Creepy - 1981

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

I found a letter...***Written by: KeepersCoffin and Narrated by: Joe Stofko***Bonus Episode: "Come Home" Written by: Some Unholy Obscenity and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Content Warning: coma / suicides***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents 1981 Written by Keeper's Coffin and narrated by Joe Stofco. So my father finally passed away. I'd say finally because he was very old and had been sick for a while.

None of this was unexpected. We moved him to a care facility near here a couple years ago, so one of us could visit him on a daily basis. His house sat empty the entire time he was at the care facility. Now we're tasked with emptying it out. What follows was included in some paper, as my wife found will go in through his old filing cabinets. Based on what we know of our father's early history before you met mom,

we all think that this was written by him and that the person described is himself. We're divided on whether this is fictional or real. It doesn't have a title, just the date of September 21st, 1981. He was in a sealed envelope addressed to a paranormal researcher who was active in the 1990s. It was never mailed, obviously. A couple packs of fresh Territon cigarettes for what it took from me to get through a day at that lousy job. Every morning I'd get the doors unlocked, flip the clothes, sign around to say open, and turn on all the lights. That clunky, black rotary phone behind the counter would always ring when

the clock on the wall showed 8.56. It was Juanita from the home office over in Waldorf doing her daily check-in, making sure she could tell management that their precious adult bookstore, just a few blocks down from the front gate of the Navy base, was open for business. After that, I'd go out back for the first day's cigarette. The morning this all happened, my lighter stopped working. I got finished with the Juanita call, then headed out to the alley behind the store. If anyone ever asked, I could say I was out there and making sure there was no sign of an overnight burglary. Like I said, we were two blocks from the main gate to the base, and a lot of

traffic in and out of that store was enlisted men. But a lot of trouble that happened in the County came out of those gates as well. And the kind of literature we sold in the back attracted all kinds of attention. Once, right after I started there, there had been a break-in. Some fellas from the base had had a lot of drunken fun trashing the place. It was their CEO that caught them when they got back, and it was he who reported it. But the management up and Waldorf decided to sweep the whole thing under the rug and not press charges. Can't lose all those customers, after all. So anyway, there I was in the back alley trying to fire up the first sig of the day.

And my old Zippo, the one I got from my dad, one time when he came for a visit, finally failed to light. I'd just put lighter fluid in there the other day, so I knew it wasn't that. Had to be the flint. I knew Juanita wouldn't be calling again until almost 11. That's when she would always make the second phone call of the day checking on the store.

So I decided there was time to go out to get a new lighter. I just needed a cheap one that they sold at the store down at the corner, good enough to get me through until I'd. could acquire a new flint for my old Zippo. Mornings were usually dead anyway. People typically didn't make the trip here until their lunch breaks. I put up the back-in-five-minute sign on the front door, locked it, and turned around. Juanita was standing right there on the pavement in front of me.

I knew it was Juanita because I still recognized her from the one-time. time we met two years before at the management office in Waldorf. I had just been hired at the time and was up there to sign paperwork. I figured what Ada must have been in town that morning all along and had been sent by management to catch me doing something, and I figured she had probably called me that morning from the pay phone in the hotel right across the street. All I meant to do was walk down two blocks and across the street to Peebles to pick up one of those cheap plastic lighters they sell at the front counter, and then head right back to reopen the store.

I started formulating all of this in my head so I could blurt it out to Oneida. Looking back, I keep trying to remember how she was dressed. It was a clear day. There was plenty of life that day. morning. Maybe we were in the shadow of the building. Thinking about it now, I'm going to have to go back there and look. I've been meaning to go back for a while now, even just to drive by the damn place, just to help piece together what happened that morning. The memory is not blurry. It is just that I seemed to remember everything that morning, suddenly went from being nice and bright to having this

veil over it. Everything went into shadow, kind of, with the somber gray veil. The dress one Edel was wearing was just some house dress, dull floral print, maybe. I remember one dull red splat, vaguely shaped like a rose, was printed on her dress right over one of her boobs. Not flattering. But I remember her face that morning pretty well, too. Her face did not look normal. Juanita was a little overweight from the one time I actually ever laid eyes on her back when I was first hired. But when I saw her that morning, Juanita's face was all puffy, almost blow-deged. one eye and one cheek protruding more prominently than the other. Juanita was not looking directly at me, not glaring with an I got you glare.

