Horror logo

Am I Being Followed? 1.3

By PrettyQuill

By PrettyQuillPublished 3 years ago 11 min read
1

**Disclaimer**

Do not distribute or post elsewhere without my approval

This series may contain:

Blood, Gore, Violence, Seeing things, Hearing voices, Dangerous situations, possible crude language and mental breakdowns.

Please read with caution as it is still in progress and as I remember specific parts of this dream it could change what the disclaimer will hold

I pack up the shoes, getting ready to take them to the counter. Luckily when it comes to shopping for shoes I’ve always been good at getting it done rather quickly, probably thanks to my bored window shopping online when Tom is too busy to hang out. I get to the counter and put the pair I picked out on the counter and tell the lady at the counter that I had found what I was looking for. As soon as she scanned my shoes I noticed that she had stopped moving even though she was about to say something. I quickly turn to scan the rest of the store and see everyone had stopped moving! Everyone! Everything! Even the water from the fountain right outside the store!

As the realization of what’s going on washes over me, my heart starts racing and I start digging for my phone in my purse so I can record what is happening. “Got it!” I whisper to myself and start recording. I walk up to a mother that looks like she is lecturing her daughter while putting a pair of shoes on her feet while the daughter looks like she is holding back tears. I wave my hands in between their faces to see if either of them can move, with no luck. I walk up to a few different people trying to get their attention also with no luck. “Is this just in my head again? Maybe like on the way to the mall too?” *CRASH* I quickly turn around to see that some of the boxes towards the back are now lying on the floor.

“Wait…is that? IT IS!”I think to myself. I’m looking at the same creature that I was looking at across the street while walking here! A wave of fear washes over me and I’m too scared to move or say anything.

I can’t pull my eyes from its big yellow eyes with slit like pupils black as night. He notices me staring at him and gives the creepiest of smiles. Everyone that was frozen had started mauling each other. I saw one woman jump on another, once she has the woman pinned to the floor, I watched her use her long stiletto nails to dig her fingers under the skin of the other woman’s face and quickly peels the flesh on her cheek and chin clean off! She had dug her teeth into the piece of cheek flesh and rips a chunk off. Covered in a layer of blood, she is fighting off the woman under her that is trying to do the same to her side and shredding her dress in the process.

I see the mother run into some shelves, trying to throw her daughter off her back who is trying to dig her teeth into the side of her neck. The impact was able to get her daughter off of her, and then beating her to stand, the mother leaped at the daughter in hopes of eating her.

As I’m watching amongst the chaos, far too shocked to even know what to do, someone jumps on my back wrapping their legs around my body for stability, knocking my phone out of my hand. I start to panic and can only think of getting her off of me before she does any serious damage. As she is trying to bite into the side of my neck, I’m using all of my strength to keep her from getting too close enough while I try to figure out how to get out of this.

My vision starts going black and I mentally shut down, letting my body take over, somehow managing to throw, what turned out to be a woman who looks to be about in her mid-twenties, off of my back. I watch as she manages to land on her feet but a little off balance. As she staggers to regain balance I frantically look for my phone because I don’t want to lose the video. I finally spot it and sprint toward it hoping that I can get to it before the woman regains her balance.

I take a quick peak to make sure it’s still safe, but as I catch her in my field of vision I see her about to take a leap toward me; instinctually I ducked and slid, watching her fly over me, straight into the drywall. I slide straight to my phone and am able to get to my feet and start running towards the exit through all of the chaos, trying to get out before she could get back to her feet or anyone else noticed me there.

The moment my foot reaches the other side of the stores threshold I notice that there’s no more noise of destruction. Without thinking, I turn my head to see everyone hallway of the mall is acting as if nothing is happening. I stop in place and breathing heavily I look inside the store and everyone looks normal again and are just shopping like normal.

I feel my heart sinking and my knees feel weak, but I force myself to stay standing. I look at my phone and see if I can find the video I had been taking, but my phone screen is destroyed from where I had dropped it. I try to regain my demeanor and take a slow and weary step back into the store to see the cashier looking at me as if she was concerned about my reaction. I give her the fakest smile I could ever give and look her in the eye, “Sorry about that, I thought I was going to have a heart attack from spending so much on some shoes! Haha!” She doesn’t seem to be buying it and hesitates for a moment before continuing to finish my transaction. I pay for the shoes still trying to process if everything that happened was real.

I thank her, grabbing the shoes off the counter and then quickly walk to the front of the mall to meet up with Tom, while trying not to freak out. “I’m just seeing things. None of that really happened” I tell myself, heart still racing, thinking it’s just stress from moving to a new city and trying to get used to the new environment. Finding it rather odd that the voices didn’t have any input this time so instead of thinking too hard about it, I reassure myself that being around Tom will help with calming down and forget about it.

