Being Followed

A/N: had a random idea about a MiB story and this is what came of it. First MiB kind of story so feedback is welcome. Sorry for the formatting etc.

Warnings: talk of mental health in a derogatory manner. Paranoia. Drugging.

I saw a UFO; an actual unidentified flying object. I only call it that because there were no reports of flyovers or weather balloons and where I live isn’t heavy on military traffic and definitely isn’t a flight path for commercial aircraft.

It was around three in the morning and I was on a late night walk; it’s when I do most of my thinking and de-stressing. I live with four other people so the house can get noisy and claustrophobic - we all need our space.

I had gotten to a local field that I regularly go too to just chill. There were no street lights to pollute the sky and I had a great view of the stars and moon. Tonight there was no moon or stars to be seen due to heavy cloud cover; it was still a beautiful night.

Sitting on a large felled tree stump at the edge of the field I pulled out my smokes and swore as I realised I’d forgotten my lighter and didn’t carry matches. My breath let out in a haze ahead of me as I sighed heavily and rolled my eyes. It was as I had rolled my eyes that I briefly caught sight of something in the sky over the broken down church to my right.

You know that feeling when you know something isn’t quite right but you can’t pinpoint what? You get that really-uneasy-pit-of-the-stomach-nausea because you can tell that there’s something… but your brain just can’t make the connection…? I had that.

I had that as I did a double take and let my eyes focus on the series of lights that were seemingly floating silently over the church ruins. I said quietly but definitely out loud that Jesus must actually be an alien. And then I sighed again because there was only me to hear it. Even when alone I was reminded of how socially awkward I am.

My mind raced trying to place the lights; Chinese lanterns? Flares? Drones? LEDs attached to helium balloons and someone was playing a joke on me? I thought any one of these could be true until they started moving closer to me and I was literally filling in the blank…. the large blank that filled the space between the lights. Even though there were no stars to be seen, I could still make out clouds - the sky wasn’t pure black, there were breaks in its texture. Except the area between the lights was black. In fact, somehow it was darker than black.

As I was looking, I stand and take a few steps towards it but the lights suddenly disappear. They don’t dim and turn off like a normal light; they’re just no longer there and almost as I blink the dark area, the void where the lights had surrounded disappears and I can see the breaks in the dark sky again. I can see light peeking through the thinning clouds and I very slowly come to my senses. My watch, I find, has stopped working - being digital it’s just… off. No more battery. Pulling my phone out my pocket I’m confused to discover the fully charged battery is also very dead now.

My walk home is quick as a strange anxiety and dread fills every part of me spurring me to just get home.

The hall clock tells me it’s 6.07am. The last time I had looked at my watch was just after 3.21am as I sat on the felled tree. One of my housemates walks out of their bedroom and frowns at me then looks at the time but says nothing, heading to the kitchen to start their day. I make it to my bedroom before my legs become jelly and the reality of what I had just witnessed hits me with full force. I crawl to my bed and manage to plug in my phone before I pass out on the floor.

~*~*~*~

Work was quiet, my social life was quieter but I tried to get on with life. I told nobody about what I had seen; mainly because I didn’t think anyone would believe me in any capacity but also because it didn’t take me long to realise I was being followed.

I thought I was being paranoid at first or was dealing with deja vu but it’s hard to maintain either thought process when it becomes abundantly clear that neither is the case.

It started on my drive to work two days after the lights above the church. A matte black SUV with dark windows and strange plates followed me on my daily routine. When I wasn’t driving, a tall man in a black suit and sunglasses was always in my peripheral vision. He carried a briefcase and was often reading a book or a newspaper - or looked to be reading at any rate; I couldn’t see his eyes behind those glasses. I continued with my days and didn’t let on that I knew he was there but I took notes on plate numbers, dates and times. Within a fortnight I had a full notebook. Within that same fortnight I noticed my health beginning to deteriorate; I wasn’t exactly the healthiest to begin with but now it was painfully obvious not only to myself but to my housemates and few friends. I played it off as work stress and eczema but I could tell by the looks on their faces they didn’t believe it. I think I was trying to convince myself more than anyone.

I finally broke down and talked to the housemate I trusted most only to get told I was paranoid, crazy and needed to see a doctor about my “eczema”; they even used their fingers to make air quotes. I remember just walking away and shaking my head; resigned to dealing with this alone.

The other housemates started to act weirdly around me after that so I kept to myself, stopped going on late night walks of any sort and eventually stopped leaving the house when the matte black SUV appeared on my street and didn’t move.

I called in sick to work after the weekend and played my best flu-voice but my boss told me instead that I was fired. When I asked him why he told me he was not at liberty to give full details however it was linked to my out-of-work hobbies and interests and that off the record it was a “bad look for such a high profile company to have a ‘kook’ on the payroll.” I was wished luck and told to expect my final paycheck within the next two days.

I confronted all my housemates; I didn’t give full details to them but I asked politely then demanded to know who had talked to my boss. They all denied talking to him or anyone to do with my workplace before suggesting I should see a doctor and get some sleep.

I couldn’t sleep. It’s not that I didn’t want to and hadn’t tried; it didn’t matter how tired I was I had only managed a couple of hours maximum per night since the lights. No shower or bath made me feel clean, no amount of music or tv could drown out the constant white noise in my head and no amount of supplements was helping my greying skin. I had long since stopped using any kind of creams on the growing red marks.

