Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - The Face Game

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

🎧 Check out The SCP Experience podcast here: https://spoti.fi/3juM1og 🎉 Ad-free bonus stories + exclusive uncensored animations: https://www.patreon.com/drnosleep 🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/DrNoSleep ✅ Send all advertising inquiries to: [e-mail] Author: John Beardify Check out more of his work Here: https://www.reddit.com/user/beardify/ New Book Release Here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QJXLHF4 DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #drnosleep #scarystories #horrorstories #doctornosleep #truescarystories #horrorpodcast #horror Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, I want to give a shout out to Olga, Jason, and Valerie for signing up to become Dr. No Sleep patrons. You three now have full access to my ad-free podcast episodes and bonus episodes. If you'd like to receive access as well, check out my Patreon page at patreon.com slash DR No Sleep to sign up. The link is also available in the description below. Now back to the story. The face game can be played by four or more people. Players must begin the game alone and in absolute darkness. If any sources of light or observers are present, the game will fail.

But the game itself is simple. Players stand in a circle with one player in the center. The player in the center is called the judge. The players who form the circle are called the Pretenders. In the center of the circle, the judge spins counterclockwise, while the pretenders rotate clockwise around them. The players continue to spin until the judge announces in a loud voice, I wonder, I wonder whose face I will find.

The pretenders then freeze and take three steps backward, widening the circle. The judge can no longer be sure who or what is standing where. They must approach the first pretender and attempt to identify them by touching their face. If the judge touches any part of a pretender apart from their face, or if a pretender moves or speaks, the game fails. A pretender can sneer, scrunch up their nose, or otherwise manipulate their face to make themselves more difficult to identify. When the judge is confident about a pretender's identity,

the judge announces loudly, This face belongs to the pretender's full, true name. If the judge is incorrect, the face game ends. Otherwise, the game continues, and the judge approaches the next pretender. If the judge correctly identifies all of the pretenders, the judge wins, and the face game ends. If a pretender successfully deceives the judge, the pretenders win, and the face game ends. There is, however, a third possible outcome. the face game, it is possible that the judge might touch a face that they are unable to identify,

a face that belongs to someone or something that wasn't present when the game began, the outsider. The judge must take their time with the face of the outsider, being sure to touch every part. They must not be discouraged or frightened by weeping sores, strange protrusions, or squirming things beneath the outsider's flesh. Even if the outsider bites the judge, licks them, or makes its skin abrasive, the judge must continue until they have touched every part of the outsider's face. The pretenders must remain in their places. They must not move or speak, regardless of any foul odors, unnatural sounds, or changes in temperature that the outsider might produce. When the judge has completely touched every part of the outsider's face, they must loudly announce,

I do not know who this face belongs to, but surely it is the most beautiful face of all. The outsider then disappears, and the face game ends. However, if the pretenders move or speak, if the judge fails to completely touch the outsider's face, or doesn't pronounce the game-ending phrase correctly, or if the outsider successfully impersonates one of the pretenders, the outsider wins the face game. And what happens if the outsider wins the face game? My best friends and I found out on Halloween night in 1999.

Light is a feather stiff as a board. Light is a feather stiff as a board. The five of us chanted, but Amy didn't budge. My fingers hurt. I was starting to sweat and clarifies. a stuffy unfinished basement. And I thought that choosing our heaviest friend for the witchy ritual might not have been the best idea. I wanted desperately for it to work. I think we all did. Mostly because now that we were 12, Halloween had started to seem sort of lame. Erika had stolen

her brother's copy of scream, but it hadn't made us jump and shriek the way we used to. eating so much candy had made us all feel sick to our stomachs, and the flickering tea candles Christina had set up felt cliche instead of spooky. We all wanted that special Halloween magic back, even if it was just for one more night. The basement door opened with a creek. We all jumped and let Amy drop. Ow!

Amy groaned, clutching her head. Clara's older sister Holly stood backlit by the rectangle of light at the top of the basement stairs. Are you still trying to do that stupid trick? Holly sneered. You know it's fake, right? Holly was two years older than us, and, according to herself, about ten times cooler.

