“Step-bro, can you help me?”
The words woke me from my nap like a slap to the face. I sat up in confusion, groggily wiping the sleep from my eyes as I looked around the dim room. The door to my bedroom was open, and the portentous dark of the hallway loomed in the distance. While my mind scattered to recollect what was going on, I felt for my phone in hope of clarity.
The screen was blinding. No missed calls, no texts, nothing. Only a little caution sign in the upper right corner, near the battery.
No service.
“Hello?” I called, swinging out of bed. I was shocked I heard anything at all, I’m usually a really heavy sleeper.
The house felt empty, abandoned even. A feeling I was still getting used to in the new house. My mother had recently remarried after over a decade of being single. The man had money, the kind where your house echoes because there’s not even furniture or bodies to fill the space. The only thing stranger than your mom shacking up with someone fifteen years older than her, is house-sitting their empty home on spring break.
“Lisa?” I called once more, and got nothing but silence.
Lisa is my step-sister. Whereas I had volunteered to sit-out their ravishing vacation in exchange to catch up on Elden Ring and jerk-off in peace, Lisa had skipped to go wild while Daddy was away. Our dorms were closed for the holiday, making each other annoyed acquaintances for the week. We’re both in our early twenties and single, and we don’t care much for each other. I remembered laying down for a nap, in preparation of pulling an all-nighter, while Lisa waited for her ride, dressed in an outfit her father would shriek at. She said she would be back late, and it was only 9p.m..
“Hello?” My voice echoed again.
Standing in the doorway, the house was especially dark. Every light was off, the only residual glow coming from a single doorway downstairs.
The laundry room.
“Step bro? Can you help me?” A voice beckoned from downstairs, making me jump.
It was faint, but just loud enough to hear. It sounded like Lisa, but it sounded… muffled.
I sighed, already irritated.
“Lisa? What are you doing? I thought you were out!” I called, heading down the hall. I flipped every switch as I went, trying to bring in as much light as I could. The place was creepy in the dark.
“I came home to channnge,” She slurred, like she had been drinking “and I got stuck.”
Down the stairs, passed the framed doctorates and awards.
“Stuck in what?” I asked on the stairs, awaiting the reply. There was a moment of silence, like she was thinking about it.
“The wash—washing machine. Can you help me?” She asked, pitifully.
She had to be fucking with me.
“Are you fucking with me?” I asked, scoffing. The implication of the situation was not lost on me.
“No, I’m not. Look, I got sick and threw up, step-bro. Like a lot. I couldn’t keep enough down. I tried to get some clothes out to change, and I got stuck, alright? Now will you help me or not? Please?”
I looked at the bright doorway of the laundry room, the tile stark white and pristine. Something felt wrong, like I was being set up. I thought maybe it was some kind of prank, like a TikTok trend. I considered just leaving her there; she was a bit of a brat and had been nothing but unpleasant since the recent marriage. I was just about to turn and go back to my room when she started to scream.
“STEP-BRO HELP ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING THING OR I’LL CALL THE POLICE AND MY FATHER AND THEN YOU’LL—”
“Alright! Alright, jeez. I’m coming, settle down, will ya? Stop calling me that.” I sighed and hurried down the stairs, shuffling to the laundry room. Lisa cleared her throat like she was choking back vomit, before muttering a muffled apology.
“Thank you.”
The voice was deeper, and cracking towards the end.
“God, how much did you drink? It’s still early…” I muttered, stopping when I rounded the corner to the laundry room. The sight before me was… ridiculous.
The laundry room was so bright it was blinding, overhead fluorescents beaming above the clean floor and matching set of machines. The dryer and washer were next to each other, with a linen cabinet on the other end. Hanging out of the expensive front-load washing machine was Lisa, only her lower half visual. It was like she had tried to climb in and fallen asleep, not only was she not stuck— she wasn’t moving at all.
“Lisa?” I asked, looking at her.
The room was so quiet it was unsettling. I expected vomit, a spilled purse— something. But it was just Lisa in the washer, her hands tucked inside like she was using them as a pillow. She was wearing the same outfit she had gone out in: a striped bodycon dress so tight you could see her panty-lines, and platform heels. One of the heels was missing, leaving a single set of painted toes laying against the tile.
“Lisa? Are you alright?” I asked from the doorway, not wanting to go in.
“Help me step-bro, I’m stuck.” She said, her voice whiner than usual.
“Bullshit. You’re not stuck, you’re just laying in there. What is this? A joke?” I asked, looking around the room for her phone, for the setup. But there was nothing but white, no camera, no one hiding around the corner recording.
“No, please, I really need help, I swear” Lisa started to sob, her voice breaking to the point of babbling, “help me step-bro, please.”
Except she wasn’t moving, not even a little. It didn’t even look like she was breathing. But the inside of the washing machine was dark, and I could only see the faint outline of the back of her head, her “bob” haircut tossed and completely still.
