I want to start by saying that I’m so very sorry. I’ve been bored out of my mind being stuck inside week after week and just wanted to keep myself busy. I’m always on here and I read so many stories and then I saw that people narrate these stories.
Thinking it was cool and seeing that people were making money doing it I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in giving it a shot. I should have reached out to others who knew more than I did or at least looked into it, make sure I was allowed to just go ahead and take stories. I didn’t consider those who had posted them. It hadn’t crossed my mind that the stories I had read on here were in fact, real.
I’m just making excuses for myself at this point. I’m just filling the page with nonsense so I can avoid everything going on around me. When I first started recording a few handpicked stories I was excited to see that I was growing faster than I expected. I know how much of a struggle it can be to make it on youtube so seeing that my second video already grabbed just shy of 100 views lit a fire in me.
I looked for more stories. Copy-pasted them into Word and kept recording nearly through the night, I planned to release a new video every other day. It hadn’t even crossed my mind how the people who dared to share their experiences might feel about it. I thought they were just stories. Tonight I learned that wasn’t the case.
My fourth video had just gone up and I was getting ready to start recording another story or two before getting some rest. The video had been up for only half an hour when I had gotten a notification from youtube about gaining a new subscriber. I slipped off my headphones to check if anyone had left anything on the video when I heard a thud behind me.
Quickly gaining my attention I turned to look to the source of the noise. I became acutely aware of just how dark my apartment was when the only light came from my computer. The door that led to the hallway was unwelcoming as I listened closely for any follow-up noises. I was alone but started to question if I had remembered to lock the front door.
Slowly rising from my chair I tried to make as little sound as I could while making my way to the door. Peeking my head into the dark hallway I peered at the living room where the sudden interruption had come from. The room was still and with the small traces of light coming in from the windows I was able to discern there were no intruders.
Letting out the breath I had been holding in I stepped out into the hallway, getting a better look at the empty living room I let out a laugh. I figured I had just been making myself paranoid reading all those scary stories by myself. Still, my heart was racing, slowing down but still fast enough to feel against my chest.
I decided to go to the bathroom and splash some water on my face. A way to kind of shock myself out of the nerves I was feeling. With the bathroom light offering a soft glow of comfort I turned the water on and dipped my hands in. The feeling of cold water washed over my face and I started to feel silly. Then, I felt a lump.
I felt it when I went to swallow the saliva in my mouth. The liquid met some resistance at it went down my throat. It felt like my adam’s apple had become swollen enough to barricade my ability to swallow. Lifting my fingers I felt all over the outside of my neck but even when applying pressure I couldn’t find anything out of sorts.
Trying to swallow again accomplished the same swollen throat sensations. Using the illumination in the bathroom I opened my mouth and tried to get a good angle that allowed me to see the back of my throat. My phone vibrated again. Quickly peering at the notification I received a comment that said “Great story, love the gruesome ending!”
Admittedly this earned a smile from me and I replied “Thanks, I’m glad you liked it.” I don’t know why it’s not like I wrote the thing. A quick attempt to push down more saliva reminded me of my predicament. Using the mirror with an open mouth I did manage to see something resting at the back of my mouth. A small black speck that was reflecting the light that hit it.
I couldn’t quite make out what it was but I was certain it wasn’t supposed to be there and it was likely the source of my discomfort. My pointer finger and thumb became spelunkers as I reached them back to my throat. Ignoring my gag-reflex as best as I could I managed to get a hold of the black bit after a few failed attempts.
Pulling my fingers out like a fishing line I became aware that the thing in my throat wasn’t just some black speck, it was a larger object. I could feel something like a string passing through my throat and mouth as I pulled more and more. When I became aware of the feeling I didn’t want to pull to fast and risk injuring myself.
When my fingers were far back enough I was able to make out what I was freeing from within me. I just couldn’t get my head around how it got there, it wasn’t even something I had in the house but I remember it from my childhood. The thin black ribbon that contrasted the white teeth around it. I remembered ruining my father’s old cassette tapes.
The ribbon’s gloss reflected the light as I pulled more and more of it out until eventually that feeling in my throat left and all the ribbon dropped into the sink. I started at the mess of ribbon all folded over itself, coated in thick wads of saliva. Even though the lump was gone I could feel where the edges of the ribbon had rubbed against my throat.
I rested my hands against the white sink as I heaved, the urge to vomit becoming increasingly overwhelming. Then as I stood there letting out heavy breaths I watched as the ribbon in the sink, twitched. It was small at first but before I knew it the mass of thin black was wriggling around like a pile of worms. I was reminded of the first story I narrated. It was about a guy whole visited some country and got a tapeworm, but the tapeworm didn’t stop at eating what the guy at. It started chewing away at his internal organ.