I remember Juanita's head bobbed and jerked around slightly while she stood there, and I could tell the hair on the back of her head was all pushed up and matted like oily, unwashed bedhead. but her eyes were halfway open and seemed stuck in position, slightly down and to her left. They did not move at all and did not blink. The lips of her mouth were puffy, too, and parted slightly, and also just kind of frozen in place. This situation was awful for me in a couple of different ways. On the one hand, I was alarmed to see,

Anyone from the management office is standing there on the curb that morning. As awful as that job was, peddling smut all day, I kind of needed the money. And nobody else in the whole county would hire me for anything at that point of my life. On the other hand, the sight of that person on that sidewalk on that morning was the most unsettling, gut-wrenching thing I had ever seen in my life. I stammered something like just five minutes, or something like that, and then she started screaming.

I mean, it was like someone threw a switch, and a high-pitched burglar alarm started going off the back of Juanita's throat. I just kind of stood there, I guess, in shock. This went on for a few seconds. Juanita just screamed in this high-pitched, keening wail. Then, all at once, she stopped. And her face jerked up, and her eyes popped open real wide, and her mouth started moving. I remember when that happened, I kind of jumped back very suddenly,

and my butt and elbow connected very hard with the door behind me. Juanita's eyes were wide open with tiny pin-prick pupils. This gurgles started coming out of someplace deep in her throat, kind of like a long, growling burp. And then Juanita's lips started to shift and move around this gurgling sound to form words. You shouldn't have done it, is what Juanita said to me that morning. That's all she said. I remember I was cold and clammy and sweating while all this was occurring.

I remember starting to ask her just what the hell was wrong with her. I wasn't scared to losing the job anymore at that point. I was just very alarmed in general, and I could not figure out why she was acting like this or what was wrong with her face. I asked her two or three times what the hell was the matter, starting to yell. Juanita made no reply. Her bulging eyes searched the air past my right shoulder, moving her head from side to side, slightly as she did this.

Since all this began, her head and neck had become more bloated. The flesh on her face had taken a ghastly pallor. One wist of black hair floated in front of her face, and I mean it floated, and like it was suspended in water rather than blowing around by the way of any kind of breeds or gust of air. It was like looking through a sheet of glass at someone suspended inside a big fish tank. Then this terrible low rasp started coming out of her. I realized Juanita was trying to say something else. It slowly started to sound like Juanita was reciting something in Spanish. But this time not to me.

It's like she was just saying it into the air in front of her. Then, Juanita was gone. I do not mean that Winita turned and walked off. She did not brush past me and disappear into the store. She did not hop into a nearby car. I did not look away at a distraction and look back and she was gone. I mean, she just vanished into thin air, right in front of me, in the full line of day. There was no way for me to react to this.

I was frightened, but nothing seemed to make sense in a way I could react to. I guess I was in shock. Despite my time in the Army, despite having survived automobile wrecks, despite being in bar fights, I had no way to react to what had just happened to me. Still don't. It was like nothing seemed it could be real anymore, like everything was all at once equally ludicrous. The thought of cigarettes and nicotine and a new lighter had completely left my mind. mind, at least for a while.

Next thing I knew, I was back in the store, just standing there in the front aisle, like customers usually do, with the racks of magazines and the back of the cash register facing me. I don't completely remember going back in. I was wondering what to do, and simply standing there, dumbfounded. And then I snapped out of my days a little bit. and ran to lock the door. The street was sunny again.

There was no sign of Oneita. She was gone. Then I went back behind the counter, picked up the black plastic phone, and dialed the home office. I dialed Juanita. There was no answer. Which was unusual.

Someone was always at her desk during office hours. I went out and paced the aisles for a few moments. There was, of course, the other number I could call, the one that went directly to management. I had never called that one before. That was actually the last number in the world I wanted to call for a couple of reasons. I paid some more, and then finally I did call. First, though, I tried Juanita again. No answer.

I let it ring until the beeping started. I slammed the receiver down. then I picked up the phone again and pressed it to my ear and listened to the dial tone for a few moments. It took some willpower, but I dialed the other number. I slowly turned the dial for each number and then held my breath while the phone on the other end of the line rang. There was no answer.

I hung up and sat there in the quiet, with just the sound of the overhead lights buzzing away. My hand automatically went up to my shirt pocket, where the pack of Terryton sat. Then I remembered the lighter. Then I called the police. It took longer than I expected to get someone on the phone who could handle what I was calling about.

