Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24929924-20140511161513

Hey guys, so this is my first Creepypasta ever. It's not finished yet- I'm actually still a ways away from the end, but I'd like to get some feedback on the opening parts of it. Unfortunately, the first part isn't really very creepy yet(it's supposed to be a long, slow build), but I would still really appreciate any advice you all may have. Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

The Journey (working title)

 I am afraid.



 Simple words, but powerful. They express more than a transitory state, a passing affliction. They signify more than a momentary fear, a glimpse of horror. They are not encompassed by the startled gasp of a man surprised by his son's sudden appearance behind a door as he returns home from work, or the quick screams and ensuing laughter of a group of friends enthralled by a spooky tale. These words reach deeper than any of that. They grab us, take hold of our minds, and assert themselves as our ruler. They represent something fundamentally more desperate, more permanent than the horrified disgust of a couple stumbling upon the scene of a death. To be afraid is to have no respite, no refuge or deliverance. To be afraid is to cower in the recesses of our minds, to live trapped within the constant reality of our own doom. To be afraid is to be subjected to the will of our subconscious, to have our thoughts bent and twisted until any shred of light, life, or hope has been torn from them like so much gauze. To be afraid is to exist in fear.



 And I am afraid.

 - Unknown author 



 I am going to tell you a story. I warn you, it is not a pleasant one, but then again, such things never really are. Regardless, it is a tale that must be told- in my many years, I have learned that history has a terrible memory, and I fear the consequences should this particular recollection be lost to the currents of time.



 I suppose an introduction of sorts is in order. I am a wanderer, nothing more and nothing less. My name is of little consequence, and the particulars of my origins serve no purpose to anyone but myself. Know only that I am old, far older than I have any right to be, and that I have seen many things.



 In my travels of the world, I have come to see it as a beautiful place, full of vibrancy and life. Time has not jaded me to the majesty of the soaring mountains, nor has the tranquility of a forest grove lost its magic. Even after lifetimes of experiences, the world continues to astound me with its endurance and subtle grandeur, and no less have I been amazed by the heights and depths of human existence. The smiles of a pair of lovers are as tender now as when I was young, and the thrill of hope wound deeply into our existence has not faded in the slightest with time. The world is a wonderful place, and my gratitude for my time here is eternal. I could tell you stories of such happiness that even the most hardened of stoics would weep with joy. I could relate sights of such beauty as to propel the most decadent of sloths to travel the world. I could describe passages of history grand enough to inspire the humblest of peasants to greatness. I have witnessed love so deep as to mark history to its bones. But that is not my purpose here. No matter how much I wish it, those stories must wait for another day.



 As there is life, love, and happiness in the world, so is there death, hate, and despair. The balance between them is tenuous at best, and catastrophically dangerous at worst. For all the joys of my prolonged existence, there resides, in the recesses of my mind, one memory that has long served as a counterbalance to them all. It represents the sole moment in my life where I doubted the right of this world to existence. I relay it to you now in the desperate hope that no such happening may ever again come to pass. Whether you read my words with the heart of a believer or of a skeptic, I entreat you to not cast them aside as mere ramblings. It is my greatest hope that I never be proven correct, that this story remains throughout history as naught but a cautionary tale meant to scare children and the weak of heart. But should such events begin once again, if the shifting of the world turns to darkness once more, remember my words. It may be the only hope we have left.



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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in0.5in0.0001pt;text-align:justify;"> I don't possess these thoughts I have --- they possess me. I don't possess these feelings I have --- They obsess me.

<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in0.5in0.0001pt;text-align:right;"> -'' Ashly Lorenzana ''

