Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28431889-20160511142312





I was a rather normal boy. I wasn’t too small, not too tall, and I wasn’t a social outcast, thank god. I looked normal, and I did alright in school. I had no disabilities, at least that I knew of, and I had a rather decent amount of friends. Although, I guess you could say that I was a little bit “off” in one way or another. Something that for whatever reason everyone found weird about me, was my intense level of bravery, or so that's what everyone called it. To me, it was just curiosity. Whenever something came on the news, disturbing or not, I would watch it, thirsty for the knowledge in which I could afterwards posses. To me, it was normal to check out strange noises, or to watch scary movies, even knowing I would not get a second of sleep that night, and maybe days after that. Anyways, I’m rambling.



It all started around 4 years ago. I was only 12 years old, and like I said, I was an ordinary kid as far as myself or anyone else was concerned. I had just been leaving from school, when my friend Daniel confronted me, asking me if I had wanted to come over for the night, as it was Friday and I really didn’t have anything planned for the weekend. Being 12, I was very excited, as sleeping over at Daniel’s was always the first thing that came to mind whenever I thought about the weekend. We always stayed up way later than his parents suggested, watching scary movies and sneaking Dr Pepper and chips from the kitchen. Sometimes, we would even sneak out and go to the park. Looking back now, I don’t know why we went there, as all we did was sit on the swings. I guess there was just something in the breeze of the night that made it feel so peaceful.



After speaking with Daniel, I rode my bike home as fast as I could. It took me roughly five minutes to get home, as I only live about two blocks from the school that I attended. Daniel only lived about 2 minutes walking distance from my house, but with the amount of fun we had on the weekends together, I was in a hurry either way, hoping to waste as little time as possible. When I got home, I just threw my bmx bike on my front lawn, and ran up my concrete patio steps, and entered my home, yelling my moms name with excitement as I walked in, not bothering to remove my shoes from my feet. My mom came down the wooden stairs in a rather quick manner, almost like she thought I was in some sort of trouble. “Hey honey, how was your day?” She asked me. I replied with a simple and quick “It was good, how was yours?” But before she was able to answer, I interrupted with the question that I have been dying to ask her since the second I walked in the front door. To my surprise, she interrupted me, almost as if it was done intentionally to get back at me for doing the exact same thing to her. “I just got off of the phone with Daniel’s mom” She said, and I knew already that I was able to sleep over. A massive smile emerged on my face, and I was afraid that if I looked in the mirror, I would look like a clown with a painted on smile.



After packing my bags, kissing my mom goodbye, and heading to Daniel’s, I greeted Daniel’s mom at his house, and went inside. Out of breath from biking as fast as I could to Daniel's house, I went up to his bedroom. He was playing Call of Duty on his Playstation 3, and he asked me if I wanted to join him. Without hesitation, I loaded in as the second player, and from there until dinner time, we played video games. Daniel’s mom called us down for dinner, interrupting our little gaming session. As this part of the story is irrelevant, I will skip ahead about two hours, to when Daniel and I decided to watch some horror movies.



