Read This R/nosleep Recently Called The Arkansas Experiment By Jared Robberts. I Think There’s Something

Everyone knows that actions speak louder than words.

Yet, for some reason, my English teacher gave me an F when I mimed my essay instead of writing it.

Another short story I wrote as a kid. Not too bad, but a little cliche. If I come up with something better I will rewrite it.

Hide-And-Seek

I forced myself to breathe softly, praying I wouldn’t be heard. His footsteps drew near, closer, closer, before the door slowly creak open, and I let out a blood-curdling scream.

Josh took a step back, aghast. I got up from my hiding spot in the bedroom.

"Sorry," I said.

"Why did you scream? I wouldn’t have found you."

"I can’t help it, it’s a force of habit!"

"It’s 12 AM! You’ll wake someone up!"

Alex’s brother is at the store, and her parents are working the nightshift. Who am I going to wake up, the house?!"

"The neighbors,"

"Whatever,"

I followed him as we scouted for our other two friends, Alex and Sarah. First, we found Alex. Then a big, nasty, hairy spider. Then Sarah. Then, oh wait. It was my turn.

After I finished counting, I started my long, hard hunt. It took me ten minutes, until I could find the first person. It was Josh, in the closet, who grinned at me the entire time he followed me searching. Next was Sarah, behind the laundry machine, who made fun of me for taking too long. Last, was Alex, in a cabinet, who took the longest to find. We were awestruck at how she could fit in such a small space! When asked how she did it, she modestly replied "Don’t know, it’s not too hard."

It was at that moment, we heard a key turn in the front door. Alex whipped around and whispered "It’s Felix! Let’s surprise him by hiding in the basement!" We all tiptoed into the small room, and crouched behind the door. It was cramped, hot, and smelled faintly of old wood. Alex clicked off the light to avoid detection as the older boy finally got the door opened after struggling with the lock. Alex chuckled as her brother walked to the living room, muttering about how the little brats finally went to sleep. The T.V. clicked on, and I cringed at the sound of a familiar macabre scene of my well-disliked movie play on; the scene I loathed the most played at a grotesquely high volume.

We held in our giggles, waiting impatiently for him to near the door. The T.V. shut off. Silently, we listened. Felix groaned angrily, mumbling, "Dumb T.V." Silence. Then we heard a scream.

"Whoa!" he said. "What were you doing in there?"

"Playing hide and seek," we heard Alex’s voice reply, definitely not in the basement. I froze. My eyes widened at the click of the door lock, followed by Alex’s menacing laugh breaking the sinister silence.

Just ignore it

One of the first stories I posted on wattpad.

On there I'm at 71 short horror stories right now, I'm not sure if I will ever post all of the stories I wrote before on tumblr, but here is one.

Word count: 1105

TW: Psychological horror

I look up at the old school building, just for a second I see the cracks. The surrounding plants around it have started growing inside. Some of the windows are broken.

The broken bell goes off and it almost sounds like a muffled scream.

I quickly go inside.

Inside the right classroom I take a seat at my table, it is a scratched old table with graffiti, not done by me.

Slowly the classroom fills with my 'classmates', these dolls with keys in their backs. They enter with their rattling keys and stiff movements. Opening and closing their wooden mouths, like they are talking to one another. I can't hear them, but I'm not interested anyway.

Lastly, the 'teacher' enters leaving its books on the desk and 'starting the lesson'.

I don't care to listen to the clacking of its mouth. It doesn't matter anyway, ignoring is for the best and pretending.

At some point the 'teacher' points at me and stops.

Carefully I stand and walk towards it, followed by the empty stares of the other painted wooden faces.

It is quiet.

It has always been quiet.

My 'teacher' seems to have stopped working, so I stand behind it and gently turn it's key until it starts working again.

Then just as quietly as before, I return to my seat.

I stare out of the window, without actually observing what is happening. Well nothing is happening really. Nothing ever is.

Just nature taking over this school, this empty building.

Even during break I just stare outside, while those dolls are clacking to each other.

If I go anywhere the dolls will be mean to me, they will sometimes throw things at me or clack mean things about me. So it is better just to remain in one place. They are defective.

I return home without looking back.

I live in an old dollhouse, it's almost completely empty and always silent.

I love the silence.

I enjoy the emptiness.

The rest of the house is just like the city with plants growing everywhere, inside and outside the buildings.

All buildings are slowly breaking apart and I just ignore it.

It's all fake anyway.

It's all useless anyway.

