The Belfry

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

‘Twas 9 beers into Santa Con
When all through Times Square,
Staggered thousands of Derricks,
With spiky gelled hair.
They’d come from Long Island, New Jersey and Philly
And wore Santa caps with intent to be silly.

By noon they were wasted on bottom rung liquor, and barfed up their nachos and buffalo kickers.

Bar owners regretted their choice to register, as bros accused busboys of banging their sisters.

They smashed up pint glasses. They peed on the seat.
They asked poor bartenders for “Fireball, neat.”

New Yorkers all cowered away in their condos, as streets ran blood red with Old Saint Nick ensembles.

And this I have witnessed for quite a long time, through grates of the sewer, enshrouded in slime.

I’m a horrible thing of demonic descent, entrusted to smite those who blaspheme Advent.

I sleep til December, when I feed myself, on meatheads named “Vince” dressed like Buddy the Elf.

Their beer-addled brains are so easy to fool ‘cause booze brines their brains up deliciously ::drool::

I’ve devoured three Connors, nine Brians, two Johnnys, four Tylers, eight Michaels and one Giuliani.

Each wicked and boorish in Santa disguises, each meeting their fate in passed hors doeuvre snack sizes.

But this year I spotted the king of these sinners, some frat boy from upstate, a promising dinner.

Dressed in red and white garments bought from Party City, he tortured New York passerbys without pity.

He cat-called a nun, poured Red Bull on a dog, and lewdly referred to his crotch as “Yule Log.”

He jaywalked and big-talked, hogged ADA bathrooms. Then tipped 4% at packed Murray Hill saloons.

I waited of course 'til he strayed from his friends, then dragged him by his Sperrys to meet his just end.

He shrieked and he hollered to little effect, for his pals ranged from “blackout” to “totally wrecked.”

And as “Jingle Bell Rock” played from a D'Agostino’s, this boor met his doom wearing Gap discount chinos.

Before his last breath as he stared at my jaws, he cried “What ARE you,” and I said “Krampus Claus.”

So back to my slumber I’ll go 'til next year, when rowdy, rude d-bags besmirch Yuletide cheer.

Merry Christmas New York, and sleep well in knowing, Krampus Claus lies beneath you and his hunger is growing.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

It’s difficult to get scared in a studio apartment.

Unlike big old creepy houses with their dark hallways and shadowy corners, you can see every inch of a studio apartment. There’s no place for awful things to hide.

Unlike big old creepy houses, where you’re isolated from your neighbors and no one can hear you scream, studio apartments lack any sort of privacy. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You can be screaming your head off or clipping your toenails. You will be heard.

And unlike big old creepy houses, you rarely hear about a studio apartment that’s haunted.

At least that’s what Oscar thought until he turned out the light in his new sublet, and started to hear whispers coming from beneath a large pile of clothes at the foot of his futon.

“It’s someone next door,” he said clenching his eyes shut willing himself to fall asleep.

But he knew that wasn’t true. The facts were inescapable. The whispering was real and it was coming from the pile of clothes on his floor.

It was the first night of Oscar’s sublet in this studio. He’d seen the ad for it on Craigslist and done extensive research about the history of the building to make sure it wasn’t marred by some shocking tragedy or crime that could result in a lingering paranormal presence.

He’d had bad luck before. A townhouse he’d occupied in Philadelphia once belonged to a suicidal beauty queen and time and time again, Oscar’s mirror would shatter out of nowhere. A colonial home he rented in Salem had paintings whose eyes would follow him around. And most recently in Boston, he’d resided in a cavernous loft that used to be host to occult rituals, and he subsequently vacated when he noticed that shadows not belonging to him would creep across the walls every night.

But this building off the 7 line in Queens was brand new and Oscar’s room on the 6th floor was bright and cheery during the day. At night, however, despite the large window and the city lights, the room was somehow pitch black.

And the whispering voice beneath the clothes had just begun repeating words like “murder” and “escape” again and again before returning to indistinguishable mumbling, which didn’t help the situation.

Oscar would’ve turned on the light, but the switch was by the door and he’d have to pass the pile of clothes to get there. Frankly, he also considered climbing out the window to make a getaway, but he had no fire escape, a troubling fact he hadn’t realized until this very moment.

