Inspire

It had been two months since I’d written a proper creepypasta and the last one I’d made had been reamed mercilessly. They say writers have the biggest egos yet most fragile self-esteems so I’ll admit I was wounded. I couldn’t bring myself to read the thing again, much less revise it, so I moved on. It wasn’t anger at the readers, just myself. I’m a published author, (nothing bigger than short pieces for small magazines at a pittance, but hey, you start somewhere,) and knew I could do better.

But apparently not. I couldn’t write anything. Some call it writers block, but I can usually force myself to sit down and churn out something passable. A friend suggested I switch to pen and paper to get the creative juices flowing. That just gave me cramps. So rather than sit in front of a keyboard in frustration, I spent my free time the way I did in high school. Playing TF2 and watching bad anime.

I made all kinds of excuses for myself. “I’ve felt crappy lately.” “I’m stressed because I just quit smoking and cut back on the alcohol.” “It’s one of our busy seasons at work.” They were nonsense reasons, of course. I work at UPS and the only true hectic time of year is December. There was this writing forum I used to frequent and, desperate for advice, made a thread for the first time in eleven months. It immediately got a page view but no replies. I went to work.

Two days later, still no responses. Still no more than one page view. Not even a year and everyone had forgotten about me, despite three thousand posts and half a dozen crit-partners. Enraged, I booted up TF2 and spent all weekend trolling. Gunslinger Engineer who runs around with a Pompson spamming Medics. Phlog/Axtinguisher Pyro. Oh, yeah. It got weird a few times, though.

I swear I saw a burning soldier become a charred skeleton. Another time, a Scout ran into a wall and went splat before disappearing. It wasn’t that disconcerting. It’s a pretty violent game so whatever. My experience wasn’t about video games, anyway. Still, the glitches or whatever they were got the juices flowing. I’d never written a gaming creepypasta before. Probably because I’m not really a gamer. But they were pretty popular and I was fairly sure there was a youtube channel dedicated to them.

So I gave it a shot. I tried TF2 and Mass Effect. Pretty much the only games I ever had an emotional connection to. The only things I could think of were unoriginal and super, crap that sounded like bad mods. I didn’t even save any of my attempts.

Newly frustrated, I decided to delete my account on the writing website. Before I finalized the deletion, I checked my thread. Still just one view. That did it. Right before I clicked ‘Are you sure you want to delete your account: Confirm,’ I noticed a private message. What if I hadn’t read it? No use thinking about it.

It was from a user I didn’t recognize. ‘TheHelper(:’

I didn’t know they allowed non-alphabetic characters in user names, but maybe they’d changed the rules. The message was simple enough. “Any luck with your creepypasta’s lately?” It was a little odd that he didn’t post on the thread, but it was friendly enough.

“Nah, no inspiration as of yet. Thanks.”

It seemed rude to delete my profile mid-communication. I’d let TheHelper(: respond again before deletion. I felt weird playing Team Fortress, so I watched some old Shonen on hulu. Scary animes, too, hopefully to give me a lightbulb moment. Everything in the shows were just a little bit off. Nothing notable, but the story lines and character designs weren’t quite how I remembered them. I ignored it and fell asleep thinking about old horror movies and books.

At about three AM, I woke with a start. Something was scratching on my window. I jumped away from the sound and stood up on my mattress. A few yards from the window, I noticed eyes staring at me. My heart nearly jumped from my chest and I almost broke the glass throwing an alarm clock at the eyes. But they were gone. I told myself the eyes were my own, reflected in the window. It turned out the scratching was just a tree branch. It had happened before on windy nights. Time to trim them. Since I was too freaked to go outside, it could wait ’til the morning.

I doubted that I could get back to sleep, so I turned on the computer. One of my writing strategies is to keep brainstorm files in notepad, and I opened that up. Surely, experiencing real fear was a plus. I started plotting out a story about a monster scratching on someone’s window each night, but foresaw what it was turning into and I’d promised myself I’d never do another Rake pasta.

Next, I invented a new creature. Some sort of tree monster. It was stupid, like something out of a 70s B-flick. Besides. What’s a tree going to do, chase you? I surfed aimlessly for a bit, hoping to get tired, and stumbled upon the forum. TheHelper(: had replied.

“How about now? Anything?”

I froze up, wondering if he knew about the tree and the eyes. Then I laughed. What a stupid thought, right? He’s just an annoying yet well intentioned guy on the internet. I gave a curt response, “No.” hoping he would stop pestering me. A few seconds after I pressed send, there was a noise in the kitchen. I hoped it was just a pot falling over, but since I live in a four room house, (bathroom, living room, bedroom, kitchen,) I can hear everything clearly.

Someone was definitely inside. I don’t really believe in guns, but at that instant I wished I was less liberal. Or at the very least had invested in a tazer. I managed to find a metal curtain rod under my bed and forced myself to investigate. “Hey!” I said as I opened my door. “Get out now and I won’t call the cops!” I took a few shaky steps through the hallway, club raised. The shuffling stopped. Was he hiding? Had he left? I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew.

“Raahhh!” With a yell, I charged into the kitchen. A yellow tabby cat responded with a snarl and jumped out an open window. I breathed a sigh of relief. Though I didn’t remember leaving anything open, I’d seen that cat around the neighborhood. I’d have to talk with it’s owners. I closed the window and brought a glass of water back to my room.

TheHelper(: had sent another e-mail. Oh, he’s on. Maybe I can make him get the hint. I naively thought. But it was like an ice cold egg ran down my spine when I opened it.

