We Have To Stop This

We have to stop this.

All of this.

We have to stop writing, reading, telling, and spreading these things around.

As I sit here in my one-bedroom apartment, I can feel him looking at me. He's closer now, I can see him pacing in the corner, and when he sees what I'm writing here, I'm not sure what will happen. I've been writing these stories, these THINGS, for the past year. I've polluted the world with this filth for a year now, but I'm done! These stories, these abominations have ruined my life like no drug or drink ever could, but after tonight I guess I'll never have to think of them again.

I don't want you to think it's always been this way.

I haven't always been a worthless waste of space.

I was married once. I was married to an amazing woman who loved me. We had a little boy, a new house, and I had a job that I loved. We had friends, we went out, and we had a life together.

That was before I found the creepypastas.

I've always been a fan of horror. Horror films, horror comics, horror stories, and pretty much anything scary. I remember when I was six, I watched The Shining with my mom. While I didn't sleep at all that night, I remember relishing the squirming feeling that lived in my guts. From that day forward, I was hooked. I watched anything, and everything and even cheesy films like Paranormal Activity or The Haunting of Sunshine Girl seemed to pique my adrenaline. The darker the movie, the more it appealed to me. I guess that's why I liked them so much. If I was afraid, then my adrenaline was pumping, and it made me feel more alert; more alive.

Horror movies are how I met my wife; Lisa.

We were both standing in line at a midnight showing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and began talking about horror movies as we waited to get our tickets. By the time we got inside, her friends had called to cancel, and I invited her to sit with me. She was so cute but turned out to be a total scaredy-cat. She spent most of the movie hiding her eyes and squeezing my hand during the best parts. I didn't mind though, I think I was in love by the end of that movie, and six months later, we moved in together. To my surprise, we meshed well together. We didn't have the usual arguments over dinner or the division of chores around the house. The house was brighter with her in it. On the first anniversary of our first movie, I proposed to her, and we made it official.

My one-bedroom condo, our one-bedroom condo, was fine for a while, but when she told me that she was pregnant, I knew it was time to find a bigger place. I do IT work for a pretty big company, so money for a house wasn't too big an issue. With our modest incomes, we were able to get a nice three-bedroom house in the city, and I put my condo up for rent. When our son was born, I thought it was the happiest day of my life. For a while, we were the picture of a happy family.

Little did I know how quickly it would end.

About two and a half years ago, just as my son turned two, a friend of mine told me about a new game on Steam called Five Nights at Freddy's. He knew I liked horror games and bought me a copy saying it was a late birthday present. I gave it a thorough playthrough, and though it was kind of cheesy, I felt like it was still an okay experience. The game, however, opened up a door I wished I'd left closed. I was taken with the mystery of the game, the bite of 85, the animatronics, the missing children, and it led me to search online for more info.

That's when I stumbled across the Creepypastas.

They were great, how had I never seen these before? They were terrifying in a way I hadn't been terrified in years! I started with a classic, 1999, which was recommended because of the main character from the FNAF games. From the first time I read the story, I felt like there was something about it; something different. It prickled the hairs on the back of my neck, to be sure, but it also felt like something was watching me. I shrugged it off, just that "scared feeling", like when you watch a really intense horror movie and for a day or so afterward you feel on edge. I spent the next few months engrossed in any Creepypastas I could find. Jeff the killer, the Slenderman legends, Smile Dog, Candle Cove (that one was one of my favorites), the Blue Man, all the SCP's. After a while, I'm ashamed to say that they became a sort of mania in me, and I absorbed anything that I could lay my hands on.

When I learned that there were several channels on YouTube that read them aloud, I instantly subscribed. I would eat through months, years, of archives in one sitting, and with my headphones on, I felt immersed in a world of darkness that no horror movie could simulate. The creepypasta created a movie in my mind that no Nightmare on Elm Street or House of 1000 Corpses could rival. It seemed like when I had time I was always listening to them, ignoring everything else.

That's when things started to get really bad.