Nothing matters here, just that I do what I have to do and return 'home'.

The next day when I go to 'school', something strange happens.

The 'teacher' introduces a new 'classmate', another doll.

With a key and a painted face, just like any other.

It takes the empty seat next to me.

The new student seems to try to get my attention, but I just start doodling in my workbooks. Pretending I don't see or hear her.

The day passes by quite quickly, and I return to my old dollhouse.

I walk up the creaking stairs and past the rotting woodwork.

In my room I stare out of the hole in the roof, at the dark, starless abyss, most people call the sky.

And just like always, another day has passed.

The next day I do the same as all the previous days.

Stare out of the window, turn a key and return to my seat.

Then lunch comes around.

The new student is getting more annoying.

It has even started jumping in front of me to get my attention, which made the other dolls clack their mouths like they were laughing.

It's becoming more and more difficult.

Then suddenly it locks it's wooden hands around my wrist.

No matter how hard I struggle, It won't let me go.

Then it started walking and I am forced to follow.

We go up to the rooftop.

"I need you to listen." The voice coming out of the doll sounds vaguely human.

While blocking the only exit, it let's go of my wrist.

What does this thing want from me? None of them ever try to contact me as long as I ignore them, why does this one do?

The new student puts a hand under its chin, then a short click could be heard.

She removes her face, I guess she was wearing a mask.

I look at her face, her nose, her eyes, her eyebrows... Everything about her looks too familiar.

She looks like...

me...

Why does she look like me?

"I need to speak with you, please listen." She pleads with my voice.

I don't like where this is going and I take a step back. She doesn't seem to mind though.

"I need you to start looking around you and not ignore everything."

I remain silent.

"Remember what the doctor told us, about the ignoring of bullies and unfortunate situations? Well he was wrong."

I stay quiet and stare past her at the door, so close yet so far away. I just want to ignore her and continue my day.

"You can't ignore everything, you've already done that too much. You need help. You need to tell others about what's going on and learn not to just take everything."

So annoying.

"I don't care... I can just ignore it." I mumble to myself.

"Please don't." the other me pleads, her eyes starting to look red and watery.

I don't answer and take a few steps closer to the door.

"No you can't leave!" She yells.

I glare at her: "You're not supposed to exist. The doctor wasn't the only one who told me to just ignore it. Everything is better this way."

Defeated, she moves aside, her head hanging down: "S-so it has already gone this far... I see, it really is too late."

In silence I continue towards the door.

As my hand brushes the door handle she suddenly seems to want to give it one more try: "This whole city will collapse on top of us! It will kill us!"

"Then let it collapse. I can't go back to the time, when I still observed, when I still listened and I still felt everything. That time was hell. It was worse than death."

"But it is not too late. You can still get the help you need, before your world will collapse!"

"I don't want it."

I shove her aside and return to class.

The classroom looks more in disrepair than before we left, but I ignore it.

As school continues on, more cracks start appearing and I haven't seen the other me since I left her.

She probably won't return.

She must have left.

Given up entirely.

Well it's not like she could change my mind or anything.

She has no power over this place, unlike me.

I don't want to leave this place.

Yes, it's empty and it's lonely.

It might all be breaking apart, but this is my only safe haven. My own place of peace and quiet.

My own safe little world.

When the teacher stops working while pointing it's finger at me again, I turn the key on his back and return to my seat.

See, it all works perfectly fine.

I'm perfectly fine.

Nothing is wrong.

As long as I just ignore it all

And then at last the cracked walls can't hold the ceiling anymore.

I can hear its creaking.

But like always... I just ignore it.

Wasn’t expecting that fs but a good read c:

Condemned

Paul loved escape rooms. 

He just loved them. The lovingly-crafted set designs and props, the electric buzz that came from finding hidden items and putting together puzzle pieces, the euphoria of cracking a code, the adrenaline of the ticking clock, and most importantly, the thrill of the escape. 

His friends had long ago stopped accompanying him every week, sometimes more than once a week, to escape rooms in his area. Especially once he started driving hours out of town just to try new escape game centers for a fresh hit of that delicious escape puzzle challenge.

Paul now preferred to go alone anyway. People just bogged him down. He didn’t come to make friends, he came to win. 

Months of hot anticipation finally bore fruit when the “Great American Escape” opened its doors to him, at long last. Great American, according to the billboards and posters strewn around town, was the primary attraction of an entertainment mega-complex which took the place of a long-disused waterpark hotel. It would be huge, he knew. Not just physically. His great fear was that it would blow up on social media– maybe even on his feed– and then the solutions would be spoiled for him. So he had to be first.