Waldorf, where the management office was, is in the next county over. The operator had to keep patching me through to some other place. First, the other county, and and the state police barracks nearest to Waldorf. I ended up requesting a welfare check on the home office when I did finally get somebody. They told me a state trooper would drop by the main office and make sure nothing was amiss.

Corporal so-and-so would get back to me if I thought it was necessary. I said it wasn't, but if they could just drop by, that'd be good enough. There was a loud knocking at the front door, and I jumped, kicking over the stool that had a box of newly-shipped VHS tapes balanced on it, the contents of which went scattering. A man was peering through the front door with his hands cupped over his eyes to see in. Sports jacket, tie, Trilby. I realized the back-and-five sign was still facing the street and the door was still locked. I walked over quickly and opened the door. Hey, you carry anything on computers, he was saying.

I thumbed vaguely in the direction of the periodicals and said we carry the latest copy of Byte magazine. We did also carry normal periodicals up in the front, regular books too, greeting cards and a spinning rack of comic books. The dirty stuff was all in the back behind the wall with the door. As my customer rummied around, I kept eyeballing the street out front, completely ignoring the guy while he went about his business. I was looking for Juanita. I could not explain it at the time, but I did not want her showing up again. My customer finally got my attention by clearing his throat. I went back and robotically rang him up, wrote the transaction in the blue ledger, and then reached,

turned to the front door. The guy walked out past me with the morning edition of the times he had bought tucked under his arm. Something on the front page about a nuclear weapons test France was carrying out that day. I locked the door again behind him and just stood there, keeping an eye on the sidewalk. Lunchtime came and went. The black phone never rang. I did not try dialing headquarters again. the PM editions of the Times and the Sentinel got dropped off just after when the 12 o'clock bell rang at the naval base. When that thing rang, it could be heard all over town. Going out to fetch the bundles of papers from the curb

was the only other time I unlocked the door that day until the squad car pulled up in the afternoon. Two state troopers got out of the squad car, one in uniform and one in plain clothes. Both had little brown mustaches. When I went to unlock the front door, I noticed my hands were shaking badly. The two officers noticed as well,

and asked if I was all right. I stammered something about not having had a cigarette that day, lighter, flint, something, something. The one in uniform quickly offered me the use of his own lighter. Oh, I lit up. up a cigarette right then and there. I noticed they both had blue eyes and were giving me the exact same expression of deep concern as I tugged on the smoke. Right then and there I knew something absolutely awful had happened. The officer in plain clothes asked if there was any place

we could sit down and talk and said I'd better lock up for a few minutes while we did so. I told the officers that actually, other than the stools and the viewing booths in the back of the store, the only option was the stool behind the cash register. As much as they certainly wanted some privacy for what was about to take place, neither wanted to go in the back of a store like mine. So we continued the conversation where we stood. The two officers started out asking me what seemed like several dozen questions. about the home office in Waldorf.

They wanted to know everything I knew about it. They wanted names and rules and rules and titles. They wanted to know when was the last time I had been up there. They wanted to know when was the last time I talked to anyone there. Then they asked me about my personal history. That got very uncomfortable for me. I don't see any reason why I have to answer questions like that. What I always do in situations where someone starts asking about my personal history,

it starts out with my years in the Army. That's the first thing I want people to know about me, that I served. It turned out the plain-clothed trooper was X-Army as well, though a little younger than me. After that, I had to explain how I came to work in a place like this. If I am being honest, it was a whole damned string of... failures that led up to my then current state of employment. But that's nobody's business, and I conveyed only bits and pieces the officers needed to know about all that. They both just kind of nodded and jotted stuff down while I did this. The plainclothes officer was

surprised when he heard who my father was. Damn, they managed to extract a lot of information from me. I am pretty sure I am still considered a suspect in all this. They asked me about the typical course of business there at my store. I told them about the prompt and daily calls from Juanita. I told them how just this morning, sure as clockwork, Juanita had called me to verify I was in and the lights were on. That is when the nature of questions changed. The officers seemed like they needed me to say it five times and in five different ways that I had spoken with Winita that morning, on the phone, and at what time? It was then that they told me Juanita had been murdered that morning sometime right around nine o'clock.

