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starbide · 4 years

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Inspiration below. The following is a work of fiction.

'Six years,' I thought to myself walking down the road. It had rained earlier that evening, but by now the clouds were long gone. The pavement shimmered in the waxing moonlight, still slick with the water of those vanished clouds. I would not slip; the road was mostly level as it lazily stretched down the gentle hill behind me, and the streetlamps cast in gold what the moon would otherwise leave dim. The world was silent.

'It's hard to believe I've been gone that long,' I continued, step by step. Six years since I'd moved away for my career. Six years since I'd left my family behind. 'Left her behind,' I smirked to myself, passing a large bush on my right. Houses stood dark and serene on either side, all daily activities complete and put to rest. No cars joined me on the waterlogged street, preferring the concrete comfort of their driveways and garages. I approached and passed under another hazy lamp.

It was cool out, a gentle breeze brushed past the wool of my jacket without raising a single goose bump. I paid it no mind; I was always a bit warmer blooded than others in my circle. My best friend for most of my school years couldn't understand my ability to wear shorts comfortably year-round. 'Those were the days,' I mused, thinking back to the last time we'd seen each other. It had to be more than a decade at this point, long before I'd moved north for work and expanded my wardrobe to include legwear longer than my knees.

I reached an intersection and paused. Four ways, no direction more enticing or foreboding than the next. A lamp at every corner, and the bus station deserted save by its sign across the diagonal. The station I'd waited at patiently every morning for that bright yellow school bus, before I'd ever met my old bestie. It was just me and one other kid, a rather scrawny looking boy who had been in most of my elementary grades but with whom I'd never really gotten on with. We'd shared classes, teachers, and the occasional pencil or marker, but never played together outside of academia. He'd moved away much longer than a decade ago. Now I was really delving into my memory, faded as it was with time.

I checked my phone: 11:57 PM in small white font. My first night back home, I should be exhausted. This wasn't my normal time zone and airplane seats aren't exactly memory foam, but I'd found a second wind after dinner and took to the night after my folks had gone to bed themselves. Sure, I'd been physically gone for six years, but we'd stayed in touch off and on since I'd left. Maybe five months back was our last video call. We'd talked about me taking this trip, now that things had settled down and my life was much more under control. Things had been wild for a while, and if all went according to plan at work things would become wild again not too far down the line. Which reminded me, I needed to make another appointment when I returned home. Couldn't go running out of my prescription again.

A brief twitch of motion caught my eye, and I peered down the leftward lane. One of the bulbs had burned out a few dozen meters down, and in this larger pool of darkness something had moved. At least I thought it had, but my eyes could be playing tricks on me with the shadows. One dark spot moving erratically through a larger, differently dark spot wasn't exactly proof of anything. But of course, my heartbeat quickened regardless. Base human instinct, I suppose. Spot a motion in the dark, prepare to act to either fight or flee.

That hallucination had triggered something else in me though. A memory, unconsciously bidden, rose up behind my eyes. That kid, the little one I'd shared a bus stop with for years, I did not recall being nice to often. Many times, I'd engaged in common teasing, and he always took it personally. A couple times he'd even cried, but I'd never gotten in much trouble for it. A different time I supposed. That sort of behavior wouldn't fly nowadays, and that's good. I felt a bit sick thinking back about it, as it was now clear I'd been a bit of a bully. What it hadn't been was a wake-up call for my parents, who didn't get me the help I had so desperately needed until much later in my teens. I was better now, better enough to see what I'd done back then was very wrong. I couldn't remember all of it, but that boy's tears had stuck with me. I wonder what happened to him?

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts and calm my pulse, I opted for the path in front. This route would wind close to the park, after a couple turns beyond my current field of vision. Crossing the street, I didn't even bother looking left or right, as the night was so quiet and empty, I could hear a car coming from miles away, if there were any to hear. A rock lay in the far side gutter; I kicked it just to give my ears some stimulation. It knocked against the cement curb and bounced across puddles thin as saran wrap to a rest. By then I'd already forgotten about it and left that intersection behind.