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> First, I must provide some context. For what is experience without its place? A disjointed mess of memories does no one any good, and in particular this tale requires its proper setting within history.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> For all of my time in this world, I remain a human. The question of how such an extension of my life came to pass has perplexed me throughout the eons, but I assure you that I am naught but an exceptionally old man. A rather spry one for my age, I suppose, but an old man nonetheless.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> My point in bringing this up is to assure you that I, like you, am no statue of perfection. I have my flaws and idiosyncrasies, and in particular when I was young I recall being something of a fool. Not a fool in the meaning of lacking faculty of reason, but rather in that of a complete absence of simple sense and direction. I lived with reckless abandon, giving no thought to the chains of causality set off by each of my careless actions. In short, I was a child. Life had not yet dispensed to me its grand wisdom, and so I acted in the moment, without rationality or caution. I had ambition without aim- I knew I hungered for discovery and grandeur, but lacked the basis from which to reach it.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> It was by this disposition, which lingered into my early adulthood, that I came to be involved with a man known to me only as Kelert. My first encounter with him was innocent enough- a chance introduction by a friend of mine at a party. My family had no lack of wealth, and such events were a regular occurrence in my early life- I was completely surrounded by socialites growing up, and these activities were their lifeblood.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> Of course, seeing as we were at a party, no genuine discussion arose from our meeting. We were all far too consumed with the revelry to even contemplate serious thought. Still, he struck me as an interesting man, a sort of kindred spirit. Something in his eyes relayed to me the very sense of dissatisfaction I had felt building within me for some time. At the time I didn't recognize it for what is was- all I knew was that we were in some way similar. I took to him immediately, and I believe he did the same. Our interactions over the next few months became increasingly frequent, and we soon became fast friends.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> He was a secretive individual, and exceedingly cautious, a true oddity amongst the boisterous crowds of the upper class. I suspected even then that Kelert was not his true name, but I never let it bother me. And why should I? A name is naught but a designation, a title given to us without our knowledge or consent. Rather, I took it to be a sign of strong sense of being- he defined himself how he liked, rather that submitting to the insistence of others.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> It is here that I will say that we lived in dark times- in stark contrast to the bright lights, gaudiness, and indulgence of the upper class, the rest of our people had withered and buckled. Of this, I, of course, was completely and blissfully unaware. All it took was a single trip to the neighboring city to change that. In that city, poverty, hunger, and misery ran rampant around us, kept in its place only by the thin walls inside of which the rich had barricaded themselves. It was a dichotomy that had been, by some power I know not, previously invisible to me. All it took was a single glimpse at the state of the world for the doors to be swung wide, and Kelert gave me that glimpse.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> You see, like myself, Kelert had an excess of ambition. The difference between us was that he knew precisely how he wanted to direct it. In my naiveté, his unshakable purpose was as an anchor, a foundation. Here, at last, was a direction. Here I could see a path to all that I so desired. I had my trepidations, but for all his secrecy, Kelert was persuasive and charismatic. I have never been easy to convince, and even less so to hoodwink, but he was able to win me over to his cause.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> Kelert's grand ambition was simple, if insidious. He harbored within himself an intense curiosity regarding the darkness consuming humanity. Born of the state of the world, Kelert's all-consuming quest sought answers to the tragedies so present in our society. Motivated by the horrors I experienced within that city, horrors that remain with me today, I agreed to help Kelert in his search to understand the source of such travesties. He, of course, insisted that it was all for the sake of eliminating misery the likes of which now haunted me, and I had no reason to doubt him. And so we began our descent into the depths of evil.

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<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center;"> * * *

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in31.5pt0.0001pt0.5in;text-align:justify;"> Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in31.5pt0.0001pt0.5in;text-align:right;"> - ''Baltasar Gracián ''

<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> I warn you, from here the tale turns dark. Steel yourself against your fears, tighten your resolve, and we shall carry on. Not because it is pleasant or easy, but because it is necessary.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> In those days, the state of the world was quite different than it is now. The laws of existence have changed on some fundamental level, and I alone remember how things once were. Perhaps that is why my life persists- I am a record holder, a relic meant to preserve the histories forgotten by the rest of the world. You see, at the time of my origin, concepts such as good and evil were more than just a thought or disposition. In a way that I can no longer describe, such things had substance. Descendants ridicule their ancestors for believing in poltergeists and monsters, but there was a time when such beings truly did exist, although not in quite the way they are remembered.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> I realize that this may seem a rather important aspect of my recounting to leave out until now, but I have my reasons. I speak now to those of you with open minds, those willing to believe my words. Can you truly say that, had I revealed such a detail at the beginning of this passage, you would have continued to listen? Oh, you may have tried. You may have read every word on this page. But you would not have believed. I am not foolish enough to expect even the most willing among you to take what I am saying simply on faith. I can only hope that you now are able to sense the truth in my words, and the weight that they hold.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> Our aim was, of course, no simple task. Such basic questions had plagued even the most discerning philosophers for centuries, and have continued to torment the minds of truth-seekers ever since. One might even call it foolishness, to think that two lonely men could unveil the truth obscured by the darkness within our souls. But then, we were fools.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> The plan set forth by my companion seemed deceptively simple: to understand evil, all we required was a method of producing it. With such knowledge, could we not simply revoke whatever process by which we had arrived at it?

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> Of course, evil was, and is, spectacularly easy to come by. One need barely walk outside to be presented with a dozen examples. We are surrounded by darkness, by day and by night. The only difference is to what degree. And therein lay our problem- while evil is common, pure evil is exceedingly rare, as is our understanding of it. So often when men believe themselves to have defeated or expunged corruption, they have naught but reduced it, relegated it to a corner and allowed the slivers of good, once fighting for existence in the darkness, to expand into the vacuum left by vice's absence. Sadly, effective as this method may seem, it always leaves traces of villainy- dregs of sin, an aftertaste of depravity. Like a line of dirt left by a dustpan, the job is left unfinished. And so long as even a hint of evil remains, it will always return.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> And so, to conquer evil, we resolved to find a way to destroy it. Not to limit it or combat it, but to wipe it out of existence until not even a memory remained. In accordance with our plan, we realized that our only recourse was to create pure evil.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;"> I hope to continue updating it as I progress, and I'm probably going to edit the later parts of this section pretty heavily. Again, any feedback is very much appreciated. Thanks again, and have a nice day:) <ac_metadata title="Working on my first Creepypasta"> </ac_metadata>