“The complex was built on an ancient burial ground,” he determined, “Or…or a construction worker died building it. First thing tomorrow, I’m getting this place smudged.”

But when the whispering stopped and was replaced by a familiar jingle, Oscar’s curiosity was piqued.

He padded silently on bare tiptoe across the newly tiled floor and lifted a shirt at the top of the clothes pile with a curtain rod he had yet to hang.

Beneath the shirt, a light blue glow emanated through the folds of his underwear and gym shorts.

It was his phone. And it was playing NPR’s “Fresh Air” at the lowest possible volume.

“I’m Terry Gross and welcome back to Fresh Air. If you’re just joining us, I’m talking to pop psychologist and paranormal researcher, Dr. Cynthia Wythe…” the speakers buzzed, sounding remarkably like whispering.

Oscar breathed a sigh of release that lasted a full twelve seconds and chuckled as he walked back to his futon.

“The western belief that only places can be haunted isn’t shared universally…” Dr. Wythe droned on as Oscar pulled the covers under his chin, “In fact, many cultures believe that it’s people who are haunted and that supernatural events follow them for the rest of their lives…”

Then his phone died.

Before he closed his eyes, Oscar’s throat dried up as he noticed a shadow creeping across the ceiling toward the window. There, in the frame, stood an awful, gangly thing, smiling at him with bloody teeth and ice-cold eyes.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

Evil is alive and well in Manhattan. If you’re looking for it, it will be located on Astor Place, between Cooper Square and Lafayette Street tomorrow from ten in the morning to three. It was there today as well.

This afternoon, at 12:45PM, Steven left work to grab a smoothie. The place he liked had a thirty percent off deal for any smoothie before 1PM. He’d been craving it all day. The sidewalk was bustling with people, weaving in and out, some wielding unnecessary umbrellas from the earlier rains. Steven hated this block, mostly because it made him feel like a bad person. Every day, he avoided eye contact with each person who had a clipboard and a neon vest.

“Sir, do you have a moment to stop Animal Cruelty?”

“Sir, do you have a moment to end Domestic Abuse?”

“Sir, do you have a moment to champion the environment?”

“Maybe if the spokespeople weren’t so abrasive,” he’d justify in his head. “You know what? I’ll donate to their website instead.” But it always seemed slipped his mind. Today, Steven faced the same routine.

“Sir, do you have a moment to support Gay Rights?”

“Sir, do you have a moment to support our troops?”

“Sir-”

“Sir-”

“Sir-”

“Steven.”

Steven stopped. Had someone said his name? He turned around. A tall pale man with a mane of curly hair looked at him. He wore a bright red vest. They locked eyes.

“Me?” Steven asked.

“Yes. Steven, do you have a moment to save a child’s life?”

Steven walked up to the man. He did not recognize him.

“How do you know my name?”

“Do you have a moment to save a child’s life, Steven?”

Somehow, Steven felt compelled to say

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

“Perfect.” the man said, “His name is Charlie and he’s locked in a trunk behind Saint Mark’s Church. You’ve got ten minutes or so before he runs out of air.”

The man grinned with a mouth so black and rotten that it caused Steven to jump. Then the man was gone.

Steven stood, stunned as people flooded past. He looked at his watch. 12:50PM.

Ten minutes later, Steven walked back to work with a strawberry smoothie. It only cost him four dollars.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

Lydia woke up one morning behind the wheel of a luxury car, stopped at a red light on Fifth Avenue, in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

There was a moment of panic; “What am I doing?!” Before her memory kicked in.

Last she remembered, she’d spent the night dancing with some friends from out of town. At some point she recalled doing a very wobbly version of the moonwalk on top of the bar, while a bartender and two waitresses begged her not to do that because it was very dangerous.

“I must have passed out,” Lydia reasoned. It wasn’t such a big deal. She did it almost every weekend. “But did I steal an Uber?” She wondered. “That would be new.”

She also had a very vague memory of breaking out of a box and climbing over a car seat as a man in a black suit and hat screamed and ran away from her out of the car. Or maybe that was a dream?

Looking in the driver’s side window, Lydia saw that same man in a black suit and hat running away, wildly flailing his arms and screaming.

