I collapsed onto our couch in the living room. It was the Friday night of a particularly strenuous week, and I was determined to celebrate. Unfortunately for me, my roommate had invited over about a dozen of his friends for a little party and pregame before they went out. I can’t remember what their plan was exactly. It had something to do with bar hopping. All I knew was that eventually, I was going to have some quiet time to myself in the apartment, that is, if I didn’t decide to join them.
The thought occurred to me that I should check my assignments. I wanted to be sure I was done for the week, and that I could finally just kick back and relax. Upon checking, it looked like I had everything submitted, but before closing my laptop, I heard the faint sound of the Discord notification over the blasting music in the apartment.
Someone pinged me in the group chat, the chat that my friends and I used to “stay in touch” as most of us live nowhere close to each other now. It’s more accurate to say that its purpose is to send stupid memes to each other above anything else.
“What’s up, dipshits?”
I sent, hoping to spark a conversation. Not even a minute later, I received some friendly name-calling in return. Their messages put a smirk on my face.
“Just staying in. I’ll probably be in voice chat later if ya’ll wanna join. Maybe we can play something”.
One announced.
A few others replied that they would be there, including a couple of friends who rarely joined the voice chat. Another pinged me asking if I would join, as I hadn’t said what I was doing yet.
I sighed as I sat back, looking at my laptop screen. A part of me considered going out with my roommate and his friends. After all, I had just turned 21 and I wanted to get out of my shell a little but I also knew I wouldn’t have another opportunity to join this many of my own friends for games for a long time. I also knew that if I went out, I would get bored easily and quickly rediscover that bars are not my idea of fun. I sent my response in the group chat.
“Alright boys, I’ll be there”
Immediately, my friends added reactions to my message and sent overly dramatic messages to show their enthusiasm. Once everyone decided on what time they would be able to join, we narrowed down our list of games and decided that the first few of us who got on would start with a few rounds of Phasmophobia. After all plans seemed to be established, everyone returned to using the chat to post memes.
Realizing I had a couple of hours to spare, I joined my roommates and their friends at the kitchen table. I didn’t know a few of the people there, so I made an effort to introduce myself and make conversation but being the introvert I am, I found myself walking away and checking my phone more than talking to anyone face to face.
Most of the time, I was checking the group chat and the various memes being posted. During one of these little breaks from being social, I saw a new link that hadn’t been embedded as any image or video. The most annoying memes are the ones that don’t embed or can’t be viewed unless you go through the link to whatever app or site it came from.
This link, in particular, looked off. I couldn’t make out the name of any and it looked like nothing more than jumbled letters and numbers. Even weirder, the person who posted it didn’t have a name, and the user avatar was just a default one. I was fairly certain no one with access to that chat had a blank profile. After a moment of hesitation, I tried to open the link but whatever it was wouldn’t load.
I wrote it off as my phone acting up, but curiosity quickly got the best of me and I felt an urge to know what it was. I retrieved my laptop, opening it again on the living room couch. To my confusion, the unorthodox-looking link from the nameless, faceless user was still there. I again hesitated before clicking on the link again.
A full-screen window appeared, quickly loading a grainy black-and-white video of an empty room. I realized my error in not checking the volume beforehand because apparently, I had it on max. The annoying sound of static disturbed the music coming from my roommate’s speaker. A yell came from someone at the kitchen table in response.
“Turn that shit off”
I frantically tried to turn down the volume on my laptop, but it didn’t seem to work, the static remained just as loud. I tried to Alt + F4 the window, but it refused to close. I tried to open other windows. I even tried to shut off my laptop entirely. Nothing was working.
As the mysterious, blank video continued to play, one of my roommate’s friends drunkenly walked over to the couch and stared at the screen for a minute before asking
“What the hell are you watching, dude?”
“I don’t know man. One of my friends sent a link to whatever this is and I’m trying to…just hold on for a second”
I replied, uninterested in explaining the situation while trying to fix it. My roommate, Alex, walked over and sat next to me on the couch, along with another one of his friends.
“What’s this? Some old movie or something? Looks creepy”
Alex inquired.
“I have no clue, I’m trying to shut it off right now. The window won’t close, I can’t turn down the sound, I can’t open anything else and my laptop won’t even shut off”.
“Well, just let it play I guess”.
Alex suggested, so I let it be for the moment. Another minute or so of just the empty room passed by before a figure walked into view of the video. The few of us watching went silent as we observed and waited.
The man who had walked in front of the camera was very well dressed. He wore a very old-fashioned-looking suit, it looked like something from the 1920s, maybe earlier, I don’t know all that much about suits. On his hands, he wore black gloves This is all we could make out because his face was out of frame. The camera must have been angled poorly because we couldn’t see anything above shoulder height. He walked into the center of the frame before standing square, facing the camera.