It started with insomnia. I was plagued with nightmares that would wake me up several times a night. I'd wake up, certain that there was something in the bedroom with me, but a frantic sweep would find nothing except a grumpy wife at being woken up yet again by my nightmare. It got to the point where I was lucky to get five hours of sleep a night. Then four hours of sleep. Then two if I was really lucky. Then two, but only if I took sleep aids or drank myself into oblivion. My wife made me go see a doctor who put me on medication, but that didn't work either. Then, at her wit's end, she made me sleep on the couch, but that only escalated my night terrors. That feeling of being watched got worse and worse, and I started seeing something out of the corner of my eye when I listened to my creepypasta's. As I sat awake, using the fear to keep myself from the nightmares, I would see the shadowy something as it huddled in the corner. It would creep closer and closer, just out of my sight but always in the peripherals until I'd snap my head around, and it would vanish.

I started having trouble at work. I was always tired and short with my coworkers, and one day the boss told me not to bother coming back. My wife was furious and finally told me that it was my family or the scary stories. We argued, but my heart wasn't in it. I had come to understand by then that the stories were the problem. The stories were keeping me awake. The stories were keeping me amped up. The stories were making me paranoid. I needed to work, I needed to be a father, and so I did the only thing that made sense.

I gave them up cold turkey, at least for a little while.

I lasted all of two months. Without the stories, I started to slip back into a normal routine. I was getting to sleep on time, my job let me come back on a trial period that quickly became a permanent gig, my attitude improved, and I was once again the man I'd always been. It's funny, though, how we forget what set us down the bad path once we're back in the light. It was just a little bit at first, on my phone at work, and then after my wife went to bed, or when I was on the toilet, and slowly the night terrors came creeping back again. I had relapsed hard, and before I knew it, I was listening to them all the time again.

That's when my wife took our son and left for her mother's house. My nightmares got worse, and suddenly I wasn't sleeping at all. My temper would flare unexpectedly, and that was the last straw for my newly returned job. My friends tried to help me, but I became moody and unpredictable, and soon they stopped coming around too. I started drinking again, drinking to blackout, and feel a few moments of blissful oblivion. My wife filed for divorce, unable to help me, and unwilling to watch me kill myself with these stupid stories. My parents stopped calling, agreeing with my wife that if I wouldn't stop on my own, then they didn't want anything to do with me, and then one day, I realized that the stories were all I had left.

Or so thought.

About a year ago, the stories weren't enough. I could see the thing in the corner of my eye more and more, stalking me. One day, for no reason at all, I started writing my own stories. I've never been a writer, far from it, but the act of writing worked as its own kind of talisman against the creature. Writing them seemed to keep him at bay, seemed to get the darkness out of me, and for a while, things got better. I was getting five hours of sleep again, I was feeling better than I had in a long time, but the writing became just as big a mania as the reading.

The divorce proceedings went badly for me. She got the house, of course, and child support, and a lot of other things I would have fought for once. I didn't care, though. None of this mattered to me. All I cared about was the thing in the corner of the courtroom that kept growling and pacing. All I wanted was to get this over with, so I could get home.

Get home to my writing.

I moved out, went back to the condo we used to live in, and took odd jobs online to keep the light and the internet on. I've sold blood, sperm, written terrible things for terrible people, and all to feed this addiction that I've developed. I'm no better than any smack addict; no better than some worthless junkie who writes up his fix every day. My wife keeps calling me, asking when I plan to see our son, who keeps asking where his daddy is, but I don't have time for them. I have to write. I have to keep this beast at bay.

But now even the writing has stopped working. That thing isn't in the corner of my eyes anymore. I can see him now! He's not even trying to hide, and I'm afraid that he's very close to having me. God forgive me, but he's stalking forward right now, and I can see his paws or feet or whatever as they make little divots in the carpet. I can smell his rancid breath as he grins with his lipless mouth full of teeth.

So what's the point of this then? Why write a Creepypasta about Creepypastas? For some kind of macabre immortality within a world, I once loved? To have one more hurrah before the end?

No

I'm writing this for you; for the ones who may be reading this after I'm gone.

Always remember, if you remember nothing else, that these tales are spun from Darkness. That the thing you feel watching you when you create fear is real. It can and will get you if you let it. While you stare long into the abyss, know that it stares hungrily back at you.

His face is inches from my throat now, and I can finally identify the brimstone in his every breath.

I think my time might be up.