Great American Escape was so new the day he strode in there that there were still “CONDEMNED” notices stuffed into the recycling bins and old lists of health & safety violations stuck in the vents. 

“One ticket for Mystery Escape,” Paul, slapped his money on the counter and smiled at the teen boy working behind it. He was a short, lithe, wide-eyed man in his thirties with dark greasy hair and one navy blue university sweater he’d kept in moderate repair for a decade and a half.

“No group?” The boy asked. When Paul confirmed this, the boy said, “You’ll have to wait until a group comes in. You need three people at least.”

“When is the next group coming?” Paul asked.

“We don’t have any groups booked today,” the boy replied.

“... So, you’re not gonna let me in?” 

“... Um… yeah. I can’t. Sorry.”

Paul put down another handful of bills. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

“I’ll buy three tickets,” he said. He made sure to draw the boy’s attention to the extra $20, a little tip for a helpful front deskman. 

The boy, who was thin and bored-looking with a patchy teen mustache and his elbow resting on top of a stack of I Escaped stickers, glanced at the security camera which flickered in the corner, its blinking red eye frosted over with a decade of dust. The boy took the $20 and shrugged. 

“You won’t be able to escape,” the boy said. “It’s impossible by yourself. But if you want to try… I guess you can try.”

The boy led Paul towards a set of slightly rusty elevator doors, past posters and cardboard cut-outs of characters from “Rattlesnake Gulch Treasure Hunt,” “Escape From Venus,” and “King’s Dungeon Jailbreak.” Paul planned to return to these, but he’d start by going straight for the crown jewel– Mystery Escape, which had been advertised exclusively with nothing but an open doorframe leading to darkness. 

The boy went over basic safety guidelines. The door wouldn’t really be locked, red things were real alarms, things that said “staff only” were really for staff only, etc., blah blah blah, boring stuff.  Paul listened impatiently, but carefully, only because knowing what was “real” (and therefore inconsequential) would give him a leg up in the game. 

“The game starts when the elevator door opens,” the boy finally said. “Floor 3. Good luck.”

The elevator bell dinged, and the doors slid open. The light flickered. Paul stepped inside. 

He waved to the boy as the doors shut. He pressed 3. 

The light above flickered. Paul could almost see his reflection in the red-rusted metal doors. 

The elevator began its ascent, and right away, Paul could tell something was strange. There was a creaking noise, like a train braking. The light flickered. The light sputtered out. 

The elevator stopped.

Paul was trapped. It was pitch black inside the tiny car, which made no sound or movement. 

The first thing Paul did in any escape room was to check around for hidden props. Keys, ciphers, and puzzle pieces were often hidden around a room for players to find, which would then give them a clue as to what to do next. Paul checked around the elevator car for hidden tools. He pulled up the mildewy carpet by its frayed edge– nothing under there but more mildew. But wait! On the bottom of the carpet there were numbers and letters: EL1. What could that possibly mean? 

The next thing Paul did in an escape room was to interact with anything interactable he could see. In front of him was a series of numbers, 1-5, a “door open” and “door close” button, and “emergency.” But “emergency” was red, and red things were inconsequential. 

Paul pushed all the buttons but the last. To his surprise, the door began to open slightly– then jammed. 

Paul mused about the possible meanings of “EL1.” E was the fifth letter, and there were five numbers… But L? 

Maybe it was a cipher. Paul thought on this. 

He started trying combinations of buttons. The cipher thing was the key somehow, he knew it. A cipher worked with a code. Where was the code? Maybe it had to do with the symbols, not the numbers…

Suddenly, it all made sense to him. He pressed a set of numbers and then hit the door open button.

To his delight and satisfaction, the elevator doors creaked open. And with them came light.

Paul could see well enough now to see that he faced a concrete wall, which took up the whole lower half of the exit. But above that half, Paul could see a hallway of a hotel, so tantalizingly close. 

Paul had beaten escape rooms that had physical components to them before, so this was cake. He gripped the edge of the concrete ledge in front of him and pulled himself up. He let out a grunt as his head and arms made it over the threshold. He just had to find something to grip so he could drag the rest of himself through the gap, and then it was on to the next puzzle.

The elevator lurched.

There was a sound. A scrape, a crash, a wet squelch, a snap. It all happened at once, and it was the loudest sound he ever heard.

