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guyawks · 1 year

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Karen’s Diner

Karen’s Diner: Where our burgers are mean and our staff are meaner!

“Are you fuckin morons gonna stand there gawking at our sign all day?!”

The young couple, having just wandered into the near-empty diner from the highway outside, flinch at my rude outburst—before descending into giggles.

“See, Sarah, I told you we should eat here!” says the man excitedly to his partner. “This waiter is hilarious!”

“Oi, dickhead!” I bark, thrusting menus into his chest. “Go sit in that booth and shut the fuck up.”

Exchanging amused looks, the pair take a seat at said booth while other waiters flip them off from across the diner. I take the opportunity to eavesdrop by aggressively wiping the table beside them.

“So, the whole gimmick is that the staff are nasty to us?” asks the woman sceptically. “How dumb, Chris. And what’s a ‘Karen’?”

“You know—abrasive, selfish, entitled assholes. Karens. Anyway, novelty aside, the menu looks great! All our favourite meals are on it.”

“Gonna order something, dipshits?” interrupts a scowling waitress with a notepad.

Thirty minutes later, we bring their food out. Setting the plates on their table, I elbow a soda glass straight into the woman’s lap. She yelps as freezing ice drenches her clothes.

“Oops, clumsy me” I sneer, eating a fry off her club sandwich.

“Hey! What the hell?!” the man shouts, flabbergasted.

“So soweee” mocks the waitress, spitting in his spaghetti.

“Okay, this is going too far...” the woman murmurs. But it’s far too late for them to stop it.

At once, the waitstaff begin pelting the couple with glassware. Terrified, the pair’s complaints become shrieks as sharp projectiles lacerate their skin.

“Help! I want the manager!” screams the bleeding man, attempting to leave the booth. In response, I slam his head into his plate, splitting open his cheek.

Joining in the carnage, my fellow waitress uses a steak knife to slash chunks of hair from the screaming woman’s scalp.

“You can’t treat us like this!” they sob defeatedly. “We’re patrons!”

Us “waiters” just turn to each other and laugh.

That’s where they’re wrong. They’re no customers.

They’re death row inmates.

Back in the dark days, every prisoner was entitled to a last meal of their choosing—no matter how undeserving. Meanwhile, the cost of executing killers kept going up. Eventually, government officials had an idea.

Why not kill two birds with one stone?

Grab death row inmates, wipe their memories, drop them at a diner across from the prison, serve them their last meals, have the victims’ family members perform as malicious servers and…execute monsters.

And so Karen’s Diner was born—named after the last child to be savaged by criminals before society stepped up its justice system.

“This is for my daughter” I seethe, inching towards the maimed, memory-wiped convicts in the booth. ”The girl you killed.”

“This is for Karen.”

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hughjidiot · 2 years

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That Time of the Month

(Content Warning: Blood)

“Oh fuck.”

The sound of Stephanie’s voice roused me from my slumber. I tentatively opened my eyes, blinking against the sunlight streaming in from where the blackout curtains had slightly parted. As the world came into focus I turned to see my wife sitting up in bed with her hand over her eyes.

“Mrm, what’s wrong honey?” I muttered.

Stephanie just groaned and shook her head.

I shifted again and my leg brushed against something wet and sticky. The feeling ignited a light of clarity that cut through the fog in my half-asleep brain, and I remembered just what today was.

“Oh. That time of the month again, huh?”

Stephanie nodded, eyes still covered. “Yup. It’s really bad this time.“

Aw come on,” I said as I sat up. “I’m sure it’s not that-”

I froze at the sight of the massive crimson stain on the blankets, the blood splattered across Stephanie’s nude form.

“Oh. Yeah that’s… pretty bad.”

Stephanie flushed, grimacing. “This is so embarrassing…”

I smiled and took my wife’s hand with my own. She slowly lowered her other hand to look at me with those soft blue eyes. God I could just get lost in those sapphire orbs.

“Hey, it’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before,” I said softly. “Go ahead and hit the showers while I get all this loaded in the wash. Then how ‘bout I make some of my award-winning chocolate-chip pancakes?”

Stephanie smiled sweetly. “Aw no fair, I’m trying to sulk over here. You know I can’t resist your cooking.”

“Well yeah, why else would you have married me? We both know it wasn’t for my looks or personality.”

Stephanie giggled, that high-pitched silver bell sound that was music to my ears.

