Two in one!

Two little stories I originally wrote for r/nosleep a long time ago, but since I am forcing myself to write, draw, code and publish all of the above, (let's see how long this one lasts) I'll be tossing some old works here and there. First, "Something is calling me from the forest":


I didn't want to come here, I wasn't thrilled, I didn't want to, I know it's bad. It will be bad, that is for sure, though I still don't know how.
It would have been worse to stay, though. I was shown the images... visions? dreams but they felt like they would happen if I wouldn't come. They'd last a few seconds, judging by the way things were after I saw them, but each one, at the time felt like it lasted... hours? I am not sure, it felt so wrong, both long lasting and not the kind of time we know as time. I can't really explain. I don't want to go into detail about the images; they were gruesome. I would bathe on... on their... I would bathe on their fluids. Not all is red, there is a share of yellowish green here and there an- this is why I don't want to go into detail about those images. If I didn't come to the forest, I would have lost my mind.
Not that this place is helping me keep it. At least I could leave a note, that I am not going back, not going to, no, no. It's dark out there, thoughts of how I ended up here are all harassing me as I try to make any sense of my surroundings. There was light as I walked in, coming from the ground, or maybe above the ground, far into the distance. I could feel something is twisted. Nothing decays, I didn't see any plants withering, the leaves on the floor are not even broken, the barks are smooth... but it feels murky, and smells faintly rotten. There is something that scares me more, though: all the trees are planted (or laid?) in perfect lines and there are no signs of animals or people coming here, or leaving trails, yet, I know the exact way I have to go through. I can't help but go, even though everything seems to be wrong, I know it will be awful, whatever it is, that awaits me there.
It has already started to be bad. Awful. I had this little bit of skin next to my left middle finger nail. I pulled it a bit, just a bit, and it came off with a bit of blood, no big deal. Then the wound turned black and went down to my knuckle, opening the skin and showing the muscle tissue. The skin around the wound dried up rather quickly, as I tried to stop it, but then I saw the muscle underneath wither and darken. I scratched furiously, dug the dried skin with my nails to reach the stiffened flesh, I scratched it all into little flakes of dusty dead skin, I peeled it all away leaving a mummified finger in the middle my of hand. I think I inhaled some of the skin dust.
Before I came here I was a normal person, normal life, normal dreams, normal ideas... I don't remember all the details. Or how it began to call me here. It was never nice. Or my concept of "nice" has changed since. Maybe both. Whenever I try to remember things that have nothing to do with this situation, they slip away from me, almost when I reach them.
Now I can hear water running. It is cruel, I didn't even bring a canteen. Ok, that was stupid of me. But I can't shake the urge to find water. I don't think I can. I'm getting tired. My neck is in pain andeverythingisstartingtorotatetotheright. Everything just... just on its own, but nothing is slipping away. I can't believe I didn't fall, but I am dizzy now. I have to walk funny to keep my balance, leaning to the left. I have to keep going. This is horrible. Not doing it would be worse. But the curiosity is the very worst. It's grinding my mind from the inside, it feels like something nested inside my conscience and wriggles inside eating its way out. I have to take a break.
I coughed so hard I fell. Then I noticed the forest didn't tilt to one side. My neck contracted to the left, and my left humerus and femur bones contracted some inches towards my ribs. They curled, too, so they are shorter than they used to. That doesn't worry me as much as my left eye, though. All I see with it is black, with pale white outlines of the trees around, and those things. Those black reptiles with big, empty eyes. There is one on each tree, some times twitching their thin, angular fingers. The worse part about those things is that they never blink. They never blink. I can't tell if they are watching me, because they have no pupils, but I can feel they are paying attention to me. It feels I know them too, but I can't remember much of my life prior to coming here anymore... did I ever?
I've been drooling and spitting this thing like egg whites, just a bit more watery. It's mostly see through, but it has small white veins. Or maybe branches. When it hits the ground, the white strips cluster together like iron shavings. It doesn't bother me, but it reminds me there is something trapped in the back of my throat, which I can't cough out. I'll try to trap it between my tongue and my finger... I forgot I was using that hand to walk. At least the impact with the ground helped my finger go really back and trap that thing. I can pull it out now. It's a mass of hair. A whole string, it keeps coming out as I pull. It's all out now, as thick as my wrist and longer than me. Most of it is hair. I wonder how it got there.
That tree over there is bulbous, some bulks are palpitating gently. They hum. The forest hums. This is what has given me a mild headache. So very mild I barely notice, but it has been going on since I stepped in... how long ago? I can't remember. I can't know, I can't tell anything apart, there is no sign of the sky, no wind. No way to tell the time.
I want to know why it curled my left limbs, it makes it difficult to crawl. I had a bit of an itch on my shoulder blade that went away when my humerus started to crack from the inside. That extended to the rest of my half. The half of my rest? the body of my half? I have to stop talking to myself.
...
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No! I tried and the hum became very loud and the back of my conscience started buzzing, and the guilt stepped out of the dark and stung me, every inch of my body felt it, even the petrified finger. Actually make it hand, it's been extending down to my hand. Some of my teeth loosened and some fell. I couldn't close my mouth to stop them from sliding down to the ground. I am very close. My chest feels heavier as I approach. I can't rest.