When Paul finally sat up, he was somewhere completely different. It was dark here. Darker than the elevator car. The darkness of this place was crushing, like the depths of the deep ocean. There was a smell of meat all around. Paul quickly dismissed the idea of trying to adjust his eyes– he’d navigate by feel.

Paul reached out into the darkness and felt nothing. He stood. His hands pushed him up from a strangely soft, lumpy floor. He noticed something strange about the sound of his movements, and let out an inquisitive “Hey!” to check the echo. It did not bounce. He was… outside?

No– he must be in the disused waterpark proper. The building was huge. Paul was delighted by this thought. He’d chosen the right room.

Paul felt around for a wall, a light switch, a puzzle. Anything. 

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” said a deep voice.

“Hello?” Paul said after a moment. 

“You lived a selfish life, Paul. You cared for nothing and no one but yourself and your own pleasure. You were an idolater, a heretic. You raised the Escape Game to the heights of a god. Pity that from this place, there is no escape.”

Paul listened carefully to the monologue. Selfish. Idolater. Raised. Heights. These things might be clues. 

“Paul,” said the deep voice, which seemed to come from above, below, and all around him, “You died a foolish death. Pity that you did not suffer. But now, you will suffer for eternity.”

Paul was already climbing up a staircase he’d found. It was the disused waterpark. Raise, he thought. Heights. The key was to go up. 

He found a craggy, warm wall. There was something under his hand– a button? He pushed it in, hard.

Under his hand, a huge glowing red eye flew open. 

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!” 

The eye blinked in pain and fury, welling up with tears. A thousand more eyes flew open along the wall before him, and Paul saw that it was not a wall at all, but some kind of enormous creature. It stirred, its red gaze illuminating the space around them.

“Stupid man. You woke something up.”

But now Paul could see the entire room– or space, or whatever it was. What he’d taken to be the “floor” was a mass of flesh– human hands, it looked like, reaching up stiffly. The hands started to stir as the creature woke from its slumber. What Paul had taken for a staircase was not that. 

Paul was making some real progress. As the hands clamored over each other, rising like tentacles from around the immense eyes, Paul hopped onto the face of the thing and started using the eyes as hand-and-footholds, which was their obvious use. Paul could spare no time on figuring out little things like that the honest way, he was on a clock. As he stepped on the creature’s eyes, it let out another unearthly roar and started to rise. 

There was a hole in the ceiling. Yes– this was meant to be a cave of some sort, and it had an exit. 

“You idiot,” the voice boomed. “You–”

Paul kicked the creature in the eye a few more times to make it rise faster. A tsunami of pale, writhing hands on wiggling stems shot up towards him to slap him away, but by the time they reached him, he was already through the hole. 

Paul scurried through the tunnel as fast as he could. If it was a three-person puzzle, you couldn’t waste any time.

He came to the next room, which was well-lit– a nice reprieve. In this room, a sweltering cave, some props department had gone all-out carving little demon faces that stuck out from the sides. These gargoyle-like stone structures leered at him and grinned in anticipation.

“The flametongue is coming, kindling,” the demon voices hissed. “Ready or not!” Paul heard a splashing, gurgling sound up ahead. He took quick note of some of the quirks of the gargoyle faces– most of them had black scorch marks on them, but some didn’t. That was a clue. The light from the other end of the tunnel grew brighter, as did the gurgling. Paul realized what he was meant to do, climbed up the protesting gargoyles, and found a set on the ceiling which had no scorching on them. Below, a wave of red-hot boiling sulferous-smelling magma flowed down, passing over the other gargoyles, who screeched and sputtered in it. Another puzzle solved. Paul dropped down once the stones cooled, and hurried up the tunnel– no time to spare. Only one more wave of “fire” passed before he solved the gargoyle pattern and pulled the right ones out of the wall in sequence to reveal a hidden exit.

This escape room was huge. He made his way through a room which featured a river of moving knives, which he was able to avoid by memorizing the timing and patterns, and climbed up into a room full of blistering ice and animatronic zombies which lurched toward him, their bodies crackling as they froze just as soon as they’d moved, their lips split by the cold. This puzzle was a simple matter of lining up the giant shards of ice in the room so that the light concentrated and blasted a hole through the glacial wall. 

Paul’s own body was profoundly frostbitten by this point, but he didn’t notice. He was on a timer. 

By the time Paul finally made it past the “three-headed-dog on a chain” puzzle, that subterranean voice from the first room had caught up with him.