“Sometimes I can’t believe I wound up with a guy like you,” she said, giving me a peck on the cheek.

With that Stephanie hopped out of bed, making her way towards the door leading to the master bedroom’s attached bathroom. I swung my legs out over the opposite side of the bed, noticing the trail of blood leading out the door and the deep scratches in the carpet. I furrowed my brow as I followed the mess, wondering if…

Yup. Down the hallway I spotted shredded remains in the living room, little more than a pile of mincemeat. A severed head with familiar grey hair lay next to the upturned coffee table. I nudged it with my foot, saw the blood-spattered face frozen in terror, and found myself grinning.

“Good news sweetie!” I called out. “Looks like you got old Jim Foster this time around!”

From down the hall and over the hum of a running shower I heard Stephanie laugh. “For real? Great, I hated that son of a bitch!”

I glanced around the living room, taking in the mangled body, dried blood and smashed furniture. Yup, looks like I had a full day of cleaning in store for me.

But hey, that's married life for you.

#hugh jidiot's original fiction #cw blood #horror #short scary story #horror story

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prettycoolducks · 1 year

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Fav father daughter duo ✨️❄️

#art #resident evil 8 #resident evil #re8 #resident evil village #i think they should've done a face reveal for Ethan in the dlc btw #i know we already know what his face looks like but i feel like story wise it would've made sense for him to be able to show his face #in the mold dimension. like. he's already dead. his things over #he has sparkle powers now he's not fucked up anymore #kind of #anyway #ethan winters #rose winters #the dlc felt a bit short but like. its a dlc. so is to be expected #i wish we got more rose content tho. i hope we do get more rose content #im excited for whatever comes next either way though #i like that they let rose be a little gross and scary like her dad. they're both sooo stupid too <3 #i also LOVE that Ethan has sparkle powers in the afterlife.or well. mold. memory. whatever #I'm just imagining all the lords in the mold being like. damn well i guess this isn't so bad. then miranda shows up #and heisenburg is like fuck! and then Ethan shows up and everyone is like fuck!!#like what do they do? kill eachother again? they're already dead #i guess miranda like. killed all the other lords kinda and used them to make the evil duke?? unless i completely misread her notes #I'm gonna go check. then I'm gonna stop typing whole paragraphs in the tags. see ya #art of duck

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b4kuch1n · 7 months

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crumbs in your bed

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#bakuspecial #comic #horror #cw: child abuse #cw: body horror #ask to tag #hi! hello. this is basically just a goosebump story I think. or a scary stories to tell in the dark entry #that's kinda what I aim for? along with the good ol vibe of fuan no tane #and also the like. Thing in east asian art where they make the main character a generic white person and then #every other thing about the setting is deeply recogniseably common asian shit lmao #that's entertainment for me. this came about extremely haphazardly... its why the first two pages look nothing like #the rest of it fsdjfhdsjhf. I slammed those out at a cafe like two days ago #went into this one no plan outside of a general sense of direction #I dont think Ive ever actually designed a single character in any of the short horror comics I did. like either its me or #I made someone up as I went. genuinely didnt know what the character'd look like until I sketched em #and then I kept referencing previous panels to draw em. dont know if I recommend this method #mmmm on reread not super sure if the sound effect of the bed leaving the room is clear enough... oh well there are other comics #been writing a lot about food and places recently Ive found out. oh yeah dyou know whats funny #I watched a wayner highlight vid of the kingdom heart charity stream today (I do not know anything about kingdom heart) and realized #how much of kingdom heart (at least the first one) is about like. places.#which is like. good job baku great deep read there isn't kingdom heart literally behind a door. arent there doors all over the place.#isnt the biggest symbol from that game taht EVERYONE knows about the KEYblade. for locks on door #fskdjfhdj but yeah its just. very cool to me that that game really does have iconic recogniseable sites. like the scenes are all tied to #where they happen at. and the climactic battle happens in a black void around a door. its good #good story about leaving ur home after ur friends aren't there anymore and being changed so much by what you go through that #you can no longer call where you started at home anymore. I am being conned by the music #anyways. yeah I go sleep now. powered thru the last 4 pages of this so its done and out there. hope my bed will not do this #have a good night lads! be careful of bugs

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factoryfileshorrorseries · 8 days

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Factory Files Vol. 3 - Infected Within: Breached Archives . . . Pt. 3

[ DO NOT REPOST, ALL ART & CONCEPTS WERE MADE BY ME ]

Illustration Time of Pt’s 1-5: Pending . . .