It hurts to keep going as much as to stand still. My breathing sounds ill, my mouth is dry, my nose is working at half capacity and the hum won't stop. The petrification has spread up my shoulder to my cheekbone and waist. My left eyelid doesn't move anymore, it's stuck open. I don't care anymore. The sound of dripping water echoes inside me, I know I am close to it, and my destination. Soon I will know.
The trees around here are closer together, and smaller, so are the reptiles. I think they are part of the trees. I have yet to see one blink, but one hit its tail against the bark of its tree as I crawled past, struggling to inhale. It sounded like crackling cartilage. Or maybe it was my skull.
My bones were marked before I came to be. The more I hear the hum, the more I am convinced. I've decided to keep my right eye closed. Seeing in black and white makes more sense now, much more sense. I don't need depth, that's not useful. I just have to see them paying attention. These ones on the younger trees, they move more, they are thinner and spikier too. They all have a bigger right eye than left eye, I wonder if I should... AH! I didn't expect the sun. With my right eye. It's the worse feeling so far. I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it. My left eye doesn't work out here in the sun. I am on my way to the well. It's there where I should arrive. I am close. I'm limping as I crawl, I've worn out my extremities. I can see the black well form here. I am done with my left side, I'll only use the right. I've got some leaves in my mouth, I can't spit them out. I suppose I can just wait for them to fall out on their own. They are bitter.
I finally reach the well. It's a perfectly black, smooth cylinder, the sound of dripping water comes from within. I just have to put my hand on the edge. It will take most of the strenght I have left. I can... just a little bit more.
...
Ican'tmove. I can feel my body being frozen. My eyes are shut. I'm humming, it doesn't bother me anymore, because I am not hearing it, I am being it. My chin is on the ground, underneath there is a big seed poking at it. It's growing slowly, so slowly. Crack it grows sharper. Crack it pierces my jawbone, so very slowly. Crack as it grows branches, they engulf my molars, keeping my mouth half open. There is some goo accumulating right at the bottom. The stem keeps growing inside. I can't move, only feel. It's coming out from under my eyeball. It's pushing it, rooting on my forehead. On the bare bone. Why can I feel? Is this punishment? I am nothing, I do nothing, but I can still feel. Why? ...why?
Steps are coming my way.