“Paul,” the voice said. “There is no hope. There is no escape. Do you understand? You are dead, Paul–”

“Ssh,” Paul said, gazing at the puzzle before him. 

The door was immense. It seemed to stretch above him and beyond for miles. It was carved from stone older than the bedrock of earth, and above it, in an arch as large as the firmament, there was carved a phrase:

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

This was clearly important, because the deep voice had already voiced it earlier in the game. After checking the area for tools, Paul ran through anagrams. There were a lot of little props around the big door– lots of discarded holy texts, some bones, some strange bits of giant insectoid carapaces which Paul could not immediately identify. The bibles and such had bits burned and torn off of them in places. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. That was a ciper, maybe. He was sweating. He had to be at nearly an hour already. He started arranging the bones.

“What you are doing is futile nonsense,” the deep voice said.

Aha! By turning the phrase above the gate into numbers and then matching those numbers to the non-burned sections of each holy text, organized by the printing date, Paul had discovered an anagram which, when re-ordered, spelled out skeleton key prop, ds flo knemb yyuq. Paul had only bothered to spell out the first three words, however, due to the time crunch. That was all he needed to understand what to do, and he had done it: he had connected all the bones into one big key.

“I don’t think you understand, Paul. This is not a game. You cannot escape your fate. You cannot escape your death. You cannot escape damnation. You cannot escape from Hell.”

Paul slid the giant skeleton key into the lock. It took all of his strength to shove it to the back. Behind him, the host of hell scrambled over each other up the lip of the abyss– the thousand hands and eyes, the fire-spitting gargoyles, the lurching ice zombies, the great black dog, and many others, come to claim him for their own special torment.

Paul turned the key. There was a click. 

Well– more of a thunderous clunk.

The deep, gravelly noise of the stone door opening reverberated all throughout Hell.

“What the–”

“Hell yeah!” Paul shouted. He ducked through the door.

The red eye of the security camera caught it all. The man, crawling through the gap in the elevator. The lurch. The fall. The split.

The hopeless paramedics, the traumatized front desk boy, the shaking venue manager, the anxious lawyers, the dozens of police putting up brand-new yellow “do not cross” signage around the old hotel. 

The red eye of the security camera watched on as people in grim uniforms put the larger piece of what had been paul into a black bodybag and fetched the rest from the third story floor. 

“Used to love this waterpark when I was a little kid,” said one of the paramedics to another. “Now I hope they tear it down.”

“Wasn’t this place a lawsuit magnet back in the day?” said the other. “I remember a kid–”

The paramedics both noticed at the same moment that the body bag was moving. A lot. 

“Is he alive in there?” The first paramedic choked out, even though he understood that the answer had to be no. But then the zipper started sliding down. The bag was opening from the inside.

The headless body of Paul Gibson sat up. It reached out with its stumps of fingers, covered in cool dark blood, and rolled out onto the hotel lobby floor. Both paramedics screamed and leapt away as the decapitated Paul stumbled to its feet and lurched forward. It felt around without its fingers, leaving smears of blood on the front desk, the wall, the table, the “do not cross” tape, until it found the small white cooler on the floor. He pried it open with his mangled hands and lifted his own iced head out. 

Paul put his head on top of the gristle that was his neck. He had it the wrong way around, but his eyes opened and he smiled through bloody teeth. 

“I ss-ss-olved the b-a-ag puzzle,” the formerly dead man sputtered. “Did it a-all mys-self.”

He turned around to face both paramedics, so that his front side faced away. 

“Uh… congratulations,” the second paramedic said.

Paul choked up more blood and grinned wider. He stumbled toward the front desk, toward the paramedics. They backed away from him in horror as he reached out the wrong way and grabbed a commemorative I Escaped! sticker from the top of the pile.

“Th-a-ank you,” Paul said. “I’ll be su-ure to come back soon!”

Our dairy farm still prints photos of missing children on all our milk cartons.

It’s educational for consumers to know what each dairy cow was fed.

in the rain

A short horror story I wrote last year, I'm surprised to find out I hadn't posted it here before.

Word count: 1848

TW: psychological horror

The sound of the gentle tapping of the rain on my window awakens me.

Just by glancing over at the window I can see the dark autumn sky even though it must still be around noon.

Slowly I get up from the couch, I must have dozed off for a minute or so.

I walk over to my kitchen to see if there is anything to eat.

Opening all the cabinets and finally the freezer, I discover that I'm all out of food.

Damn, I forgot, it's grocery day today... and I still have to go out with this shitty weather.

Still I ready myself to go outside, I take my dark green raincoat and a bag.