Characters Featured (Within Story): Luna (Jacobs) Anderson, Christian Anderson, All Glamrock Animatronics (& Foxy), Gregory, Vanny/Vanessa, Burntrap, Michael Afton, Mr. Fazbear, Bonnie Bro, Carrie & Cami Parks, Lacie Brown, Harper & Hadley Palmer, Lorelei Baker, “Wandering Adventure” Animatronics, Rocky, Aster, Wen Mèng Yáo, Wen Elijah, Dax Green

Fandom: Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach

Fanfic Title: “FF Vol. 3 - IW: BA ”

Coming Soon . . .

[ This is a FNaF’s / PoppyPlaytime / My Friendly Neiborhood AU, in no way is this canon to any of the OG storylines. ]

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have-you-read-this-short-fiction · 4 months

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#short story collection #short story collections #scary stories to tell in the dark #alvin schwartz #20th century literature #english language literature #american literature #have you read this short fiction?#book polls #completed polls

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see-arcane · 2 years

Link

Since we’ve finally got Dracula getting delivered by the doomed FedEx of the Sea, it’s worth mentioning that enough goes down in this small chunk of the book that they’re making a movie out of it next year ^^^

#it's by the same guy who did The Autopsy of Jane Doe #and Scary Stories to Tell and the Dark #and Trollhunter #so I'm cautiously optimistic #there really is a lot to play with in-between the Captain's short log entries #ready to see how they play with the concept #dracula #the demeter #dracula daily #The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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spookcataloger · 3 days

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Vietnam Tunnel Rat Stories (2020)

#/x/ 4chan #greentext #armyanon #caverns #innajungle #short stories #creature stories #dangerous animals #humanoids #unidentified creature #scary #spiders #gnomes #weird

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ask-the-totally-real-peppino · 1 year

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It doesn’t matter wether it was nice to look at or not, you’re our friend! Il nostro amico! You did so good calming back down… and for the record, it’s okay if you get worried and fearful when you see Short Peppino. No shame in it at all.

"I... Did good- Did good-!"

"-Grazie grazie-"

"Em ot... Ecin os... Lla era uoy..."

"Sdneirf... Uoy rof yrt lliw... Yracs si ti fi neve... Onippep trohs ot klat ot... Yrt lliw I..."

"Ereh morf -'snork mimi'- og Onippep trohs raeh nac I... Tsrif peels lliw I tub..."

#pizza tower #fake peppino #translation: “You are all... So nice... To me...”#“I will try... To talk to short Peppino... Even if it is scary... Will try for you... Friends...”#“But I will sleep first... I can hear short Peppino go 'snork mimi' from here...”#there's the happy boi again!#tired but happy #also I couldn't resist the idea of his apron ribbons being a waggy little tail any longer #so it is canon now #I will have to find the name of who came up with it bc I definitely saw it somewhere else #story post

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kjudgemental · 3 months

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'I heard one cry in the night, and I heard one laugh afterwards. If I cannot forget that, I shall not be able to sleep again.'

'Count Magnus', by M. R. James (1904)

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nathaluna · 11 months

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🪰🪰🪰

fungi.

#aesthetic #dark aesthetic #dark poetry #dark academia #horror #scary stories #scary signs #scary #scary shit #short poem #short poetry #short story #poetry #horror poetry #darkpoetsociety #dark poem #wild fungi #alternative

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twistedmindtales · 5 months

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The Stench

She found herself standing at the threshold of what she had hoped would be a new beginning. Kate’s new apartment, nestled in an older part of town, was a bit rundown but held a quaint charm. When she stepped inside, she first noticed the dull peeling paint. The wooden floors creaked with every step, and the windows let in more draft than light, but to Kate, it was a blank canvas, a chance to build something anew and start over.

As she moved in, the apartment's peculiar familiarity offered her a flicker of hope, a feeling she hadn't felt in a long time. She had become depressed over the past few years due to her recent failed relationship and began pouring her energy into fixing up her home, channeling her emotions into every stroke of paint and every nail she hammered. The living room, once draped in faded wallpaper, came alive with warm hues of yellow and cream. She polished the wooden floors until they shined, reflecting the newfound light in her life.