It got worse, much worse. Without going into too much detail, the officers informed me that the head manager and the owner who had been in that morning for a meeting were both. also murdered around the same time. Of the eight other people who also worked in that building in Waldorf, none of them had yet been accounted for. In the end, it would turn out that there were only six other people in that building because two had called out. The remaining six are still missing persons cases to this day. I guess I am a suspect in those as well. The conversation needed to be continued at the police barracks, I was told. The troopers followed me around the store as I

locked things up. They had to follow me into the back so I could lock the rear door. The H made a deliberate effort not to look to either side of them as they walked down the aisles. I understand. That stuff was all pretty awful, really. Made my stomach turn, to be honest. On the way over to the barracks they pulled into a gas station. The plain-closed trooper got out for a minute and came back with a three-pack of cheap plastic lighters for me. I was taken to the new barracks that apparently had just recently been built, and was, or is, state-of-the-art. From the outside, it was a drab, but at the same time, brutal-looking one-story building. It had no windows. Inside the new barracks was most one large room full of cubicles.

There was a glassed-off conference room right in the middle. I had heard that they were getting computers in this new building. I did not know what I was expecting, but I was shocked to see there was one at almost every desk. They were just like these gray television sets with a bunch of wires coming out of the back. The screens did not look like anything out of Star Trek. They were black with glowing green letters.

Each one had a keyboard and some kind of a box for electronics beside it. There were several regular rooms with doors lining the outer walls of the barracks. I was taken into one of those. At first, I got a little scared that they were taking me to a jail cell. But it was an interrogation room. There was an AC unit, and that thing was crue. cranked up really high. I told the officers that I was cold, they brought me a cheap, flimsy blanket. We all sat at a small table. The two officers wanted to talk more about Juanita. They started

with almost the same exact questions they had asked me back at the store. I told them I knew basically nothing about her. I told them that, as far as I knew, Juanita's sole purpose was to make phone calls to make sure the stores were open on time. The company had the one store I worked at, two others in D.C., well, actually right on the border with D.C., and one up in Baltimore. Someone else from the home office mailed me my paychecks. Someone else handled delivery of the inventory. I was just there to mine the place, work the cash register, and do bank deposits. The officers asked, when I had first met Juanita. I told them I had met Juanita about two years ago when I first got hired

and was up in Waldorf to sign a bunch of papers. They asked how frequently I spoke to her. I told them again twice a day on the phone. They seemed pretty keen about that when I told them. They wanted to know what we talked about. He had to laugh at them at that point. I told them to look back over their notes, as I had already told them at least four times about the status calls. But the trooper said they just wanted to hear it from me again, that's all. They asked me why I left the job at the office supply store two years ago. And they wanted to know why I was asked to leave the job at the power plant a month before that. They wanted to know why the job.

teaching gig did not work out. I wanted to leave and walk out of the barracks at that point. I would be willing to walk all the way home or hitchhike. These guys wanted to know about both my failed marriages. They wanted to know about my landlady for crying out loud. But I also knew this was deadly serious business. People had died. I certainly did not want to antagonize the police by standing up and walking out. So I sat through all this and just took it. But I certainly didn't like answering all of their questions that had nothing to do with my actual job or about the murder case. My personal life was none of their damned business. I don't like talking about it anyway. It is nobody's damn business. After another hour of this, I was getting to be a lot of

getting to the point of walking out again, but then their questions circled back to Juanita. Was I involved with her? Had I been involved with anybody at the home office? No, I snapped at them. I hadn't been involved with Juanita or any of those people. They asked about my car. I told them I did not have a car or a truck or access to any automobile. I sold my old sunbeam a while back because it was just too unreliable, and now I had no car.

They really got interested to hear I had no car. They almost got kind of annoyed. Who doesn't have a car these days, they asked. How did I get to work? I lived how far from work? And I walked that far every day, both ways? It was at that point that they both just stood up and left the room. I had to sit there, wrapped in my blanket, and stewed for a couple of hours. When they came back in, finally,

they both thanked me very cordially and offered me a lift home. I was still mad at them, but accepted the offer. I left the blanket on the table and walked out of the room with them. I walked down the hall between them. Almost everybody else in the building had clustered in the center conference room. They were all packed around a conference table inside those big glass walls. Hanging in the air about a foot above the tallest person's head was a thick, bluish haze of cigarette smoke. They had all stopped whatever it was they were doing to look at me as I was being walked out. There he goes. There goes the guy who had something to do with it. They can all drop dead.