Maybe it was just the sweltering basement or my frustration with our disappointing Halloween night, but I suddenly just couldn't take any more of Holly's superiority complex. Oh, let me guess, I snapped. I bet you know one that really works, right? How I wish I could take those words back now. Holly's mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times. She couldn't believe that one of her little sister's friends

had actually talked back to her. I do, Holly spat, when her jaw finally started working again. And I'll prove it. She slammed the basement door on her way out. We all looked at each other and giggled. Holly was gone a long time. Here. She stormed down the stairs and shoved a sheet of printed paper into my hands.

The face game read the header. This isn't some game you knew about. I snorted. You printed it off from somewhere. Look, the ink's not even dry. You're too scared to play it. Anyway, I'm going to talk to my boyfriend, so do not come upstairs. Holly shouted over her shoulder before slamming the door,

and getting yelled at once again. We read through the instructions several times. It didn't seem complicated, but even as a preteen, I wondered about the face game. It seemed so simple, so anonymous. Who had created the face game? Why?

At the time, I didn't have any answers. The five of us stood in a circle, waiting for Clara's parents to click off the television and go to bed. when the house was finally quiet, we began. I volunteered to be the judge. It had looked easy on paper, but spinning in circles in Clara's stuffy, pitch-black basement went to my head immediately.

I had barely twirled five times when the floor began to feel wobbly beneath my feet. I wonder, I wonder whose face I will find, I shouted queasily, starting the game. It had sounded like there were, a lot more than just my friend's footsteps circling around me in the dark. But when I spoke, all sound stopped. Standing dizzily in the complete darkness made me feel like an astronaut from one of the documentaries we watched in school, floating alone in the lightness, hostile void of space.

With a shiver, I took a step forward, then another. Where were my friends? I held my hand out in front of me and staggered blindly forward. When my fingers touched flesh, I nearly shrieked. A face. Fortunately, the first one was easy. It was a round face with soft, pudgy features. And if that weren't enough, there wasn't a drip of sweat on it. That meant it could only belong to Amy, the girl we've been trying to lift with her spell. I felt around her face, just to be sure, then called out, This face belongs to Amy Leanne McCade. I heard Amy let out a sigh of relief. No one else spoke.

The game would go on. The next face was bony and twitchy. Whoever it was didn't want to make it easy for me. They wrinkled their nose and lips so much that for a terrifying moment, I thought I was touching the outsider described in the rules. But then I realized that whatever I was touching trimmed its eyebrows and used strawberry shampoo.

Only one person I knew was such a pain. This face belongs to Clara Simmons. Wrong! Christina laughed. Sudden footsteps, a banged knee, cursing. Kelsey flipped the lights back on. I was standing in front of Christina. Clara was next to her in the circle.

The darkness had made me more sensitive to smell, I supposed. And besides, I'd figured that only Clara was. try to trip me up. I'd forgotten how sneaky Christina could be. My friends, the pretenders, had won the face game. I felt my cheeks burning. Holly's stupid paper printout game had been more difficult than I thought, and I looked and felt like an idiot. I was angry with them, but even more angry with myself. Well, since you won Christina, why don't you be judge next? I challenged her. Christina just shrugged. I realized that none of the others understood what I was so angry about.

They didn't understand the tension and fear that came with being the judge. That weird sensation of touching a suddenly unfamiliar face in the dark. Before I knew it, the lights clicked off, and we began to spin. I don't know if Christina had a higher tolerance for dizziness, or if she just wanted to show off, but she twirled for what felt like forever. ever. Candy sloshed sickeningly in my stomach, and I wondered what would happen if someone passed out during the face game. I wonder, I wonder whose face I will find.

Christina sighed in a sing-song voice. We froze. After taking three steps back, that feeling was back. The sensation of being alone in the universe. There was nothing to do but wait for hands to touch my face. I heard shuffling feet, wiggling, a barely stifled giggle. This face belongs to Clara Simmons.

Clara groaned. Christina moved on. She barely took two minutes to identify the next pretender. This face belongs to Erica Rebecca Moss. Christina was moving fast, maybe too fast.

