Buzz, buzz,
Ding!
You roll over in bed,
You open your eyes sleepily,
Your phone screen casting light onto your ceiling.
You are slightly annoyed at being woken up,
Who could be texting you at this hour?
You pick up your phone from your night stand,
You have 3 texts,
You unlock your phone to read them.
Your eyes widen to adjust to the bright light,
The first text reads
I know who you are.
Well.. that’s creepy,
But it’s probably just your friends playing a sick joke,
But you don’t recognize the number…
The second one reads
I know where you live
Well that’s even worse…
This is starting to creep you out.
You look at the number again just to make sure,
Nope.
You definitely don’t recognize the number.
Your phone vibrates in your hand,
A new text pops up,
It reads
Do you want to play a game with me?
A chill runs up your spine.
You sit alone in the dark,
Should you respond?
Should I ignore it?
Should I just go back to sleep?
You think back to all the horror movies you’ve seen.

They always just ignore creepy texts and go back to sleep, and once they fall asleep the killer sneaks into the room, because ya know, these people have never heard of locks. Or the killer steps out of the closet because they were texting from inside the house!

You decide to turn on your lamp,
It clicks on, dimly lighting up the corners of your room.
You pick up the homemade club you keep at your bedside.

What? You can’t blame a guy for being prepared… and a little paranoid. I watch a lot of horror movies and stay up late reading creepypastas, so sometimes I get a little creeped out...

You swing your feet over the side of the bed, club in hand.

Well... it’s not exactly a club… I made it out of an old ax handle I found in the shop. I just wrapped some blue tape around the end with the grove in it, (I also added a piece of duct tape on the end to make it look better) where the ax head used to be and vuala! A new club to make me feel safe. (and sometimes through up in the air and haphazardly try to juggle)

The handle of the club feeling comforting and familiar,
Fitting perfectly into your palm.
You silently walk over to your closet,
You swing the door open.
Luckily, there is no murderer waiting their for you.
Few! No murderer in the closet.
You feel a bit safer now.
But just to be extra safe you walk over a few steps and lock your bedroom door,
Just in case.

I usually leave the door unlocked when I sleep just in case I sleep through my alarm to get up and ready for school, so that someone could get in and tell you to get up.
Oh well, guess you’ll have to risk it tonight. But there is a certain sense of security I get when I lock the door.

You cross the small room and crawl back up into bed.
The club is sti in your hand,
You set it down on the blanket next to you.
The room is dead quiet.
Your phone vibrates.
You almost gump out of your skin!
You heart is racing.

Aaa! Oh my god! Oh… hah...huh…it’s just my phone. Oh…That scared me more than it should have, guess I’m a little jumpy.

You pick up your phone,
You have one text,
You sigh and put it down,
You don’t even want to look…
It’s just some sick joke…
But what if it’s not?...
Just as you decide you have to read the text your phone buzzes again.
You pick it up,
You now have two texts,
The first one reads:
The game begins now.
Great...just great…
The second one reads:
Pick up your phone! I know you are awake. I can see you. I can smell you to.
How?!... you are in shock.

How can they know I’m are awake? Well I guess it’s because they can see me?! Oh god… This has to be a joke. It has to. Smell? They can smell me? What does that even mean?

Your thoughts race. Trying desperately to find a rational solution, any solution but that… but you knew in the corner of your mind what it was.. It could only be it. You couldn’t believe it. You didn’t want to believe it...But you knew it was true.

No… It’s not possible, only it could know that… only it would say that. The only thing human or not that said that, was it. Your it. The thing I created that day. It’s not possible. I only wrote about it, it wasn’t real! It was just a scary story I wrote half for homework and half for ‘fun’. It was so long ago too (it was really only a year)… maybe it was just some crazy fan who read my story and was trying to freak me out...? But how did they get my number?
~~~~~~~~~~~~I             I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay let me start from the beginning…
~~~~~~~~~~~~I             I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, it was a regular Tuesday night and I was trying to get all my homework done for Thursday. I only had Literature and Writing because we only get science homework on weekends, and we had a Math test that day so we didn’t have any homework either. I had a History project due on the 17th but I only work on it during the weekend. I had to read chapters 25-28 and do pages 17-18 in the study guide, but that was okay. I had been having some trouble getting my school email to work but we had gotten it figured out that day so I could get to my other writer’s notebooks, (I was supposed to turn 5 of them in that day but I was locked out of the email with most of them on it so I printed the 4 I was and turned them in.) I was writing with this prompt of ‘Write a suspenseful story about a character who receives an anonymous text during the night.’ and I had gotten really into it but I didn’t have time to finish it in class so I decided to finish it and turn it in on Wednesday as my 5th writer’s notebook. I got really into it and creeped myself out while I was writing it and I also got really long...Oh well, that was fine.