I don't mind walking. I was in Army Special Forces back during Korea. We walked quite a bit back then. When I walked out of the barracks, it was dark, and I knew I was miles from home. But I told the officers to forget the ride, turned away from them, and started walking. I know they stood there and watched me while I walked off with my hands shoved in my pockets. I never once turned around, but I did not hear them go back in. Most of the country's roads out there are gravel over top of sandy loam. This made it easy to hear the car coming up behind me from quite a distance. I could tell it was coming towards me, but at a slow kind of pensive rate,

I thought it was another squad car, so I just kept going without turning around. When the car pulled up beside me, it wasn't a squad car, it was a station wagon. Hey, yeah, I heard someone say. The voice was a little bit familiar, and I realized it was my one single customer from that wretched day. I don't know if he necessarily recognized me from the store, or knew who I was. He made like he was just offering a fellow a ride. By the looks of him, I figured I didn't have much to worry about unless he pulled a gun. So I climbed in. Oh, where you headed, fella? He asked. I told him what road I was on. The cabin I rented had no actual street address,

but if my driver got me to the entrance of the property, I'd be all right. What do you do? Do you work at the bank? the man asked. I told him no. Then I just gave him the name of the bookstore. He, of course, acted like he had never heard of the place. Hear about those murders up in Waldorf? he asked. Yeah, I know all about it, I said, without really thinking about the conversation I was having right then and there. The car slowed in the middle of the road practically to a rolling stop. Hold on, my driver said. propping one forearm on the top of the wheel,

we were completely stopped in the dark in the middle of the road. Fortunately, there was no other traffic while all this was going on. I turned to look at him. The brim of the Trilby cast a shadow and obscured his face. The driver leaned over slightly. I could smell his breath. You say you know all about the murders that just happened in Waldorf? Do you mean, he went on, like you know about it, like you just heard about it on the evening news,

or you know about it, know about it. I exhaled, working where I work, I hate giving out any personal details, but I had already stepped in it with this guy, so I just told him. I told him the office where the murders had happened was my company's main office, and I actually knew the people. I told him I had just been talking with the state police all evening. I ended with, I'm helping them with their investigation. Ah, man said, I see.

He straightened back up and took his foot off the break. We drove on in silence. It finally occurred to me to ask him how the hell he knew about the murders. But a little voice in my head told me that somehow, that was a terrible idea, and to just get home. Here, I said, once we reached a gas station near my road, this is fine, thanks. He stopped and said something like,

I got out and immediately walked towards the rear of the car, so he'd have no chance to roll down his window and speak to me any further. I turned as fast as I could onto the dark entrance to my road and walked it. The trail that led to the cabin was, about a quarter mile down from the main drag. I walked fast the dirt driveway that went off to the parked trucks out in front of my neighbor's cabin.

Then I sloshed through the wet carpet of damp fallen leaves that led up to my front door. Once inside, I remember lighting the fire because it had started to get a little chilly that evening, and I turned on the radio. I loved listening to that large, crappy radio during nights in that cabin. It got terrible reception out there,

but I always left it on a classical music station. You can always make out the piercing beauty of classical music, even through radio static. Since all that happened, the media circus had come and gone. The case is still open, but so far there aren't going to be any trials. They never charged anyone. The old bookstore is now a bowl.

ordered up rotting tooth in the middle of that strip of storefronts. It has been vandalized multiple times since the landlord had it emptied out. Absolutely nobody will rent that location. Kind of as a result of all the media attention this got, I met a woman who works at the college nearby. We started seeing each other for a while, but it didn't work out. I did, however, do a lot of work on her house while we were dating. After all, I was not working and was idle, and she needed a lot of stuff repaired.

When we broke up, she decided it would be more of a clean break if she wrote me a check for all the hours spent on house repairs. That's why I've got my sunbeam back beneath me again, with a fresh tank of gas in it. My clothes, my books, and the radio are all stashed in the boot. I am leaving town today, leaving the whole D.C. area this time. I am leaving the murder case, leaving the cabin, leaving my debts, leaving my reputation, escaping my father's orbit, heading out west again, maybe back to Colorado. Maybe I'll patch things up there.

But first, I'm going to drive. back into town. I'm going to park my car and walk back over to that stretch of sidewalk in front of the old store. I need to go over to that same exact spot at that same exact hour and minute. I need to check the angle of the light, try to figure out how it all happened. It has been two years to the day that the murders happened, and the weather is the same as it was that awful morning. I never told anyone about seeing Juanita that morning. I never shared that part, not with the police, not with anybody. I never told anyone how right in the instant before she vanished,

she raised her jaw just enough that I could see her neck. I never told anyone that the murder weapon was unmistakably a length of yellow army-issue tripwire. episode, creepy presents, come home, written by some unholy obscenity and narrated by Michelle Kane. The pain really is indescribable. You could call it a pinch, but I think that's underselling it. When it happens, you're either lucky enough to have it hit mostly meat or unlucky enough to get