“What movie do you want to watch?” Daniel asked. Being me, I have seen most horror movies, and decided I would let him choose. “I always choose, dude. You choose.” He quickly interrupted “No, you choose. you're the guest.” I quickly recommended we sneak out and go rent a movie. Daniel argued that because his mom was downstairs in the living room watching television, it would be next to impossible to sneak out. Just as boredom and annoyance was getting to me, I heard Daniel’s voice come out of nowhere, scaring me half to death. “I just remembered! I found an old film in my basement during spring cleaning about a week and a half ago! We gotta watch it!” His eyes were practically bulging out of his head with excitement, and I knew that nothing I said would make him change his mind, not that I wanted him to. As I mentioned earlier, I was keen on exploring the unknown, and I was quite the curious individual. Quickly, I responded with a “Sure, why not?” I sure as hell wasn’t as excited as Daniel was, but I was quite eager to see something new. Life was boring during the weeks following the sleepover, as Daniel’s mom had come down with the flu, and I wasn’t able to sleep over.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The case on the movie read “ <span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Outside the Window.” <span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The name wasn’t even the slightest bit familiar to me, and I have sat through hundreds, if not more horror movies in my life, and for some reason, my ears, my eyes, and my mind, have never seen, heard, or even thought about this film before. A weird feeling of hesitance crossed through my mind, and I asked Daniel if we could google the title. Daniel wasn’t the type to argue about small things, so he pulled out his iPhone 4 and handed it to me. I unlocked it, and went into the google app. After searching for almost ten minutes, even going onto the second page of google, which nobody really does as far as i’m concerned, I found nothing. This only made me more ancy, and I couldn’t wait another minute to watch the film. While I was searching google for any trace of the movie, Daniel had run downstairs to get us a glass of soda each. When he entered the room, I explained to him how there wasn’t a single trace of the movie on the internet, and he stated that it could be one of those films that never made it into the market, or just hasn’t been released.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">We gently put the film into the CD player, and flicked on the television. The room was illuminated by the television, as Daniel and I had come up with our own policy to never have the lights on whilst watching horror movies. It was something about the darkness that put us that much more on edge, and I honestly loved the feeling. We were greeted by some white noise at first, along with some static. I figured that the disc was just old, and it turned out to be the case. After around five seconds of white noise and static, the screen went dark. I soon realized exactly why. It was a classic movie, or at least styled in that fashion. It was black and white, and something could be heard in the background. It was inhuman, almost like animals, most likely a monkey by the sounds of it, screaming. The shadow of whoever was holding the camera could be seen on the floor, as they walked down a dimly lit hallway. The screams of what I thought were animals only got louder as the man progressed slowly down the hallway. There was something familiar about the scenery, but the thought passed my mind rather quickly, as I was very interested in the movie.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">As the man shuffled slowly down the hallway, the thought of recognition kept crossing my mind, and tugging at me inside. I again dismissed this thought. I kept watching the movie, and the screams got unnaturally loud. They weren’t screams anymore. In fact, they were now squeals, not of animals, but those of people. Human beings. Clearly, these were the intense, brutal noises of suffering, and what happened next stayed with me until this very day. The man walked into a small room, no lighter than the hallway, if not darker. The room was so dark that I couldn’t make out any object in the room. The man slowly walked forward, and out of the darkness, I managed to make out the shape of two wooden beds, and what I seen next really scared me. I liked it though, as I knew, or at least thought confidently that it was just a movie. I made out the shape of two figures on the bed, tied to it. The man holding the camera quickly looked into the lens, and scared the living crap out of me. His mouth, it was stitched closed, and his eyes were a bright color, it was hard to make out considering the fact that it was a black and white movie, but by the looks of it, they were yellow. They just stared into the lens, and what looked like a smile on his stitched mouth emerged. His face was badly scarred by the looks of it, and by now, I was really into the movie.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The movie suddenly cut, and the illumination within Daniel’s bedroom got much brighter, as you could now see color on the television screen. It kind of hurt my eyes, as all of the scenes before hand were black, grey, and white. It looked as though it was being filmed with an old school camera. It displayed the date and time in the top left corner, the battery level at the bottom right corner, and a flashing “recording” button in the top right corner. The quality of the camera could be better, but that's besides the point. The camera and whoever was holding it, were in the same hallway as seen in the scene before it. The man filming walked down the hallway, and turned to enter the same bedroom as the freak-faced man did in the first scene. Except, when he went to enter the room, he had to step over some yellow caution tape that was set up in the doorway of the bedroom. I soon realized that this was a crime scene investigation, and a million different thoughts of wonder raced through my mind at once. I was no longer scared, and I was instead excited, dying to know what happened. After stepping over the caution tape, the man walked into the bedroom. The two beds were still there, the sheets on the bed looked like they used to be white, but now were drenched in a pool of blood. The feeling of excitement was suddenly replaced with that of intense fear. My heart sank, as the thought that has been tugging at me finally broke through my mental barrier, and I realized exactly what was so familiar about that home. It was the very home I was going to sleep in. It was Daniel’s home, and even worse, the scene happened in Daniel’s bedroom.