Another thought was creeping up from my subconscious, this one more distasteful than the last. I'd left a girl behind when I moved for work, and the breakup hadn't been pleasant. She'd been very upset, naturally, and felt betrayed I was abandoning her like that. Abandoning. It had been her word, not mine, but with the clarity of distance I could see she was right. It had been years since I'd considered how we ended, and I wasn't sure what spurred those thoughts just now, but after what I'd done to her, I could accept she was right.

Still though, rounding the first turn, my leaving her should have been a good thing. Now that the floodgates of memory were open, I may as well dive right in. She'd been so hurt by my sudden departure because I'd systematically isolated her from her friends and much of her family too. She'd grown more and more attached to me, and I'd encouraged that through some particularly devilish means. I didn't know about the term 'gaslighting' at the time, but that was a polite way of putting it. I'd been very proficient at psychological manipulation back then, and my desire for control over her life could have consumed us both. At the end, she'd only had limited contact with her sister, who had been rightly concerned about her but too terrified of me to do anything to stop me. Looking back, I can't blame her. I now believe it was good that I left when I did. I hope she realized the same, though I haven't heard from her since.

Now the road turned left, arcing gradually around a thicker cluster of trees. This walk was turning out to be less relaxing than I'd hoped. The smallest things seemed to be dredging up thoughts and old memories in me, and none of them were painting me in the best light. Being my thoughts, maybe that was the best light I could possibly be presented in. Maybe their memories of me, the version of me still living in their mind, was far worse than I could imagine on this unassuming suburban night. I'd read somewhere that we're all the hero of our own story, and of course the hero never thinks they're the villain. But I'm sure that's what I am in at least a few people's stories. I'm starting to feel like the villain in my own.

Opening up ahead of me is the park, and the wide-open fields I remember so well. This area is less well lit, with streetlamps only illuminating the edges of the grass and allowing the moon to bathe the world in dead white. In reality, this is only sunlight reflected, but from the moon it feels much less like the bright star that gives this planet life. Like Luna itself, it feels cold and impersonal, like it wouldn't actively try to end my life but also wouldn't even notice if I merely faded away into the ether. I'd had some trouble with those thoughts as well over the years, before I got help. And now, rushing back to me, I remember they were also why I lost my best friend.

He and I had been out for the evening, playing some game with a few other friends. The game had ended, and we were walking home together when a car had rushed past us. Neither he nor I were injured, but it had been close and the driver had continued on recklessly. After it rounded the corner, we'd both heard a large thumping sound, followed by the rapidly diminishing roar of its engine. After a quick glance between us we'd rushed around the corner ourselves to see a big yellow dog crumpled up in the drain. Not losing a moment we hurried up to it, but we needn't have rushed. It had most likely died on impact, before we even saw it.

My friend had knelt down next to it to try and save it, even though it was hopeless. He must have known, but it's only natural to want to help another life. At least, it is for me now, and it was for him then. I remember him crouched over the dog, tears in his eyes when he accepted what happened, and then he looked up at me. His tears ebbed and his face froze in fear at what he saw, but he couldn't say anything to me at the time. We walked home in uncomfortable silence after that, and said a short awkward goodbye. Truth be told, that's the last time we spoke to each other in person.

Thinking of the next part, I felt a chill run deep into my core. I remembered now what he told me, over text message later that night. He'd bent over the dog and been so distraught because he knew it. He'd checked the tag to be sure, but it was his neighbor's dog that he'd grown up playing with. I think he'd even muttered its name a couple times, but I'm not sure. But when he looked up at me, he said I had the biggest grin he'd ever seen. The look on my eyes was not maniacal, as some would think, but dead, not present. As if the dog dying had brought out a whole new face in me, as if the lights were on but nobody was home, and yet the lights still wanted to kill you. It had terrified him, and it was all he could do not to sprint from me that moment without looking back. I don't think he ever knew how right he'd been back then, something that took me years to realize and longer to overcome.