Amidst the apartment’s renewal, a subtle, peculiar smell began to make its presence known. At first, it was barely noticeable, a fleeting whiff that Kate would catch as she moved from room to room. She thought little of it, assuming it was just a quirk of the old building. Maybe it was the mustiness of aged wood or a lingering scent from a previous tenant. It was easy to dismiss, lost in the aroma of fresh paint and cleaning products.

As days passed, the smell began to evolve. It was no longer a mere background note; it became a persistent, underlying stench that seemed to grow stronger with each passing day. Sometimes it was a faint, putrid scent in the morning, like a whisper of something rotten hidden beneath the surface. Other times, it would catch her off guard in the evening, a sudden gust of foul air when she opened a closet or passed through the living area.

Kate tried to combat it with scented candles and air fresheners, but they only masked the odor temporarily. She cleaned obsessively, scrubbing every inch of the apartment, hoping to eradicate the source. But the smell persisted, growing bolder, more oppressive. It started seeping into her newly hung curtains and the upholstery of her refurbished furniture, an unwelcome intruder in her sanctuary.

The stench became a constant companion, a reminder that not all was well in her idyllic retreat. It hung heavy in the air, a tangible presence that seemed to watch her as she moved through her daily routines. What once were sporadic whiffs had now become a suffocating cloak.

Determined to uncover the source of the smell, Kate examined each room, starting with the living room where she had first noticed the smell. She moved furniture, looking for any hidden mold or forgotten trash that might be causing the odor. She cleaned the carpets and drapes, hoping to wash away the scent, but it clung stubbornly to the fabric.

In the kitchen, she scoured every cabinet and appliance, checking for spoiled food or a dead rodent perhaps trapped behind the refrigerator. She poured bleach down all of the drains and kept all of the windows open, even at night, but her efforts yielded nothing. With each unsuccessful attempt the stench seemed to mock her, growing stronger, more pervasive.

Her search eventually led her to a small, unnoticed storage area above the furnace. It was a cramped, shadowy space, easily overlooked. With a sense of foreboding, she pried open the locked door, steeling herself for what she might find.

The sight that greeted her was something out of a nightmare. In the dim light, she could make out the form of a human body, grotesquely decomposed. The shock of the discovery sent a jolt through her. Once she caught her breath and gained her composure, Kate leaned in closer to take a look at the body which revealed features twisted in an expression of horror, and eerily reminiscent of her own.

Her eyes began adjusting to the dim light and a horrifying realization dawned on her. The body, though decayed, bore an uncanny resemblance to her. The face that stared back at her was her own. It was a ghastly version of herself, but unmistakably hers. The eyes, though lifeless, seemed to hold a mirror to her soul. In that moment, time stood still, and a chilling silence enveloped the room.

The air held a heavy sense of solemnity as the building superintendent led a group of police officers into Kate's apartment. The visit was a grim affair, precipitated by a harrowing confession that had recently come to light. In a moment of conscience-stricken turmoil, Kate's ex-boyfriend had confessed to her murder, revealing details that had eluded everyone until now.

With measured movements, the officers opened the small storage area. There, amidst the darkness and the now-overpowering stench, lay Kate's mortal remains. The sight was a stark reminder of the brutality she had faced, a jarring contrast to the memories of the vibrant, hopeful woman she once was.

#horror #short story #apartment #girl #depressed #stench #scary #scifi #weird #weirdcore #strange #fiction

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jovialtorchlight · 6 months

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The Cursed Halls of Carcosa

By Jonny Bolduc

If you are reading this letter, you want to know about Carcosa? You want to know about the gate? You want to know about the fate of doomed travelers ambling in the dim halls? I can oblige the regaling of the tale.

There were three of us. George Irish, a strong, competent man of about fifty with grayed hair and a long red beard. Emily Wellspring, a spry, energetic woman who caused a stir in gentle society after she worked for a few nights as the only female ditch digger in London. That did not last long. Now, she roamed around the city, taking whatever work she could find.

What fools we were. Of course, our instructions were clear, with little room for mistakes. Traverse the first few halls of the catacombs, marking the walls with charcoal etchings as we turned.

Later, as I followed George close enough to breath upon his neck, desperately latching to the dim light of the lantern like a moth to a flame, I cursed the day I signed the contract obligating me to undertake this wretched endeavor. But in the beginning, it was sold well to me. Let me take you to the start of this descent.

