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turquoise-stones · 4 years

Text

Never Leave Me

Yandere!Shigaraki x reader

artist link (I think? It’s traced back to that twitter account but it’s private so I can’t check.)

A/N: Theres quite a bit of blood. I don’t condone kidnapping your crush btw. See my fic “moderato” too learn how to properly confess aha

I really wish shigaraki had white hair. dont get me wrong baby blue is cute but dang does that b&w palette look good.

. . .

You blinked your eyes groggily as you woke from your slumber. Your eyelashes seemed to drag against some material, blocking your sight. Completely disoriented, you opted to close your eyes once more.

Your mind was numb and hazy, you hardly registered how your body was sweating in the overwhelming heat. As you tried to wheeze in some semblance of breath, the air seemed musky and lodged itself in your throat instead.

Groaning, you tried to shift yourself to remove the blockade in front of your eyes, only to find your muscles unresponsive.

As you let out a cough, you revealed the lingering taste of blood in your mouth. Gasping for air, your eyes frantically darted behind your blindfold.

Something shifted against you. You had a groggy sense of who it was... He tightening his grip around your back, pushing you into his chest. The sudden movement caused a searing pain in your stomach, far more agonizing than the previous shock, snapped you back into consciousness.

"Good morning sweetheart..."

. . .

You had met him in a rather odd way. Your life before meeting him was really was rather ordinary, you had dreamed of being a flashy hero just like every other kid, but your quirk, Skin Stitch, was far more useful in the medical field. You were an emergency room doctor, quickly stitching up flesh wounds with a simple sway of a hand.

For the most part, you worked on patients in a hospital. So when you found him, bleeding out on the empty, dark streets as walked home, it was your duty as a doctor to help him. You didn't recognize him then. But even if you did, would you of let him die?

One night, after a tiring day of work, you had turned a corner to find a trail of blood going down the sidewalk, leading to a body spread eagle on the empty sidewalk in front of you, in a pool of sticky, still oozing blood.

Nearly tripping over your own two feet in shock, you rushed to his side. It appeared to be a man, lying face down as if he had simply keeled over as he walked.

"Sir? Sir?" You immediately whipped out a phone to call the ambulance, only for the man's scarred hand to shoot out and grab your wrist, in such an odd way that his middle finger didn't touch you.

"Don't." His garbled voice came. Your eyes widened. Why wouldn't he want the police? Was he a villain? It didn't matter, a doctor's law was to heal, regardless of the person.

"Sir, I'm going to turn you around and dress your wounds, is that okay? I won't call the police." You said, voice stable from practice. He said nothing.

Assuming that he fainted, you gingerly turned him around, to reveal a mess of flesh and blood on his abdomen. Peeling away the drenched clothing, you ran your hands over the wound, watching the skin meld back together seamlessly.

After a couple of minutes, he was as good as new, and his pulse was weak but stable.

"Okay, sir... I'll need to call the cops now." You said, trying to wipe a bit of blood off his face. He was extremely scarred, yet looked mildly familiar. You thought he must have fainted from the blood loss.

But to your surprise, his hands gripped onto your forearms, still in that odd way.

"No." His weak voice rasped. You were at a loss.

. . .

He nuzzled himself into your neck, seeming to reveal in your panicky breath.

"Did you sleep well?"

You were petrified in fear. You couldn't shrink away. The heat enveloped you in waves.

You tried to rasp out a scream, only to have a whimper come out.

"S-sh... those pills really did the trick huh... hehe don't try even try screaming sweetheart..."

"W-why me?"

"You're the only one who cared about me... the only one who would help me." His cold breath, in contrast with his burning grip, caused uncontrollable shivers to shoot up your spine.

"I don't want you to leave me... so I'll keep you like this forever."

"P-please let me go, I don't deserve this." You whispered in terror.

"Mm... but I'll keep you nice and safe, (y/n). Nice and safe... everyone wants that... right?"

. . .

"Sir, I'm telling you that it'd be in your best interest to call an ambulance. But for now... I suppose you'll be fine after I healed you." You leaned down to pull his arm over your shoulder, gingerly trying to pull him upright.

"There we go... alright I got you, I got you..." you muttered, casting the man a nervous smile. Your smile quickly melted off as his eyes shifted in and out of focus before zeroing in on you. Under the light, you noticed how badly scabbed his face was. You internally shivered at how strangely creepy this man looked. Just who was he?

"I'm gonna bring you over to that bench right over there..."

The two of you hobbled over, before you leaned him back onto the bench, wincing as his blood seeped into your clothing.

"Uh... sir, do you need anything? Water maybe?"

He stared at you with an unreadable expression, remaining silent. His crimson eyes raising red flags in your head. He wasn't a villain. If he were, you'd be dead by now, right? Right?

"Okay... I'm guessing I should just turn around and pretend like we never met, yeah?" You gave his bloody, slouched figure one last glance before quickly walking off.

"Wait."

You froze, turning around in slight fear.

"What's your name?" His red eyes gleamed at you through his tainted blue hair.

"(Y-y/n)." You should have lied. But something about him caught you off guard.

The side of his mouth raised into an unnerving smile, his eyes wide with emotion- happiness or murderous intent, you couldn't tell. Just who was this man you just rescued?

"...(y/n)..." he echoed back, raising an arm out towards you. A bloody, scarred hand unfurled and reached at you...

You didn't spare a moment- spinning around, you ran as fast as your legs could carry you.

. . .

"W-what do you want? I-I can give you money... I have jewelry at home, or organs!? Anything..." you gasped frantically.

"S-sh..." he mumbled, and you felt something rough brush against your lips, which instantly silenced you.

"Don't worry... why don't I tell you a little story, instead?"

. . .

Ever since that night, something had been seriously wrong. At night, you felt as if someone were watching you. Even on crowded buses, in restaurants, you felt as if that bloody hand would reach out and capture you at any moment.

After a week of sleepless nights, you decided to do something about the paranoia. You installed alarms and cameras, and even asked your boyfriend to sleep over with you, hoping that he could protect you.

But of course, it wasn't enough. The night that man came to you- it felt like sleep paralysis. Waking up, and feeling numb with fear as you looked at the figure hunched terrifyingly over your bed.

Unable to move, barely able to whimper out a prayer to God as a knife came down on your lover beside you.

Every hair on edge as a mist of warm blood coated your face, the strangled gurgling of a dying man filling the air.

"No... no... this isn't happening..." you mouthed, a shaking hand touching your boyfriend stab wound. The fear and disbelief gripped you-you couldn't even bring yourself to use your quirk.

. . .

"A-A story?"

"Yes..." he mumbled, shifting slightly to pull you closer into the insufferable heat of his body."

"There was once a lonely little boy... who had no family... yes, he was all alone."

"He had no mother and no father to guide him, and he became very upset."

"He became more and more upset until he hated everything. Everything burned. Everything... rotted."

The man fell quiet for a couple of minutes. It was as if he weren't used to using his voice so much, that it was already hoarse.

"...But one day, an angel finally visited him." He squeezed you tight until your eyes pricked with tears or pain.

"She helped him when everyone else let him down. And the little boy was so happy. He was so, so happy."

"The little boy fell in love. He loved her. So so much. He wanted to be with her. Always."

"The boy knew that the angel wouldn't love him back, yet. But she would learn to love him. She had too."

"(Y/n). I love you. And you're going to love me back."

. . .

Your eyes slowly rose from your lover, up to the man in front of you. His grin spread from ear to ear, as his bloodied arm reached out and grasped your arm.

"...(y/n). (Y/n), (Y/n), (Y/n)... hehehe, I finally found you..."

And you closed your eyes, hoping it was all just a bad dream.

. . .

Warm tears melted into the back of your blindfold. You shook uncontrollably.

"...who are you?"

"Do you really want to know?" He rasped, his fingers fiddling with your blindfold.

You gave him a timid nod.

"I'm Shigaraki. Tomura Shigaraki."

The blindfold slipped off your face.

Masterlist

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki imagine #shigaraki x you #my hero academia shigaraki #yandere shigaraki #mha shigaraki #bnha shigaraki #bnha x reader #bnha #reader insert #mha x reader #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #yandere

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pbpress · 4 years

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Midnight Coma

By Ruqayyah Pickel

My parents always said I was a resilient child.

So they weren’t surprised when I took a bowling ball to the head when a fight broke out at our local arcade a couple of months ago--and seemed to be just fine, save for the massive bruise that formed on my head.

I did still end up in the hospital for about a week, but other than that I was fine. I still felt lightheaded at times, and I passed out quite a bit, so my parents decided to homeschool me to limit the risk of my head trauma getting worse. There were too many things at school that would pose as a hazard to me...especially the stairs.

Being an only child, spending a lot of time at home was…rather boring. Sure, there were the huge stacks of RPGs and fighting games I got for Christmas, but the bright lights and flashing would probably make my frequent headaches even worse. So I mostly took to reading mystery novels and drawing when I wasn’t doing schoolwork. Most days, though, I preferred to read. Drawing was fun too, of course--I used to love to come up with strange characters, or just drawing cool landscapes I found online when I was out of ideas, but the last thing I needed was for my parents to come and check on me and see the more recent pages of my sketchbook.

Anyone who looked at my sketchbook nowadays would think something was wrong with me. They wouldn’t exactly be lying, though: recently, my pages were filled with stuff that had been happening in my dreams. Shadowy figures standing over my bed, running down dark alleyways, fearing for my life, drawings of me being chained to my bed by spectral shackles…drawing these for the first time used to unnerve me, and I barely ever finished the first ones. However, I gradually came to find it more therapeutic, like I could put a face to the otherwise enigmatic forces that haunted me each night.

Getting a good night’s rest was nearly impossible nowadays; I was tormented endlessly by sleep paralysis and recurring dreams. I couldn’t go a single night without dealing with either of them, or both. Some nights, I’d find myself frozen in bed, trying to will myself to move with no avail. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t cry out for help, but I just struggled endlessly to free myself from whatever was holding me down, feeling the warm tears falling down my face as I wept in silence. Sometimes my sleep paralysis lasted for over an hour. Before my parents homeschooled me, I ended up missing the bus because of it.

Other nights, I actually could move...and I kind of had to. I’d find myself in that same dark alleyway, knowing what was to come and dreading it every time. I would walk around aimlessly, waiting, until *he* finally showed up.

Those heavy footsteps, the chill in the air that my dream tormentor always carried with him. Those black, tattered clothes, his black gloves, his huge hood that held an empty void where his face was supposed to be. He would just stay there for about a minute or so—I counted—before bursting into a sprint towards me. I couldn’t fight him, I couldn’t reason with him, all I could do was run as fast as I could and scream, hoping some dream god could hear me. This faceless killer always carried with him a razor edged knife that was curved just slightly, and though I’ve yet to feel it pierce my skin, just thinking about how it would feel sent shivers down my spine.