Though the audio was coarse, his deep, soothing voice was heard clear as day.
“Greetings, and welcome to our 7th installment of this series. I’m your host…”
Before the man could speak his name, a wave of static violently washed over the screen accompanied by even louder white noise. After a good ten seconds, the video returned to normal and the man continued.
“I advise that all watching are sure to have seen our past works. Particularly, installments 1, 2, and 4, as they detail how to locate and acquire a proper subject. This is paramount information to have before proceeding with this installment”.
By now, the music in the apartment ceased and all of Alex’s friends crowded around the couch to get a look.
“As many of most of you know…”
The man in the video continued
“The old markets are gone, and our farms have died out. Since such a time when this commodity was abundant, we have no choice but to seek out and harvest it ourselves”.
“What’s he talking about?”
Asked one of Alex’s friends, before being hushed and told to shut up by everyone else. A few of them whispered comments to each other, most pointing out the weird camera angle excluding the man’s head.
“Along with the acquisition and proper preparation of subjects, the processing is equally important, and the last step necessary to enjoy your hard-earned goods. Future installments will explain the process in greater detail and complexity, this film seeks only to demonstrate the most basic processing techniques”.
The screen once again became flooded with static and blaring white noise before cutting back to the film. When it did, the suited man was no longer alone.
Front and center of the video was someone new. Another man dressed in a suit, though his was much more modern. His head was also above the view of the camera. Something about him felt off but I couldn’t put my finger on it. At least not until I heard a gasp from behind me, then I saw it too.
The man was hanging. From what, we couldn’t see, but his lifeless, dangling feet held over a wide metal bucket on the floor beneath him made it clear. Everyone else must have noticed as well as some began whispering concerned comments back and forth, others hushed them in response, eager to see what would happen next. I stayed silent, believing it was nothing more than an act.
The man in the old suit walked into view again dragging a cart with him. It immediately became clear that he was quite a bit taller than the man hanging up next to him. Their shoulders appeared to be about the same level, but the feet of the man who was hanging lightly swung back and forth in the air, at least a few feet from the ground. Some commented on this but fell silent as the man began to speak again.
“I have here a subject for this demonstration. Those of you who have seen our past installments may recognize it. The harvesting process may be done when the subject is dead or alive. Of course, alive can be much more…entertaining. Unfortunately, our subject here put up too much of a fight to do this demonstration live. It is especially important not to damage any of the more valuable pieces while acquiring a subject. Before you start, have something to serve as a collection bucket for the blood. We don’t want one of the best parts to go to waste”.
Most of us watching remained silent. Some felt suited to laugh at the absurdity of the dialogue, but the ones who did were silenced as the towering man raised a knife from the cart.
“First, we open the chest”
He plunged the tip of his knife into the hanging man just below the neck, though only a couple of inches. He pulled the knife down effortlessly, tearing through the man’s clothes and the man himself like butter. Along with it came the grotesque sound of flesh being ripped and bones being snapped. He returned the knife to the cart before placing his hands back in the man’s chest.
In one rigid motion, he pried the man’s chest open. Everyone around the couch, including myself, recoiled uncomfortably upon hearing the insufferable noise. Blood gushed from the newly made open cavity in the man, soaking his clothing and collecting in the bucket beneath.
My roommate, Alex, quickly got up from his seat, expressing his disgust in the process. Some of the others turned away and covered their eyes. I, like all the others who were still watching with intent, thought it was all an act, reasoning that it must have been some sort of prop corpse, with prop blood and now we were looking at prop organs.
“And now, we harvest the goods”.
Expressed the man who seemed to be acting as a butcher.
“Letting the organs marinate in blood enriches their flavor”.
He announced, grabbing a smaller blade from his cart. For the next several minutes, he removed organ after organ. Heart, liver, intestines, everything. He carefully lowered and lightly dropped each organ into the pool of blood collecting in the bucket, somehow remaining to still keep his head out of view.
Everyone remaining on the couch began to leave one by one as the video went on. Some even gave me disgusted glances as if it was my fault that they saw what they had and could have warned them. I think some even got the idea that I watch these kinds of disgusting things in my free time. I hadn’t met most of them before, so it was certainly a bad first impression.
I remained on the couch, though I lost attention to whatever you might call that video. After several more unsuccessful attempts to shut it off, I set my laptop back on the table and resumed messing around on my phone while it continued playing in the background.