A week ago, Reginald Garrish, a rotund man dressed in a fine black coat, who claimed to be employed by Howard Black, Esquire treated me to a lavish night of wine and merriment, and in the stupor of overindulgence, obliged me to scrawl a drunken signature and accept a small pouch of 40 shillings, binding me to the task of diving into the uncharted subterranean catacombs beneath Black’s sprawling estate in search of his missing boy, Barnaby.

"The only trace we've got," Reginald said halfway through the raucous evening, his voice slipping from the faux haughty accent he so clearly rehearsed and falling into a workyard rasp, "is this little trumpet he used to toot about. Discovered it in the mausoleum, near the stairs that take you down to them crypts."

And so, when we first took the crumbling stone depths down, away from the light of the midmorning, we saw plenty of signs that the boy had been wandering; a half eaten bonbon, wrappers; a half consumed cigar and some spent matches the boy had stolen from some adult. The hall continued straight, long, descending down further and further into the earth, growing colder and dimmer.

“Just stay close to me,” George uttered earlier in the morning as we donned cloaks and filled our canteens from the well. “We won’t be long in the labyrinth. We are merely scouting.”

George, of course, took the lead of the procession.

“We must have walked one thousand steps,” George said about an hour into our journey. “How far down do these depths reach?”

A step later, and the dimming light revealed the end to the steps. A carved hallway in the stone, branching off in two directions. On the descent, the sides of the crypt had been bare and smooth; now, at the landing, our lanterns illuminated carved nooks in the walls, on which rested the desiccated remains of ancient corpses, a body on either side, dusty skeletons resting with arms folded. One skeleton in once ornate, now moth-eaten silks of red, the other clad in yellow. A peaceful rest, it seemed then.

George stopped to ponder at the split of the catacomb. There was no reason or clear danger at this intersection; we of course knew that this crypt would be full of the dead. But something inside of me screamed at the thought of pausing too long, some internal voice protested, urging me to move, to keep moving, and never to stop.

I glanced behind. In the few hours I knew her, Emily never really stopped moving; she was animated by some internal engine, constantly bouncing or fidgeting. Now, though, she seemed still, ridgid even. A slight movement caught my peripheral vision; I swung my head around to the corpse in yellow rags. Of course, it hadn’t moved.

Of course.

After a moment, George decided to take the corridor on the left. The light was dim, and staring off into the hall, George thought he could see some article of clothing strewn on the ground about twenty feet out. George limped, dragging his foot as if injured, though I knew better. I had known George in passing; a former night-guard upended from his duty by a lingering knee injury who often took unscrupulous jobs or favors. I had also heard pubside murmerings that George faked his injured knee to avoid his contracted duties. And for the first thousand steps, he had no limp or wavering steps. Now, though, he trembled as he walked, as if his imagined injuries were realized.

And so we walked, and the clump of clothing was revealed to be a shadow cast upon the sides of the catacombs. Rather than preserved bodies, resting upon the carved tables were piles of bones, as if remains had been indiscriminately dumped on the shelves of the catacombs. After a few minutes, George stopped suddenly, and plunged his arms into a bone pile, emerging with a skull.

I had no real time to protest this, though I would have made it clear that I did not think it wise. Some dread, some superstition was building in my stomach. George emerged with a skull. Taking charcoal from his bag, he marked large “X” on the cranium of the dusty skull, and set it gently down on the cool floor of the catacombs.

“There,” he grunted, “We’ll be able to find our way back.”

Neither Emily nor I spoke. We kept walking. The light grew dimmer, and dimmer still.

Over the next hour, George pulled three more skulls, marking them with charcoal.

Emily, silent, trailed the two of us. I heard a clatter; turning on my heels I saw Emily, sprawled out on the floor.

“Damn,” she muttered, hoisting herself up. As she regained her standing, we saw the cause of her stumbling; a humerus, knocked from the shelves, strewn across the narrow hall. I noticed that she was not holding her lantern.

“Oh,” she said, quietly, staring at the catacomb beside her. Somehow, as she fell, the lantern sailed from her hand onto the shelves, and was now covered by loose bone.

She and myself stared at the lantern. Some voice inside of me begged, pleaded in the whimper of a child not to reach into and graze my hands upon the bone. Emily likewise stood motionless, blue eyes wide. With hands trembling, she reached into the pit of bone and pulled up her lantern.