Before long, I started seeing this maniac in real life, too. No, not on the street wandering the waking world, luring other innocent victims to their death. I started seeing him in my room, while I lay there, motionless, helpless. He stood over my bed, the knife in hand at his side. I saw it, he knew I saw it. But he did nothing. Not for a while, at least.

Then, he started to take action.

He would raise the knife up, slowly; sometimes it wouldn’t even fully reach the top before I had managed to blink him out of existence. Sometimes, though, the knife would go higher, sometimes reaching the very top. Some nights, the knife would already be fully raised when he showed up. Then, like a roller coaster car at the top of the hill, it would plunge straight down. Only then was I finally jolted out of my sleep paralysis.

Too many times have I seen his nonexistent face.

Too many times have I pleaded with him to leave me alone.

Too many times have I screamed in silence, felt my heart thunder against my chest in real life as I tried to outrun this shadowy killer.

Too many times have I laid in my bed, frozen, my face drenched with cold sweat as I woke up with a comatose start after my relentless tormentor was inches away, always just inches away from finishing the job.

And too many times have I broken free from his chase, thinking I was safe, only to find him just inches away in the real world.

When I did eventually wake up, I found myself in tears. I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to go to sleep. Whenever I asked my parents for help, they just told me to “look up a solution, ”or “just try to sleep.”

And I did.

I always did.

I never stopped trying.

And I never stopped failing.

But I had enough. There had to be something I could do. Fortunately, I did have one person to confide in: my good friend Quinn, who claimed to be a witch. One morning, after yet another run-in with the shadowy killer, I sent him a text:

“Can you come over?”

Immediately, I saw that he read my message. And so I waited. Two minutes later, I heard a knocking on my window. I turned to see the wild-haired, freckled witch boy crouched on my windowsill. He had on his signature necklace with a metallic feather on it. His brown shirt was torn a bit, creating a slight v-neck, and his “lucky witch hat” was tied on his back with the string. He stumbled through the window as I opened it, and he landed on my floor.

“I see you’ve called on my services once again,” the witch boy said, putting his hat on as he sat cross-legged.

I nodded. “It’s gotten worse. He’s started showing up in real life, too.”

“Like, you’ve seen him around?” Quinn asked.

“No. He’s shown up right beside my bed, sometimes even stabbing me.”

“Well, not really stabbing you, now, right?”

“No…at least I don’t think so.” My hand instinctively moved toward my abdomen, where I would often find the blade just inches from me before I woke up. “But during these nights, when I woke up…I could feel a slight stinging sensation right here.” I gestured toward my abdomen. “I...also found a bruise there earlier today.”

“How strange…” Quinn said. “I suppose he’s finally caught up to you.”

“Caught up to me? How?” I asked, worried.

He gave me a solemn smile.

“It’s as I suspected. He’s a dream demon.” He opened his purse and flipped open to a page in his homemade spell book, then showed it to me. “Creatures of the night that only attack a victim while they’re sleeping. Yours just happened to be strong enough to reach the waking world…and I can only think of a few that can do that.”

I felt the color drain from my face. Did I really have a dream demon?

“Is there any way to get rid of one?” I asked Quinn.

He thought for a second, examining his book, then looked up at me.

“Standard exorcism—though not like you’re any good at that—won’t work on this particular nasty,” he explained.

Ignoring his hurtful comment, I urged him to go on.

“Fighting a dream demon,” he continued, “requires one to arm themselves mentally, and, to an extent, physically. The way I see it, you’re at an advantage and disadvantage simultaneously. Your greatest weakness is your greatest strength. And you may fear it, but the truth is, you will have to accept it eventually. Especially in a case like this, you don’t have much of a choice.”

I felt my face contort into an expression of confusion. As always, Quinn’s riddles had caught me off guard. I read his own expression, hoping he would give me some kind of clue, but that slight smile stayed on his face.

Finally, I had come to realize what he meant. Quinn and I had talked for so long that I was somewhat accustomed to the kind of magic that he gets up to. I was then, at least, familiar with the “solution” he had in mind.

Astral projection…

Quinn first told me about it a little while ago. I won’t lie, the ability to project one’s soul out of their body sounded awesome...except it required the body being completely still in order to pull it off.

In other words, I would have to enter sleep paralysis.

In other words, I had to do the exact thing that led me straight to my supposed dream demon.

“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting…” I said, “Then absolutely not. Astral projection is way too risky for me. Look what damage he’s done to me already! I might as well just slap a sign on me that says ‘hey! I’m helpless! Come kill me!’ This plan is completely counterproductive! Are you out of your mind?!”

Quinn let out an exasperated sigh.

“Oh come on,” he said. “I promise you, it won’t be so bad. You just have to trust me. Besides, I’ve been doing this longer than you have. Your whole sleep paralysis problem is going to make astral projection a lot easier. Like I said--your greatest weakness is your greatest strength.”

It was my turn to let out a shaky sigh, one heavy with anxiety.

“Very well.” I sat on the floor in front of him, legs crossed, ready to listen, like a kindergartener. “What do I need to do?”

“Finally come to your senses, hm?” Quinn gave me another sly smile. “Lovely. Now, listen closely. I don’t have much time, so I can only say this once. The instructions are as follows...”

—————

Quinn’s instructions stuck with me that whole night.

Step 1.

I got in bed, lying flat on my back and throwing my covers over me to where only my head was exposed. I stared at the dreamcatcher on my ceiling; more specifically, the very center of it. I focused on my breathing, and tried to clear my mind of everything. Slowly, the thoughts of everything, save for Quinn’s instructions, slipped out of my mind…that fateful day at the arcade…the shadow killer that pursued me every night…the adrenaline from the other night as he chased me down in the dreamworld…

Step 2.

That’s when I began to feel…strange. Like my body was shaking, vibrating, but as far as I was aware I wasn’t moving a muscle. As Quinn had instructed, I was to leave these feelings alone and stay completely still.

Step 3.

I thought about moving my right hand, but kept it still. Then I moved up my arm, willing myself to move it up and fight against the physical restrictions I had placed on it. This went on for several, unsuccessful minutes, until finally…I felt my arm move, as if it actually was. But my physical arm lay still. Then, I moved on to my left hand and repeated the process. Then my head, both legs, and gradually…I lifted myself up from my bed, leaving my body behind.

For a moment, it felt like I was still in bed, then I looked back—or down, rather—to find myself lying in bed, eyes shut. It reminded me all too much of an open casket funeral, and my stomach dropped just looking at me.

My stomach dropped even further when I realized I was floating.

The very air around me felt like an ocean, and I frantically flailed around trying to find any sort of ground. When I tried to hang onto the edge of my bed, my hand phased right through.

Just fly over to the ground! I thought to myself. This should be easy!

But it wasn’t. The weightlessness was jarring; I flailed around desperately in the darkness looking for something to cling onto. It didn’t help that I felt so vulnerable without the fleshy cocoon that was my body. The sensation of someone—something—trying to pull me away, was ceaseless. The room around me felt larger as I continued my desperate flailing, like any sort of anchor I could use—my bookshelves, the foot of my bed, my chair, the windowsill—just got further and further away.

I kicked my legs out, trying to force my body to go upright, until I finally managed to jerk myself upright. Confident in my position, I landed my feet on the ground, praying I wouldn’t slip under the floor.

To my surprise, my feet landed on the floor without slipping through.

I didn’t begin to question how I managed to stay on the second floor; I was too busy reeling from the probably-too-long process of trying to steady myself. Now all I had to do was wait and see if that faceless terror decided to come for me again.

And so I waited.

And waited.

It’s been several minutes and nothing was happening. Surely some outside force was causing my sleep paralysis…right? So where was it? If I had managed to pull off a feat like, oh, I dunno, forcing my spirit out of my body, then nothing was impossible at this point…

Right?

Finally, I gave up and decided that I was probably better off getting myself out of this state of paralysis. I stood on the edge of the bed, right where my feet were, turned around, and fell back on top of my body, hoping to be jolted awake by the sudden return of my spirit—

And fell through the bed instead, stopping myself just in time before I fell through the first floor, too. I looked around and, after taking a minute to process everything in the dark, came to the conclusion that I was in my living room. Annoyed, I drifted back towards my staircase, intending to go back and try again—when I felt something grab me as I turned the corner. I was pulled back into the living room, and found myself face-to-face with an eerily familiar figure…

…the same black-clad, faceless, knife-wielding killer from my dreams. Grabbing my wrist, he held the knife behind my neck, as if to draw me closer. I was almost forced to look at the empty void where his face should have been.

You know how some people say that if you stare into the void long enough, the void stares back at you? That’s kind of what happened to me…but worse.

No, the void didn’t just stare back at me. It smiled at me, a cruel, triumphant smile that only grew as it saw the absolute terror on my face as I felt the cold steel against my neck; as if it could just feel the overwhelming despair within me that only continued to eat at any hope of me getting out of this situation alive.

“Who...are you?” I whimpered. “What the hell do you want from me?”

My dream demon gave no response. It didn’t do anything, in fact. As panicked as I was, I started to at least regain my senses when I noticed that this thing was almost completely still. It didn’t even look like it was breathing.

Was it actually frozen? Or was it toying with me?

Either way, I wouldn’t let this be the end.

One last chase, I decided. One last chase. I’ve already outran it several times. What was one more?

I immediately broke off into a sprint, pushing my hooded tormentor’s arm that held the knife away as I stumbled on my way out the door. Being incorporeal, I at least had the advantage of being able to phase through the locked door instead of opening it. The feeling of phasing through solid was much more jarring than I could handle, and I continued to stumble a bit as I ran far, far away from the house. I could barely feel my transparent feet hitting the concrete, or the tree branch that would’ve smacked me right in the face after I ran into it. I couldn’t even feel the wind on my face, though I’m not sure if this came from being too overwhelmed with terror or a side effect of being incorporeal.

The only thing I did feel, however, was the constant, incessant dread of my accursed stalker barely even a foot away from me. I didn’t want to turn around, I begged myself not to look, trying and failing to comfort myself with the lie that the killer wasn’t as close as I thought it was, there was no way, no human can run that fast. The even more obvious lie, of course, was that this was another dream, and even if it does catch up and strike me, I would wake up back in my bed, back in my body.

Finally, I caved and turned around, only to find myself facing that sinister void once more. I screamed, tripping and collapsing to the floor face-down. I turned back up to face my attacker, who was innocently holding its knife behind its back--no, that wasn’t a knife anymore, I noted. It had somehow grown longer than the razor-edged knife it had before, and I could now see the end of the blade from behind the void-faced freak’s back. It had now reached the length of a dagger, or maybe just bordering on the edge of being the length of a shortsword.

I could only crawl away from my tormentor as I struggled to stand back up. As I pushed myself off the ground and back on my feet, my stomach dropped when I realized my feet were no longer touching the floor. Though I tried desperately to get myself back on the ground, remembering how jarring the feeling of floating had been the first time, I realized that my would-be killer was only a few feet away from me at best, and I should take advantage of this new ability. I willed myself forward, pushing through the air like a swimmer pushes through water, and then did the same going upwards, up past a nearby three-story house.