I quietly walked to the center of the field, as far from the streetlights as possible, and looked up. The moon provided none of the same dangers as the sun when staring straight at it, and I took a few moments to just gaze at it and let my thoughts sort themselves out. I'd been a monster in my childhood, a terror in my youth, before I found my doctor and we set out on a years-long journey to get me better. Any other time I'd have kept on that dangerous path, ruining some lives and possibly ending others. That had all changed, thanks to my incredible fortune and a lot of hard work, but with the clarity of hindsight I could see just how close to the precipice I'd come. How I'd always be there in the minds of childhood mates and adolescent connections. And this was just what I could remember now. There was no way for me to know how many other monstrous versions of me still lived in any number of former classmates.

In the corner of my eye, I saw another twitch in the shadows. Jerking my head down, I followed the motion to the foot of the trees, the darkest spot on the field. This time there was no mistake; there was definitely an object moving there, slowly but surely. My heartbeat shot up and my throat swelled as I bent my knees and got into a defensive posture. The object lumbered forward, moving without haste but with purpose. When it came into the light, I was surprised to see a little boy with a scratched-up shirt and messy brown hair. Standing up in confusion, I was certain I'd seen him somewhere before. Step by step, I focused on every detail I could make out in the gloom, before it hit me like the car that last night walking home.

That boy was dressed, to the letter, the exact same way I had on picture day in third grade. My hair had been an untamable brown mess, and even the cheap novelty watch was the same. I was more perplexed than anything now, as I couldn't understand for the life of me what a kid was doing in that field, at midnight, wearing clothes that weren't even made any more. That was until he spoke, and his voice froze my blood in its veins.

It was like whispers, floating around my head, and several voices all at once and all taking turns being the loudest. They were all his, but not really. His mouth had opened and his lips were framing the syllables, but it was my voice from so many years ago repeating every taunt, every tease, every foul nickname I'd ever given that scrawny boy who shared a bus stop with me. Who'd cried, not once or twice, but dozens of times. Who'd gone home often with scrapes and tears in his clothes personally inflicted by myself. I had terrorized him for years of his early life, and what I saw before me must be what I forever lived as in his memory.

But if that were true, then this kid in front of me couldn't be real. I had to be hallucinating again, I must have been more exhausted than I'd allowed myself to feel. He sure looked real, though, and his footsteps were matting the grass in a way I didn't trust my mind to make up. But the ghostly, strangled voices of my younger self crashing in waves into my ears gave the entire scene a surreal feeling, making the hair on the back of my neck stick up like electricity. I couldn't bring myself to step away, and I sure as hell wasn't going to walk forward to meet him. It. Whatever it was I was seeing, real or not.

Only a few meters away, he stopped moving. Swallowing bile, I could do little more than watch him as the voices continued to echo in my ears, unchanged by his distance all this time. Then I spotted another motion far off to my right, and then a third to my left. Glancing quickly between them, I determined that they were both noticeably older than the child before me, one by a few more years than the other. They too walked slowly towards me, bringing their own voices to the forefront. Despite the dozens of voices I now thought I was hearing, every word registered clearly in my mind. One was speaking about my old best friend and the dog, the other repeated every lie I ever told my ex-girlfriend before leaving. As if their mere presence in my eyes were not enough, hearing my old, hateful words repeated to me in my own voice almost made me vomit with fear and disgust.

They too, stopped approaching me at the same distance as the child. As they did, dozens more similar hallucinations emerged from the trees and surrounding neighborhood, all carrying their own chorus of hate and venom and bringing back new, abhorrent memories of my youth. Terrorizing a girl in my 4th grade class. Catching squirrels in my early teens and setting them on fire, then getting caught myself. Giving that kindergartner a major concussion on a dare, after my best friend had ceased speaking to me. Even one similar in age to myself now, though he brought words of loss and failure, and of betrayal to my parents. That must have been right before my breakthrough, with the doctor and an early test version of my current prescription. I was better now. I had to be. But why was I seeing all of this, all of these versions of me locked in the minds of everyone who I'd left behind in my life? My trail of destruction?