I fell onto my bed and stared at the ceiling until my eyes became dry and itchy. I rubbed them and reached up to turn off my bedside light; my hand hovered and stopped when I noticed something that shouldn’t have been there. Sitting up and removing the shade I see a small round pea-sized thing with a couple of wires poking out. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. I smashed it under a glass and spent the next three hours going through my room looking for anything else. I found nothing else but that one bug; a listening device maybe, was enough to put me on edge.

I heard a heavy knocking on my door and an angry housemate “it’s like two in the morning stop the noise!!” She called.

“S-sorry!! I uuh…. saw mouse!”

I hear her squeal and pad off talking to herself about getting mouse traps and an exterminator first thing in the morning; meanwhile I go back to my thoughts.

I peaked out my curtains and saw the SUV still parked outside the house; it had been there for at least three days at this point.

Had those men in suits been in this house? In my room? If they hadn’t, who put it there? Were my housemates spying on me? Had they been tricked into putting it there? Or had it been attached to the light the whole time and I really was just paranoid?!

I rub my face and catch sight of myself in a small mirror, seeing properly for the first time how bad I was looking.

Tired; no, more than tired, more than exhausted. I looked ill and not just flu-ill. The dark circles under my eyes were threatening to take over my face, my lips had become dry, my skin was pallid, my eyes dull, my hair was thinning and the patchy rash that only days ago was pale and an annoyance was now angry looking, threatening to break my skin.

Opening my door I start slightly as I’m greeted by my trusted housemate.

“You need to see someone…”

I relent and nod “I do. I don’t feel so great.”

~*~*~*~

The drive to the hospital was silent and we were tailed. At a distance but I could still see the SUV; I pointed it out but he didn’t listen and just rolled his eyes so I gave up and closed my eyes instead and leant my head against the window.

I was prepared to be sat waiting for hours in triage; I wasn’t exactly urgent but instead I was rushed through and admitted. My housemate was ushered away by a nurse who started talking in hushed tones to him; I followed him with my eyes, turning my head and catching sight of a tall man in a dark suit and sunglasses making his way to intercept them.

I started yelling. I remember shouting and screaming at them to stop the man, that he was following me and I had proof. I remember the sting of a needle in my skin before everything got hazy and then I finally fell asleep for longer than two hours.

I woke to the beeping of a machine, my eyes felt gritty and I felt sick to my stomach. I tried to move but found I was unable; attached to the bed by my neck, wrists and ankles. The straps were soft against my skin but felt like they were rubbing away at me at the same time.

A nurse came into my view, leaning over me with a tight smile “glad to see you awake.” I try to reply but only croak instead.

“Don’t try and speak, you’ll just do more damage.”

I frown and look to the door when a doctor walks in followed by a tall man in a dark suit and sunglasses. I try to let out a cry of panic but again, fail. My throat feels raw and dry, I have a strange metallic taste in my mouth. The doctor and nurse don’t react to the man in the suit who keeps his view on me as he moves to the corner of my room.

“......I suggest you don’t try and speak, we still need to do more tests….” my hearing fades in and out as I half listen to the doctor. “...for your own safety as we think the radiation has affected you mentally…” as he continues and the nurse takes readings and writes more notes it dawns on me that they can’t see the man.

They can’t see the man in the suit and sunglasses.

“..I really would like to know how you got so irradiated. Where were you when it happened and such..? I think the government would be interested to know too…”

I look at the doctor and he places a pad and ballpoint pen at my hand. I write as best I can.

“Man. Suit. Sunglasses.”

The doctor reads and nods “yes, your friend told us you had been seeing a tall man? I dare say I would be hallucinating too with that amount of radiation in my system… how you’re not dead is really beyond us.”

“Radiation?” I scribble.

“Indeed and we can’t figure out the type or cause. It’s almost like the radiation used in therapies for cancer but not exact… where have you been?”

“Field. Work. Home.”

“What field?” The nurse frowns.

The man in the suit makes no moves but keeps staring at me. I get this feeling, a sense, that he wants me to tell them. So I write down the approximate location and directions from my house. The paper is swiftly removed and the pen taken from me, the doctor and nurse hurry out and the man in a suit takes a step towards me.

I hear the machine beside me beeping quicker as the man moves towards me but with a single look from him it falls silent and I’m left unable to look anywhere but at his face. For the first time I realise his skin is so very pale; not quite white like a paint, it has a dewey look to it like when my housemate used a highlight under their foundation only this was all over. His lips look slightly waxy and as I continue to stare I notice that they don’t open; not that he doesn’t open his mouth but that he can’t because there’s no opening - the lips are cosmetic only to look real but not function. His nostrils are much the same; where there should be openings there isn’t, it’s as if his face had been moulded out of clay and painted with shadow to look as if there were openings where they should be.

I knew I was hyperventilating, I knew my blood pressure and heart rate were through the roof into the stratosphere and that the machine should have been going crazy notifying the main desk but still, nobody came. Nobody saw me terrified and panicking as the tall man leaned over my bed and slowly removed the pitch black sunglasses from his face revealing his equally pitch black eyes; two holes filled with void blackness and in that moment I was positive that I had not been meant to see what I saw.

I knew, in that split microsecond, how my life would end and as I was mesmerised so completely by these two ink filled pits on a not-right face I knew that humanity was doomed.

~ fin ~

#men in black #ufo #original #creative writing #original writing #creepy pasta #campfire tale #campfire

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