I was flying, I realized with awe and wonder, which was quickly cut short when I saw my tormentor climbing up the same house. Part of me wanted to warn the neighbors inside, but every other bit of me just wanted to make sure I actually survived this nightmare.

I flew back to my house, phasing through trees and powerlines and a bit of scaffolding, until at last I nearly missed my own home. Spotting my room on the second story, I phased through the window and back into my bedroom. It was still dark in my room, but I made out the shape of a body in the darkness.

But...it wasn’t my body.

At least, I didn’t think it was. It looked too weak; some bits of hair had fallen out, I looked like I lost a small, yet noticeable amount of weight, and when I looked closer at my face, it didn’t look like me at all. I looked much more pale, my lips were extremely dry, and I could make out the color of an old and large bruise that covered over a third of my forehead. Suddenly, I felt my stomach drop when I realized what was so familiar about how I looked.

I looked dead.

That’s when I felt a cold breeze come in through the same window, and turned around to find my void-faced, black-clad killer raising a giant onyx scythe towards me. I found myself unable to move, unable to fly away. I just stood there, paralyzed with terror, looking dead in the eyes at the same monster that faced every soul at the end of their lives, no matter how much they begged for mercy.

Its giant scythe, its black clothing…this wasn’t a demon, was it?

No. It was something worse. People dealt with this thing more frequently than demons, yet this walking void carried with it more terror, more despair, more ruin than any demonic creature could even dream of. My parents always said I was a resilient child, yet my resolve shattered in the face of this monster. I stood in front of it, weeping silently as the sheer dread of my tormentor filled me from head to toe.

“Please,” I begged. “I held on for so long…please don’t take me away.”

But it didn’t listen. It never listened. My “resilience” may have made me feel special, but right now I was no different from everyone else—standing in front of this monster, pleading for their lives, never receiving an answer.

And so, like everyone else, all I did was stand there as its onyx scythe tore through my soul, letting out one final silent scream as I felt my very being, and the remnants of my resolve, fall apart.

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#ruqayyah pickel #poetryfiction

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mornadest · 6 years

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STORYTIME.

I've been having a vivid, bad dream and Idk what it means.

I’ve been debating posting this for a few days but I need to get it out, it’s playing on my mind a lot and really don’t know why.

I’ve been having extremely vivid and unnerving dreams and I can't stop thinking about it.

Firstly, I know what you’re thinking, oh this is some new viral scary story or some shit but I promise, it’s not. These are very real dreams /experiences I’ve had. So, let me preface, I suffer night terrors and sleep paralysis often but these dreams or nightmares seem different somehow.

It started out a few days ago. I dreamt I was in Japan, more specifically, I was walking to Mt Fuji via Aokigahara Forest with a hiking group. Now, everyone should know this forest as the ‘sea of trees' or commonly known (unfortunately and rather awfully) as "suicide forest". The dream started out innocently enough, albeit extremely vivid. I’ve never been to Japan, let alone Aokigahara...yet everything felt so familiar and I had the weirdest most incredible sense of déjà vu. I was on the walking trail right by an ice cave.

This is where the dream took a turn into more nightmare territory.

I was no longer with a group. I was alone and the forest had turned irregularly quiet. Ominously so, it was like time just ceased to be, the air was thick, swallowing, and darkness enveloped the entire area surrounding me, Out the corner of my eye I saw this well dressed, business looking man stood watching me, when I turned to face him he smiled and turned, walking into the forest.

I had an insistent urge to move southward off the path and into the thick brush of the forest, to follow this guy. Something told me this was a Bad idea but I persisted anyway. I walked for what felt like hours. Yet time seemed impossibly slow.

After what felt like forever, I couldn’t see the stranger but I came across a large tree that marked the start of where someone had left a trail of red string. A feeling of utter dread and hopelessness washed over me. I knew what I’d find if I followed it yet I couldn’t turn away.

Something told me I HAD to follow. So I did. I followed the string deeper into the wood and each foot I followed the forest seemed to darken. It was unnerving. Sure enough, after a while it lead me to an unfortunate sight, it was the same fucking man. Only he had passed on. Chosen sadly to end his life.

He looked like he was in his late 40s and the sight-he looked I hate to say it, but fresh. Like it had just happened. As that hit me, I ran all of 4 steps forward before I stopped in my Tracks. Something was incredibly wrong but I couldn’t place it.

I had the most awful paralyzing feeling that I was unwelcome to come any closer. That if I attempted to save this man the forest itself would be angered. For some reason, it felt evil. It struck me somewhere deep in the back of my mind that this may be a dream so I edged closer and reached out for the man, desperate to help despite feeling somehow it was wrong.

As soon as I made contact with the body, wrapping my arms around the torso to lift him out of the rope around his neck, everything changed.

The man contorted into something grotesque, it was literally like something out of a horror movie. I shit you not. He, or I guess It, whipped it’s head round to face me and the once soft features of this man had, stuck in perpetual torment and sadness now shifted into a skeletal mutated monstrosity. It fucking grinned at me. IT FUCKING GRINNED.

I felt physically sick. Now, I’m happily atheist but let me tell you, seeing that thing look at me felt like staring into the darkest depth of hell itself. I’ve never felt more scared in my entire life.

The worst part was when it spoke. I saw it’s face contort, it looked like it was speaking yet it didn’t physically make a sound except the rattling and squelching of bone and well.. flesh. All of a sudden I saw letters in my mind. I felt myself write them down physically as they appeared. I didn’t understand exactly what it was saying but after glancing down at an open journal in my hands-things I’m certain I didn’t have before. What seems like Latin appeared on the page in dark red ink. I at least pray it was ink.

I looked up and the thing was gone. The man was back. Sounds came back to the forest and I could hear my hiking group calling for me and finding me all the while I’m staring at this journal and the words I don’t remember writing in a stupor. Shaken and paralyzed. We cut him down got police and they informed family. Turned out he’d been missing for almost 3 months. It felt...both real and...also not?

That’s when I woke up. Throughout the dream some deep part of me knew I was asleep but it didn’t make it any less real in my mind. I’ve had sleep paralysis less real seeming than this dream, night terrors too and I can’t shake it.

I tend to take notes of my nightmares and terrors or anything of note in my dreams so instantly grabbed my phone, opened notes and typed the words I remember.

The words are what scare me most. I don’t know Latin, I don’t know how I even still remember what it said in full but I remember waking up and writing them down immediately. Thank god for translate too I guess? Or not.

“Expectavi enim sermones tui. Vos ipsi vidistis eum. Ergo? tu sequere” The translations a little off I think, from talking to my friend it seems so. Think I chalk that down to dyslexia and not really knowing Latin? Either way..

The "translation" of the full sentence according to Google

"I waited for you. 'You yourselves have seen him. Therefore? you follow" See what I mean about the translation being a little off? Idk Well, it certainly doesn’t help with how shaken it’s left me.

What’s worse is last night I had another dream and this time all seemed normal. Except, every now and then, HE appeared, at first out of sight. Then he started appearimg closer until eventually he was just there. Part of everything, not saying anything, not hanging. Just stood. Watching and sometimes smirking. It honestly sent shivers down my spine everytime i saw him.

honestly I have no idea what to make of all this. Just needed to get it off my chest. Honestly don't care if you believe it or not. Just need to share. My best friend seems to think it's not necessarily bad and that Someone is trying to tell me Something?

Idk maybe I'm overthinking a few night terrors? But yep. That's all really. Kinda don't want to sleep tonight.. Maybe I'll update if I have anymore dreams but Idk

guess I'll die? 🤷

#the life of rachael #true story #help #send help #night terrors #storytime #bad dreams #strange dreams #dream analysis #nightmare #i dont really know what it means #anyone have ideas #i just want to rest #please let me rest in peace

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inadarkdarkroom · 7 years

Text

Opening & Shutting

When I was 10 my parents moved us from air force base housing to a split level home they bought rather cheaply. I remember having to stay with my godfather for a few months, because the house was a bit unlivable and needed repairs before we moved in. Every day my sister and I would be stuck in the big empty house while my mother worked and my step father did all of the repairs and renovations himself.

The neighborhood kids, especially the older ones, were full of stories about abuse, mental disturbances, and a death happening in the house before the family just sort of left without much warning. I never followed up with actual adults or more reputable sources to see if any of it was true. Having seen the state of the house and considering the implications, I didn’t want to know. There were fist-sized holes in the walls filled with playdough. Storage spaces clearly used as sleeping quarters. Cracked mirrored walls. A toilet used despite not having a wax seal around it (so it leaked continuously all over the carpeted [yeah, carpeted] bathroom) Hand prints and stains on walls and the wood floors that even my childhood self was unnerved by.

We fixed it up just enough for it to be livable before money ran out, but it was still a sort of rickety place. The kind of place where the floors are so squeaky you can echolocate every single person in the house (this fact becomes relevant later). My sister and I never felt comfortable there. We both told my mother as much, but she basically told us to suck it up and that everything would be fine. And for the most part it was, my sister went through an intense period of being afraid of a being in her closet, while I never wanted to be alone in, or turn my back on the basement out of a very primal and inexplicable dread, but that’s all pretty normal stuff for kids, really. We always told my mother. Citing evidence like how the cat always slowly watched something in repeating patterns from the front door to the kitchen back and up the stairs. She would shake it off as nothing, our imagination, or she would tell us about seeing weird ghost-like things as a kid and assure us that we were always safe. We didn’t really believe her, but just also kind of went about our lives. Then puberty hit me and 4 years later, my sister. We fought. Constantly. Even more than we did as kids. That’s when shit started getting real. I randomly started sleep walking and would stand at the foot of my parent’s bed, staring at them until my very light sleeping mother would wake up. My sister followed suit, to a lesser extent, a year or so later. I experienced sleep paralysis and night terrors more and more commonly until they happened most nights. Pictures would “fall” off of walls, and stuff would fall off of shelves in the middle of the night. Cups and coffee pots were known to shatter for absolutely no reason. The air in my room became so cold my breath would rain back on me in the Summer, and would freeze into a large patch of ice on the ceiling just above my pillow in Winter. My sister and I both resorted to staying awake and reading until the sun came up, afraid to sleep until the exhaustion forced us to. All the while, I became more angry and anxious and my sister became more depressed and withdrawn, which means we fought harder and longer and more frequently. My parents were at their wits end trying to figure out what was wrong with us or where they went wrong. Every once in awhile, my mother, a family member, or a friend would reference the family before us, or offhandedly say the word “spirit” and “poltergeist”

Then one night, around 1am, I was in my room reading when I heard my sister’s bedroom door open. It was followed by the sound of our shared bathroom door opening and shutting, so I thought very little of it. Then, my parent’s room’s door opened and shut, and I figured my sister getting up had woken up my mom and she was checking on the noise. Soon after my parent’s door opened and shut, then the bathroom door again and then my sister’s room again. All seemed normal. Until from two levels down stairs I hear the playroom door open and shut, and every hair on my body raised all at once. No one inhabited that level. It was a tiny daylight/garden level kind of thing with the aforementioned broken bathroom, a laundry room, and a room we used basically for junk/toy overflow. We never shut the door to that room. We hardly were in that room for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. Then I heard my parent’s room go again. Open and shut. And my sister’s room. And the bathroom. And the playroom. And it started to get faster, so fast it would be impossible for one person to be doing this by themselves. Two things dawned on me, at this point. 1) I have not heard a single floorboard creak to indicate anyone/thing was walking around. 2) My door is probably next. I throw myself out of my bed and grab the doorknob, plant my foot on the wall behind me, and my other hand half on the door frame and half on the door. At this point all the doors in the house are opening and shutting. Not loudly or forcefully but quickly and without consistent pattern or rhythm. There is no slamming. It’s like an army of very polite guests are moving from room to room aimlessly. Somewhere in there I noted that the front door and the door to the garage are both opening and shutting too, and those doors were always locked and double checked by everyone before they went to sleep.