“Oh Shoot,” she said out loud, “I definitely stole an Uber.”

Suddenly, the light turned green and Lydia instinctively stepped on the gas. She began to worry.

“I’ve got a couple minutes before the cops show up,” she thought, “I need to get my story straight.”

Lydia checked herself out in the rearview mirror. She looked surprisingly okay. Her makeup was perfectly intact, her hair still retaining its shape. Her dress on the other hand was a bit prudish.

“What was I thinking when I bought this thing?”

As she circled the block trying to figure out what to do, she noticed a long line of cars behind her.

“Just pass me for chrissakes,” Lydia groaned.

Then came an idea! She could just ditch the car and call a cab. While at another stoplight, she reached for her purse on the passenger seat. It matched her dress and once again, Lydia didn’t remember buying it. When she opened the gold clasp she found that the only thing in the purse was crumpled up newspaper.

“What the hell is-?”

The first in the line of cars behind her beeped. The light was green again. Frustrated, she leaned out the window and screamed at the driver “JUST GO AROUND ME, A-HOLE”

It was at this moment that Lydia realized three things.

One: The driver she was screaming at was her father, dressed in church-clothes.

Two: The car she was driving was long, black and not a limo.

Three: She was dead.

Her father put his hands to his mouth in shock. People poured out of the line of cars to look and gasp and scream. People like Lydia’s Aunt Renee, her cousin Ashleigh, her ex-boyfriend Vince.

“Ugh, Vince got so fat.” Lydia thought before she resumed coming to grips with this terrible realization.

Just then, a bony hand tapped Lydia’s right shoulder. She turned in horror to see that suddenly in the passenger seat was a hooded figure with empty eye-sockets and a skeletal grin.

“Why don’t you get in the back, miss. I know the way from here,“ it said in a thick Brooklyn accent.

Before she could make a break for it, she found herself lying in a satin upholstered box.

From the front seat, the driver snickered “By the way, nice dress, prude.”

Lydia screamed as her coffin slammed shut and the hearse disappeared into the early morning mist toward Woodlawn Cemetery.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

“We are being held momentarily by train dispatch. Thank you for your patience,” the same old pre-recorded voice blared into the 4 train. Ravi didn’t hear it though, as his ear buds were jammed in tighter than he was jammed into his seat amidst dozens of groggy commuters, one of whom was somehow, SOMEHOW, eating greek yogurt.

“Why would you ever do that?” muttered Ravi under his breath.

His train had been sitting in the tunnel under the East River for 15 minutes now. But then again, that was expected since this was one of the first trains to head back into Manhattan after the MTA shutdown due to the storm.

For Ravi, the hurricane that hit New York City in the last days of October had resulted in a pretty unremarkable week. He never lost power, he was far outside the tri-colored flood zones of Brooklyn and he spent much of his time cooped up in his Park Slope apartment, wolfing down plastic cartons of shrimp pad thai on his couch, while breezing through the “Halloween Favorites” section of his ex-girlfriend’s brother-in-law’s Netflix account.

His less fortunate friends had been stranded in powerless Manhattan, shivering through cold showers in their pitch-black apartments, eating Power Bars by candlelight. Ravi had considered calling and seeing if anyone wanted to come over, but then he’d have to put pants on and oh! “It Came From Beneath The Sea” was up next in his queue right after “Deep Rising!”

But now, the impromptu staycation was over, as electricity had been restored to the Financial District. And that meant back to work for Ravi and the rest of city. Another five minutes passed as the R train stalled in the tunnel. Ravi avoided eye contact with a standing pregnant lady who was probably aiming to guilt him into giving up his seat. “She doesn’t look that pregnant,” he determined.

“We are being held momentarily by train dispatch. Thank you for your patience.” the automated voice droned again.

The packed in passengers groaned.

Again, Ravi couldn’t hear them. He snorted a bit, thinking how similar this was to the opening scenes of all those monster movies he had watched.

“It would make sense,” he thought. “Big storm. Rising sea levels. Some massive ocean predator displaced into the subterranean tunnels of the New York City transit system. Man. I could write a movie. It’d be so kickass.”