I put on my shoes and finally leave, locking the door behind me, walking towards the nearest bus stop.

I know I'm being lazy, walking that distance can be done in about half an hour, but still this weather seems to only be getting worse.

As I turn around to face the weather I feel the cool breeze going through my coat and the water gliding off my face.

A greeting from the outside, a cold and wet greeting.

Quickly I make a run for the bus stop.

Each time one of my feet hit the middle of a puddle, the water flies around me, making me feel like a little kid playing in the rain.

It takes a couple of minutes for me to reach the small square hut, known locally as the bus stop.

I live in the middle of nowhere anyway.

As I finally lay eyes on it I almost dive for cover under the roof.

I know it doesn't really matter, I'm already soaked, but still, it brings me comfort.

Immediately I notice that I'm not alone.

Someone else is standing beside me.

Most likely also waiting for the bus to come.

Their face is obscured by their coat... Their dark green coat.

Did he get it at the same store as me?

For a while we awkwardly stand next to each other, not speaking a word, or perhaps letting the rain itself do the talking.

Cold seconds pass slowly and eventually I can't take it anymore.

"So... uhh... the weather is pretty bad, éh?"

I know the question is bad, small talk is not everyone's favorite, but worse than that, I don't get a response at all.

And we are back at listening to the rain and just standing next to one another, but this one more awkwardly than before.

The person next to me didn't show any sign of even hearing me.

Finally the bus arrives and I get on.

I look back, but the person behind me doesn't seem to be moving in the slightest.

Does he even breathe? I really can't tell.

"Hey man? Didn't you need to take the bus too?" I call over to him, gesturing that he can go in, but again he doesn't move at all.

I shake my head and then turn it towards the bus driver.

Unlike the usual uniform, they seem to be wearing another dark green raincoat. Almost exactly like mine, or perhaps it's completely the same...

I show the chauffeur my ticket, but he doesn't move a muscle.

Quietly I turn around to look further inside the vehicle.

It's almost completely empty, except for a few strangers dressed with the same dark green jacket.

For a moment I hesitate.

Do I really want to be on this bus?

But then the squeaking doors behind me close, cutting off my only escape route.

Obediently I take a seat, trying not to look around me and just stare out of the window.

When the bus finally comes to a halt at my stop I get out as fast as I can.

Strangely enough this is the first stop it made, no one got on and no one got off.

As I step outside, I am greeted by more rain, falling down even heavier than before.

Quickly I race towards the store and feel a sense of relief wash over me as I finally reach the entrance and hear the familiar chime.

The bright light hurts my eyes, it's a lot brighter than outside after all.

I let out a shivering sigh from the cold. It might be less warm here than outside, or perhaps it's because of how wet my clothes have gotten.

The water has gone right through my coat after all.

I notice my breath leaving my mouth in small clouds and rub my hands together for some warmth.

I guess it must be cold here after all.

Carefully I look around, it seems that I'm the only customer inside the store.

I should probably hurry up, I'm not sure if there will be many buses leaving after I'm done with shopping.

I take a shopping cart and start to move around the store.

Taking with me things for breakfast, things for lunch, things for dinner and of course some snacks.

Eventually I find myself next to an aisle that's entirely empty.

"How strange..." I mutter to myself: "I was sure these were filled just last week..."

I take a few steps back, towards the fridges where they keep milk and stuff.

Something about it seems off.

Carefully I take a closer look.

It looks like all the cartons of milk from the highest shelf to the lowest have all been cut in half in a straight row.

No, cut isn't the word.

More like half of it has been melted off.

The contents are spilled all over the floor.

As I inspect the next row, I see that these all have half-faded packaging.

I look up to find a huge dark stain on the ceiling above it, water is slowly dripping down onto those products and the floor.

It's almost as if the rain is washing it all away.

Quickly I leave for the check-out and find another one behind the counter.

A person, dressed with the same raincoat as mine, somehow still with a faded nametag on their chest, too faded to read.

Honestly it looks a bit silly.

Their hood is up and they look down, causing me to be unable to see their face just like with the others before.

I greet the 'worker' like normal even though he doesn't move at all and I hand them the money, which they don't take either, so I place it before them.

"Keep the change." I say, trying to joke away the fear I feel inside.

That is the truth after all.

I'm scared.

I'm terrified.

I'm terrified, but I don't want to let it show.

Everything about this day has been strange.

Normally I don't fall asleep during the day, normally I don't take the bus to the store, normally I don't stand waiting for a bus with a stranger...