Only a second after noticing the extra door noises, I felt it. The knob turned under my hand and the door moved inward and against me, as if someone was giving it just the slightest push, just like normal pressure you would apply to any bedroom door, and was surprised to meet resistance. I burst into tears and started mouthing prayers. It did it again, quicker the second time, just a jolt of a turn and push. I locked the door knob, spun around and leaned my back against the door. I slid down it to sit down and plant both feet against the wall across from me, praying my legs were a strong enough barricade.

The opening and shutting slowed down until it finally stopped. All told it was probably 2 minutes of activity or less, but it felt like a lifetime.

I stayed planted in the barricade position for hours panicked, breathing shallowly, hoping nothing could hear me. When I finally got up enough courage to get back into bed it was about 4am. I picked my book back up and read until the last bits of adrenaline left my system and I passed out due to exhaustion. When I woke up in the morning, I immediately convince myself that it must have been a weird night terror dream. All that noise, even such unobtrusive light noise, surely would have woken my mother at least, but no one came out of their rooms. I didn’t hear anyone speak. That should have woken the whole goddamn house, in all seriousness. All signs pointed to dream. I shook it all off, chalked it up to ever worsening nightmares, cursed my brain for being so fucked up to me, and headed downstairs relieved to hear the sounds of breakfast sizzling, looking forward to my mother’s unrelenting morning chipperness after such a night of dark dreams. I walked into the dining room and sat down to a plate already made for me, wished my mother and sister a good morning, and tucked into my eggs as my mother, sat at the table, annoyed look on her face, asked me, “Were you opening and shutting doors last night?”

More Scary Stories Here Submit Your Scary Story Here

#haunted #supernatural #ghosts #spirits #ghost #paranormal #scary #scary story #horror #spirit #demon #demons #demonic #entity #horror story #true story #ouija #freaky #weird #creepy

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eyesaremosaics · 7 years

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I came across your "shadow people" post and was curious to hear about your experiences with them? You me mentioned that you see them standing around your bed... Do you have sleep paralysis?

No I do not, though I once had a friend who did suffer from it. Oddly enough it was at her apartment that I first saw them, or at least… The traditional notion of shadow people. She described the feeling of dread, that she couldn’t move, the feeling of pressure on one’s chest making it difficult to breathe etc., and detailed shadowy figures with glowing red eyes.

In my opinion these are inter dimensional beings, or dark entities. It is possible that they attach to humans in the same way a “Shinma” does in the sense that it finds highly sensitive, damaged, or otherwise psychic individuals with an open crack to their soul. These beings feed off of lower vibrations. From what I gathered from multiple people who experience this phenomena: the sleep paralysis generally happens when they are in a lower vibration.

The only times I have ever seen these beings was when I was on dissociative drugs. I used to take DXM with said friend, and one night in particular I was really high. She didn’t reach the plateau that I had, and was slightly annoyed by this fact. I began hallucinating sarcophagi on the floor, a sea of roses wavering like the rides of the ocean, along with her closet suddenly being full of Victorian cabinets. I knew these were hallucinations, even though they looked clear as day. My hand would go through them. I was pleasantly enjoying the visuals, paired with the dream like dissociation.

When I returned to her bed, I say somewhere in the middle, and she sat to my right, slightly higher up on the bed, whereas I was more towards the middle of the mattress. Suddenly, 3-4 tall, thin, shadowy figures crouched around the bed staring at us with glowing red eyes.

Now, when you are on a dissociative drug, all your emotions are stripped away. Things that normally would terrify an average person, will only appear vaguely perplexing to a person on DXM. My eyes wide, pupils dilated. To her, there must have been darkness there, nothing more. Yet I clearly saw these beings, and even through my euphoria–they did not feel good.

“Do you see them?” I whispered to her.

“See what?” She asked me, a note of concern in her voice.

“The shadowy figures. They are standing around the bed”. I continued in a whispered hush, I rose my arm slowly with my finger outstretched, and pointed off into nothingness. “Right. There”.

I could feel the fear prickling in her beside me, and I knew it was most likely due to her sleep paralysis. Even though she couldn’t see them right now, she had seen them before. It must have been very unnerving for her to feel they were still in the room, even when she couldn’t see them. That’s what creeped me out about the whole thing. Do these shadow beings hang around certain spaces? Or do they hang around certain people? Interesting questions to ask..

The shadow people hung around for the remainder of my trip, I could feel them watching us. It was scary because even on a drug that erases feelings, I could still feel their energy, and it wasn’t friendly. They also felt real. I knew the other things were hallucinations, but they felt strangely solid, and had very clear heavy, and magnetic presence. Like the still intensity one feels alone in a forest.

I had another frightening experience when I was 17. I had been on an ecstasy binge, had done it all weekend, and was still a little out of it. Sure it’s possible my brain was just playing tricks on me due to the drugs in both of these stories, but my gut tells me that these beings do exist. The issue is: most people lose their psychic perception and intuition at a young age, it gets stamped out of us in this society. I strongly believe that shamanic practice is on to something. Using drugs as a means to coalesce with the spirit realm. It lowers one’s inhibitions, and the veil between realities becomes thinner.

I think this is also true for schizophrenics, or hallucinations brought on by psychosis or severe mental illness as well–yet that is an entirely different discussion.

I had come down off the drug 24 hours prior, only traces of the drug are still in your system at the point, waaaay past the peak period where one would have hallucinations. I was trying to go to bed in our old house in Martinez. It was on a hill, so you came in through the top and went down. I lived on the bottom floor, and it was clearly haunted. Hardly ever slept in that room. It felt unarguably cold, and I always had this sinking feeling that I was never alone down there.

However, this was something else entirely. I am manic depressive, and have struggled with mental illness all my life. I have type 2 bipolar disorder, which is far less severe, so psychotic episodes and hallucinations are not a part of my experience. On this night, I went to bed in my room. Grounded from drug usage. I was seething, very angry. Suddenly… This hooded shadowy figure appeared beside my bed. It had no eyes, or face even, instead it had three white spirals where it’s face should be.

It’s important for me to note, that this hooded figure with the swirls in its face has appeared to me in dreams more than once. However, this was the first time it appeared to me. The figure stood right at the edge of my bed and was staring at me. It felt cold, and watchful. Having death with spirits and entities trying to communicate with me as a child–I told the thing to go away.

When I did so, another one appeared right beside it. Followed by another, and another. Soon they were surrounding my bed, which was set into a nook in the wall, between the closet and the window.

I told these things to go away again, but one sat right on my bed next to me. I could move, so I wasn’t paralyzed, yet I was terribly scared and pulled the covers over my head. I asked the beings to leave me alone, and when I lowered the blanket from my eyes, the things face was hovering over mine, staring down at me. The swirls in its head were eerie, like a hypnotic mask. Suddenly I felt floaty, out of body almost. I saw the thing hovering over my body, it’s arms extended, creating a black shroud.

Then suddenly… It rushed down towards me, as though it were suspended by chains and then dropped on top of my body like a flat piece of heavy metal. It dropped from the ceiling diehards my body, cloaked me in blackness on impact–and I passed out.

When I woke up the next morning… I felt really out of it. Initially I felt like these things were aliens. I know that sounds crazy, but the more I learn about shadow people, the more I think they are aliens (to a certain degree). Beings from another realm, without solid form. I have no idea what that thing was, if I imagined it, if it possessed me. No idea. Yet I know I felt really weird the next day, and not just weird because of the substances from earlier in the weekend either. No this felt really invasive. Like my body was not entirely my own.

Those are the only two vivid experiences I had. Though i have communicated with beings before on psychoactive drugs. Various kinds of beings, including the shadow people. Yet those memories are not clear. Very I distinct pictures.

Does anyone else have experience with this phenomena? I would be very interested to hear what you have to say.

#asks #sleep paralysis #shadow people #supernatural #paranormal

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enygmass · 7 years

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Silence - A Fable and jon?

[hi my name is amy and i haven’t written a drabble in 10 years ]

Anyways, not set to a specific verse, but does involve a bit of childhood as well as school years. This is pre-scarecrow as well, so, no gassing unfortunately.

Scarecrow and Silence - A fable, with the emotions ‘Dream, Symbolism, and Nightmare’

By Ames

Word count - 1006 [AN ACTUAL DRABBLE]

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Jonathan could accurately recall that he was only eight years old when he ceased dreaming. This was not an uncommon occurrence – people woke up without recollection of their dreams on a near-daily basis. The mind could only contain so much information, after all. At the age of eight, he ceased dreaming, and continued these long nights of endless darkness until he reached the age of eighteen.

He could not offer an explanation as to why they came back.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that there were not the few rare occurrences in which dreams would come to him at night, in their forms of flashing images and peculiar aromas, the sensation of something touching your skin or breathing down your neck. Some nights he wondered if they really were just dreams; that if he covered his head and counted to ten then opened his eyes again everything would be gone. He never tried this though. It seemed far too childish for his liking, even though he was a child himself. Besides, if you cover your head when the monster was in the room, wouldn’t you be unable to see what he would do next? That was one of few things that scared him when he was younger – what it would do next.

On the few occasions that he did dream, he would often find himself standing in a field. In ten to twelve years time he would learn that such repetitive dreams were the mind attempting to convey a message to the conscious, doubled with the taunting name of ‘Scarecrow’ by his peers, but as a child, this information was above him. As a child, he thought it was something supernatural. His family always did talk about spirits, and messages from beyond, and how witches can do things to an innocent mind that he could never fathom and it wasn’t like the south was unknown for its supernatural aspect. The thought of witches wasn’t what unnerved him the most, however – it was the Scarecrow.

From his room in his ‘home’ he could see two things; the road, and the fields, and in the fields, there always stood a Scarecrow. He was rather ineffective at his job, as whenever Jonathan looked to him there was always a crow or two perched on his shoulders, pecking away at his straw hair or his burlap mask, as if to mock his inability to swat them away. When he was forced to go out to the fields he always did his best to avoid going near it. There was something about its face, its long abnormal limbs and its wiry frame, that just didn’t settle right with him and caused his gut to turn. So, he did his work and he never looked its way.