A different announcement came over the speakers, a human voice, urgent, incoherent, ending in a scream that suddenly cut short. Passengers looked around at each other, concerned. Whoever was eating greek yogurt also paused. But not Ravi, as he continued to write this masterpiece creature feature in his head, while house music blared into his ears.

“It’d star like, Vin Diesel as a cop, and his brother who works for the MTA goes missing in the tunnels. And he’s a renegade so he goes to investigate OFF DUTY, and he finds all these mangled hobo bodies….”

A smell like the Chinatown fish market on a July afternoon began pouring into the R train.

“And then he meets this sexy marine biologist, played by January Jones, or NO, that chick from Scandal! And she’s like “There’s something out there, Officer. Something big.”

The fluorescent lights flickered and the train lurched forward unnaturally fast then stopped causing people to scream.

“But the crooked mayor, Kevin Spacey, would be like “We can’t let the public know about this! I’m up for re-election next month!”

Something wet and barbed wrapped around the yogurt eater’s ankle and dragged her out through a shattered window. Some good samaritans tried to help but got pulled out as well. Everyone was screaming.

“Then it bursts out onto the Brooklyn Bridge and all hell breaks loose.”

People began racing out of the train car. Ravi spread his legs wider than necessary and put his bag on the seat next to him.

“But what is it? A crocodile? A mutated half-shark half-crab? A super-smart jellyfish?”

Black ink began dripping from the overhead advertisements as the train-car began to buckle under the strength of some monstrous appendage.

“Nah. That’s lame. Oh, what about an octopus?”

A massive tentacle slithered under the light blue seats towards Ravi’s Sperry Topsiders as an unblinking eye the size of the Trump Globe stared in the window behind him hungrily.

“NO WAIT. A giant squi-”

Ravi never finished his synopsis. But if he did, he would’ve wanted Brett Ratner to direct.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

With Apologies to Edgar Allan Poe

-A.F.

Once upon a misty Monday

Stocking shelves, I hoped that one day

I might tread beyond the swing of my bodega door.

Eight lonely months had I been slaving,

Tethered to 3rd Ave while craving

Freedom from the snack display racks I grew to abhor.

Auntie Dear had left it to me.

Perhaps purposely, she screwed me,

Cursed me with her dying breath

To run her One-Stop store.

Tonight no customer had entered,

Leaving my thoughts fully centered

On new schemes to ditch my role as sole proprietor.

That’s when the door chime signaled entry

Of a teen or tipsy gentrifying type in search of rolling papers, I was sure.

But when I looked I gasped to find… the bodega cat. And nothing more.

You might wonder at my dread

“It’s just a cat no need to fret”

But listen friend, I killed that cat

A full two weeks before.

I couldn’t stand its smug appearance

So much like my auntie’s sneer

It mocked my misery with every meow and purr and snore.

So I killed it. Nothing more.

“This couldn’t be the same black feline,”

I thought now, as it made a beeline to a tower of soup cans piled high above the floor.

There it sat and stared down at me as if to say “I’m back, you boor.”

I swung a broom to get it out

I clapped and stomped and even shouted

“I DON’T WANT YOU HERE,”

My voice quite shaken to the core.

It purred at me. And nothing more.

“That’s it,” I said and grabbed the mallet

I once used to bludgeon til it stopped its mock’ry and its judgment of me weeks before.

I did it once, why not once more?

The cat just smiled and curled its tail

As I crept closer, primed to wail upon the undead demon sent by my dear aunt in hell.

I struck and missed.

The black cat hissed.

The tower of soup cans fell.

With deafening clangs, it crushed me flat,

An aluminum death knell.

Then as my vision faded, I heard a distant ring.

And hoped it came from my new home where choirs of angels sing.

But when I turned my weary head to see the noise’s cause

I saw instead, the cat had fled on silent ghostly paws.

There it stood outside the door

And eyed me through and through

And seemed to laugh ‘hind yellow eyes

“I guess we’re even, boo.”

For I’d been trapped, in life and death inside this corner store

Forever damned to stare at items you pay too much for.

And ever free to come and go through that glass swinging door,

Is my cursed companion.

