The Fear

I always used to get left alone at work. It’s kind of awesome. Nobody could see me, and more importantly, nobody could see my computer screen, not when they were on floor one and I were on floor two. They don’t track my browsing history, and they don’t bother looking at my computer even when they can see it. As long as I turn in something at the end of every day, I’m good to go, and no one cares how much I screw around on Facebook, or how many creepypastas I listen to on youtube. I’m allowed because my job is incredibly boring.

I worked with two other people, Sue and Larry. We were all in the off-campus library at my college, where all the archival records are kept. They have tons of work of their own to do, and since I’m a lowly graduate student, I can’t possibly help them empty boxes and put things into other boxes, so I’m stuck cataloging box upon box of dusty records up to and including ones from the opening of the college a hundred and fifty years ago. It’s a really boring job. Now you see why I listen to creepypastas on youtube. MrCreepyPasta is one of my favorite readers. He’s got a great reading voice.

It’s pretty big, with forty different aisles on each of its two floors and a row down the middle that accesses all of them. Every so often, when I was listening to a particularly good creepypasta, I would get the feeling that I wasn't alone, that someone was watching me just out of the corner of my eye. It always went away the minute I turned around, and I’m sure it was just being scared of my own shadow, like I sometimes am, but being alone in a dimly lit building with too many places to hide certainly didn't help.

Anyway, I usually sat there with my headphones in the computer and the volume at a reasonable level. It’s almost always low because the commercials on youtube are a good deal louder than the videos and when they interrupt the creepypasta readings, it scares the crap out of me and I jump. I love the feeling of being scared, but loud jump scares like that are cheap, cheap shit, and not okay.

I was sitting at my computer station, cataloging all the boxes, and listening to one of my favorite creepypasta readings, the one on Jeff the Killer. The picture always scared the crap out of me, but I got used to it after enough exposure. Sue was out sick, and Larry had left for the day. He always leaves at two, which means that I get two hours with the archival library all to myself. There’s nothing exciting I can do there, but it’s kind of cool to be the only one in the building. I liked the feeling of being alone, but the worst thing to happen when I’m there by myself is to get the feeling that someone else is there with me, someone who shouldn't be. I don’t know who it is, but every once in a while, I got the feeling that it wasn't just me in that room. It was probably caused by listening to way too many creepypastas in a row, so I usually don’t pay it any mind.

The feeling kept getting stronger and stronger, and I decided to stop and look around me to make myself feel better. I got up from my computer, left my earbuds plugged in, and checked my immediate surroundings. Nothing there. I peeked around the nearest aisles, making sure to be more thorough. Nothing there. I was just scaring myself. I have a habit of doing that. I went back to my work station and sat down at my computer again. I turned the video back on, but nothing played. I couldn't hear any sound, I couldn't see any video. I refreshed the page and tried to play the video again, but nothing happened. Thinking the internet must be out, I restarted the computer and waited for it to boot up again, but nothing. All I saw was a blank screen. I knew it was weird, but I figured it was just a bug in the computer. These computers, especially the laptop I was using, were pretty piss poor.

I got up to check the plug; maybe I shut it off with my toe or something. As I stooped down underneath the desk to check the power strip, my knee felt wet. I lifted my knee up from the wet, sticky liquid and saw blood. Blood? Why was there blood on the floor? I quickly scanned the rest of the floor and noticed that it was also slick with blood. When the fuck had that happened? Was I really that unobservant? I got up to look at the computer, and the desk was wet with blood as well. I ran to the exit, or at least where the exit should have been. The door was no longer there. I don’t know where it went, but it wasn't there anymore. Instead, it was a wall, just like the others. The wall was pulsing. It was red and slimy, like I imagined flayed skin would be, and it was pulsing as if the building had a heartbeat. I reached out a hand to touch it, to see what it felt like. It felt like hamburger meat, but it smelled like death. The slight pressure of my fingertips caused the wall to ooze blood where I had touched it. I scrambled back as quickly as I could, wiping my hands on my jeans. What in the fuck was going on?

I first saw it out of the corner of my eye. At first, it appeared as nothing more than a flash of white. When I tried to look directly at it, I immediately had to shield my eyes. I can’t even describe what it looked like. I can’t even begin. The best way I can put it into words is that it was the physical embodiment of nails on a chalkboard. I shut my eyes as tight as they would go, but I could still see it inside my eyelids. It wouldn't go away.

It spoke to me. I don’t know how. In fact, I can’t even call it speaking. There were no words. I suppose the best way to describe it was that it spoke via pictures in my head, although that still isn't quite right. I just kind of felt what it wanted me to know, as though it was thinking with my own brain. I could see what it was trying to tell me. Pictures of mutilated children, animals turned inside out, masked men hacking women to pieces, and all sorts of fucked up shit flashed through my mind. It was at that point that I threw up. When the vomit hit the steel grating, it slopped through the grating and down onto the floor, but it then began to eat through the metal, like acid. I quickly wiped the remains of it from my face with the sleeve of my shirt. I didn't want that shit on me any more than I wanted to see what the hell that thing was trying to show me. It still bombarded my mind with images; my dog cut up into sausage, my boyfriend crying with empty eye sockets, Sue and Larry with their limbs hacked off and sewn up on the wrong bodies. I tried to repress the urge to throw up again as these feelings all cobbled together into one cohesive thought: fear. Was that what this thing was? Fear? With that thought, I felt a rush of positive energy flow through my stomach. The thing, the Fear, must be trying to tell me I was right.