Well, I’d like to say I lost attention but it would be more accurate to say I couldn’t bear to look at the screen. Still, enough curiosity remained for me not to walk away entirely like the others. For the next several minutes, the man continued his disassembly of the corpse.
Though I looked away for most of it, I could still hear everything. Clothes were cut, followed by flesh. Bones were snapped, joints disconnected, and blood continued to trickle into the bucket on the floor as the man’s calm voice detailed exactly how to follow along.
I loosely listened along to his reasoning behind keeping each limb intact while I checked back in on the group chat on my phone, curious to see if I could find out who the unnamed account that posted the link was. To my annoyance, the message was no longer there. When I texted my friends, questioning them on the matter, none of them knew what I was talking about. I was the only one who ever saw the message.
By this time, most of my roommate’s friends were putting on their shoes and using the bathroom as they waited for their Uber rides to show up. I figured now it was a good idea I decided not to go with them. A few of them glanced over at me in disapproval as they headed out of the apartment one by one, others just turned away, I can only assume judging silently.
Once everyone cleared out and it was just me left, I walked into the kitchen to clean up the mess, most of which they neglected to pick up themselves. All the while, the video of the ridiculously tall man cutting up a body and narrating his process continued on my laptop. Not even half a minute after they left, the apartment door opened and my roommate, Alex walked back in.
“I forgot my phone”
He explained in a panicked voice. Annoyed, I agreed to help him.
“I’ll check here in the kitchen. Why don’t you check your room and the living room?”
I suggested. Alex hurried to his room without a word. In the meantime, I looked between the half-drunken solo cups and bottles covering the kitchen table and surrounding countertops. If I’m being honest, I was mostly eager to find it so I could have some peace and quiet alone after what just transpired with me and his friends.
Unfortunately, neither of us were having any luck. Alex moved to the living room and began checking the couch. After checking the first cushion, he looked up at my laptop screen again. The man in the video was now cutting strips of flesh from what remained of the corpse’s torso and carefully lowering them down into the bucket of blood, organs, and limbs.
“You still have this on?”
He muttered, disappointed.
“I have no clue how to turn it off. I don’t know what to tell you, man”
I replied, a hint of irritation slipping through in my tone. Alex turned back to the couch and continued to search through the cracks. I was about to look away from the laptop screen and continue searching, but something was off about the video now.
The man in the suit was standing still, and his commentary ceased. I thought it might have been lagging due to a poor connection but the continuous, annoying ambient noise made it known that the audio was still playing.
I walked into the living room to get a closer look. When I got close, I spotted some blood still dripping from the corpse into the bucket and could hear their splashes. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up at the realization. The man in the suit was simply standing there, too still to notice any movement. Though his face was still out of frame, it was obvious he was looking in the direction of the camera.
The screen cut to static once again, causing me to flinch and fall back, as I had been mere inches from the screen. The screen cut back to a video, but not the same one. The man in the suit was alone once again in the same room, though no hanging corpse accompanied him this time. He faced the camera, head still too high to be in the frame.
My eyes may have been playing tricks on me, but I could have sworn colors started to seep into what was once a black-and-white video. The dark splotches on the wall behind the man turned red, though color wasn’t the only thing that seemed to be changing. The details on the man’s suit seemed to become sharper and clearer, and the grainy noise in the background faded. In a matter of seconds, the video quality transitioned from terrible to fantastic.
“It would seem one of our subjects has decided to join us”
The man chimed in after the long silence. His deep, soothing voice now sounded crystal clear. The quality of the audio got better too, but something about it felt off about his voice. The best word I could use to describe it is synthetic, like something trying to mimic the sound of a man. Something that didn’t get it quite right. Seconds later, the lights above the man turned off, and the video went black.
Alex stood up excitedly from the other side of the couch, holding his phone.
“Finally”.
He expressed. I was about to remind him of the Uber and his friends waiting for him downstairs when all the lights in the apartment suddenly went out. We froze, giving a brief moment of silence as we both realized the power must have gone out. That silence was broken by the sound of approaching footsteps from the video before the lower half of the man’s face came into view for the first time, right in front of the lens.
On his unblemished, ceramic-looking face, a grin formed. As his smile widened, his jagged, sharp, asymmetric teeth revealed themselves one by one. In contrast to the rest of the dimly lit and dull picture, his bleeding gums brought color. The sight of the inside of his mouth sent a shiver down my spine and I tensed up in anticipation of whatever would appear next.
To my relief, the video cut once again. This time to black, where it remained. I tried the power button on my laptop but to no avail. It seemed that my laptop had simply died, but that didn’t make any sense. I could have sworn it was at full charge when I first took it out, it should have lasted hours.
