Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27190570-20160112030014

This story is old, I wrote it a year ago. I am aware that the plot twist at the end is exceptionally similar to the one at the end of another popular pasta, but I think that the story of this one differentiates it well enough. It may not be great, but I do believe it can be put on the main site with a bit of work. Any feedback is appreciated.

The man woke with a start. Every night he had the same nightmare, and he couldn’t remember anything except abject terror and a feeling of falling. He had gone to the doctors and they gave him some pills. They had said the pills would take a few days to start working, but it had been more than a week. Before the man could worry anymore his alarm went off, and it was time to get ready for work. He got dressed, drank coffee, ate a granola bar, the normal stuff. He grabbed his cell phone and his keys on the way out the door and got into his car. His phone vibrated as he started the car, it was a text from himself, he did that, occasionally, it was a good way to remember things but, he was fairly sure he hadn’t sent himself anything. The message contained no words, but there was a picture. The picture was taken in a forested area at night. There were four tall blurry spots in the picture. The man was unnerved, to say the least. But he was a rational man, and he knew that it must be a bug of some sort. This is what he told himself, repeated it like a mantra. Soon, the worries of the message were replaced with work related stress. After parking in the lot of his office, he deleted the picture and entered the building. The man worked at an accounting firm, he said ‘hello” to his friends, and gave a “good morning, sir” to his boss. But the entire day, the man could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. He finally decided to go home sick, thinking that he needed sleep. As he arrived home, he noticed his door open. He had closed and locked it before he left. He knew that there had been several burglaries in his neighborhood so he quickly phoned the police and grabbed a tire iron from his trunk. The man was not exceptionally strong, but he figured he could bluff fairly well. He charged into the house through the open door with what he thought to be a ferocious cry and immediately regretted it. Three peop- no, not people, things, were in his living room.They were about five feet tall, but they were hunched over something on the carpet, they could be easily seven or eight feet tall when standing erect. The things had skin that looked close to human skin, but a small torso, with unproportionally long limbs, and horrifically long fingers. They turned to face him, and his blood ran cold, his body numb from the ribs down. The things looked at him, they looked as though they might’ve had faces at one point, but their flesh has covered the face thinly. The man dropped the tire iron, and the noise startled the things, they ran through an open window into the timber behind the house. Now, the man was a logical person, it must’ve been a feverish hallucination, he’d have to go back to the doctors. Then he looked that the carpet. The things had been hunched over what had been a person, but now was some sort of monster. The once-person was vaguely humanoid, with legs and arms, but mouth, nose, and eyes were covered in a thin membrane of ashen grey skin. The creature's limbs were still spasming, and it almost looked like they were- oh god the man thought It’s growing. It was one of them, one of their offspring perhaps. Or, more frighteningly, some poor soul they had abducted and dragged into his house to turn into one of them. He had called the police once more and told them that all was well. He covered his house, and the still-spasming creature in gasoline, and threw a match upon it. He grabbed his phone, his keys, and his money and left. He drove for a long time, in a sort of trance state. Finally, he pulled over to the side of the road, and with his hand clutching a kitchen knife, went to sleep. He awoke at about four in the morning to a petrifying screech. The man froze and clutched his flimsy knife with a white-knuckled grip. For a moment all was silent, but then a grotesquely long arm crashed through his passenger window. The man opened the driver-side door and ran, the things chasing close behind him. He sprinted into a wooded area, stepping over logs and tripping over branches. The branches scratched his face, leaving it criss-crossed in shallow bleeding cuts. He finally approached a cliff that overlooked a shallow lake. He stood on its rocky edge and looked below him, the lake far below him. He turned on his heel to face his pursuers, and in his last act of defiance, took a picture. He did not have the space to save the photo, so he sent it to the first person on his contact list. The message sent and he tossed his phone to the side. The things made a strange clicking noise and advanced towards them. He figur- no, he knew that they meant to turn him into one of them, like they did to the poor creature in his house. He would not let them. The Things edged closer. One lunged at him, but, with a smile on his face, he leaned backward and fell from the cliff. The scream of the monstrosity that fell with him a metronomic beat to the end of his own life. The man woke with a start. Every night he had the same nightmare, and he couldn’t remember anything except abject terror and a feeling of falling. He had gone to the doctors and they gave him some pills. They had said the pills would take a few days to start working, but it had been more than a week. Before the man could worry anymore his alarm went off, and it was time to get ready for work. He got dressed, drank coffee, ate a granola bar, the normal stuff. He grabbed his cell phone and his keys on the way out the door and got into his car. His phone vibrated as he started the car, it was a text from himself, he did that, occasionally, it was a good way to remember things but, he was fairly sure he hadn’t sent himself anything. The message contained no words, but there was a picture. The picture was taken in a forested area at night. There were four tall blurry spots in the picture. The man was unnerved, to say the least. But he was a rational man, and he knew that it must be a bug of some sort. This is what he told himself, repeated it like a mantra. Soon, the worries of the message were replaced with work related stress. After parking in the lot of his office, he deleted the picture and entered the building. 