"I ah... have been on that hiking trail a couple of times before. Nice view and stuff. I wasn't searching for a new path or anything; I was just crossing a narrow one. Sigh. My ankle gave in, I slipped and fell. Rolled even. I don't know. I landed on a place I have never been to, lots of trees, very quiet. I tripped on this big mess of hair and wires, about seven feet long. I have no clue what that was about. No, I didn't pick it up. I kept walking until I got to a glade, and I heard water, so I was relieved. I saw this cylinder, right? about four feet wide, coming up from the ground, metallic and smooth, all black. I thought it was weird and kind of short for a well, but hey, whatever." He inhaled, picking his next words carefully, sitting in front of an assistant at some random doctor's office, wondering if he would be dismissed as a mental patient. He continued as the assistant kept writing down his story.
"There was a sapling growing on the other side of the cylinder, and a few inches from it, resting on the edge, these leathery rolls. I went to check it out. The rolls were mummified fingers attached to a big chunk of hand. The arm was on the ground not far, and the rest of the corpse was there. It was… it was just... the spine was curled. Curled! The limbs of one side were resting inside the spine circle, bent in an unnatural way, uncomfortable to see. The other leg was clasped on the ground. And the head... It was looking up, all the way up. The sapling was growing out of it through an eye socket, and right above the socket there was this like carving, or mark, I am not sure, a crude drawing of a gecko.” He closed his eyes and collected his memory of the event. He felt the same chills that invaded him back then on the forest.
“That head was humming. I was startled at first, and then thought there should have been something inside it making that sound, so I pushed it up a little bit and it…” His eyes were wide open. “It howled in a way that made my blood freeze. It cracked and broke; the shards fell to the ground where there was a murky goo coming from the neck. The stench was…” He had to take a deep breath to push away the urge to vomit.
“I felt nauseous and I got the chills, man, I didn’t care what that was, I had to get out. I ran away, as much as I could. I don’t even remember half of it, I just thanked God when I saw the highway, fell to my knees and kissed the ground, no lie. Then I hitch-hiked. A trucker brought me here when I told him I needed a doctor.” He was done but the assistant expected more. He wrote everything down and got up to take the hiker to the next room, asking him to lie on the cot until the doctor was back from her lunch break. The hiker did, closed his eyes and tried to rest. Not a minute later he jumped off it violently to get to the window, where he saw his palm and mumbled something about a mark. The assistant couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The hiker growled some incoherencies as he tried to step out, but was met by resistance. He shoved the assistant to the desk, knocking down a vase on his way out, and ran away from the office.
“I have to go. I have to go.” He told himself.

...that's it. Then a story I wrote when I got mildly angry at someone. They never found out I wrote this. Har. It's called "I guess someone hates me" and it was supposed to be another series, but I just left it at one episode, making people think the main character died at the end (he didn't) and asked "Then who was submit". Good question, guess we'll never know, though. Here it is:


Something weird is going on.

I'm so confused. Ah. Let me give some background first. As a young dumbass, one makes bad decisions. Like that time I took a dare that involved a smoke bomb and a beehive. Not my smartest choice. But you don't really care, you are invincible (or so you think). So in my group of friends, our most common dare was to send each other to abandoned houses and stuff like that after telling each other stories of how the place was haunted or full of traps put there by some psycho. You know, kids are kids.
So the other day I got a letter in the mail. Big deal since it wasn't an e-mail. I notice the handwritting is familiar, one of my old friends'. It says that out of nostalgia we should meet up at some adress, the gang will be there, too, on friday night. I think 'Why not?' because I haven't seen a couple of them since forever. Maybe after whatever shenannigans ensued we could grab a beer or something. So I went to the place, turned out to be a junkyard. I expected some cars parked there, but I didn't see anything except a clean piece of paper pinned to the door, so I got there and read what it had doodled on. Same handwriting as the first note, told me to just push the gate and come in, and I did.
Boy, I'm dizzy.
Anyway, I went in to find junk, what else? I spotted a light to my left... yes, the left, it was the left. I walked avoiding a lot of crap scattered all over, I saw a rotting mattress with rotting old toys bursting out of it, bugs crawling from crack to crack, and thought to myself that whoever picked this site was spot on, creeped me out already.
Finally I made it to a little shack. Old and splintered, I covered the handle with my sleeve and turned it, I had to struggle a bit to open the door. I stepped in and found a mannequin. It wasn't dirty or invaded by moss like the rest of the place, and it had a hole on its (her?) throat. No hair, and given the light and the position, the face looked eager. I looked around expecting any of the guys jumping and yelling "Got you!" but there was no other sound than my own breathing.
I leaned to see the mannequin better, right?, so I saw there was a piece of paper taped inside her neck, the corner peering from the hole. I stepped forward to take it out and before I could even touch it, I felt a sharp pain on my foot, I lifted it and I saw there was a long needle coming from the floor that I didn't at all see before and that pierced through my boot and penetrated my foot. I cursed loud enough for the entire place to hear, I must have scared some animals. Nothing. No guys laughing and howling at my stupidity. I'm dizzier now. I don't want to puke. I stepped carefully not to get pinched again and got the paper out of the neck of the mannequin. Same handwriting. It just said "You got it". I still don't get it. But the thing is I felt my foot burning when I tried to walk again, I had to limp out of that place. I got to my car and the leg went back to normal, so I didn't do much about it. I was more concerned about what happened to the guy who put this whole thing together, but after the weekend I had to put all that aside to go back to my normal life. Except when my leg went cold on me yesterday and refused to move from the knee down. I get dizzy at random and some times I get nauseous. I think the needle was... had something... it. Oh man, I can't fo
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