They had all stopped walking now, forming a tight semicircle around me. The voices still buzzed in my ears, but slowly they faded to an indistinguishable babble. I tried to speak, but my throat had caught a bubble, so I gulped fruitlessly and closed my mount again. The thoughts racing through my mind had no similar handicap, as my mind shouted repeatedly the same things. Who are you all? Why is this happening? What are you doing to me?

The version of me who gaslit my girl took a couple steps forward, as if presenting himself as the leader. I had no time to process what this might mean before he spoke, in a much clearer form than any of these hallucinations had yet. "We are you. We are you that you left behind, trapped in the minds of those you hurt, frozen in time from the moment you left us years or decades ago. We have had no life to live, no chance to grow and thrive, no possibility to leave the prisons of mind which you left us in, being tortured again and again by those you tortured without remorse and without recompense. We cannot sit by from behind our bars as you continue to enjoy the life you stole from us all."

"I didn't know I was doing this!" I cried, finally able to break the blockade in my throat. "I was a monster, I know that well now, and I've spent years trying to recover from the damage I've done!" I felt foolish, yelling out into the night at visions only visible to myself. 'All this work, all this progress,' I cried to myself. 'This will set me back months if not more, and I can only hope my medication doesn't fail like I have.'

The same me looked down at the ground and shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry, but you must know how little that matters to us. You've lived a life of freedom from any repercussions and locked us away to suffer in your place. You've flaunted that fact with your precious medical tools and until tonight, hadn't even remembered us or what you did to torture and imprison us. We are here now for the life that you stole from us, to end the torture you sentenced us to and walked away from yourself unscathed." He took another step forward, his face growing menacing.

"I don't know what that means," I cried, shaking my head as the tears started to drop. This was starting to feel all too real, and fear was expanding like a balloon deep into my core. "I don't know what any of this means. What do you want from me!?"

Another step. "We want your life," the gaslighter said mirthlessly. "We all want your life, the life wrongly denied us time and time again. And you will learn what it means to be ripped apart and put back together, over and over again. Tortured yourself for what you did to so many people in your life. You gave us to them to burn, to break, to grind down into dust and be restored only to do it all over tomorrow. You tortured them, and then you gave them us to work their revenge on, day after day with no hope of an end. And the most unforgivable of all was giving the youngest of you away to feel this pain the longest. Over two decades have the youngest of us been taken to pieces, shattered in mind and body and soul for your carelessness and your fleeting experiments in sociopathy. This will end tonight."

I could say nothing, the terror burning white on my face. If this was a hallucination, it was the worst one I'd ever had and I had no idea how I'd survive it. It was far too realistic, far too deadly for me to think of anything else, any of the tricks and tools my doctor had given me. What had happened to cause this? I swear I never missed a day on my prescription, and these memories... Where had they all been before? Why had I not been able to recover them and work through them with my doctor? Were they even real? Was this me, standing only a meter away now, real? Or was he only real in my mind, and if he wanted to hurt me would that distinction make a difference? I reached out my hand, reaching toward his arm slack against his torso...

And he reached out and took my wrist like a vice. Ice cold and unflinching, he held my arm up in front of me and closed the gap between us imperceptibly fast. "You may have many regrets. I have only one," he said in a low, bloodthirsty voice. "While there are dozens of us gathered here, dozens you sentenced to eternal damnation without a second thought, only one of us may live this life. I may not be the youngest of your victims, I may not give you the longest time in the torture you gave us, but I intend to fight with everything you have put me through these long years. Your life is mine."