“George,” she whispered, ��swing the light this way.”

As George did so, the fire cast light upon Emily’s hand, holding the lantern. She let out a high and cutting scream, and I let out a grunt of terror as the light revealed the disgusting truth.

I was as if Emily had stuck her hand into a fire; her flesh bubbling with pus, red, skin peeled. George came close, and hurriedly wet a rag from his small leather pack, holding it to Emily’s skin as her lantern clanged upon the stone floor.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Emily whispered, frantically, as if enemies were listening in on her words. “Tell me, why doesn’t it hurt?”

“Shock, perhaps,” George muttered as he wrapped her hand. “It’s a bad burn. Something must have happened with the lantern’s fuel.”

“We need to turn around,” I declared. “We need to get her to a doctor.”

As if in reply, a scream, muffled by distance, rang out. The scream of a child. Emily jerked her hand from George, and cradled it, wincing, as if the scream somehow cut her, or at least opened her mind to the pain of her burns.

“God, it hurts!” she whispered into the darkness. George had already turned around and started to hurriedly amble towards the sound.

“George!” I said. “She needs a doctor!”

“Was that not the boy?” George said, not turning around. ”Her burn, though grotesque, will be fine. The boy could be in danger.”

We hurried after him, and I realized later, when the terror latched onto us like an engorged tick, that Emily had left her lantern behind.

We walked, in a tight procession, George with his lantern held high to illuminate us all. The dark tunnel had not again diverged into an intersection, but still, three or four times, George pulled a skull from the pile to mark it with charcoal. It seemed as if another hour passed, walking through the long, dark halls.

Eventually, I grew concerned. I heard Emily’s footsteps behind me, and I could sense that she was following close behind, but the young woman who had talked vigorously before the descent, teeming with adventure and life had uttered only a few fleeting words since descending into this abominable crypt.

“Emily,” I whispered, half turned to remain close to George, and to also read her face–which was, as I saw, empty, dreamlike, as if she were sleepwalking. “Do you still feel no pain?”

She nodded, her mouth agape. She cracked a smile.

“I feel wonderful,” she said, her words slow and slurred. “We plod along the dark path towards the city on stilts.”

“George,” I whispered, low, teeming with intensity. George had to know that the pain of the burn, in tandem with the oppressive darkness of the crypt, was settling into Emily’s mind. “We've had no sign of the boy for over an hour. We need to turn around.”

George swung around, the lantern light illuminating his pale, narrow face and unkempt beard, lips pressed together, grinding his teeth, eyes sunk back deep into the socket.

“That which I have seen on this dreaded path set deep into my consciousness,” he started, slowly, as if a furnace kicking on after a season of sleep. “I heard the slicing whispers the dark ahead, speaking in ancient and vulgar tongue about the dread path. I have seen purple shadows with proportions impossible cast upon the dark stone of the crypt wall. I have seen those bones cast upon the stone of the earth and ground to dust. We cannot turn back. Carcosa calls.”

My stomach dipped. Handling one person driven to madness would be an impossible task; guiding two panicked souls from darkness to light seemed ruinous. We walked in silence, until George finally stopped.

“Companions,” George uttered, his dry voice crackling like a fire in the dark. “Do not falter from the light of my lantern, for these corridors seem..” His voice trailed, swallowed by the heavy dark.

I looked past him. He was right. Previously, the catacombs had been wide enough for two to walk side by side. The hall narrowed, and instead of remains strewn indiscriminately in piles, ancient corpses stood straight up, mounted into chiseled indents in the walls, posed with ceremonial swords and carvings.

“George,” I whispered, “How much oil is left in the lantern?”

George turned to me, lips stretched, yellowed teeth exposed, locked into a grimace of pain. With one hand, George gripped my shoulders; in surprise, I tried to throw him off. His other hand dropped the lantern, clattering it on the floor; still it remained lit, casting a dim light upon the low stone ceiling of the tomb. The darkness was so oppressive, so consuming, so encompassing that it was if we were mosquitos encased in amber resin. As George pulled me in close, towards the cast light, I felt his impossibly tight grip on my shoulder. He pulled me so that we were practically nose to nose.