I finally reach the front of the mall and I see Tom pulling up to the door to pick me up. Still a bit scared and wanting to get away from the mall, I force myself to walk a bit faster than usual to get to his car. I put my stuff in the popped trunk and then get into the passenger seat and give a really hard sigh.

“Are you okay, Autumn? You look a little pale!” Tom asks me concerned. As a tear runs down my face I look at Tom as he asks me again, “Are you alright? Do you still want to hangout today?” I wipe away the tear that had painted my face then smile and look him in the eye while saying, “I still want to hang out but can we pick up some clothes from my house real quick? I..um…packed a bag this morning and forgot to grab it.” Obviously avoiding the question knowing that he can see that there’s something going on and believes I will more than likely tell him later when I’m not as tense. He gives a sigh and double checks, “You’ll tell me later right? I’m really worried about you, you know?” I just give a slight nod trying to keep myself from crying.

He pulls away from the mall entrance and starts heading to my apartment building. The whole ride is very quiet while I look out the window, I can just feel the concern on Toms face. I want to tell him but I don’t know what he would think if I told him. Would he laugh at me? What if it is all in my head and none of it was real? The more I question what had happened the more I think that none of it really happened and all of the overwhelming fear I felt, was fear of losing myself. There’s a part of me that is hoping that it was all in my head, because I don’t even know how I would begin to deal with this if it was real.

We pull into my apartment buildings parking garage’ “Um, Tom?” was all I was able to get out before he said, “Of course I will go up with you!” He turns the car off and gets out of the car. Locking the car doors, we start walking toward the stairs that lead to my apartment. With each stair we climb I feel a little tenser from remembering the feeling I had this morning before leaving my apartment and how I’ve been a bit on edge today.

We finally reach my apartment door and I feel pressure that feels like it’s weighing me down, solely from my nerves and not knowing what I’ll find on the other side of the door. I slowly reach my shaking hand to put my key in the lock and right before I unlock the door I feel something warm wrap around my dangling hand, I panic at first and turn around quickly to see it’s just Tom. “Autumn, I don’t know what happened but if you’re scared I’m here for you.” I give him a shocked look as my eyes start to water. “Do you want me to do it?” I give him a slight nod and step aside to let him open the door. He quickly unlocks the door and we enter.

As we walk in I breathe a sigh of relief as I notice that everything is still in its place. I look at Tom, “I’m going to go grab my bag real quick and then we can get out of here.” I head toward my bed and grab my bag off of it. “Alright let’s go!” I say as I turn back toward Tom so we can leave and when I turn around his eyes are the same yellow as the creature from the mall. I start breathing heavy and I can feel my heart start to race. The edge of my vision starts to turn black. I’m starting to panic.

“Autumn?” He notices something is wrong. “Autumn!” He yells before running over to me as my legs give out and I start to fall. He manages to catch me before my head hits the floor. “Autumn! I need you to breath! Inhale…”

My body feels limp and I can’t hear much over my own heartbeat that is now pounding so hard that it feels like it’s making my head move. The only thing I can really sense is the heat from my blood pumping so fast but also a hint of warmth from being held. My body starts to mimic the patterns it notices. We both inhale, “Now exhale until I say stop.” We both exhale for what feels like forever, “Okay, now inhale again.” He repeated the instructions a few times until I was able to hear him clearly and can see that his eyes are his normal beautiful chestnut brown but they are filled with tears.

I slowly sit up as I only now feel the tears of fear and confusion start to run down my face as I can hear him say, “Are you going to be okay? Do you want to go to the hospital” I turn to face him and wrap my arms around him, looking for some comfort and trying to forget how much my body hurts now. “Please don’t leave me!” I say through the tears. He hugs me back, “Autumn, I don’t plan on leaving you anytime soon, especially not like this, but you didn’t answer my question.” I think about it for a moment before answering him, “I don’t want to go to the hospital but if it gets worse then I’ll explain everything and agree to go.”

Tom helps me to my feet and grabs my bag for me. We head out the door and back down to his car, all while he has an arm around me trying to make sure that I don’t fall over again. “He probably thinks you’re crazy, you know that right?” “I really don’t have the energy to deal with you right now, could you please leave me alone.” “Well what do you expect? It’s not like you are taking any of this seriously. You’re just using him! You didn’t even fight back when he paid for your clothes! You need to…..” I started to let the thoughts run wild but ignoring what they’re saying and put myself in auto pilot. I’ve found being rather absent to what my brain and body are doing have helped keep my sanity in times of what feels like pure physical and emotional exhaustion.

Tom leads me to the passenger side of the car and helps get me into the seat before getting into the driver seat. He starts heading towards his apartment that’s about a 25 minute drive from my place. This is plenty of time for me to kind of regain myself before getting to his apartment building.

To be continued....

fiction
1

About the Creator

PrettyQuill

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.