Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27361742-20160909201421

As I was at the last leg of returning the apartment complex that I live in, using a shortcut through an alley, I saw a relatively small painting with a gold-colored frame in the alley. The words on the frame said, ‘The Real Girl’, embossed into a tag that was put on the frame. I took a look at the painting. It was of a creek in a forest, with a young girl sitting next to the creek, facing the creek. Her hair was a dark brown, and she was wearing a white t-shirt with a red skirt. The painting was beautiful, and well-painted. I was about to walk away when I saw a small note attached to the side of the painting. Since it was and beautiful, I sneakily took the painting and hung it up in my apartment. I hung the painting in my living room, where it fit in very well. As the day ended, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I felt tired, as I feel many days. I felt like I hadn’t slept at all, even though I fell asleep very quickly after heading for bed. I made some coffee and went into the living room to watch TV. As I was watching the news, I looked at the painting. I felt like the painting looked different, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. That is, until I saw the girl sitting by the creek. Her head was turned, so I could see the side of her head, but not her face. The only way I noticed it was that I saw the outline of an ear (which was barely noticeable), and small changes of brushstrokes to the hair. I thought it was there because I was tired. It wasn’t a big deal, so I ignored it. It was such a minor change that it seemed plausible that I was making it up.

The next day, when I woke up, I was much less tired. I felt a lot better. But when I looked at the painting, as my eyes darted around the canvas, I saw something that took me aback. The girl’s face was completely turned around now. I knew it wasn’t me making this up. The girl had brown eyes and a slight smirk on her face. I thought something was up.

After seeing that the painting had changed, I walked away with a look on my eyes that showed nervousness. It wasn’t that scary on its own, but still, the painting had changed. That’s not normal. After further examination of the painting, my fears were confirmed. It wasn’t something with the paint or anything. After confirming that the painting had changed, I grabbed the painting and calmly took it outside, note still attached, and dumped it in the alley where I found it, so that I would never see it again or worry about it. When I entered my apartment after dumping the painting away, I heard a giggle. It was that of a young girl’s.

 I went to bed, scared but relieved that it was gone. I fell asleep. I was in a dream. Inside a forest. It seemed surreal. I kept going forward until I found a clearing, with a creek. A girl just like the one in the painting, turned her head, grinning, revealing sharp teeth. Then the dream ended. I woke up, my clothes wet, from my sweating. I had a very bad headache. It felt like my head had been split open. I looked at the clock. It was 2 AM. I fell back asleep. And when my consciousness slipped into a dream, I heard a childish giggle.

My dream was in the same place as my last dream, a forest, and it was exactly  the same. Until the end of the dream, though. The same girl was by the creek, grinning. This time it was not a grin of joy. It was a grin of evil. Her sharp teeth were partially red. The girl charged started to walk towards me, with a limp that was painful to look at. It looked like the bones in her legs were broken; the way she was walking. I tried to run away, but my legs would not move. As she got closer and closer, I could feel a girl’s light breathing more and more. And then I woke up.



<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;">Hearing whispers to the left of me, I turned to my left. I immediately froze and tensed up, eyes wide open and frozen. It was the girl from the dreams and the painting, in a grotesque form. Her skin was deathly gray. Her eyes had gray pupils, her thin hair was missing in patches, and her body was covered in scars and open wounds. Her clothes were tattered, like they had been fed into a paper shredder and taken out after a few seconds. She stood still for a few moments, which felt like an eternity, looking at me with her stone-cold and dead eyes, and sending chills down my spine. Then, she suddenly ran away, out of the room, laughing ominously. As I kept looking at where she just was, I saw that her bare feet had left muddy and wet footsteps. Since I felt just as tired, I looked at the clock once more. It was 5:30 AM.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><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 turned on the lights and followed the footsteps to see what was up. Was this a game? A person secretly living in my house? I wanted answers. A second after the lights came on, the bulbs exploded. The glass did not hurt me badly, but one shard cut my face, drawing a slight bit of blood. I kept following the footsteps. The footsteps went into the living room, and ended at a wall. <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;">The wall where the <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;"> <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;">painting hung. <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;">When I looked at the wall and saw the painting hanging up, I took a gasp of shock and horror, and I found it difficult to collect myself. I got rid of that painting! I didn’t bring it back in. I left it out in the alley. It wasn’t a burglar, or a sick joke. It was real.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><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 girl in the painting had moved again from when I last saw that painting. She looked just like the girl in the last dream. I saw her grinning, sharp, teeth. They were covered in red. Now that I could see better, I saw what the red was. It was blood covering her teeth. She was also closer to the viewer, I could see little but her face. Then I heard a girl’s scream. I started to turn around and run away, but hands grabbed me, and pulled me back towards the painting. I blinked, and after I blinked, the girl was even closer to the viewer. I saw nothing but her grotesque face in the painting. And the hands were coming <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;">out <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;">out of the painting. I fought the hands. They were a girl’s hands, but they were much stronger than any girl’s hands, and they were pulling me towards the painting. I fought back. I thrashed my arms and flailed around. I got a grip and hit the hands as hard as I could. Then, the hands loosened their grip on me and returned into the painting. As I turned towards the door to my apartment, I heard a girl’s cry, one of anguish, and I looked back at the painting. The girl was nowhere to be seen. It was just the forest and the creek.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><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 felt nauseas, and very sick. It may have been from the lack of sleep. I was extremely angry. I was going to smash that painting. I raised my fist and whacked the painting as hard as I could. The glass broke with a satisfying sound, a loud crunch. The shards of glass drove into my knuckles, drawing blood, but I could bear the pain. The adrenaline fueled me. When I was done destroying the painting, I looked at the wreckage and I saw the painting was now completely red. Nothing but red. It looked like blood, and I didn’t see any visible brushstrokes. It looked real. I gave the red canvas a few more whacks, and it broke even more. The canvas was smashed and dilapidated now.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><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 walked to my bed to go back to sleep. And then I saw the girl on the bed, with the same dead eyes, the same scars, the same tattered clothes. She was not grinning. Her face had a look of spite and evil. I started to run away, and I got a small head start. The girl followed me in pursuit. She didn’t run, she just floated a foot above the ground towards me, seemingly not moving at all, making no noise. I tried to wrench open the apartment door. It wouldn’t budge, not even a millimeter. The girl floated towards me, and flashed a grin, one of triumph. She looked at me once more with her eyes, making complete eye contact, and then she thrusted her hands towards my throat. She grabbed my throat, and started to choke me. I felt the life draining out of me, as her fist clenched around my throat and as her eyes stared at me with a cold dead stare and a grin. My world went dark.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><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;">When I woke up, I was in a forest, surrounded by trees, which darkened the forest. I kept walking. I was lost. I tried yelling, but there was no reply. Eventually after an hour of walking I reached a clearing. There was a river, dark and murky. I looked around, and then is saw a girl, with a white t-shirt, a red skirt, and dark brown hair. My blood turned cold. As I looked on in horror, she turned her head with a giggle... <ac_metadata title="Real (Rewrite)"> </ac_metadata>