A bodega cat. And nothing more.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

Mummies have long struggled with their cultural representation. That’s just a well known fact. Monster movies about them tend not to do well at the box office. Their most recent incarnations have fallen victim to Brendan Fraser, Tom Cruise and the comedy action genre, which is a major blow to the dignity of ancient Egyptian history.

They rank below zombies in scariness, somehow, probably because they’ve been dead for so long that any gore or gruesomeness has already long evaporated. Though often grouped with Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man in various Halloween crafts and commercials, mummies are rarely featured as stars of their own media. Still, they are reanimated dead bodies, usually with some kind of magical invulnerability and the wherewithal to kill a person ruthlessly and painfully. That was what worried Delia when she saw one staring at her from across the room at a costume party.

Delia had visited Egypt a year previous, and of course, she’d wandered from her tour-group and opened a sacred box (like an idiot), thereby unleashing a curse that caused a four thousand year old mummy to come to life and stalk her all the way back to civilization. In his pursuit, the mummy had strangled Delia’s tour guide, her best friend Janine and roughly seven innocent bystanders. Delia felt partly responsible and would’ve stayed for the funerals but she instead decided to fly home to New York City after seeing the Mummy stumbling around her very exclusive resort in Cairo.

The Mummy was awful looking in a way that film wouldn‘t do justice. He appeared to be a skeleton made of beef jerky, with a few rotten strips of gauze clinging to his putrefied flesh. His jaw dangled by a dried-out tendon and his eyes were empty, crumbling voids.  All in all, he looked substantially frightening. Delia had no idea why the Mummy had come now, after a full year since their last interaction.

The truth was, it had taken all that time for the Mummy to walk across the ocean floor to the South Street Seaport in New York. Mummies are slow. You would be too if your knees were fighting against eons of rigor mortis. Still, he’d gotten there in one piece and he fully intended to make good on his curse.

This particular mummy didn’t have a name, at least not one he could articulate thanks to the standard decomposition. Most likely, he was a royal bodyguard who had an affair with a princess and was forever doomed to destroy anyone who desecrated her tomb, but at this point, even he didn’t remember. He was essentially your run-of-the-mill revenant, not one of the flashier mummies who could turn into a sandstorm or conjure giant cobras or anything like that. Still, one had to give him credit for his determination. The guy just kept coming no matter what.

The party was on the twenty-third floor, and seeing as he didn’t understand the concept of elevators, the mummy took the stairs. Perhaps that’s why he seemed especially ragged to Delia when she first noticed him. It was unclear who let him in, or if anyone recognized that he was not someone in a costume. The Mummy scanned the room, not comprehending the conceit of a costume party, or the relevance of any of the disguises themselves. If The Mummy had been familiar with the Bravo channel, he would’ve recognized people dressed like various “Real Housewives” from different cities. He also would have noted that there were no less than five girls somehow wearing the exact same outdated Snooki costume. Delia was one of those girls, which gave her somewhat of an advantage. The problem was, in real life, she actually looked a great deal like Snooki.

People didn’t fully notice when The Mummy made his first guess, reducing Snooki number one to a dehydrated husk. People screamed and ran once he killed Snookis number two and three. Snooki number four was in the process of being broken in half as Delia grabbed her coat and ran to the door. She looked for Hooper, that doofy stock-market guy who’d been hitting on her earlier, hoping for a quick getaway and a place to stay that was way way uptown. She found him and he paid for the two of them to take a car to his place on The Upper West Side, so that was nice. He wasn’t very good in bed and he cried afterwards which Delia found weird. Still, she was relieved she’d bought herself a bit of time. Maybe tomorrow she’d book a flight down to Miami where her bubby lived. That ought to hold off her undead pursuer for a month at least.

In the morning, Delia turned over to thank Hooper before heading out, but instead she found that his head had been wrenched off. She then looked up in horror to see The Mummy. He’d figured out the subway system.

As The Mummy staggered out of Hooper’s apartment building, police arrived and began shooting him pointlessly. He gave a sigh of completion as sand poured from the bullet holes in his chest, and he lurched into the Hudson making his way back to Cairo.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

“I just didn’t find it scary.”

“You didn’t find it REMOTELY scary?”

“Nope.”

“Bullshit.”

“What??’’