“Damnit, my phone died”.
Alex said, frustrated. I decided to check mine and sure enough, it was dead too. I knew for a fact that the last time I looked at my phone the battery was somewhere in the 80 percent range.
“I gotta get down there, man. They’ve been waiting too long”.
“I don’t think the elevator is working either”
I responded, my voice shakier than I expected.
“Well, I gotta try it. The only other option is booking it down 19 flights of stairs”.
He retorted, annoyed as he walked towards the door.
“I’ll come with”
I assured and rushed to get my shoes on. A part of me wanted to get to the lobby to figure out what was going on with the power outage, but I think more than anything, being in a dark apartment alone with no electricity or communication after watching that was the main reason I wanted to go along.
When we emerged from our apartment we were met with nothing but pitch-black darkness of the hall. I suppose I should have expected as much. With no windows in the hallway and the power being out, there wasn’t anything to light our way to the elevator. Me and Alex walked slowly and stuck to the wall, feeling it along the way to the elevator.
On the way, our hands passed over a couple of doors to other apartments, which sparked my curiosity as to why we were the only ones who had come out. I had to think everyone else realized the power was out, I imagine some of them had to wonder why that was.
Finally, we passed over the door to the stairwell and into the elevator area. We felt around the walls for the buttons until Alex finally found one and pushed it. Of course, it didn’t light up, nor did we hear the elevators moving like we usually could. Alex made his frustration at the idea of missing his ride known. I responded
“Looks like stairs are our only option. If you wanna make it to your ride, we better get moving. The door to the stairs is right here”.
I felt around the wall, going back the same way we had come until I found the handle and opened the door.
My eyes squinted at the sudden influx of light that flooded the hallway around us from the inside of the stairwell. Of course, the sight of working lights was a welcome one, but how, with the power seemingly out, they were on was a mystery. Alex seemed much more interested in catching up with his friends than pondering that mystery himself.
Before I could even open my mouth to question the oddity of the situation, Alex moved passed me to enter the stairwell and I swiftly followed. I brushed off the lights being on as more than likely emergency power.
I followed closely behind as we practically ran down the first few floors but somewhere around the 14th floor, Alex suddenly halted his descent, as did I. He turned to me but didn’t say a word, keeping as quiet as possible as if he were waiting for me to notice something. I was about to ask what it was before I felt it myself.
The air was cold in there, very cold. It felt like we were walking into a freezer. When we first entered the stairwell up on the 19th floor, it most certainly wasn’t anywhere near as cold as this. I traded a confused look with Alex before either of us could say a word and we both carried on with our previous pace.
As we continued, the air only seemed to grow colder. By the 10th floor, we could see our breath and although it was cold outside, I knew it wasn’t anywhere near this cold.
At the 6th floor, Alex once again halted but this time I watched his eyes grow wide as he stared at something in front of him. He tried to mutter something under his shivering breath but he failed to make words. I, being disturbed by his sudden state of shock slowly inched my way down the last few steps of the flight I was on before peeking around him to get a look. I felt my heart sink to my stomach when I got a glimpse.
On the handrail of the stairs hung a meathook, the end of which was holding up one of Alex’s friends through his gaping mouth and coming out through a bloody hole that was once his nose. His frozen eyes looked up desperately in perpetual terror, with blood running down from the end of the hook and his mangled face, soaking his clothes in red.
Alex and I must have stood there a whole minute before he finally came to his senses.
“W-We have to get out of here. Now”.
He whispered to me. I simply nodded my head and followed him as we walked past his friend’s corpse, but we didn’t make it much further. When Alex saw down the next flight, he slowly collapsed to the floor and covered his face with his hands. A few more of his friends were presented in the same position, hanging from the handrail on their respective hooks. Seeing more of them on this level gave me the urge to look over the rail, down further.
It looked like almost all of Alex’s friends who had been in our apartment were now here, dead and hanging. Blood from their faces trickled down slowly, though, with as many of them as there were, it collectively painted a dotted pattern on the concrete floor at the bottom of the stairwell. They all looked up at me with the same horrified expression on their faces.
The sound of tearing flesh broke my trance and caused me to lean away from the handrail, though still close enough to see down it. A gloved hand reached out, holding another meathook and a body with it. The arm attached to the hand reached out and effortlessly placed the hook on the opposite handrail. I recognized the style of suit belonging to the impossibly long arm, but couldn’t believe my eyes.
After placing the hook, the arm froze in place. Then he began to chuckle softly.
“So”
Began the synthetic mockery of a man’s voice.
“Our little watcher has come to see how we do it with his own eyes”.
My heart sank again. He meant me.