“It is too late for me, Jonathan,” he said. His breath reeked, as if his organs and guts were rotting; a tooth fell from his mouth and clattered on the floor next to the lantern. “For I have seen the rotting well of midnight and I have been drowned. I have seen the last hour of the world played out in the shadows upon these walls; I have seen the yellow robes tattered, rising up from the detritus of our ashen, burned cities. The river will flood the bank, and my bloated body will drift down a river of filth towards dread Carcosa.”

The side of George’s face was illuminated. It was sopping wet, streams of dark, oily liquid running down from the top of his head to his mouth . He cried out, blubbering, spitting up water, like someone was holding his face in a bucket. His clothes dripped onto the floor. A chunk of his red hair, dripping wet, coated with slime, plopped onto the floor. His skin bloated, inflated with drowning. A chunk of black, necrotic skin slopped off the arm that gripped me, landing on the floor with a slap. His shirt rapidly decayed, black mold lining the fabric, coated in discharge, clutch still firm on my arm.

“The river will flood the bank,” George cried, skin falling off in chunks, slapping against the cavern floor like a rainstorm of meat on a tin roof.

I was finally able to break free of his grip. As his skin fell from his legs, he fell face down into a pile of his own skin, and his movement ceased. I grabbed the lantern, and turned to Emily. She stood, swaying.

“Emily!” I shouted. “If you are present, if you can hear me, we must leave this cursed place!”

She did not respond. Gingerly stepping over the remains of George, I decided to see if I could move her arms like a puppet master. I wrapped them around my waist, and started walking, hoping that somewhere in her deepest consciousness she could decide to save herself. And she did. She walked along with me, her hands wrapped tightly around my waist, keeping my step.

Part of my panicked mind posited that it did not matter what way we chose to leave. Every turn, every step spelled doom. But it seemed as if we may stand a chance if we turned around the way we came. So in that way I walked, only for a few moments, before the lantern flickered and went out.

Curiously, it was that darkness that saved me. In the darkness, I could see no shadows cast upon the wall. I could not see the rusted gate swinging wide, leading to Carcosa. I walked, with Emily close behind, through the darkness, staying straight and true. We walked that way for a time, before I stepped on something that crunched beneath my boot like a plate.

“A charcoal skull,” I muttered. “We are on the right path.”

And so we continued. I hugged the walls, and every so often, I stepped on a skull in the darkness. With each skull, improbable hope rose up from a deep internal well. I thought that Emily and I would perhaps see the end of this cursed maze; and that hope became ecstasy when I realized that the hall had turned to steps.

“Not longer now, Emily,” I muttered. And climbing the steps in the black was difficult, and slow moving. But we rose, slowly. Eventually, light cast from the opening of the tomb illuminated us, however dim. And as if a cosmic puppet on a string, as soon as I saw that light, I tripped, and fell backwards, onto Emily.

But I did not feel the flesh of a human body when I fell. No, indeed, madness swells in me as I recall. I felt the crunch of bone. I rolled over, and a scream of fear escaped me. I glimpsed a skeletal face, mummified, clad in a crown of iron, twisted and bent in impossible angles; scrambling backwards, I saw the scalloped yellow robes that I now know belong to the King. Propelling myself backwards, the monster raised a feeble hand up at me.

Like a spider, I threw myself backwards, kicking away from it, eventually righting myself. I bounded up the steps, not looking behind, and as I threw myself out of the tomb, rolling upon the grass, seeing the sun peak through the gray clouds, I was not relieved. Instead, I thought only about dread Carcosa.

You may see me wandering these dark and dim streets, begging for alms. In my mind, I am still stuck in the tomb, clutched by the King in Yellow, dragged towards dread Carcosa. I never again heard mention of Reginald or Howard Black.

But if you look in my eyes and see ghostly shadows cast upon the iris, friend, know that George and Emily live in me, screaming, thrashing to escape the clutch of the King in Yellow and trying to leave the dread Carcosa, the city on stilts. They were claimed by the tomb. They were dragged through the gate and now are captives in the dreaded city of Carcosa.

And if you are reading this letter, know that I am meandering towards the crypt I emerged from seven years ago. Know that I am going to jump into the black oil and listlessly drift towards Carcosa. Know that I will descend back down into madness. I will become the voice of the King in Yellow. I will unleash his will upon this cursed and hanging earth.

#carcosa #scary story #short story #body horrow cw #horror #jonny bolduc

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