“You jumped! I felt you jump several times!”

“Yeah, I jumped. I jumped because I’m a human-being and human-beings jump when silence is followed by a loud noise.”

“Then you were scared!”

“I was startled.”

“OOOOH.”

It was a first date. But it was a first date after a lot of OKCupid courting, so in many ways it was like a fourth date. They’d already built a rapport. Dinner breezed by. The waitress asked if this was an anniversary. They laughed. And now they were laughing again, walking to the train after the movie.

“Well now I feel bad.”

“Why? Don’t feel bad!”

“I chose the movie because I thought you’d like it.”

“I thought I’d like it too.”

“And you didn’t.”

“No. I thought it was terrible.”

“It had an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes!”

“Yeah, you can’t trust Rotten Tomatoes. They gave “Insidious” like a 70% or something.”

“You didn’t like ‘Insidious?”

“NO!”

“I thought you liked scary movies!”

“I do! Did YOU like “Insidious?”

“Yes.”

“NO!”

“ I mean it wasn’t perfect but I thought it was really creepy. I like atmosphere more than all that gory “Hostel” stuff.”

“Oh then have you seen ‘The Innocents?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen ‘The Innocents’”

They talked about ‘The Innocents.’ About whether Deborah Kerr’s character was crazy or if the children really were haunted.

“I have to be honest. Ambiguity in scary movies bugs me.”

“Oh. You’re more of like a…?”

“I like twists. Like ‘The Others.”

“Yeah. ‘The Others’ is great. Hey. This doesn’t look familiar. Isn’t the subway this way?”

“I was following you.”

“Why were you following me?”

“I don’t know. You seemed to be definitively leading the way.”

“Oh I’m totally faking it. I have a terrible sense of direction!”

They laughed again and turned left.

“Well anyway.”

“Anyway.”

“I like ambiguity in a scary movie.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t think it’s a cop-out?”

“No, it tends to stick with me longer. Like “The Thing.”

“The Thing doesn’t end in ambiguity!”

“Yes it does!”

“What question does it leave unanswered?”

“Which guy left is the alien?”

“It’s what’s his name!”

“Kurt Russell”

“No the other guy.”

“Keith David.”

“Yeah.”

“Or is it? I mean it could be either of them, right?”

“I’d have to watch it again.”

“I have it. If you wanna come over.”

“I have it too actually. If you wanna come over.”

“Hm.”

“Hm.”

They stood together at the mouth of an alley. It was late. And quiet. “I think it’s this way,” one of them said. But that was a lie. They’d passed the subway station twenty minutes ago. Still, they walked down that alley, talking about “The Thing” and whether it was Kurt Russell or Keith David in the end, all while one of them fiddled with something sharp in their coat pocket.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

“It’s a totally illogical fear. Stupid. Ridiculous. Laughable.” He’d been told this a thousand times in more ways than he could count. After a while, he stopped telling people about it altogether. He’d even left his therapist because he couldn’t begin to answer the imminent question “Why?” He didn’t know. He was afraid of them and always had been. Their size, their silent but insidious sound, the feeling of one, soaked in rubbing alcohol, chafing along his arm before a shot. Their ability to appear everywhere: in bags underneath bathroom sinks, glued to kindergarten crafts, in massive glass jars at the doctor’s office. They were inescapable.

Day to day, things grew worse. Monday, the seventeenth, one had blown across his shoe on the train. Then the following Thursday, he discovered his building’s lobby guard used them to clean nail polish off her cuticles, right there at the front desk. But the ultimate terror came on Sunday when he felt one scrape across his bare wrist after putting on a sweater he’d lent to his roommate, Darby. He watched it fall out of his left sleeve to the ground, where it held defiantly to the carpet with its white microscopic fibers. He had no choice but to evict Darby for such a crime. What other solution was there? They were finding a way in. He paid his super thousands to come in and replace the carpet with wall-to-wall linoleum in hopes of avoiding further incidences.
       

He spent much of the following days in the tub as it seemed to be the perfect place to view all areas of potential attack. It wasn’t quite logical, but they don’t work logically either do they? When he had a lucid vision of one dropping from a crack in the ceiling and falling into the bath water, he very quickly removed himself and didn’t return.
      