In his dreams however, there was a different story. Dreams could twist themselves into various forms and the dreamer always had no control over this. He would be in a field, the smell of rotting corn hanging heavy in the air as a reminder that harvest season was over, and the clouds above would be grey and stormy. There would be the cawing of crows although he could never see one, and the house in the distance would be dark and forlorn. The most prominent thing in the dream was always the Scarecrow. Sometimes the setting would change, and he’d be in school, or he’d be in the city, but the Scarecrow was always there. It never really did anything either; it just sat on its post and look intimidating, with its twig-fingers dangling from beneath the sleeves and its black, pit-like eyes staring directly at him. It would never do anything, yet Jonathan would always wake up drenched in sweat, gripping his sheets like a lifeline as his entire body was seized up and immobile.

These were not dreams as much as they were nightmares – and Jonathan would become very familiar with nightmares in due time – that just repeated over and over like a broken record.

Until he turned eighteen. Until he left for Gotham.

Then suddenly, as soon as they had begun, they ceased. No more Scarecrow, no more field, no more cawing crows. It was as though someone had turned the lights off. He went through university with ease, earning his degrees and excelling in his classes. He gained a position as a T.A, and soon pulled himself to the ranking of professor, taking the psychology department by the reigns and guiding it into some of the most successful years it had ever seen at Gotham University. Jonathan was in the prime of his life; he had success, he had a career he was passionate for, and he had funding to push forward his research on the fear response in individuals put under stress.

Like the dreams, however, things often came to an end. In his case, the end came in the form of a gun, which was followed by an accusatory figure, a panel of twelve men in one room, and a slip of paper that stated ‘termination’.

When he was in his early thirties, the dreams came back. The same field, the same home, the same sound of crows and the same sky. Above all, there was the same Scarecrow standing on his post.

Instead of feeling fear as he once did in his youth, when Jonathan stared into those pits that were its eyes, there was a sense of understanding. The message that the figure had tried to convey to him ever since he was eight years old had now been revealed to him, like some open book or blatantly obvious statement, and when he woke up there was no paralysis or gripping of sheets.

There was a sense of peace, and better yet, there was a plan.

#amy talks #amys fanfiction #jonathan crane #thnx boo boo #Anonymous

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pinkipie100 · 7 years

Text

Lance and the 25 Days Chapter I: Awake

Welcome to the first installment of Pinkipie’s Fic-cember 2017! This will be a twenty-five chapter fanfiction involving the characters of Voltron and the spirit of the holiday season.

In this chapter, Lance wakes up as if he’s just had a terrorizing nightmare, but perhaps he’s just awakened to a dream come true.

Happy Holidays, and enjoy!

Words: 2048

Category: Gen

Contains: Lance's Christmas boner, inappropriate use of the castle ship’s alarms, tired paladins + Coran, Jewish!Pidge, a dust of subtle angst [because I can’t G*DDAMN HELP MYSELF, CAN I?!]

Takes place during S4, sometime after Keith left, but before Reunion.

Lance’s eyes shot open in a cold sweat. He was panting heavily and felt pinching anxiety in his gut. Something was happening to him, but he couldn’t get himself to move. He did not shift his paralyzed body from the bed in fear, so he only sat there like a log, flat on his back, shaking with anticipation for some reason unseen.

What could possibly be triggering this? Lance panicked, dreading the possibility of sleep paralysis. If had to endure a terrifying vision of a demonic alien, he would never sleep again. The paladin just sunk deeper into his mattress as he pondered what was wrong with him, considering several other equally unnerving options, such as a Galra poisoning him with a nightmarish drug, a previously unnoticed mission injury, an intense alien disease, and the like.

Lance attempted to look over to the day cycle clock built into his wall, and managed to read out of the corner of his eye that it just turned midnight. The boy then gasped, for he knew exactly what this meant- he knew he wouldn’t sleep again, but for an entirely different reason than fear.

Lance spontaneously regained control of his muscles, bounced off of his bed and flopped ungracefully onto the ground whilst gasping breathlessly, “IT’S TIME!” He landed upon the floor in an awkward sprawl of lanky limbs, but quickly regained his composure and launched out of his room like a sprinter at the sound of the handgun.

The boy practically flew through the hallways, zooming all the way to the bridge in just a dobash. When he arrived, shoulders nicking the edges of the doors he burst through before they were even fully open, he tumbled over to the intercom system, pressed the button to turn it on, and then shouted, “CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!”

Hopefully, that would be enough to wake the others to this important occasion. Just to be sure, in all his panting and lightheadedness, Lance turned on the alarm and manually set the day cycle to morning so that the ship was brightly lit and cacophonous. He then waited as patiently as possible, tapping his foot rapidly until the other paladins and Coran had showed up.

The others rushed into the bridge fully-armored and disoriented, and Shiro was the first to speak, inquiring intensely about a Galra attack.

Lance shook his head, shutting off the blaring alarm. When Allura questioned what the emergency was, Lance announced, “Didn’t you hear me in the intercom? It’s CHRISTMAS!” Team Voltron looked unimpressed. When Pidge uttered and irritated ‘what,’ Lance continued further, “It’s Christmas! We’ve got to get to celebrating, stat!”

Coran and the pink paladin looked at one another, totally lost, while Pidge sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Lance, you understand that the ship’s alarm is only for emergencies, right?” Shiro groaned, rubbing the corner of his right eye. The red paladin assented to this, but argued that a holiday should never, ever be missed, so therefore this was and emergency. “How do you even know it’s Christmas?” the black paladin asked, desperately attempting to hold off a yawn.

The boy’s lips formed a guilty-looking squiggle, and he held his breath for a moment before admitting, “Well, technically, it’s not Christmas, but it is December first. So, that means we have a lot of preparation to be doing for Christmas! We have to start right away!”

Pidge groaned loudly. “So, it’s not even Christmas?! Lance, you woke us up for this?” Lance protested that the winter holiday was no joke to him, and it shouldn’t be such to anyone who is associated with him, but Pidge then continued, “Why would you think it’s December?”

Lance responded, “Well, here’s the story: when I was four years old, I was super excited for it to be December. I mean, I was a little kid, right? Of course I was excited for Christmas; anyone would be!” Hunk warned Lance about going on a tangent, so the latter resumed, “Right. Well, my parents won’t tolerate anyone in our family saying anything about Christmas until the month of; they couldn’t stand holiday overexcitement and all that, you know? Anyway, it was November 30th, and I went to sleep like normal, but the next day came- and I mean exactly when the next day came- I woke up so that I could start preparing for Christmas. I woke up at midnight on my own, jumped out of bed, and pulled out all the Christmas decorations with my tiny four-year-old arms, and I started setting them up. When morning came around, my siblings woke up and started helping me, and by the time my parents came down, they found the mess we made with the decorations. Needless to say, they had to clean it all up and make the decorations right. But ever since that night, I’ve always naturally woken up at midnight on the first day of December to decorate the house with my family! I did that same thing just now, and the only explanation is that today is December first!”

Pidge scoffed and rolled her eyes, deeming it impossible for Lance’s biological clock to work like that, until she was interrupted by Hunk concurring with Lance. The yellow paladin had been fiddling with some calculations on his armor device, and he confirmed, “Lance is right; I just calculated the amount of quintants we’ve been here according to my logs, converted that to Earth days, and then added them to the date that we left Earth. It came out to be December first. Besides, Lance’s biological calendar is never wrong when it comes to Christmas the First. Right, buddy?” Lance high-fived his companion, and Pidge stared at Lance in shock, asking him if she could monitor his sleep patterns from now on, for science.

Coran joined in that he was very lost as to what was going on, and Allura’s expression echoed this.

Shiro took it upon himself to explain the holiday to the Alteans; the trees, the stockings, the strange white-bearded man who broke into your house at night and made out with your mom, the carols, the mistletoes, and especially the gifts. The two aliens listened intently, ears twitching with fascination.

“That’s so odd!” Allura exclaimed when Shiro finished. “And you do this every decafeeb?” Shiro answered, ‘yes,’ adding that there are other December holidays, which surprised Allura even more. “Other celebrations? Unbelievable! That seems like so much work!”

“Indeed,” Coran agreed. “Well, at least it’s only an end-of-decafeeb rush.”

Hunk shook his head at that, delineating that not all people celebrated the same holidays in December as Pidge nodded in agreement, and also that there were other holidays throughout the year, like Halloween and Easter. The Alteans were taken aback, and when the yellow paladin asked if Alteans even had holidays, they shook their heads, claiming they had nothing of the ilk, only celebrations for recent events or ceremonies.

Lance’s foot-tapping evolved into thumping until his impatience grew too much, and he interjected, “Alright, that’s enough exposition! We’ve got work to do! We need to decorate the castle with lights, find something resembling a pine tree, maybe get a mistletoe or two,” Lance said this waggling his eyebrows in Allura’s direction, “Oh! and some ugly Christmas sweaters…”

“Lance.”

“What, Pidge?”

“I’m Jewish,” the youngest paladin stated with an eyebrow raised.

Lance’s jaw dropped while he gawked at Pidge. Hunk recalled that he noticed a clay dreidel amongst her stuff back at the Garrison, but he’d since forgotten about it. Shiro had this countenance that suggested that he was berating himself for forgetting about the Holts being Jewish, and he promptly facepalmed. Coran and Allura just looked at one another and shrugged.

“W-wait, you’re Jewish?!” Lance piped out, just before Shiro spoke over him.

“Pidge, I’m so sorry- I should have made the connection that you’re Jewish just like the rest of your family,” Shiro apologized in a You’re-An-Idiot-Shiro tone.

Pidge reassured everyone that it was fine, but she laced her fingers and twiddled her thumbs bashfully. Upon noticing this, Lance ran up to her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and began apologizing profusely. Pidge dismissed the grovelling, “Lance, it’s not a big deal! I never told you, how could you have known?! You can stop!” Lance still expressed his regret for assuming, but Pidge just grabbed the older teen’s arms and pushed him away, firmly telling him to quit it.

“Pidge, let me make it up to you! I’ll do anything, just tell me!” Lance persisted, and Hunk sighed fondly at his friend’s antics. Hunk vociferated that Pidge probably did want something, and he nodded her way, whilst she scrunched up her face and looked back at Lance’s begging eyes.

Pidge reluctantly began drawling that there was, indeed, something she wanted Lance and the others to do for her. Lance perked up, as did the other paladins. The green paladin drooped her head, and a slight blush could just be identified by Lance. Then, she slowly mumbled out, “I… I want you… Umm…” Pidge looked up through her brow to make eye contact with Shiro, who smiled warmly, and Allura held an eager and supportive gesture behind him. The paladin sighed, finally spitting out, “I want you all the play the dreidel with me!” Everyone stared at her for a half second, then stalwartly agreed to do so, especially Lance, who was enthusiastic enough to kneel before her and shake on it.

Hunk questioned, “Do you have the dreidel from the Garrison to play with?”