With the story in my head, remembering the hell the guy in the story went through I reached up and turned the faucet on. The water quickly making the wriggling mass unable to move as it was pulled down into the drain. Then, another thud from the living room, louder this time. Turning my head I had a straight line of vision from the bathroom to the living room. With the light from the bathroom, I could see even clearer that no one was in there.
I had almost forgotten what I had just seen until I felt the pain of several small scrapes when I went to swallow. I needed water or something to soothe my throat and using the faucet in front of me caused vision of that ribbon reaching out of the drain to grab me. Instead, I headed to the living room and into the kitchen.
Opening the fridge I bent down and felt my pocket vibrate. The light of the screen informed me that I had two new subscribers and the video I had just put up had almost 70 views already, the title was a great one. It was very “You gotta click on this”-ish. Putting the phone away I reached in to grab a bottle of grape juice.
Twisting the cap off I lifted the bottle to my lips and tilted it back, barely any time passed before the liquid exited my mouth and trickled on the floor. A repulsive taste of filth and aged milk was still coating the inside of my mouth. I lifted the bottle to inspect the juice but it looks perfectly fine, the juice on the floor, however, did not.
The pool of liquid laying on the linoleum by my feet was frothing and a disgusting shade of green that I’ve only ever seen accompany the worst of infections. I spilled some of the juice out of the bottle, it retained it’s purple gleam the whole way until mixing with the other liquid, diluting into a lighter shade of green.
Then I put the bottle to my mouth and sure enough the juice transformed to rot the moment it passed by my lips. The second story I put on my channel was just like that, some poor girl had been cursed and no matter what she did, whenever she tried to eat or drink the food would become inedible. In that story though, in the end, the girl discovered that human meat tasted so good it was addicting. So much so, that she had to write the story with fewer fingers than I’m using right now.
I was frantic to disprove my suspicions so I pulled everything from my fridge, taking bite after bite, sip after sip. All of it turned into rot in my mouth, it got so bad that when I spit out the cheesecake I had been saving I could see small white beads squirming around in the mess.
As I watched the maggots squirming around, reminding me of the ribbon in the bathroom I heard an alarmingly large bang from just feet behind me. It caused me to leap up and spin, nearly screaming while doing so. The living room was once against empty. I stood for a moment staring at the dimly lit space and realized the only light was coming from the fridge now. The light that once fell through the windows had vanished. The third story on my channel. Even if I wanted to run I would have nowhere to go.
One step after another brought me closer to the window, felt like it took me ages just to reach the other side of the room. The third story was about a man, he was desperately trying to find any kind of contact, any sign of life. What he described in his story and what I was seeing out of my living room windows matched perfectly.
He said he had woken up one day to find that the world outside of his home had completely vanished. All that was left, was an endless dark landscape, within that landscape he, and I, could make out figures that walked around. Figures that were much too large to be any sign of life that could be found on planet earth. They were huge, towering over the view offered from my window, and yet as they stepped, there was no impact.
My phone vibrated. Another comment, the new video was doing so well. “Did you write this story?” The comment read. I stared at my phone for a while, just reading the words over and over again. I just replied. “No.”
There was another loud bang again but it didn’t scare me anymore, or at least the noise itself didn’t. And that’s where I am now. After that last thud I walked over here and started getting this all out, I thought this was all fake. I thought all the stories here were for entertainment. I guess that shouldn’t matter anyway, I shouldn’t have just helped myself either way.
I think I get it though. These aren’t stories, they’re experiences. My dad used to always say “you should try to walk a mile in their shoes.” When I didn’t understand someone’s words or actions. When other people ask permission to tell these stories, sorry, experiences. They get to live vicariously through the individual who had to live through it. But when you just take that moment in someone’s life without asking. When you just recreate all that negative energy, all that horror, you open a door and slip some pretty grizzly shoes on before stepping through it.
I was going to come on here and ask for help, for forgiveness. To those I’ve wronged I truly am sorry. I should have reached out, taken the initiative. I think it’s too late for all that though, the video reached just over 100 views before I deleted it and everything else on the channel.
Are you curious about what the fourth story was? It was about a girl, she had just bought her first apartment after leaving her parent’s place. In the middle of the night, she heard a sharp noise, like a thud in her living room. She tried to ignore it but the noise kept getting louder and louder, by the end, she comes to the horrible realization that the noise, is a knock. She watches in terror a door seems to open up in the middle of her living room.
A door that defies all explanation and out of it steps a creature that also defies all explanation. A creature that is angry because she didn’t open the door for her. The twist of this story is that it’s told via her diary and it ends with a police report. The girl never got away, and even now as I can hear a creaking noise emitting from the living room, something that sounds like rusted hinges. I shudder remembering what the police report said happened to the woman’s body.
The stories on here are real. People went through all these horrible things.
They are their experiences, not yours.
Get permission.