Sitting on his sheetless bed, he looked around and got depressed. “This is enough,” he thought, “I am acting completely unhinged over nothing.” After a moment, he squinted his eyes and said “I am not afraid of cotton balls. I don’t like them. But I am not afraid of them. There is virtually no reason for me to be afraid,” he chanted over and over. “They aren’t alive. They aren’t dangerous. They’re just things. Inanimate things.” Again and again and again and again and ag- there was a sound. Almost entirely inaudible. Just three strings breaking in his mattress. He leaned to look. And a sea of them flooded out of the tear and onto his body.
      

They wedged themselves under his toe-nails. They dragged excruciatingly across his skin up to his mouth where they drowned out his screams, soaking up every bit of saliva and leaving his tongue dry and cracked. They jammed into his ears and nostrils, blocking out any sound or breath. Some stragglers slid under his eyelids, masking his vision in terrible white puffs. He was paralyzed as they invaded further and further, suffocating his lungs, getting tangled in his spine, leaving snowy wisps on each rib. Then his heart froze in shock and-
    

He woke up, screaming, in a cold sweat that made him shake. He looked around. No tear in the mattress. Skin bare. Nothing in his eyes or ears. Not a one to be seen. They were all gone. It was a nightmare.
    

He walked trembling to the bathroom to get a glass of water for his dry mouth. But before he even brought the glass to his lips, he finally noticed a strange feeling under his tongue. He widened his jaws, swabbed behind his back teeth with his index finger…and plucked out a single white cottonball.

scarystoriestoreadonthesubway:

He had screwed up big time, that was for sure. He’d been short on rent for the past couple months, and had asked her to cover him. He told her he was working nights doing word processing for a law firm in midtown and would have money soon. But tonight, she had found him, not at an office in midtown, but at one of those outrageously expensive bowling alleys where they offer bottle service for some reason. It didn’t help that he had also forgotten today was their anniversary. And it really didn’t help that He was using her credit card.

After an angry trip back uptown and a lot of shouting across their apartment, he was getting the silent treatment as they lay in bed.

“C’mon.” he said.

She turned over and pulled the covers even tighter over her head.

“You‘re blowing this out of proportion! I was drunk. These things happen!”

She said nothing.

“ Oh Jesus Christ, stop it. I’m sorry, okay! I can’t go back in time and change things, so I’m sorry! What more can I do?”

Still nothing.

“All right, great, you’re out of your goddamn mind, you know that? If you’re so angry then why did you come back, huh?”

He had her there. Hours earlier, She had been screaming at him and storming out of the apartment, insisting they were. But sure enough, when he was nudged awake at 3AM, there she was under the covers next to him.

“I’ll tell you why, because all you do and piss and moan about me and I’m sick of it. I’m done. I am done. You wanna go? You can go.”

She held her ground.

“I’m not kidding.”

She didn’t move.

“GO!” He shouted.

She didn’t jump as he’d hoped but she wasn’t leaving. He had her right where he wanted her. Now he could reel her back in.

“Look, you know I hate fighting with you babe.” he said, softly, “And sometimes I do stupid things, I admit it. But you have to admit that you always pull this holier than thou act with me and it really makes me feel bad about myself. And I think that’s part of the reason I lash out. So we both have stuff to apologize for, you know? We’re even.”

He felt her body relax a bit in the dark. He was so good at this.

“I love you, dummy.” he said.

She scooted an inch closer.

As his hand reached under the sheets to stroke her side, his phone on the bedside table buzzed loudly. Once. Twice. Three times.

“Hon, could you pass me my phone?”

She nodded “no“ coyly.

“Okay, okay. I see what you’re doing.”

He reached over her and answered. “Hello?”

“I just thought you should know,” her voice said on the other end of the line, “I’m at Keara’s now, but by the time I get back to the apartment in the morning, I want you gone. I mean it. We’re done.”

He froze.

“Enjoy sleeping alone tonight, jackass.”

She hung up.

If she was at Keara’s, then…

He looked down at the mound under the sheets that began shaking with hoarse, crackled laughter, and a smell like rotten meat filled the room.

Just then, the covers flew off and he screamed and screamed and screamed.