“What do you want with me?” I shouted for no reason in particular. I looked down on the steps leading to the first floor. A tall, thin man wearing a pinstripe suit was staring back at me. He had no face. I knew exactly who it was. My head throbbed, and I pushed my work station out of my way and ran to the other exit, but I found it blocked by another tall man. This one, however, had a face. I recognized the white skin and Glasgow smile immediately. I stumbled backwards into the railing as Jeff brandished his knife and stared at me. I lifted myself onto the railing and climbed up onto it. I pulled myself across the railing, over to the next aisle, and stumbled as quickly as I could over to the next aisle, but Jeff was waiting there for me. With him on top, and Slenderman waiting below, I looked back at the laptop. It had turned on again.

I have no idea why, but it was browsing MrCreepyPasta's video list at an alarming rate. It had already gotten through a hundred of the videos by the time I looked at the screen. Monsters began to flicker into being all around me; Gristers, suicidemouse, smiledog, the Tails Doll, a bloody Squidward, every creature I knew

“What do you want with me!” I shouted again. Jeff led the other monsters over to the railing. He yanked me back onto the metal grating and shoved me into the computer seat. Images flashed across the screen: a pile of corpses, mutilated beyond recognition; vivisected animals sprawled in a pattern resembling an upside down cross; buildings crumbling into dust; people crumbling into dust. Eventually, those images on the screen were replaced with me, living out my own worst fears. I saw myself drown, slowly and horribly. I watched as I was eaten alive by a school of sharks, as I burned to death on the computer screen. I was buried alive. And the worst part, though I have no idea how it was possible, was that I was somehow feeling all of these deaths through the computer.

Then I was the one doing the killing. I saw my mother getting her head smashed in with a spiked club. I saw my sister split open right down the middle. I saw my brother with no skin, tied to the ends of his bed and screaming in pain. I was doing it all. It was me holding the knife, holding the chainsaw, cutting off pieces of my roommates and putting them on a tray. I tried to close my eyes, but whenever I did, the images would appear inside my brain again.

I kept watching the screen until it faded to black one more time. Jeff’s strong arms still held me in place, and I couldn't move. I struggled in vain, and tried once again to get up, but he still held me tight. Below this floor, through the grating, I could see the other monsters from the creepypastas swirling and gyrating below me. The Gristers were gnashing their teeth, waiting for me to come down to their level. Slenderman was staring at me from the side. I tried to remain calm, taking deep, slow breaths, when another image appeared on the screen.

It was my boyfriend, Kevin. His eyes were sunken in and missing. There were cuts all across his face and chest. Two long, angry lines ran down each of his arms all the way to his elbow. When he opened his mouth, there was no tongue inside. He made sharp, choking noises deep in his throat, gurgling blood as he tried to speak. He stuck the stump that should have been his tongue into the pool of blood that filled his mouth. The blood began to ebb and dissolve gradually away. When it was gone, the tongue was suddenly intact.

“I want you to show me,” he rasped. His voice was airy and wet, like the sound of rain hitting the pavement. “I want you to show me, what you fear. What do you fear, boy? Is it this?” Kevin waved his hands down his body. “Is it seeing him like this?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Is it what you fear most?”

“Yes.” My voice was barely a whisper now, and I could feel my entire body quivering.

“Then I have learned all I can from you,” the thing wearing a disguise of Kevin said. “I thank you for introducing me to this machine, this computer. Surely there is a place where I may make my home while I prepare to return.” Jeff wrapped his hands around my throat and pulled me away from the computer. “As thanks, I award you your miserable human life. You may go now.”

I don’t remember anything after that. The next thing I do remember was waking up on the floor, staring up at Sue. She said something about needing to come back for her purse, but that’s all I caught. I was too busy trying to get out.

I left Kevin pretty quickly after he came to visit me at the hospital. All I can see when I look at him are those sunken, eyeless holes in his head. When he touches me, my skin bleeds and begins to fall away as soon as his hands leave my flesh. I can’t do that. I can’t do that to him.

I can get into my brain through my eye socket. If I can carve the eye out, I can get in and cut the Fear out of my brain. If nothing else, I’ll die, and the images will finally, mercifully, stop. I've tried forgetting. Normally, I drown my fears in a healthy dose of My Little Pony or some other harmless cartoon, but even that has stopped helping. Everything I see now is hopelessly violent. I thought I would become immune to it after a while, like getting used to the temperature of a hot tub, but it’s been nearly six weeks since the day I blacked out, and everything has only gotten worse. I can still see Kevin’s mutilated body, all the injury he did to himself. I can still see the tracts on his arms, the missing tongue, those sunken eyes. Oh god, those eyes. The knife! The knife!