your organs damaged. That is, of course, in cases where you get stabbed in the chest or stomach, which was my case. Agony was immediate. It felt like having a metal snake slither through my insides and bite everything it touched. One thing they don't talk much about when someone stabs you in the stomach is how their breath will hit your lips, hot and damp like an unwanted sauna. I think even some of his sweat dripped in my wound when he pulled the knife out. And you know what's almost worse? He just left me there. I think the original intent was to rob me,

but it was like he had a come-to-Jesus moment after he pulled the knife out. It was nighttime and I hadn't seen a car in minutes. I dial 911 to get help and applied pressure as I could. I must have relaxed too much when they told me a car was on the way, because the pressure apparently wasn't enough. I ended up passing out from blood loss. I fell into a coma. Apparently, the paramedics had gotten there just in time for me not to bleed to death.

I don't know if I'm thankful for that or not. People talk about how they can hear conversations from others when they're in a coma. They'll come, too, and be painful. pissed at a nurse because they heard them make fun of them at some point while they were under. I wish that's what I'd gone through. Pain made fun of sounds like paradise in comparison to what I experienced. I can't confirm if I experienced it the whole time or not, but I remember feeling as if I lived a lifetime of it.

Without being able to give the experience a proper name, let's call it a dream. In this dream, I was living inside a city I knew not the name of. I went to an office job every day. I had the same lunch every day, and then I would go home every day. It was nearly indistinguishable from a normal life. The thing is, even while I was experiencing it, I knew something was castly wrong with where I was. While most moments I was part of felt like real life, there was one thing that was seemingly

inescapable no matter where I went. In crowds or other cubicles in my office, I would see a figure wearing a white robe. The robe would cover them from head to toe, almost like an intricate ghost costume. They would hold their hands in front of them with their right hand turned on its side and fingers pointed upward, and inversely their left hand would have its fingers pointed down. This figure was always standing when I saw them, and whenever I did see them, I knew what it meant. It meant that someone was going to kill themselves. Without fail, every time I saw that figure, someone in my dream would perish. The first time was when I was commuting to this job in the city.

I was on a bus scrolling through my phone alongside all the other board passengers as our humdrum lives went on in this never-ending phantasmagoria. When I looked up to see when my stop was coming, there they were. Standing in between two passengers was this figure in white. Hands crooked as to point to heaven and hell and domineeringly tall. I could not see their face through the fabric of the robe, which gave the appearance of pale liquid with its creases. The person to the left of them, an older man who had been staring at the ground, suddenly perked up. I watched as he reached into his messenger bag and revealed a pencil and pencil sharpener. He ground the pencil for a minute or so, every few seconds checking the sharpness of the graphite with close inspection. He went on to make the same hand sign that the figure would make once he was satisfied with the pencils filing. And without so much as another moment, he rammed it into the roof of his mouth. I gasped in horror as the pencil effortlessly pierced through his bone and lodged itself in his brain.

The man slumped to the ground in a pointless heap, dead instantly. Everyone on the bus went into an uproar, screaming and crying took over immediately as the bus driver slammed on the brakes to let everyone off and call the authorities. I was frozen in place watching the lump of flesh that was moments ago a man. The figure had not moved either. I have no concept of how long I was there in my stupor, but eventually the authorities entered the bus. They asked me if I was okay and escorted me slowly. They didn't even acknowledge the figure in white. I soon learned no one ever noticed them aside for myself.

A ghost all my own. My tormentor. Countless deaths came after that. The numbers were staggering. From a woman in my office dismantling a shredder so she could put the blades to her own throat, to a teenager intentionally slamming their newly purchased car into a power line. Tragedy ran wild in this nightmare world.

In every instance of this, I saw the figure somewhere nearby. They never did anything but make the same gesture with their hands and stare directly at me. Even through the milky cloak they wore, I knew their eyes bore into my head as meaningless suicide took place. Attempts to speak with the being were met with silence. I cried, screamed, begged, and even inquired about its presence. No matter the effort, it never gave a response.

Not until the day I woke up, that is. By the time my coma was reaching its end, the deaths began to roll off my shoulder. like an inconvenience. I know how cruel that is, but you have to understand. I saw hundreds of people die. Nearly 15 a day. After a while, it just became part of the routine. I learned to live around it rather than try and understand the whim of some cosmic miscreant.

