Audio Cassettes

I suppose I should start this passage with a bit of an... introductory? I refuse to give out my real name so you can just call me Zoey. I remember when I was around four, we used to live in some small town in Missouri. I have few memories of this town or schooling or anything like that. Hell, I can't even remember the own damn house. The only distinct memory is of me walking down a hallway to see my mother in her bedroom for some long forgotten reason. I suppose there is one other thing I remember though. I'm pretty sure it was spring cleaning or something, as my parents were up in the attic clearing stored boxes. We were about to move and decided which boxes were worth the most to keep in our new little home. My parents found a container and unlike all of our boxes that we had up in that dusty old place, this storage unit was more of a trunk. I remember my parents were baffled by this, as they had no memory of buying this case. They decided to take it anyways without even looking to see what was inside. Perhaps the case would of been worth something if they were to sell it. To this day I still don't know their motives for bringing the trunk to our new and current residence. ...I wish they didn't take the damn trunk with them.

No surprise, when we finally moved in, the trunk got shoved in the attic again. I forgot about the trunk shortly after that. I focused on reality and it wasn't until I was thirteen where I saw the trunk again. My family was spring cleaning or something like that, and while exploring the attic, I found the trunk. I wanted to know what its contents were, but yet I didn't and thought I should just leave it alone. Alas, curiosity got the best of me and I tried to open the trunk. I was expecting it to just remain closed or be locked and leave it at that, but to my surprise the trunk opened with ease. The trunk was filled with numbered audio cassettes. There must of been over five hundred of those tapes. I took the trunk and took it to my room. It was heavy, but I managed to carry the load to my room. I actually bought an old cassette player recently just to play the things. Some of the cassettes were normal and what not, just recordings of your average conversation. Some were even humorous, like the 42nd tape referenced the Hitchhiker Galaxy. Unfortunately, most were rather disturbing. They all had different voices, scenarios, and scenery. With that said, I began to wonder how they ended up in one big trunk. Nevertheless the fact that they were in my own fucking attic. Here's what some of them said:

"I have this weird pimple on my right ring fingertip. I don't know where I got it from. Seriously, how the hell did I get this?" -Tape #217

At this point I should mention that I didn't play the tapes in any particular order. Just grabbing random tapes or two from the trunk at a time. This one didn't creep me out too much it just... unsettled me. I wish I could say the same for the rest of them.

Tape #126 was scrambled. The only words or phrases that I could make up were "the son of", "god damn", "fuck", "die soon", and "euthanize".

It was at this point where the tapes were genuinely starting to be creepy. Was it a son of somebody angry that he had to euthanize his dog or something? Was somebody's son getting about to be euthanized or killed? I didn't think about it much because I wanted to listen to more tapes. Plus the fact that these damn tapes were creepy enough without thought.

"Oh god... what have I done? I shouldn't have gone in, he told me that I needed to but... I just can't follow through. Mr. Brown has always been a good man to me, I can't do this!" -Tape #140

These are starting to get even more fucked up, I don't want to think about it more but I can't help to wonder what happened? The tapes all describe a situation in the most vaguest way possible while conveying a genuinely disturbing story-line that never gets detailed enough so you still are clueless about the whole tape. It both disturbs me, yet fascinated me, so I continued to play more.

"God damn it, she told me that she would be with me forever! She- damn it. I'm going to kill myself. I hate her. I hate the world..." -Tape #166

Holy shit... these are fucking creepy as hell. I don't get scared easily but I can't help getting the chills by these... these fucking tapes. I want to just stop now but again my curiosity got the best of me and I continued to watch the damn things.

"Oh god... Mike saw something outside. Was it Dan? Oh god, I hope it wasn't Dan. Please... please no. Not Dan. No." -Tape #108

This was too much for me. I promised myself that I was done with this. I would take the trunk back into the attic and never touch the fucker again. There was one tape on the floor that caught my eye though... I don't think it was in the trunk. I closed the damn thing after picking up that last tape. No tapes were on the floor then, but there it was. Smack dab in the middle of the floor. What also struck me as strange was that unlike the other tapes, this one wasn't numbered. Well, I suppose it was numbered but it was numbered... zero. Tape number zero? Even though I promised myself to watch no more tapes. This one intrigued me most of all, I decided to reluctantly watch it.

It started off with static, as if a person was recording TV static. In fact, that's what I think was happening. That immediately struck me as strange. After that carried on for about five minutes. The static, or rather the TV that presumably was making the sound abruptly cut off. It was at that point where I could hear scratching on a door of some sort. Perhaps a stray animal wanting to get in or something. That theory was quickly cut short though, as heavy panting of fear made it obvious that this wasn't some raccoon begging for scraps of food. Like the static, this continued for an unreasonably long time until about three minutes later when the person managed to muster "...It's coming. ...I-I-I never should have found those damn tapes..."