Pidge cleared her throat slightly, then answered, “No, I left it at the Garrison. Can we find one?”

Coran speculated that they could certainly look for something similar at the Space Mall, along with the Christmas décor. Pidge added that she also wouldn’t feel comfortable this Hanukkah without a menorah with her, and Shiro confirmed that they could look for one at Terra in the Space Mall.

Lance cheekily inquired if this meant that they were going to go to the Space Mall to decorate for Christmas, which was met by a firm, ‘Lance!’ from Shiro. When the red paladin turned to their leader guiltily, the latter spoke with a stern face, “If we went to the Space Mall…” Lance waited in anticipation, “…does that mean we can get peppermint bark?!” Shiro finished giddily.

Lance answered with a hearty, ‘Absolutely!’ and Shiro pumped his fist with a constricted ‘yus,’ followed by him high-fiving Lance animatedly.

This exchange gave Hunk an idea, so he turned to Lance and excitedly asked if he could do all the preparations for the Christmas dinner and Hanukkah dinners as well, to which his best friend pretended to shed a single tear, then declared that it would be an honor to be served by Hunk the Master Chef. Hunk responded melodramatically, “Oh, no no… It’s my pleasure to serve Lord Lance and the Paladins of Voltron! Pidge, you can teach me the basics of making latke and sufganiyot, right?”

“I… can… try?” Pidge shrugged.

“Also, Lance! We should totally go to the Balmera for ingredients and new recipes!” Hunk suggested enthusiastically. Pidge and Lance made eye contact, wordlessly concurring to the true intentions of said suggestion.

“Sure, Hunk,” Pidge jibed smugly.

“For recipes,” Lance mocked.

Pidge and Lance’s snickers went right over Hunk’s head as he started jotting down ideas for the dinners in his log.

Lance finally announced, “Alright! It’s all settled, then- Princess, Coran, would you like to experience your first Christmas, Hanukkah, holiday season, and holiday in general?”

“Yes!” Allura and Coran firmly endorsed, pumping their fists.

“Okay! Get ready for the holiday shopping, because we’re going to the Space Mall!” Lance declared, wrapping his arms around each Altean.

“…Yeah, can we go back to bed first?” Hunk muttered in the distance.

Shiro grinned fondly as the others laughed and joked around with one another. He stood silently in his spot for a moment, looking to his feet gradually, then shifting his gaze out the window to the stars. His mood lowered a little at the thought of the little brother missing out on the holiday festivities. What broke Shiro’s heart, however, was that this wasn’t even close to the first time the aforementioned person had missed Christmas.

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magicianparrish · 7 years

Text

Hurricane of My Ghosts

I don’t know why this is the title...Anyway, I had this idea when my head hit my pillow to sleep at 1 am and it was the reason I couldn’t sleep last night. Also the song Hurricane from Hamilton came on and helped this. Basically, I’ve always been curious about the character of the goddess Melinoe who was brought in during the Sword of Hades. And the idea of Percy not having any ghosts pre-TLO and then having some after the matter. So just some Percy grief and angst to start my day.

This wasn’t beta’d and was typed out in around an hour so take that as you will.

Links for ao3 and ff.net

Word count: 2,256

Percy is woken up by the loud crack of thunder outside his window. He sat up in his bed, his breaths coming in heavy from being startled, and from a nightmare that is already fading into the void of memory.

His room is filled with shadows, the only source of light coming from the streets of Manhattan from outside and the flashes of lightning that come and go. The sounds from the street that usually blur into white noise for Percy, were now heightened with the patter of rain hitting his window.

He stretched and rubbed the sleep from his eyes before yanking the blanket off of him. Slowly he put his feet on the ground, met with cold floorboards and an array of clothing and textbooks thrown and left in haste of the day. Underneath his pillow, he feels for the familiar weight of the ballpoint pen that he keeps in case of emergencies from his other life.

A life that has brought him more pain and suffering than happiness. One that he never asked to be a part of, but was thrust into head first. It was like he was thrown into an ocean, and told to swim against the waves and riptides, but hadn’t learned to swim prior. Some days he felt like he was drowning. Even though that would never happen, given his father is the god of the oceans, among other things.

He felt the weight of all the people, his friends, that had sacrificed their lives to fight for him, for his prophecy (even though in the end it wasn’t really all about him) and ultimately, his war. He could hear their cries as they ran headfirst into battle, only to be slain by a monster or by the hands of a fellow demigod. Their bodies left for dead on bridges, or disfigured beyond recognition on the streets of Manhattan, or gone down the river never to be found again.

The shrouds that siblings had to make for their fallen, glittered and shimmered beautifully on the funeral pyres built in the amphitheater at Camp. He had only watched his own funeral a year ago, last summer and he saw the solemn faces of his friends; most of whom were alive at that point. The Battle of the Labyrinth gave Percy his first true taste of war and what it was like to lose friends. It amplified the seriousness of the situation he was thrown into, and the way he was the epicenter to all of it stressed him out. He just wanted a sense of normalcy where he could get it, even if it wasn’t often as he liked.

He didn’t want to be a half-blood.

He rubbed his hands over his face, inhaling as much air as he could into a breath before exhaling slowly and deeply. His hair fell into his face, making him run a hand through it to make it stay back for a moment. He looked over at the alarm clock on his nightstand, and it read: 1:18. It was the middle of the night, the time he usually woke up from nightmares; tonight was no different it seemed.

Percy stood up and walked over to his window. The lights were dim from the streets, and for once there was no cabs or people walking down the streets talking loud while intoxicated with whatever they were drinking or doing. Instead, it was replaced with the howling wind and rain pounding against everything. He tilted his head to see the clouds formed in the sky, they were dark and puffy. They seemed to be moving faster than normal thunderstorms. It was a hurricane.

It wasn’t so unusual for New York to be hit with them occasionally. But the past few years they had been coming in strong and destroying towns and neighborhoods. Even parts of New York City were damaged, such as the Rockaways and Battery Park downtown. Percy knew it was his father; he didn’t understand the gods most of the times. Even though he knew his father was nice at least to him and his mother, he knew he was also known for his temperament and he was also a god. Percy didn’t even want to know what got his father’s temper this time. Nor did he really care at this point. He had done his duty to Olympus and the gods, and now he just wanted to leave in peace and go on with life as best he could.

He observed the hurricane from his window. Through the warped vision of his window due to the water, he saw that the little box that held the spring of Moonlace was still standing as if nothing was happening outside, while others were bending and breaking from the wind and water. While many felt the urge of panic during storms like this, he found the noise coming from it relaxing.

Through the cracks of the window, he could feel the chilly wind from the storm and the October air. It had been pretty hot up until this point, and Percy figured after it would start to get cold again, taking fall with it and bringing in winter.

Percy dragged his chair from his desk and brought it over to the windowsill where he was standing. Then he sat down and leaned his head against the wall. He just needed some calm, and he found watching the rain helped. He didn’t know how long he had sat there before he felt the heaviness of sleep come to him.

All Percy saw at first was darkness. For a moment, he had the thought that maybe this one time, he would have a dreamless sleep. Something that he yearned for these days. But the peace was shattered when he heard laughing. It seemed to come from everywhere, and it sent a chill up Percy’s spine. It sounded familiar, a fog of a memory that was trying to breakthrough.

He spun around to the sound hoping that he could identify who was haunting his dreams this time. Somehow he was able to see who it was. The darkness seemed to fade just a little; enough for him. It was a woman, who reminded him of that villain from the Batman movies; half her face was pale like a vampire, while the other was black and leathery like a mummy unwrapped. Her black hair was flowing behind her like it defied the laws of gravity. Her eyes were black voids that screamed of death. Percy recognized the goddess, Melinoe.

She took a step forward in the void, and she smiled at him. Her teeth were sharpened like a shark and razor like. It was malicious and made Percy’s breath still.

“Perseus Jackson, my how things have changed in a year,” she purred at him.

Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Percy winced as she walked around her, in the golden dress and shawl she wore. It was exactly like the last time he saw her in the Underworld on his quest to save Hades’ sword.

“Melinoe,” he managed to breathe out.

“So you do remember me. How nice of you, hero,” she sneered.

She was behind Percy, and he couldn’t see her. He tried to move but realized that she probably had some sort of paralysis spell on him. Goddesses tended to do that when they wanted your attention and control of the situation. It still unnerved him every time it happened, though. He didn’t like not having control over his own body.

He felt a cool hand brush against his face, her sharp nails trailing down his cheek. Not hard enough to leave a cut, but enough force to chill Percy to the bone. He wished this wasn’t a nightmare so he could close his eyes and get the hell out of here.

“If I remember correctly, the last time we met you didn’t have any ghosts. Unlike your two companions. I see that has changed.”

Suddenly she was in front of him again, but it wasn’t her. In her place was a tall man, his skin dark brown which almost blended in with the darkness around them. He was wearing a Camp tank top with the sleeves ripped and a pair of leather gloves on his hands. Goggles were placed over his shaven head. And he looked burned up.

“Beckendorf,” Percy gasped.

The son of Hephaestus’ face formed into a snarl. A facial expression Percy had never seen on his face when he was alive. He now saw that the burn marks were from the explosion on the Princess Andromeda.

“That’s all you have to say to me, after all, you’ve done?” his gruff voice demanded.

“Beck-” Percy started.

“You are the reason why I’m dead. My body left for dead somewhere in the sea to never be found again. Why I wasn’t able to live my life and continue to go to college. This is your fault.”

Percy had this argument with himself plenty of nights. He tried to justify it to himself that Beckendorf sacrificed himself for the greater good, he had even seen it for himself. He made Percy leave. But he couldn’t help the guilt sometimes. Why did everyone have to sacrifice so much just to protect him? Most days he feels he doesn’t deserve to be hailed as the hero of Olympus when so many others had died for him.

Beckendorf’s form morphed into another. It was a girl, who couldn’t be more than fourteen with light brown hair that looked like it was slashed off with a sword. A large cut went across her abdomen, staining the shirt with blood and leaving a gap in cloth. Her blue eyes had a fire in them. Percy knew who she was: a demigod who had fought for Kronos. In the heat of the battle, he had killed her. A nameless girl who he had killed.

“You think you’re a hero when in reality you are a murderer, Percy Jackson!” she screeched.

“I’m sorry, I-” he said trying to apologize. He choked when he realized tears were streaming out of his eyes.

He had tried to hard not to kill any other demigods who had fought on the opposing side. But the curse of Achilles made him crazed, and in a battle scenario, it had happened. And the girl in front of him was a nameless victim.

“Sorry will never cut it. All of those who had perished by your sword or your friends, now walk the earth as ghosts.”

Percy fell to his knees clutching his head with his hands. He tried to breathe properly again, but he felt like he was suffocating. He was a killer, he was no better than any of the bad guys or monsters.

“I warned you, Percy Jackson, that one day you’d have many ghosts. And I told you you’d remember me. It will only grow,” she taunted with a haunting laugh before leaving Percy.