Then there's the fact I haven't seen a single familiar face since I woke up. Why isn't anyone here when usually this store is filled with people I know?

I pick up the pace, too scared to look behind me.

What if they did move?

What if they did move, but only if I wasn't facing them.

What if they were right behind me, staring at me from underneath those hoods?

What if they wanted to do something to me?

I shake my head and enter the rainy and windy outside world again.

The rainfall has gotten even heavier.

I can barely keep my eyes open from all the water pouring down, only able to open them again as I blindly enter the bus stop.

This time I'm alone.

Though I doubt if that really is the case.

I mean, what if they're watching?

While waiting for the bus to come I look at my sleeve.

The dark green fabric has been completely soaked.

Why is it that we all wear the same? I think to myself.

Where and when did I even buy such an ugly thing?

I have another one, a blue one... right?

No, now that I think about it I'm not so sure.

This rain... it's making it difficult to remember.

The bus finally arrives for me to go home again.

Trying to avoid the spats coming from the sky, but failing, I enter the vehicle.

It's cold here too.

Like in the store small clouds leave my shivering mouth.

I look at the driver.

It's one of them again.

Or am I supposed to be one of them?

My coat shows our resemblance.

My hood is still up too.

I take it off and smile at the driver.

"Good afternoon sir, bad weather we're having, don't we?"

Suddenly I hear something moving in the back of the bus.

Multiple people dressed like me are sitting there, more than before.

All of them seem to stare at me from underneath their dark hoods.

I smile at them too, but now that I'm looking at them too they have stopped moving again completely.

The door behind me closes and I take a seat.

Everything feels so unwelcoming, it makes me feel a bit sad.

Looking outside of the window I appreciate the beautifully dreary scenery from my home.

It looks like the water levels have been rising far.

Much further than it normally would.

Almost like the water is trying to swallow it all up.

I'm glad I live up high.

We drive past a small cliff.

I look down at the water through the window.

The rain is still relentlessly hitting the windows, coming down unforgivingly at the windows, making me scared that it could shatter them any moment.

It has become a droning noise overtaking any thought I might have had as suddenly, I feel light.

Everything starts feels like going in hyper speed.

The bus has made a turn.

A turn off the cliff.

And we hit the water before I even realized what was going on.

It's all going so fast and yet, none of them moved even an inch.

All of the other 'passengers' keep sitting the way they sat before, not even trembling because of the fall. Making it look like they were plastic figures glued to their respective benches.

Windows break and water starts to pour in even faster than the rain.

Loudly I curse and get up from my seat in a daze.

My head is pounding terribly, did I hit something?

I'm not sure.

It just hurts.

The vehicle starts to sink and I start to panic.

A heavy tree branch falls through one of the small windows in the ceiling.

I jump back, but then see that it has shattered the entire window and created a way for me to get out.

The water is rising higher and higher and I reach for the window.

Now the people in the bus do start to move.

In a strange and shocking way.

Moving like they have never used a limb before.

Crawling around, stumbling around, a strange form of swimming.

Shit!

They're coming for me!

They're coming for me!!

They get closer and closer with their strange movements.

Trying to wrap their arms around me.

As I feel their freezing cold fingers touch me I kick around me as hard as I can.

"Stay away!" I yell: "Stay the Hell away!!"

Desperately I hold on to the branch.

The first few already have their hands wrapped around my ankles.

"Let me go!!!" I yell, kicking and screaming.

More hands.

And then they start to grip and pull.

The gray light from the sky starts to grow distant, my head is getting closer to the water.

The heavy rain has started pushing me down now too.

Pushing back my hands, letting me slide back down.

I've never seen or even felt a rain storm this heavy, it feels like it's trying to get rid of me.

Trying to clean this place by getting rid of me.

Like a ghost town being washed away by the rain...

Found this really awesome tale on r/shortscarystories called Forget Me Not by RustySunset. Might even be one of my favorite Reddit stories ever.

stood over a deepfryer and my head fell off. im screaming ah ah ah ah

Here’s a really unique take on snuff films called I’m Never Shooting Another Snuff Film. Definitely darker than some of the other stuff you find on r/nosleep.