My life had become an endless cycle of office work, and those around me committing suicide. The day I woke from my coma was the only outlier in the macabre life I was leading. Everything was the same as when it began. What I found interesting that day was how quiet it had been. The city seemed empty. But I guess when I think about it, I can attribute that to its denizens constantly ending their lives. When I arrived at work, the figure was already there.

They stood in front of the office's entryway, making the hand gesture they always did. I began to hear the fuzz of radio static grow louder in my ears. It felt like tinnitus, but it tickled my eardrons. Like someone was taking a dry paintbrush to them. After a moment or two, words came from the static and lodged themselves deep in my brain. Worship the moon and all her grisly. stars. Fall prey to your whims and watch the sun starve. The only word I've been able to find to describe the voice correctly is irradiated. It felt chemically sick. Words forced from a tongue

poisoned by man's mistakes. The figure then lowered its head and raced it again. It inverted its hands so that the left aimed up and the right was now facing down. And all of a sudden, I was staring at a sterile white ceiling. A mechanical beeping echoed in my ears where I had once been hearing radio static. I heard a woman's voice shout. They're awake. They're awake! I moved back in with my mother after I woke up. She had been there nearly every day, according to the nurses, and I wasn't ready to pay off what rent my apartment had racked up. My real job, that happened to be in a warehouse, was actually really understanding of my plight. Once they learned about what happened, they were gracious enough not to replace me

and were even willing to let me recover for another month before returning. I was blessed to be around so many people who were supportive of me during this time. and that month was all I needed to make sure I was back on my feet and making headway towards normalcy. As time passed, the persistent nightmare from my coma slowly drifted into my subconscious. I began to not think about it nearly at all and only told stories of it when I was asked by people what my coma was like. Overall, I felt incredibly lucky to be in the circumstance I was in. I know how much worse my situation could have been, and I tried to live in the gratitude I could muster. Eventually, it felt nearly as if it had never happened. Several months had gone by, and with the right

mindset, they overwhelmed the time I'd spent in the coma. Life went on, as it always does, caring not for how lives are going and keeping pace with itself, despite us. Life will always find its path, no matter how desolating or destructive it is. We as humans will never understand life to its full extent, and the decisions it makes are not with rage, but with apathy. It took me a long while to understand this. Whenever something went wrong in my life, be it my stabbing or something far more petty, I found reasons to shout at God. I would say, Why me? Or this always happens to me, as if I could ever be special enough to receive such treatment. No, that's not why life happens. Life happens because it will, whether or not you are there.

I am fully aware, however, that my presence here in the real world is little more than a blister, a sore with no purpose other than to drag pain to the surface. I was offered a higher position at my job at the six-month mark of my return. I had to believe some of it was pity for me, but in this world, I cannot argue with more money. Not only that, but it removed me from the warehouse floor and into the office above. I would be dealing with ledgers and inventory rather than physically moving those items around for customers. I preferred it a great deal, and the pay was something no one could say no to. It was to be an adjustment period, certainly, and I had been doing manual labor up until this point.

As the cards continued to flip in my favor, all I would be working with were things I already understood. My first day would be the following Monday, and I needed to rest to prepare my brain and give my body some time off. It was Saturday. I don't remember what time, sometime mid-day. day. Me and my mother were having a celebratory dinner of chicken cordon blue, as I had always been my favorite. I remember not liking it as much that day, simply because the sheer number of times I'd had it in the past year. Since waking, my mother made it constantly. I'm sure she was very afraid of losing me again. We turned the TV on and sat down for dinner and a laugh. The channel was set to the news and before I had the chance to reach for the remote, I felt my spine tingle and terror

as I witnessed what was being relayed to us. It was a story about a murder that had taken place that morning. There had been an attack on public transit, and while the details of the attack were left out, the news couldn't resist having some awful clickbait title. Stranger kills man with pencil on the bus. It was somewhat similar to what I'd experienced in my dreamlike state and enough to send me into a flashback rabbit hole of all the horrid things I had witnessed in that place. I changed it quickly and my mother and I ate the rest of our meal mostly in silence, with intermittent exchanges between us where I tried to assure her that I was okay.

Monday. Monday came quickly and I had done all I could to push the memory of that new story from my mind. It may come as no surprise that I made little progress. There was very little that I found in my day-to-day that triggered any sort of memory from the nightmare. But that story being so alike what I'd witnessed, aside from it not being a suicide, was certainly part of that tiny percentage. What bothered me the most regarding it was how flippant the television had spoken about it, as if it were normal occurrence to have someone murdered on the bus with a writing utensil. Even still, I was blessed with a new job and eight hours to focus on said job without having to consider the implications of whatever this meant. I tried with all my might to avoid thoughts of this murder.