He stood up straight, in his chair taking in a deep breath trying to calm himself back down again. There was a painful cramp in his neck from the position he had been sleeping in. As he went to rub his eyes of sleep, he felt the slickness of tear tracks running down his cheeks and hastily wiped them. He sniffled and wiped his nose from the tears that had made their way there too. He was still gasping erratically, and he knew then that he had been hysterically sobbing both in the dream and outside as well.

Outside, it was still gray. The rain was still pounding away at the streets and window, but it was much lighter than it was when he had fallen asleep again. A soft knock came on his door before it opened up.

“Percy, sweetheart, good news,” his mother’s soft voice came, “the school just called, they canceled classes due to flooding and the storm.”

He turned towards her, with a small smile on his face. A day off from school was a rarity; usually, hell would have to freeze over first before they canceled it. She saw him sitting on the chair and stepped inside with worry pinched on her face.

She was still wearing plaid pajama pants and a faded Led Zeppelin concert t-shirt. Her brown hair was messily stacked on top of her head. Her blue eyes looked at Percy.

“Are you alright?” she asked with genuine concern only a mother could have.

For a split second, he thought of lying. But then he knew that he could never lie to his mother about anything. He let out a sigh and shook his head. He stood up from where he was and went into a gripping hug. Even though he was much taller than she was, he felt like a little kid all over again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she whispered.

Percy let out a little sniff, still recovering from his sobbing fit. He let go of the hug and wiped his eyes and nose again.

“If we make chocolate chip pancakes today,” he offered knowing that they were a rarity of the house.

A kind smile broke out on her face and she rubbed his cheek, which had started to stubble. With a wink, she said: “I’ll even add marshmallows to the hot chocolate.”

He let out a little laugh. “Deal.”

The feeling of heaviness still weighed on him, though. He wasn’t sure that would ever go away.

#my writing #Percy Jackson #pjo #Sally Jackson #Charles Beckendorf #I don't even know what this is lmao #anyway here it is #my first piece of writing posted since December #pjo fanfic

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ecotone99 · 4 years

Text

[HR] Seldon's Playroom

There was only one place to buy dolls where I lived: Seldon's Playroom. Seldon was an agreeable old man, stooped and wizened. After his wife died, Seldon had declined to remarry, something that was still thought improper in our little corner of the country. Most of the cruelest whispers were all easily attributable to small town gossip, however, for there is little else to hold one's attention in the backwoods of nowhere.

And so we went to his shop regularly, and bought Sarah whatever doll she wanted. It was a cheap diversion, but adorably dear to her. Whenever we would pass the old building's rickety sign, emblazoned with its proprietor’s name in gaudy, red letters, her excitement was nothing short of precious. And, more often than not, I would find myself capitulating to those charms peculiar to a man's female children and allow myself to be led through that creaking doorway once more. I often cynically wondered if these kinds of architectural failings went unrepaired by design so as to lend the old shop a further quaint blandishment.

It was during one of these episodes that I learned of the first disappearance. I was sitting in one corner of the shop and reading the paper, which included, on the front page, an account of Susan's last known whereabouts and the panic her parents had undergone in her absence. In big cities, such occurrences are so commonplace that they rarely even make the news. There can only be so many pages in a newspaper or minutes in a television broadcast, and once all the horrific atrocities and celebrity gossip have been dispensed with, there is hardly any room left for something as prosaic as a mere missing child. In our little backwater, however, it was, virtually by definition, a big story.

She had apparently not been seen by anyone since Saturday night, three days ago. The last person to have contact with her was her brother, who was the elder sibling by about 10 years.

But that was all I read, for Sarah interrupted me by shoving a doll onto my lap and pushing the paper aside. I might have been annoyed, but it was an upsetting story. Children didn't go missing in Dixonville. And yet, apparently, one had.

“This one!” Sarah said, excitedly jingling the toy in front of me. And whatever transient anger had risen in my chest was drowned out by the sensation of my heart melting.

“Alright, Poppet,” I said, using a nickname acquired from the obscure and decidedly antiquated vernacular of my youth.

***

But, I could only put the dreadful business out of my head for so long. That night, the whole town was abuzz with talk of the missing girl. It seemed that someone had found her, and she was being treated at the hospital. The exact nature of her malady varied depending on whom you asked, but all agreed it was something sinister.

I am ashamed to say that I joined the crowd of people who visited the hospital that night and demanded to know what had happened. Curiosity, the cat, and all that. Security tried to stop us from disturbing the poor dear, but they were not equipped to deal with a mob of any kind, and so we succeeded in barging into her room and interrupting a doctor in the middle of his duties.

“What the hell are you people doing here?” he shouted, but none of us were listening to him.

All eyes were upon Susan. For, there she lay, physically undamaged, but utterly faceless.

Her features had been erased in their entirety, and yet that smooth head turned in our direction, as if somehow still seeing, and cocked ever so slightly to one side, like a curious bird. And, from a mouth that was not present, a curious, muted gasping sound filled the air.

At the same instant, we all fell back out of the room, and eagerly accepted the guards’ escort out of the building.

***

Later that night, my wife, Sarah and I sat next to the fireplace, warming ourselves against the frigid winter air which scurried under our doors and around our windows. Sarah had put her new doll on the ground and was happily dressing and undressing it.

“She didn’t have a face, Nikki!” I said, somewhat tactlessly, before remembering that Sarah was in earshot.

“Who didn’t?” Sarah asked.

“Nobody, Poppet,” I said.

“Well, do they know where she was, or what happened to her?” Nikki asked, scowling at me over my indiscretion, but failing to restrain her own curiosity.

“I don’t know. It’s all just gossip right now,” I said, shaking my head.

We both went back to sipping from mugs of hot cocoa, I with my nose buried in a book and my wife with hers buried in her phone. In those days, my interests were vaguely academic despite my dismal educational background, and the tome within which I found myself ensconced that night was a rather saccharine work of New Age spirituality. Like many of its ilk, following in the great, pseudo-intellectual tradition of Deepak Chopra, my nightly entertainment concerned itself with quantum entanglement and the so-called “oneness” of reality. Dreams, it claimed, were products of a universal mind. Borrowing half-quotes and misattributed jargon from Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, it purported to prove that our nightly visions offer a window into the future as well as “the underlying nature of things.”

It was a silly thing, to be sure, and it did not hold my interest for long. My eye was drawn back to Sarah and her doll when a sudden and unwelcome thought struck me.

Didn’t the figurine’s face look an awful lot like Susan’s?

***

When at last I slept that night, an unusually vivid dream forced itself upon me. For most of my life it has been rare for me to remember a dream long after waking. This one, however, certainly proved itself to be an exception.

In it, the creature in that hospital bed fixes me with its blank, faceless gaze, and I am frozen to the spot, unable to move or even blink. It stands, and walks toward me, slowly feeling its way through the intervening space. And, all the while, it points that hideous, featureless head squarely in my direction.

With every step, an irrational fear builds within my chest, and I want to scream and kick it until blood runs down its unnatural noggin and coagulates in pools on the floor.

But, paralyzed and voiceless, I can do none of those things. I can only watch as the thing inches toward my body until it’s right in front of me, and still I can do nothing.

And, at the instant when its smooth visage makes sickening contact with my leg, the paralysis breaks, and I lash out with all of my strength, beating it with fists and feet, over and over again, screaming like a banshee as I do so.

Eventually, all of the rage is used up and I collapse upon the floor, panting, only to realize that something is very wrong with the twitching corpse I have just created.

No longer is its face gone. It now wears the face of Sarah.

***

The morning came and broke the dream, and, just as with fever, this breaking was accompanied by torrents of sweat. When I related the experience to my wife, she ran her hand over my head and just told me that it was over now, and that I didn’t need to worry. She mumbled something like this and then fell back asleep, but I couldn’t do likewise.

Those images still sparkled in my vision, taking on the character of phantasmagoric eidola. The sight of Sarah’s lifeless body seized me and wouldn’t let me go.

For the rest of the day these terrible phantoms played at the edges of my vision and more than once made me jump, eliciting some strange and curious glances from coworkers and passersby.

On the way home, I passed Seldon’s Playroom and saw some girls leaving its creaking doorway with dolls clutched under their arms.

Something about these figures caused me to shudder involuntarily.

Then, one of the children caught my eye and smiled at me. She was a friend of Sarah. I smiled back, forcing the gesture, and waved.

And, as she turned to run after her friend, for just a moment, the features of her face were erased.

But it was just a moment.

***

The front page of the paper that night was dominated by the story of another disappearance. At first, my eyes scanned over the name of the unlucky victim, but when its meaning finally sank in, I nearly dropped the paper.

It was Rachel, the girl I had seen in the street.

One disappearance was enough to set the whole town’s nerves on edge. Two were positively cataclysmic.

I went to Seldon’s Playroom that night, and caught its owner just as he was preparing to close up shop. He smiled politely and reminded me of his hours of operation.

“Oh, no, actually I’m not here for a doll,” I told him.

“How can I help you?” he asked quietly.

“Well, it’s going to sound a little odd,” I said apologetically. “It’s about Rachel -- the missing girl.”

He nodded.

“Dreadful business,” he murmured.

“Yes, well, you see, I saw her leaving the shop earlier today, and I was wondering if you saw anything strange or unusual when she was here.”

“Such as what?” he asked mildly, and something in his voice was slightly unnerving -- slightly too calm for the subject matter at hand.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, somewhat tactlessly. “Anything.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said, and in that instant, he stepped to the side, and I saw a doll on the shelf behind him which had not been there the day before.

It looked an awful lot like Rachel.

***

That night, I had the dream again, only this time I was haunted by two faceless tormentors. When the dream reached its bloody crescendo and their identities were at last revealed, the first was still Sarah, but now she was joined by Rachel.

I woke again in cold sweat, and in that liminality between sleep and wakefulness a voice whispered very close to my ear,

“You have seen the old man’s hex

And seen them seeing with stolen eyes

Watch out, for Sarah is next”

A strangled cry escaped my lips, and once again, my wife soothed me in the gray light of dawn as I gently shook in her arms.

The moment passed, but its reliquiae troubled me throughout the day.

At the office, buried in paper and memoranda, this strange blend of terror and tedium would not entirely lift from my heart. More than once, I called Sarah’s school to check in on her, and received the same response from the secretary on the other end of the line each time, albeit in an increasingly frustrated tone. She was fine.

She was fine.

I repeated it as a mantra throughout the afternoon.

But, nothing could quell the beating of my heart when the news broke that Rachel had been found wandering the old woods just at the edge of town. Once again, I joined the throng of people insisting on seeing her in the hospital, for she too was afflicted by a disorder of recondite origin.

Security was expecting this response, but was once again unable to restrain us, and when we burst into Rachel’s room, what I saw there was, in the depths of my heart, not at all surprising.

Still, that eyeless head sent convulsions down my spine as it turned to face us, and that same, sickening gasping echoed repeatedly in the silence left by the mob’s riveted attention.