I loved this! Idk why it didn’t get more attention

Saturday Story #2: Down By the Bay

In the several years I've lived in this small town, it never rained. I remember growing up, not knowing what rain was until my parents and I visited extended family in another state. During the week we were there, there was a day where it downpoured. I remember sitting on one of the couches in the living room, curled up out of fear and asking my parents what was going on. They told me that it was raining and explained very broadly how the water cycle works. It was such a brand new and interesting concept to me. The instant returned home, I wanted to tell my friends about rain. My parents told me not to, that we were living in a decade long drought and that bringing up rain would make people sad. I didn't want to make anyone sad with my excitement, so I simply forgot about telling anyone.

Then I remembered.

About a year ago, a new family moved into town. They seemed like a run-of-the-mill, suburban family. Their eldest child, the daughter Korie, was my age (16), and their youngest, the son Thomas, was seven. They moved right into our neighborhood, right down the street. We were on summer break at the time with only two weeks left until school. And when school did inevitably come around, I decided to try and make friends with Korie.

Korie was probably one of the nicest people I've ever met. She was calm and would always strike up a conversation with me before class started. She had this way of talking to people that would instantly put them at ease. Countless times I would make jokes that she had some sort of undiscovered super power, or maybe she was a long lost goddess. She would always smile, giggle and shake her head at me. I'd invite her over after school and sometimes on weekends if her parents didn't have any plans. It was one of these weekends that Korie would inevitably ask the question.

"Isn't it weird that it doesn't rain here?"

"What?" I replied, somewhat caught off guard.

"Yeah, haven't you noticed? Ever since I moved in it hasn't rained once."

I remembered what my parents told me; "It's because we're in a drought. It's lasted for decades at this point."

"A drought ?" Korie looked at me, confused, "Weird. I feel like my parents would've known about one before we moved in."

We were both silent for a moment before Korie's phone buzzed.

"Parents need me to watch my brother, I'll see you later."

Then she left.

I had lived in this town all my life and never thought the drought was weird. No one else did. And maybe her parents just never looked into the town's history far enough to know about it. Maybe all they knew was that the crime rate was low and the houses looked decent.

Never did I think that maybe, just maybe, there was a secret being kept, that even I didn't know.

Life continued on as it was. Wake up, eat breakfast, get ready, go to school, get home, do homework, hangout with Korie, go to bed, and repeat. My usual boring routine, interrupted by a knock at my door on one Thursday afternoon when Korie had stayed home.

It was Korie's dad.

"Hey, kiddo. Your parents home?"

"No, my dad's at work and mom's running a bunch of errands before her shift."

"Oh," There was something in his facial expression that I couldn't place. It was like uneasy curiosity. "Would it be alright if I asked you something then?"

"Uh...sure?" I scanned over him, a little freaked out. I didn't know Korie's dad that well, and absolutely wasn't sure of his intentions in that moment.

"So, Korie mentioned to me that this town is in a drought, and that you were the one to tell her. I was just wondering if that's true?"

"I mean, it's never rained once in my life since I can remember, so yeah, I think it's true."

"And everyone in the town knows this?"

"Probably, a lot of them have been here for generations."

Korie's dad just stared at me as he thought. It felt like I could see the gears turning in his head.

"Okay, well, thanks for the talk, pal. I'll uh, I'll see you around then." He gave me an awkward smile before stepping off the front steps and heading down the street. I figured that would be the last time Korie's dad would be interested in the drought. It wasn't. Soon after, he started protesting at Town Hall and trying to publish articles in the local newspaper about how a town was trying to hide a drought from the media. He created conspiracies over it, things like the government was doing some sort of testing, or this was once an uninhabitable site caused by radiation. He went crazy. All over a drought. A lot of the townspeople simply huffed and shook their heads at the whole thing. A few tried to argue with him, and some even tried to silence him. That was the weirdest part. There were a handful of people treating this weird guy's dilemma like it was taboo. Not like he was crazy, but like he shouldn't be talking about it. It confused me, all of this over a drought? Why would people even bother?

My attitude quickly changed as soon as Korie went missing. It happened a week ago. Her dad reported her missing when she didn't come home from school, after he rushed over to our house. He looked so disheveled and frightened. I didn't know where she was either, I thought she had stayed home sick that day because she wasn't at school. The town joined the police's search efforts. We were out looking for hours, some of the adults posted things on social media for their friends in neighboring towns to see. News stations covered it. I was so shocked, scared and confused. I prayed that no one in the town had taken her. I prayed that she wasn't hurt, hoping that her dad's outburst hadn't caused someone to go over the edge.

I've been crying for the past few days. She was my best friend. Everything feels off. And today, when I looked out my bedroom window, I saw it.

The town has been in a drought for decades.

Today..

it finally rained.