The crew around me decided it was the only thing they wanted to discuss. While I went through my training, the five others in the office with me spoke with each other loudly about the insanity of the murder all throughout the day. It was distracting and I struggled making headway on learning the ends and outs of my new position, but I was still doing so. It wasn't until someone mentioned the assailant apparently used a bizarre hand sign. that I was incapable of focusing entirely. I whirled around in my desk chair like an impromptu tornado.

What do you mean by weird handsign? I inquired a great deal too eagerly. I could tell because it seemed to shock my coworkers how I injected myself into their conversation. It was as I feared, but not what I had originally assumed. Left hand turned sideways, fingers pointed to the sky. Right hand turned sideways. fingers pointed toward the earth. My breath caught in my throat when they explained it to me.

I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know why it was happening. How did someone get chased by a dream? My co-workers were still very much aware that I may not be as normal as I could have been, so the response to my panic attack was rather positive, all things considered. I was unable to finish out the first day of my new job. My panic had been so severe that I nearly collapsed, only being caught by selfless people and their patience. I was a wreck all over again and from something that could mean nothing, but there was no way it meant nothing. The method of killing, the hand sign, the location, those things interconnected in a way that should not be possible. A nightmare leaking its eicker into the room.

real world. When I was home, my mother made me as comfortable as possible. It felt like a child trapped in a grown body. We discussed me going to therapy or even the potential for medication to aid me with my flashbacks. I agreed, if only half-heartedly, just so the topic could end. In my heart, I knew it wasn't a flashback. Something incredibly wrong was happening. I needed. I needed, it to dig. I wanted to see what had happened. I needed to find video evidence of that murder. It saddens me to a severe degree how quickly I was able to uncover it. Phone video of the incident was captured and without going into my own opinions too deeply, it just bothered me. It took a little bit of digging to find it but nowhere near as much as I had anticipated. A couple

of threads in the local Facebook group regarding crime, and there it was, a link to an atrocity someone easily shared without consideration to the victim or their family. It's weird when darkness like that is exactly what you needed from the world. Even stranger is how reliable that darkness often turns out to be. The video itself was posted by someone claiming to be attacked by the murderer as well. They stated that this video was horribly graphic, and one of the most frightening things they'd ever experienced. They went on to say that the whole thing had felt almost dreamlike. The magnitude of what was on that video? The accuracy of it all? It was impossible. The camera is aimed towards the front of the bus from a further back seat. Angle is awkward, having a yellow

poll attempt to take focus for the first half. The person it's focused on is standing there, making the hand sign that the figure in white made to me right before I woke up for my coma, the inverse of what they'd been doing throughout my existence in that dream world. In the seat across from them, sits someone who is clearly doing their best to ignore the behavior of the stranger in front of them. That's where I'd been sitting. The person the video focused on had been standing in the same position the white figure had been standing, next to the old man who had committed suicide. Suddenly, the person in focus speaks. I hear it. I hear it as clear as I had heard it the first time it was said to me. Worship the moon and all her grisly stars. Fall prey to your

whims and watch the sun starve. The person holding the camera laughs to themselves with the muffled, what the hell, as the person on video reaches into their bag and retrieves a pencil. They then revealed a pencil sharpener and filed the pencil down until they were satisfied. The only saving grace is how quickly the next part transpired. In a flash, they were on the person sitting where I had been in the dream, with one free hand, they pry open the lower jaw of the unsuspecting victim, whose eyes had not yet processed what was happening to them, and slammed the pencil down their throat. They shoved it deep until the person was gurgling and choking and spewing blood. Shrieks and exclamations flew all over the bus,

and the cameraman cowered in the open seat behind their own. The assailant turned to face the camera, and walked right up to it, placing their face inches from the lens. Come home, is all they said. Their eyes bore holes into the camera, and I knew what it meant. I shouldn't have woken up from that coma. I made what occurred down there up here, up here, and now it was hunting me. I do not know who all of this will affect.

I cannot save for certain what comes after, but the pieces I've put together are enough for me to know that this is not where this will end. There had been so many things I'd been blind to this whole time. Like how I hadn't even recognized that I worked in an office of all places now. And how, as I type this, I can hear one of my coworkers dismantling the shredder behind me.

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