Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24803140-20140411143441

All around the world, in places long forgotten by society, there live old women who live bereft of home and hearth. If it suits you, you may go to one of these women one day. As soon as you see them, offer them whatever currency the country you are in uses. It doesn't have to be a lot - I'm not asking you to turn them into millionaires overnight - it just has to be enough for a bag of chips, or even a drink.

In return, you may ask them about the old world.

Most of the time, they will refuse. Do not press the matter if they do. That would be incredibly rude, and at any rate these people are not who you're looking for. Some of them will tell you of their life experiences, perhaps even how they got there. Laugh or cry if you wish, but know this – these tragedies have nothing to do with what I’m about to tell you next.

At the rarest of times, they will pull you close to them and tell you, with shifty eyes and a hushed voice, of half-imagined things from a time when they were of sounder mind.

It would be easy to mistake their words for symptoms of senility, or even dementia. You may dismiss them as such at your own leisure. Don’t worry, nothing as dramatic as a violent mutilation or a demonic possession will occur. But be warned that you have a lot more to lose than you have to win.

For these women were part of an older world, a world that could not be more different from our world of quantities and machines. You have been fortunate enough to receive a shard of that world. Keep it with you always. Write it down, create a file, make it so that it is never lost or forgotten. If you forget, don’t bother asking them a second time – if you go back to the same spot, they will be gone without a trace.

That old world will return someday, in all its majesty and horror, and you will need their secrets with you when it does.

(I tried to use elements from some of my favorite creepypastas. I disliked the addition of overt gore or death, and I'm trying to encourage the audience to use their imagination. As such, this isn't meant to make you jump out of your skin; more like induce a sense of mystery and a vague sense of existential horror.) 