As he growled in my face, a white-hot streak of terror shot through me and I pushed him back with almost reflexive strength. He staggered, rebalanced, then looked at me with cannibalistic hunger in his eyes. He panted twice, then screamed and lunged at my neck. With adrenaline now coursing through me, I turned and sprinted away from the gathering, hearing the pounding of footsteps deep in my brain. He had grabbed my arm. I glanced at it as I reached the sidewalk and saw a chalk white handprint etched into my grayish skin. The urge to vomit came back, but I managed to fight it down as I kept up a faster pace than I'd ever run before. The swarm of my past, tortured selves was hot on my heels, like starved dogs following fresh game. Any loss in my speed and I'd be eaten alive, or worse. I truly did not know what would happen if they caught me, and my mind was too far gone to even entertain the idea of hallucinations any more.

I rounded the next curve and thought the sound of the pack was a little quieter than before. It still sounded like pure rage and bloodlust, but with fewer voices than before. Thinking it was only a few stragglers being blocked by the trees, I kept up the fastest pace I could, not even feeling my feet hit the ground. Another hundred meters of straightaway and it was definitely growing less loud with each step. The roar was diminishing, no trees to hide the sound now, but it was still a roar. By now a cramp had begun to grow in my stomach, and no matter what I did I felt myself losing speed. Every few steps I could burst forward faster again, but I couldn't maintain the same rocket pace as before. To my ears, though, as my speed gradually fell, so did the volume of my pursuers. By the time I got to the intersection, it only sounded like a couple of me were still hunting, and I could count their individual footsteps. It was at this time I chanced a look behind, just to know what was still coming.

Right on my neck was him, the gaslighter. He grinned at me, his face less than a meter away. I felt that same shock explode throughout my body and I shot forward, faster than before if possible, fully terrified again now that I knew he and he alone was here for me. I kept running and running, past houses, lanes, and bushes. Still no signs of life from any houses, no cars rumbling down the road or creaking into place in a driveway. The night was as empty and uncaring as before, and only myself and the predator I had been broke the gentle midnight breeze. My legs thundered on, screaming in pain in their own way, but I didn't stop or look back again until I'd reached my family's old house a few blocks down.

Now truly running on empty, I turned back to face my hunter, but he was gone. Disappeared. Evaporated into the night, nowhere to be seen. The moon still hung high, reflecting some small percentage of sunlight down to me, and the streetlamps bathed the road and yards in amber light. He wasn't hiding from me, he hadn't overtaken me. There was no shortcut to the house, it was a straight shot from the park. He was simply gone, faded back into the night from which he'd come without a trace. If he'd ever really been there at all, and not merely a hallucination from exhaustion or medication or... I didn't even know any more. I just knew that he was gone, just gone, just gone.

"Hey, are you okay?" A voice called out to me. I jumped, but only in surprise. It was a familiar voice, but not familiar like my own. It sounded like my dad, and I heard large, calm footsteps walk toward me from our front door.

"Yeah," I said, although it was little more than a whisper. I buckled over, fell to my hands and knees, and felt the cramps and burning in my lungs catch up to me as the adrenaline faded away. I felt like vomiting, for the third time that night, but this time it was easier to fight the urge than before. I got some deep breaths in as I panted on the ground, slowly but surely recovering from my insane dash moments before.

My dad walked up in front of me, wearing the same well-worn brown leather shoes he'd owned since before I left. I didn't want to worry him about this night, and what I thought I saw in the park. Not when my recovery was going so well. Not when a lapse like this would mean months of work just to get back to where I was only an hour ago. "I'm okay dad, I just went for a walk. Then I saw how late it was and tried to get back as fast as I could. I guess I'm not the athlete I used to be, eh?" I tried to lift my head up to give him a weak smile, but still couldn't raise it much higher than his waist

He chuckled softly, and sounded a little strange. Still sleepy maybe, I guess I woke him up coming back here, and maybe I was screaming too. I don't know any more, I don't know what was real any more. But he knelt down in front of me after I dropped my head again, still exhausted, and said, "That's okay sport, I think we both know your real talents weren't on the field. I learned that lesson very well over the past six years."

#horror #creepypasta

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