I heard her uncertain footsteps as she nearly walked outside the circle and had to double back, feeling her way through the dark, just as I had. Suddenly, Christina gasped. Then, silence. What was taking her so long? And when had Clara's basement gotten so cold? I shivered. If it weren't for the total darkness, I was sure I would have been able to see my breath. A foul smell like rotten eggs invaded my nostrils. Something was wrong. I desperately wanted to ask Christina what was going on, and yet, if a pretender moves or speaks, the outsider wins the face game. I heard a sick, gurgling noise, followed by another more recognizable sound.

Christina weeping. I don't know whose face this is, Christina sob. But surely, it is the most you... I couldn't take any more. I didn't care what happened after the game ended. It just had to stop. I stumbled forward into the pitch blackness, feeling for the light switch. I should have slipped on bean bags and candy wrappers or slammed into the basement furniture.

I should have found the stairs. But the darkness seemed to go on forever. Clara? Christina? I asked nervously. No response. It was like my words had been swallowed up. I wrapped my arms around myself.

against the chill, but it was useless. The cold penetrated all the way to the bone. When I held my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering, I thought for sure I could hear someone screaming, but it felt very far away. No matter how far I walked forward or backwards, I couldn't reach the basement wall. I knelt and touched the floor.

Instead of Clara's carpet, I touched something as cold and smooth as ice. Is... is anyone there? I cried. From somewhere behind me, I heard a low, rumbling sound that might have been laughter. The next thing I knew, I was blind. A dark figure surrounded my light shouted down at me. What are you twirps doing down here?

Mom and dad are pissed. I knew that voice. Claire's older sister, Holly, at the top of the stairs once more. My friends were scattered around the basement like broken toys, terrified and exhausted. all except Christina. Christina stood in the center of the room, her face expressionless. She opened and closed her fingers and toes

as if using them for the first time. She wriggled the muscles in her face, as though trying to understand how to move them. And then she smiled. Your stupid game didn't work. Christina yelled up the stairs. The rest of us looked at each other. It had worked.

Too well. Christina had touched the outsider. She should know that better than anyone, and yet... Of course it didn't work, Holly rolled her eyes. I just printed it out from some message board so you losers wouldn't bother me while I talked to Brandon. He doesn't even like you, Christina said flatly. What? Holly's eyes grew wide.

Why don't you ask Brandon what he did with Shelley Spicer from Second Period at Alex Hofffeld's homecoming party? Christina sneered. How do you know about that? Holly stammered. Anyway, Brandon didn't even go. He told me so. That wasn't what he told Shelly. Ask him.

You'll see. Without another word, Holly slammed the door. We all stared. What? Christina shrugged, examining her fingernails. Holly Simmons is a bitch. She deserved it. Chris, what happened to you?

I asked. Christina snorted. Don't tell me you're still. talking about that stupid game. Just before, before everything got weird, you found the outsider, didn't you? I heard you. But surely it is the most beautiful face of a, don't tell me you actually felt for that. Christina threw her head back and laughed.

I was just messing with you. You're still such a baby. I mean, none of the rest of you were scared, right? Christina looked from face to face. One by one, each of my friends shook. their heads. I couldn't believe it. I'd seen how bewildered and frightened they were when the face game finally ended. I knew that, like me, they'd been shivering and lost, trapped in that cold, dark other place. I felt betrayed, but I couldn't blame them. There was a menacing new look

in Christina's glare, as though something ancient and cruel was staring out from behind her eyes. I think, on a deeper level, I already knew the truth. The real Christina was gone forever, trapped in that freezing abyss, and maybe even destined to become an outsider herself. The thing that had come back inside her shell was something else entirely, an outsider, and it had no problem turning my friends against me. We were young, impressionable, and, to be honest, afraid of what Christina had become. come. Throughout the fall and into the winter, Christina followed me and stalked me. She never

spoke, but the message was clear. Never speak of what you know. Once she was confident of my silence, Christina, or the thing inside her, got to work on its favorite pastime, destroying the lives of the people around her. Her parents divorced, citing irreconcilable differences, but I knew the real reason. They wanted to escape from their daughter. They wanted to escape from the outsider. In time, Christina's sadistic games drove Kelsey and Erica away. They became her new targets, and the way she teased them throughout high school crossed the line from bullying to torture more than once.