“What’s… what happened?” Was all I could ask. The hair stood on the back of my neck, my palms sweating. The way she was just hunched in there, not even kicking her feet, the same recited line repeated again…
“Help me step-bro.”
…even as she laid face down. She looked pale—sickly, and the harder I looked, the more it looked like her face was submersed, up to her ears in what looked like…
“Help me.”
Blood.
I felt like I wanted to puke. I reached in my pocket for my phone, a cold sweat beading on my forehead as I cleared my throat.
“Lisa?”
“Yes?”
“What’s my name?”
I pulled out my phone and unlocked it, bringing up the keypad.
“W-what, what do you mean step-” She started, her voice started to break character.
No service.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Lisa’s voice was deep and struggling, like she had a wet rag over her mouth. Her skinny arms reached to the mouth of the washer and started to pull herself out, and I could hear a trickling of liquid from the matted strands of her hair.
She pulled her head from the washer, and with it, a splash of deep red that washed over the tile. Her face was gone.
“Oh god—”
Lisa’s devastated cavity of a face coughed, a sputter of blood painting the wall next to her. She reached for me with mangled hands, each digit broken in different directions. She tried to stand with her bare foot and slipped.
I left her there. I ran as fast as I could, bounding up the steps to the sounds of her trying to get up on the slippery tile. A guttural moan echoed after me, an angry call that chilled my bones. The lights flickered at the sound, blinking erratically until the noise stopped.
Back down the hall, and into my bedroom. I slammed the door behind me and locked it, frantically looking around somewhere to hide. I could hear them coming, one bare foot followed by the heel. It was clumsy, but it was gaining fast.
I considered hiding under the bed, but it was too low to the ground and I didn’t know if I’d fit. I didn’t want to get stuck myself—
Lisa slammed into the door, and the hinges rattled. It wasn’t going to hold for long, I didn’t have enough time. The closet was my only chance.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and ducked into the clothes, pulling it behind me before huddling under them in a ball. As soon as I sat on the carpet I heard a squelch, like I had sat in something. As a cold wet substance soaked into the seat of my pants, the door to my bedroom exploded.
Wood splintered inward, and I watched through the slats of the closet door as Lisa slithered in. She wormed her way through the hole in the door, the bleeding crater in her face reverberating angrily as her head whipped around. She flopped on the bed first, and when she couldn’t find me, she slithered underneath. I watched in horror as she would temporarily pause after every movement to “sniff” the air, her head twitching as she knocked things over in my room in the process.
“Step….bro…” The monster gurgled slowly, moving impossibly as it blindly scoured the room. It twisted so far I heard ribs break, and when it propped itself up with its hands the flesh would tear, exposing bone. Wrists cracked, knees twisted, and tendons tore.
With an angry shriek, the monster slithered out of the room. I heard it rampaging through the hall and into my moms room, and then into Lisa’s when it couldn’t find me. When it had no luck I heard it moving downstairs, and I listened to its path of destruction as it tried to find me.
When it got quiet for a while, I chanced a look with my phone to see what I was sitting in. As soon as the light went on I had to resist the urge to scream, holding my breath and nearly pissing myself when I finally saw what was soaking into my clothes.
The carpet was caked in blood, a splotch of heavy crimson that had sprayed outward and onto my clothes. Inches away from where I sat was a single high-heeled shoe, and a bloodstained phone. Lisa’s.
I wiped the blood from her phone and unlocked it, to see the same sickening icon of no service. I tried calling 9-1-1 with both her phone and mine, and the call wouldn’t go through, even when you hit “emergency service call.”
I tried to check her recent’s, to see if I could find any answers to what’s going on. Her call logs show several incomplete calls, five to the police, four to her father, and seven to…me. None of them were able to connect.
I checked her texts too. The last one that went through was outgoing, a response to a contact labeled only as “Him” that said:
Still picking you up? I want to get up in some guts.
To which she replied with a thumbs up emoji.
I don’t know who “Him” is, but it’s not the part that unsettles me the most. It’s the nine failed texts that she sent to me that never made it through. While I was five feet away, sleeping.
Kyle, wake up
My Tinder date followed me home, I’m hiding in your closet
Kyle, WAKE THE FUCK UP, he’s in here
I don’t have service
I tried to wake you up
I think he can hear me
I don’t want him to find me
KYLE WAKE THE FUCK UP
KYLE
I’ve been in here for a while now, and my phone’s about to die. I don’t know what it is, but it’s still down there. I would’ve tried to sneak past it but it hears everything, I even had to mute my keyboard on my phone so I could type this out. I tried calling my mom, the police, my step-dad. Nothing will go through. It just says I don’t have signal.
I thought of jumping out the window, but I think it’ll get me before I can get out. It’s gotten faster, the more of Lisa it leaves behind. Last I heard it was moving things around and stacking them, like it’s trying to keep me from getting out. I’m going to try and post this somewhere, and see if I can get enough signal for it to go through. If you get this, please send help. And if you get in here, do not help her out of the washing machine.
Lisa, I’m sorry.
Think I might try the window after all.