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I jumped up off of Daniel’s bed, turning the television off ,soaked in a pool of sweat. I looked back at Daniel, to see an expression on his face that I have never seen before. His eyes wide, pupils enlarged greatly, the rest of his face still, drained of blood, and was so pale that he looked like a ghost. He looked like he might drop dead at any moment, so I interrupted his gaze, as he was staring at the now black television screen. “Daniel, I think we should go to bed.” I said in a soft tone, trying not to trigger anything like an anxiety attack or a mental breakdown within Daniel. “You’re right, we need to get some sleep.” He said, breaking his gaze with the television screen and got up onto his feet, which caused all of the blood flow to enter back into his head, as it went back to a his skin color. We got settled on Daniel’s bunk bed, and as always, he got the top bunk. Although he was usually all about giving the guests the first choice, the top bunk wasn’t something you could take from Daniel.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Almost an hour went by with no sleep, for both me and Daniel. We lay awake, just staring at the ceiling, jumping at any noise, whether it was the light rain hitting the window, to the smallest of creaking in the floorboards. Daniel broke the silence with “I can’t sleep. Not in here. I think I am going to sleep in the guest bedroom.” I wasn’t going to argue. Besides, I was going to get the top bunk, and by now, the movie has moved passed my mind, as I have adapted to watching horror movies. The only thing going through my mind was wonder. I wondered what happened to the two figures tied to the bed, helplessly screaming. I wondered who that freak-faced man really was, and I wondered if he was ever caught. I dismissed the thoughts and closed my eyes, drifting off slowly into a gaze, and sleep came soon enough.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I was awoken, not by Daniel, but by a small scratching sound on the window. I looked out the window, but the rain was now hitting as hard as hail on the window, and it was coming down fast. This being said, I wasn’t able to see 3 feet outside the window. I dismissed this, and closed my eyes once again. I opened my eyes in horror, as the small scratching on the window was now a loud, hard banging. Whatever it was, was banging on the window mercilessly, so hard that I thought the glass would shatter, letting whatever was out there to get inside of the bedroom. Seconds passed, and then minutes, and the baging continued, not getting any harder than before, but not getting any lighter either. An unfamiliar <span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">creeaak <span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">sound came from the closet, as the door slowly opened. In the corner of my eye, I seen something, or someone in the closet, and I picked up my phone and shined the light on the figure. Nothing was there. I turned off my phone, and the figure had returned. I felt like I was playing peek-a-boo with a shadow, or a creature of some sort. I am not going to lie, I was scared out of my mind. I yelled for Daniel, but got no response of any sort. I started reviewing the events that had occurred in my head, trying to pinpoint something that could have explained it all. I came up with nothing.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Everything fell silent. Both my breathing and the rain had calmed down, and not another sound could be heard. Anyone else would see it as peaceful, but to me, it was pure dread and terror. The thought of the unknown being outside of your window, or even in your closet was unbearable. The silence was broken as the bedroom door swung open, almost as if an angry unhumanly force had swung it open with such a force that it would fly off of it’s hinges. I jumped, and I ran to the one place that I thought would be safe. I sprinted to the closet door which was still opened a crack, and I went inside. I got down on my knees, breathing heavily, hoping that whatever had come into the room didn’t see me enter the closet. It was dark and I couldn’t see my own hands, so I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and turned it on. As I did so, I remembered exactly what I seen in the closet, and out of the light from my phone, I seen it. A dark figure in the corner of the closet. It, no, he stepped forwards and his smile, it just made me stop moving, stop breathing, and stop thinking altogether. I was frozen in fear, as the freak-faced man from the film was standing in front of me. Without another thought, I pushed the closet door open, and ran downstairs, waking up Daniel's mom. I was, at this point, crying. I had just seen something scarier than any movie I had ever seen, and more scary than any dream I had ever had. Daniel’s mom calmed me, and said I was welcome to sleep on the couch. I took her up on that offer. For the rest of the night, silence had taken over. I was sound asleep, and the only noise that could be heard was my slow breathing, and the small tapping of the rain on the windows.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:14.666666666666666px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I went home in the morning while Daniel was sleeping. I really didn’t care about being a “good friend” at the time, as I just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. Ever since, I have had nightmares of the freak-faced man. I still wonder to this day, what caused him to do what he did, what happened to his face, and why he stayed in the house of my best friend, years after what he had done to those poor people. To this day, I never look in the closet, and I never watch horror movies. I do not make many friends, and I like to stick to PC gaming, as I have never had a bad experience on there. I wish I could say that I healed mentally, but I still get frozen in fear when I hear the small tapping of rain on my window, and when I see small apparitions out of the corner of my eye. <ac_metadata title="My first pasta. (Please review) Why I Stopped Watching Horror Movies"> </ac_metadata>