    The story I started to write was about this boy (modeled off me) who received anonymous texts in the middle of the night and he realized when the thing said it could smell him that it was like the monster he had created a long time ago, and that it had been brought to life by him writing about it. (I got creeped out writing it because I was alone and ya know… I was writing about this monster that was brought to life but being written about? So yeah, I was sitting in my bed with my club and stuff writing about it. I felt almost like I was writing about my own future, like since I wrote about this boy and made up this story, somehow the real monster would be brought to life and come to get me too someday. It was like writing out my own future, my own doom. It made me feel weird, like I was creating an endless story inside a story… I had a weird thought, ‘what if someone someday will make up this story about a boy writing about a boy who was writing about a monster he brings to life by writing about it’? There for sealing their fate in the third layer of the story. But time went on and I soon forgot about it. Almost forgot that is…

    Until tonight. Until the day came when I received the exact same anonymous text as my character had received that day. I did the same things he did… that’s when I remembered when I had finished the story and handed it in, I thought, someday I will get the text, someday that will be me… But I also thought ‘oh that’s ridiculous! That’ll never happen, it’s just a story. But I knew in my heart, once my time was up, it would come for me too. I knew this the second my fingers touched the keys to write the story on my mom’s macbook late that Tuesday night… it was too late for me. Also that someday, someone else would write my story, and that later they would become part of this endless cycle of story within horror story. They will grow older and forget about it, maybe try to erase it, maybe stress for years and regret ever writing it, but they would never escape. Or maybe they would grow up and never forget, but they would live on. Maybe this is just a story? But maybe it’s not… This was and is a story that is as scary to write as it is to read… for my fate has been sealed. Do not let the same happen to you, not that you can help it. I even marked it on my calendar, October 25, 8:35pm. A year from the day I wrote the story, hoping nothing ever happened. But it did, today is the 25th of october...8:35 pm...on the dot…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So that’s what happened in the story you wrote, but what was going to happen next? To you? This was real life after all, not some scary story. Or was it? You wondered while you were writing the story, what if you are just a character completing another layer of the endless story? What if someone out there was writing about you writing about him? Anyway, in your story the monster fed off of the imaginative thinking paradox energy created when someone was able to comprehend and continue the endless horror story. This monster fed off of that energy and fear, and you are playing right into its hands.

You pull up your calendar, yep, today is the day.
You have it marked “Anonymous text story! date” It was short and easy to remember. In the ‘notes’ of the event it said: ‘Please be careful. <3 go back and read the story it’s on all your emails. -I’m sorry for this story… good luck and love from your past self. -Spencer, 10/25/16 8:35pm, Tuesday.”

You remember writing that,
You wish now you had just finished that prompt and turned it in when it was only one page long and not scary or involved or life threatening.
That you hadn’t kept pushing your brain to make the story better, scarier, longer,
But no.
You didn’t.
And it’s too late to take it back now.
You pick up your phone
You have one text,
It reads:
So I’m guessing you remember me by now? I can smell your fear in remembering me.
I can smell your heart rate rising. Delicious.
Oh no...it really is it.
Your phone buzzes  again.
You have one text,
It reads:
I’m also guessing you know what happens now? You wrote the story after all. You have written your chapter. Now it is time to end it and continue the book.

This can’t be happening.
This isn’t possible.
This isn’t real.
No!
No…

You drop your phone and curl your knees to your chest,
you wrap one of your arms around your knees and the other one around your head,
Digging your fingers into the back of your scalp.
Trying to block it all out,
the imagined images,
the nightmare brought to life,
the inescapable, horrible reality of it all.

But you can’t escape the whispering,
It echos,
Seemingly coming from the walls,
the ceiling,
the floor,
form everywhere all at once.
But yet coming from nowhere,
You can’t tell if it is real or not.
You can not differentiate between the quiet whisper and the painful numbing suffocating silence packed into your room,
Taking up all the space,
Surrounding you.
You want to scream.
You want to run.
You want to get away,
From the monster,
From the silence,
From your own thoughts,
But you can't move,
You are frozen in place.
You stare around your familiar room,
Staring with wide eyes,
all your possessions and belongings become shrouded and blurry,
Shadows creep in,
They are stronger than the meak light of your lamp,
They are stronger than your mind,
Stronger than your soul.
They creep in,
Taking hold.
Your vision starts going dark at the edges.
You start to fade out…

Buzz!

The sound seems deafening in the silence.
Your phone flashes on.
In angry bold bright letters it says:
You have one text!
It’s so bright…
You squint at the screen:
It reads:
I can smell your fear, your weakness, your terror. I can also smell you tired. You are so tired. How long has it been since you slept? I can smell you fading. Fading away beyond repair.

Your phone crashes to the ground. Crack. It shattered.
You cluck your ears in pain.
So loud!
You scrunch your eyes closed.
No!
You stumble out of bed,
You fall.
You struggle back up.
You take another few steps,
Trying desperately to get away.
Your eyes start to droop closed,
Your heart pounding,
Your head feeling like it was splitting open.
You can’t see anything,
Your head is in agony,
You feel cold and burning at the same time.
I think I’m hyperventilating.
You can’t anymore.
It’s too much!
snap.

Everything is black.
You suddenly can’t feel anything at all.
No pain.
No discomfort.
No silence,
No deafening noise.
You just see blackness.

“hello?”
“Yes?”
“Am I dead?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“You are one of us now.”

Everything is clear now.
You feel at ease.
No stress.
No deep feeling of hopelessness.
No sorrow.
No feeling.
I are home now.

You follow the voice,
You can see now,
But it’s not like seeing…
It’s like… smelling.