Those who stayed close to her weren't so lucky. She got Clara hooked on heroin our junior year, and Amy was killed in a car crash when Christina blackmailed her into driving drunk on prom night. Sometimes it was over quickly. Other times it dragged on for years. But Christina always wrung every drop of suffering she could from the people around her before throwing them away.

To her, or it, suffering seemed to be a sort of game. I usually kept my distance from hometown gossip, but in Christina's case, it was like being the spectator to a horrific natural disaster. I just couldn't look away. In dive bars and beauty salons, I learn of the careers she'd left in ruins, the relationships she'd wrecked, the pain and death had followed her like a black cloud. Eventually, she wound up in prison, given her love of cruel games, manipulation, and control.

I'm sure she enjoyed every minute of it. I ran into one of the correctional officers who worked in her unit by chance a few years later. His name was Mark. He'd gone to high school with Christina and I, and, like me, he was now terrified of her. I noticed a cast on his left arm. She basically rules the cell block. The inmates are all afraid of her. So are the guards.

You should hear the stories that the cops tell, the ones who arrested her in the first place. They said she was crawling up the walls like a goddamn spider. And that's not the worst of it. We were standing in the aisle of a busy supermarket, but I suddenly felt cold and alone, like I had when we played the face game. Mark looked over his shoulder before continuing. The worst part is how she manipulates people. Know what I mean?

I did. I thought of Erica with her head in a high school toilet. Clara with a needle in her arm. Amy's arm hanging out the door of a car wrapped around a tree. The other day, we caught her in an empty storage room with some of the same. other inmates. All the lights were off, and they were playing some sort of game. I shivered. We put her into solitary confinement after that, and solitary breaks everybody. I've seen the toughest gangsters and most psychotic killers cry like babies just after a few days of solitary,

but not her, not Christina. We could see her on the camera, just staring into space, Mark trailed off. He cleared his throat. Sorry if I seem a little freaked out by this. It's just... I was one of the COs who interrupted whatever game they were playing. And when the lights flickered on, I'd swear I saw something dark and horrible,

standing in the circle with the rest of them. It disappeared right away, and then... Well, then I tried to put cuffs on Christina. She snapped my wrist like a goddamn twig. He gestured to his arm. Look. Don't tell many people in town about this, okay? I don't need everybody thinking I'm scared of a girl from high school.

But he was scared. We both were, especially after I told him my side of the story. Mark believed me, and we kept tabs on Christina as best we could. But after she got out of prison, the trail went cold. It's only been a few weeks now, but I've noticed a disturbing trend. More and more people seem to be talking about this. the face game. When my friends and I played the face game, it was just some anonymous printout from an online chat room. Now it seemed to be showing up everywhere. In viral videos, in the

conversations of kids walking home from school, Mark even found the rules of the face game stapled to a telephone pole near his house. It can only mean one thing. The outsider wearing Christina's skin is spreading the word about the face game. Is it trying to bring more of its kind to our world or find its way back from where it came from. I don't have any answers. But when I walk through the streets of my old hometown, looking at the happy expressions of families out for an autumn evening stroll, I hear a sing-song voice repeating in my mind.

I wonder, I wonder whose face I will find. Lazzang sur-goled, puissance-molyne, for 15 minutes. We'd say that's the lojo. Prere to play the pleasure with the Ujo. Casino in-line, which proposes the most recent

machine-as-sou and the games of casino in direct. Profite to 50 tour gratu for Big Bas Bonanza,

without exigience of mis, and with the payment instantane. Hey, I've gained. Woo-hoo! Sonture the pleasure.

Play-Ojo. 18-8 and plus, 1,000, expuant to Ontario. 50 tours gratu on the machine-a-Bas-Ban-A. Depos minimum

of $10 dollar. Veye and I'm paying to pay