I turned to Alex and uttered the only word I could find.
“Run”
Alex scrambled to his feet and followed me as we ascended the steps even faster than we had come down. Behind us, I could hear him pursuing us, but at a relaxed pace. Though on the video nothing about his appearance was rotund, his immense weight was made obvious through the pounding and creaking of the metal stairs.
I don’t think I’ve ever run so hard in my life, and I was surprised we made it as far up, as fast as we did. Luckily, I thought, we must have been more than a few levels above him when we returned to the 19th floor, though I had lost track of his steps.
I was far more concerned with putting as much distance between him and us as possible. Alex quietly opened and closed the door out of the stairwell and we stuck to the wall, quickly making our way back to our apartment which I knew was the third door to the left.
After entering, we again closed the door quietly before barricading it with the couch. We stood right by the door, waiting. I think we were both thinking of what to do if he found us, but if he did there was nowhere left to go, nothing left we could do. Any minute, I expected to hear the stairwell door open and for his heavy footsteps to come down the hall before busting open our door, but that never happened.
Eventually, we both lowered ourselves and sat on the floor. I think adrenaline was the only thing that saved us, and now it was gone. I felt drained, and Alex was shaking. I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. One thing I knew we shared was the mix of confusion and fear as to how what we just saw was possible, and what that thing that did it even was.
A buzz came from my pocket. Alex raised his head and looked over at me. The buzz came again. I reached in and pulled out my phone. The bright light from its screen was a welcome sight, as was its nearly full battery, though its content again left me puzzled.
“Who is it?”
Asked Alex in a barely audible whisper.
“It’s…911?”
I responded, as confused as he was.
“They can do that? They can call you?”
I lightly shrugged my shoulders in response, unsure myself if it was possible. Alex pulled his phone out as well, but it still wouldn’t turn on. I reluctantly answered and raised the phone to my ear.
“You both need to get out of that apartment. Now.”
A woman’s voice commanded sternly from the other end. My lips quivered as I searched for a question to ask.
“Now!”
She came again, raising her voice.
“We can’t leave, there’s…there’s something out there looking for us out there”
I whispered back.
“He’s not out there anymore. You need to move.”
was speculative and questioned the intentions of the person on the other line. For all I knew, she could be working with that thing from the stairwell to send us into a trap but before I could contemplate my next move, she spoke again, this time in a calmer tone, as if a final appeal for me to listen to her.
“He’s in your closet. Get out now.”
A shiver went down my spine. Alex must have heard her too, as he looked at me with a confused look, but both our attentions were quickly drawn away, to a sliver of light that crawled along the ground and grew on the space of floor between us. We looked up and again exchanged brief looks of confusion before looking at the wall where it was coming from.
The doors to the closet containing our washer and dryer were slowly opening as if being pushed by an ever-so-slight gust of wind. The narrow gap between them is where the light seeped through. A wave of dread swept over me as Alex and I rose to our feet like we were ready to run, but had nowhere to go.
This wouldn’t have raised much of an alarm in my head if the woman on the phone hadn’t just said what she did, and if I didn’t already know that there wasn’t a light in that closet.
The doors swung open violently and our apartment was filled with light. A gloved hand gripped the top of the doorway before an old top hat ducked under it. The suited man entered, crouching to keep his hat from being pressed against the ceiling. He took only two casual steps towards us but his long legs closed the distance across the room before we could move.
I tripped on my feet trying to keep away, dropping my phone in the process but Alex was well within reaching distance. In one hand, the man had yet another meathook and with the other, he reached out and gripped the top of Alex’s head, giving it a quick twist. His face now looked at me from the back of his body with the same terrified expression stuck to it that his friends’ corpses had.
He flung Alex’s corpse over his shoulder and then leaned down towards me on the floor. The light from the inside of the closet cast a shadow on the man’s face from the brim of his hat, but the glowing yellow light from his eyes shined through the darkness. His breath was foul, wreaking of odor like that of rotten meat when he opened his mouth to speak.
“As for your little friends there”
He said, briefly glancing at my phone on the ground.
“Wish them good luck for me”
He said followed by another sinister chuckle. He turned back towards the closet with Alex still on his shoulder. Inside was not our washer and dryer, but rather a big open room with concrete floors and more bodies hanging from the ceiling, strung up the same way as the others. A meathook in through their mouths and out where their noses used to be.
“And as for you.”
The man turned back to me again.
“I think I’ll wait for you to fatten up”.
With his final word, he smiled at me with his jagged, bleeding teeth before carrying Alex in and pulling the doors shut behind him.
The light in the closet faded, and the power in the apartment came back.