“Did that do anything for you?”

I turned off my computer immediately and rubbed my arms with my hands to warm myself. I stayed like that, sitting straight up, rubbing my arms until I accidentally fell asleep. In the light of day, I decided I was being silly but still deleted my account. I had six unread PMs but ignored them. It felt good to be free of TheHelper(: and that useless writing forum I went to work feeling refreshed. Work itself was anything but refreshing.

My job is to unload trailers full of boxes. The fifth box that night started vibrating. This happens sometimes. You’re supposed to put it on a cart and have hazmat take a look. 99% of the time it is a toy, (children’s or sex, whichever,) so it didn’t bother me. But when two packages in an hour vibrated, I thought it strange. When it became every tenth package, and it felt like something trapped inside was pounding on the edges, and when I faintly heard screaming to be let out, I panicked.

I jumped out of my trailer, grabbing the attention of my boss. She spotted my Hazmat cart ludicrously full, opened one to find a bunch of books, and got an expression like she didn’t know to be angry or concerned. She asked if I was feeling well and told me to go home. I left. The UPS parking lots are massive and empty and it was dark out, but I enjoy the five minute walk to my car, breathing the chill air. But halfway to my Stratus, I got a text. I didn’t know the number, and dreaded reading it. I found what I expected.

“How’s your inspiration doing? Any ideas?”

I sprinted the whole way to my car, not slowing down long enough to glance over my shoulder. As I started up my car, I took a moment to catch my breath. Then the car directly across from me started up to. Its headlights blinded me for a moment and the car headed for me. I managed to pull out a moment before it rammed me and I peeled onto the road. It followed.

The car wasn’t trying to hit me anymore. Just mirror me. If I sped, it sped. If I slowed, it slowed. Still, I tried my best to lose it, even running a few red lights and stop signs. No dice. 911 was on speed-dial and the operator answered within a few seconds. “9-1-1, what is the nature of your emergency.”

“There’s someone following me!”

“How are they following you, sir?”

“In a car! I’m in a car, too.”

“Can you identify the vehicle, sir?”

“It’s a-” I checked my rearview mirror, but the pursuant had vanished. “Okay, well, it’s gone now. But it was definitely following me!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just taking the same route? How long was it following you, sir?”

“A long time! It wasn’t a coincidence!”

“Okay. Sir? I need you to calm down. If you spot the vehicle again, try to get the plates. If it continues to follow you, call again. Good night, drive safe.”

“Wait! Wait!” The operator was silent, but I didn’t hear the click that ends the call. I figured she’d waited. “All right, listen, I-”

“Do you have any ideas yet?” Said a voice that sounded like multiple people talking at once.

“Ahh! No! No, stop it! You’re not helping me, okay? Please, stop this!” I hung up and pulled into my driveway. Running inside, I hatched a plan. I would turn on my computer, go back to the forum, and find out who TheHelper(: was. At the very least, I believed, TheHelper(: didn’t want to hurt me. Whatever bizarre logic this person or not-person had, my well being wasn’t in danger. As I ran through the kitchen, a cord tripped me up.

I’d never tripped on a cord before, and wasn’t even sure what it was to, but screw it. I’m fairly clumsy and trip sometimes. Whatever. As I stood, ready to take off again, a gloved hand yanked me up and covered my mouth. I jumped backwards and bumped into them, tried jumping forwards but couldn’t.

I went into full on panic mode, basic instinct, fight or flight, you know? But this person, if it was a person, (I couldn’t even count how many fingers they had,) was inhumanly strong. As in, I couldn’t even get it to lean back an inch if I pushed with all my weight. And I’m pretty in shape. Lifting 600 packages an hour that can weigh up to eighty pounds each isn’t for weaklings. I tried spinning my head to see it, but it had my head too tight. Biting, punching, kicking, all of it was equally useless. And if I was panicking before, I was really panicking after I saw the knife.

The second hand, also gloved, pointed the knife at my chest but hovered indecisively for a few seconds. Somehow, I knew, it wasn’t shaky. It was just trying to determine the best place to plunge the five inch blade. Finally, it went in. I’ve never felt so much pain, and I’ve also never seen as much blood. Then everything went black.

——————————————————————————————————————————

That was nearly two weeks ago. I woke up in a hospital and I’ve had to stay there since. Good thing UPS has good benefits. I spent what little energy I had writing my experience down. May as well get a good story out of it. Writing this took a lot longer than it should have, mostly because pain killers cloud my thinking and lower my energy. But panic attacks from recalling everything haven’t helped, either.

The doctors say I’m lucky the intruder didn’t kill me. That if he had stabbed just an inch higher or an inch lower I’d be dead. I guess I was half right when I figured TheHelper(: didn’t want to hurt me. At the very least, it didn’t want to murder me. I guess that’s something. And they’re discharging me tomorrow, so that’s something else.

But there was one thing I had to do before I left. I checked my e-mail. As expected, there was an unread electronic mail from TheHelper(: that simply said, “Written anything yet?”

I didn’t freak out, but calmly replied. “Yes. I got a good one. Thanks, I guess? So we’re done here now. Bye.” I let out a massive sigh and got out of bed, intending to go outside for a smoke. (Yeah, I picked it up again. Sue me.) But before I left the room, I saw another e-mail. It was sent back before anyone could even have read my message, much less reply to it.

Despite the possibilities or impossibilities, I clicked open with a trembling hand.