***

When I came home, Sarah was not there. My wife told me that she had probably just gone off with some friends and had forgotten to tell me, but I knew better. And, as the hours wore on, panic rose within my chest, and the police were involved, but there was little they could do for me.

For what good are terrestrial agents against forces of occult darkness?

But, as I spoke in robotic tones to the joyless Sergeant assigned our case, it occurred to me that Sarah’s doll was no longer in its place by the table. When we were done, I excused myself to go look for it, but could find it nowhere.

All at once, the manifold shards of this broken mirror pieced themselves together, and I saw that there was at their center, had always been at their center, one place and one man.

The police were powerless to pursue this line of inquiry of course, wrapped up, as it was, with supranatural planes of reality.

It was time to pay another visit to Seldon’s Playroom.

***

When I arrived there, and demanded entry, I was surprised to find the door opened by the man himself as he waved me inside.

“Where the fuck is she?!” I roared at him, expecting some kind of evasion. But, I got none, even as I grabbed his jacket between my fingers and shoved him against the wall.

“Oh, here and there,” he chuckled.

I shoved him still harder.

“I will kill you, old man!” I shouted, but he merely chuckled again.

“No, I don’t think you will,” he said, and, with a flick of his wrist, propelled me across the room and into the wall. I collapsed, and he lifted me with unnatural strength and carried me to a back room.

“If you want to see so badly, I will not deny you,” he told me, and opened its door with another flick of his wrist.

Within that room were rows and rows of dolls, most of them blank, but some with fully realized faces. Sarah sat in the middle of the room, and was experiencing something which I cannot describe properly. A curious distortion surrounded the front of her head and, like a kind of vacuum of light, seemed to be pulling at her face with tendrils of fiery gold.

“Here she is, my good man,” he said, propelling me forward once again, so that I sat beside her.

“What the fuck are you doing to her?” I asked, tears streaming down my face.

“Nothing she didn’t ask for -- nothing she doesn’t want.”

“What?”

“Ask her -- go on.”

At that instant, a little sound escaped her lips.

“More…”

“What is happening to her?” I yelled.

“She is being transubstantiated, to borrow a religious term,” Seldon replied. “Faceless she will be, and faceless she shall remain, forever seeing without eyes, and breathing without lungs. It will be a kind of ecstatic agony -- a union of pleasure and pain, beyond time and all imagining.”

“Let her go,” I sobbed, but Seldon was reaching his own sort of ecstasy.

“She will become perfect. Without those horrible charms unique to her kind. And, Daniel, my good man, you shall have to join her, I’m afraid. An adult has never joined my collection, not here and not in the innumerable places and times I have set up this little shop. But my work is too important to risk your interference, and so, we embark on a new journey now, a new sort of playtime.”

And then he raised his hand and spoke a word I cannot reproduce, bringing that terrible light onto my face as well, and bringing me into that realm into which he had trapped my daughter, and innumerable children through the ages.

I feel it beginning, just as he said. I feel myself gaining eyeless sight and moving motionless hands. I feel the joyous rigidity of my doll-like limbs beginning to take shape.

Most of all, I can hear my own lungless gasps as I drown in oceans of ecstatic pain -- a prisoner of this half-death which fills my chest with fire and rapture.

And, imbued with that power often granted the dreamer, I know implicitly that this fate to which I and my daughter are now sentenced -- the ecstatic agony of Seldon’s faceless dolls -- shall not end for millenia to come.

Nor would I want it to.

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sending-the-message · 7 years

Text

Dreams are a Two-Way Window by TobiasWade

Infinity captured in an hourglass, turn it over and it begins again. That's what dreams are to me. I always romanticized dreams as a window into innumerable secret worlds and forbidden fantasies. It wasn't until I began lucid dreaming that I realized everytime I look out through the window, something else is looking back at me.

The concept of lucid dreaming fascinated me since I first learned about it in my psychology class. I couldn't even believe it was a real phenomenon at first; it seems more like a super power to me.

To create any world or situation with such vivid detail that I become God of my own personal universe. That must be too good to be true, but there it was. Printed clearly in my psychology textbook: a guide how to induce lucid dreams. I even made a photocopy in the library to hang above my bed as a constant reminder to follow these steps until I mastered the elusive and subtle art.

Step One: Reality Checks The textbook recommended I try to push a finger through my opposite hand at least ten times a day. This will habituate the motion and make it more likely for it to occur in my dreams. When I try the check in a dream, the finger is supposed to pass straight through my hand and prove it isn't real. The self-awareness that I'm dreaming is what triggers lucidity.

Step Two: Set an Early Alarm I set it for 2 hours earlier than I usually wake up. When the alarm sounded, my goal is to turn it off without opening my eyes to make the next transition smoother. This technique is called "wake induced lucid dreaming".

Step Three: Mindfulness After that I have to try and stay mentally awake while I let the rest of my body go back to sleep. This is known as sleep paralysis because my mind will be awake in a frozen body. It occurs because I've interrupted REM sleep where the dreams occur, prompting the body to return there as fast as possible.

It took a few days of practice before things started to click. At first I kept accidentally falling back asleep after my alarm rang. Soon I was able to maintain concentration, but then I started to see some basic colors and shapes, and I got so excited that I fully woke up. The longer I persisted though, the more real the images became.

Shapes morphed into forms and the dappled specks of light grew and twisted into rich tapestries of color. Sometimes it felt like an ordinary dream, but as I continued to practice I learned to prolong my focus until the imagery fully matured.

Less than a week had passed before I was reliably alert enough to perform my reality checks, and after that came absolute freedom. I began with enacting idle sexual fantasies, but the sheer possibility of exploration made it difficult for me to maintain attention on any one creation for long. My favorite dream to spin was where I stood in a dark room with a paint brush that transformed everything it touched. Mountains ripped through the ground and soared at my command, and a single stroke on my eternal canvas brought flocks of birds into flight. Crystalline caverns, riding dragons, alien encounters, and the entire cosmos stitched onto the back of my hand; I raced through my dreams with insatiable wonder and boundless delight.

And I kept getting better too. I invented a dozen more reality checks involving clocks, mirrors, counting fingers - anything to ensure I would always find a way to become aware. My worlds became more intricate, and I was able to cast distinct characters and plots to entertain me. It's not like this was the only thing going on in my life, but it was the best, and every night I couldn't wait to uncover the latest treasure in my mind.

That is, until I discovered I was being watched anyway. As my awareness became more defined I grew cognizant to certain elements in my dream which remained stubbornly beyond my control. It started off as a vague uneasiness which settled upon dreams like a gathering dusk of the spirit. I couldn't make out anything specifically wrong, but I can only describe the feeling as though I was a character in someone else's dream. All I had to do was tear down my canvas and begin again in a new dream though, and the feeling would be gone...

For a little while anyway. Each successive escape solidified the presence in my mind, and like an intrusive guilty thought it penetrated my next dream. I built castles only to find eyes I never conceived of watching me from cracks in the stone. A flight through the air went sour as the sun turned to watch my aerial maneuvers. On to an undersea adventure, but my paranoia amplified as an eel followed me relentlessly through the water. Reality checks confirmed my dream, but I couldn't banish these watchers. I could only hope to lose them by starting again, although each time they found me swifter than before.

I became so unnerved that I forced myself to wake up. I found myself in a cold sweat, panting in the cool morning air. The first step of my morning ritual was now a full range of reality checks. I allowed myself to relax as I passed each one. Just a bad dream, I told myself. I swatted the fly away which snuck in during the night and prepared myself for just another ordinary day. But once they've found you, the watchers will never let go.

I felt anxious all day; a source-less, gnawing feeling that made me keep checking over my shoulder. I second-guessed the motives of everyone who turned to look at me, and when my psychology professor asked me a question in class I straight-up froze. I had to try and push my finger through my palm, right in front of everyone, just to make sure. The warm pressure of skin against skin snapped me back to reality and I was able to mumble a cohesive enough answer for him to turn away. But if I wasn't dreaming, then why did his eyes swim through his skin so that they continued watching me after he had turned? Even with his back to me, I could still see them peeking out through his shaggy grey hair.

Growing awareness works the same way in this world as it does in dreams. As soon as I became aware of one discrepancy, I began to notice them all. The same fly which had been following me all day continued dancing orbits above my head. Passing gazes lingered on me longer than they used to, and always, always the eyes would return in the most unlikely places.

A dropped notebook on the floor opened to perfect sketch of an eye looking at me. A sip of coffee left the fleeting imprint of something staring at me from the foam. From knots in the trees to chips in the sidewalk, everything was an eye and all of them were directed at me.

I don't know whether it was a relief or a fresh terror that waited for me at home. Stepping into the bathroom, my reflection had completely disappeared. That was the first reality check to fail all day. At least if I was still dreaming then it meant I wasn't going crazy...

I couldn't will myself to wake up anymore though, no more than I could will myself not to see through open eyes. I tried throwing myself into bed, tossing fitfully until I at last slipped into an uneasy slumber. I was hoping that falling asleep in a dream would be enough to make me wake up for real, but it only threw me into a fresh absurdity of dreams that even my awareness could not tame.

Ghastly specters of thought whirled through a mind so saturated with fear that I lost track of right from left; of reality and fabrication. Lips began to accompany the eyes in more varied and tortured forms than my waking imagination could conjure. Faces pressed in around me as though struggling to break free from the suffocating cloth that my dream enveloped them in. More than being watched, I was terrified that they would start to speak to me. I don't know why, but just as I had bottled the divine spark of creation, I knew they now dreamed of me and that I would be slave to their slightest utterance.

Faster I spun, willing myself to wake but holding back for the horror of what I might find there. Through the dreams I raced, new ones forming before the searing lights of the last had even faded from my vision. Worlds collided together into maddening abstraction as men with fish-heads rode on horses across the clouds with lances of lightning. Through the clouds the faces pressed, withered lips peeling back to laugh and grunting in mockery of human speech. Endless possibilities are a double-edged sword. An eternity in Heaven is not the same length as an eternity in Hell.

At least now I know why they're watching. They're looking for a way out, just like you're looking for a way in. They've been doing this for much longer than you have, and whatever trick you think you know, you can count on them knowing it too. I know because for as long as I practiced and prepared myself while awake, I've spent many times over learning from the watchers in my sleep.

I'm awake now. For real this time (I think), although I run through my list of reality checks so compulsively that my palm is bloody and raw where the finger keeps pressing in. This isn't a warning against lucid dreaming though, however it may sound. I've seen how shrewdly the watchers hide, and know they were watching me long before I became aware of their existence. They might not reveal themselves to you before you become lucid, but that only means you can't protect yourself from them until it's too late.

Dreams are a two-way window, and if you aren't brave enough to stare down the face on the other side, then they can become a door as well.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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buzzandnova · 7 years

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This Man Thinks He's Being Haunted By A Ghost Child With A Dented Head

Illustrator Adam Ellis thinks he is being haunted by a murderous ghost. And after reading his Twitter thread about it, you might end up agreeing with him.

So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he’s trying to kill me. (thread)