A Chat Over Dinner
If you are the type who eats out regularly, one day a stranger might join you at the table. This stranger will always appear to be of your age and sex, and he (if it is a he) will only appear if you are alone. No matter what style of restaurant it is, he will always be carrying his own plate of food.
After a few seconds, he will look directly at you and say, “You seem like an interesting person. May I know you better?” Say yes, and he will begin to ask you questions about yourself in between bites. These questions will be innocuous enough at first: what your name is, what you do for a living, and so forth, but should you open your mouth to answer, you will be forced to tell the truth, even if you do not consciously know what the truth is. Remain silent, and the stranger will scowl at you, pick up his plate, and leave. You will never see him again. If you do indulge his questions, however, they will grow darker and darker as the food leaves his plate, and it will become harder and harder to resist answering. Do not attempt to leave the table before he does under any circumstances.
When his plate is clean, he will stand up to leave, but not before asking you one last, irresistible question: “What would drive you to take your own life?” You will instantly be aware that you will be able to lie in response to this one question, and I suggest you do, for whatever you describe will come to pass within the week. Those who are canny may use this chat to gain whatever they desire, but know that if the happenstance you name does not drive you to suicide, the stranger will start guessing as to what will. And consider how much he now knows about you.
The Childish Instinct
Everybody knows that children possess the instinct close their eyes when afraid. They think that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you. Everybody also knows that this is hogwash. Except when it isn’t.
The next time you are looking into darkness, or perhaps the time after that, a pair of eyes may open in the black, even if you know they couldn’t be there. These eyes, large and inhuman, will fill you with a terror you have not felt since you were a child who just learned about the monsters waiting in the closet. Do not make eye contact. The instant you look directly at it, it will know. Remain still and silent until they are gone. If you are in bed you might risk slowly pulling the covers over your head, but do not make eye contact.
If the darkness in which you see the eyes is that of your own closed eyelids, opening them will not save you.
Pop-Up
There is a certain page on the Internet. Nobody knows when it was created, and nobody ever comes across it by looking. If you find it, a pop-up window will appear. The window will display an eyeless, black-and-white face a few strands of hair and a plaintive smile. Should you see this face, immediately type, “I like you.” Punctuation and capitalization are not so important, but don’t go out of your way to be sloppy. Do this and the words, “I like you, too” will flash across your screen. The pop-up will then vanish. This is the only way to get rid of it. Otherwise the face will follow you from page to page. Even if you turn off the computer, the pop-up will still be there, and the more you try to get away from the face, the more its expression will shift to a hideous frown. The worst possible thing you can do is to leave your computer while the pop-up remains. It will appear on whatever surface you look at next, its grimace filled with teeth. The last thing you ever see will be the face opening its mouth.
Reflection
For some time, there lived a certain man in eastern Washington named Sheldon. Every day he woke up, ate breakfast, attended his mindless job, came home, and slept. He had no friends, for he never bothered to make any. The only thing at all interesting about Sheldon was his bathroom, or rather the mirror in it. The mirror took up an entire wall from ceiling to floor. Even the sink had been fixed as a standalone structure to keep the mirror unbroken.
One morning—who knows which morning it was?—Sheldon noticed that he had never seen himself smiling in the mirror. It was not that he was particularly depressed, but he thought that he would have smiled at his reflection at least once. He pondered this for a moment, then shrugged and continued his day.
When Sheldon came home that afternoon he felt a need to relieve himself. While washing his hands, he glanced at his reflection again and was taken aback to see that his face had settled into a rather unnerving frown, almost as if he were disgusted with himself.
A few more days passed, and Sheldon could not help but notice that he looked unhappier and unhappier every time he looked in the mirror, even if he didn’t feel it. Soon he grew to hate his reflection unreasonably. He began to have nightmares about being stalked by a shadowy version of himself, face perpetually twisted in rage.
On the fifth straight night of screaming himself awake, Sheldon dashed into the bathroom and hit the light switch, staring wildly into the mirror and grabbing his cheeks, forcing himself to grin. All he got in return was the same glower as in his dreams. Without even thinking, Sheldon slammed the mirror with his fist. Cracks spread, and as they did, Sheldon gasped in pain. He looked at his hand to see a network of cuts opening cross it. Within seconds the mirror was crisscrossed with fractures, as was Sheldon’s body. He collapsed, blood-soaked. The Sheldon in the mirror did not.
The dying man stared into the mirror as a hand identical to his started brushing away fragments of glass, creating an ever-widening hole. A moment before Sheldon’s body fell apart, he saw his reflection smile for the first time.
Sheldon’s co-workers have noticed how much more interesting he is nowadays, and they are starting to feel rather dull by comparison. A few have not smiled for almost a week.
Don’t Think
Everybody has a thought that accompanies his or her death. This thought is different for each person. And the laws of the universe dictate that this thought must always go hand in hand with death. If you discover what your death-thought is before your time, not only will you fall dead on the spot, but the universe will also make sure you suffer eternally for trying to cheat it. There is no way to know what your death-thought is without thinking it. So don’t think. Don’t think of anything. Just hope that you die before your mind crosses that invisible line.
The Photograph Pile
A young girl walking home from school found a small pile of Polaroid photos lying in the gutter. There were twenty in all, neatly wrapped in a rubber band. She picked them up, and as she walked she started to browse. The first photo was that of a ghostly white man on a black background, standing just far enough away from the camera that she couldn’t make out his features. The girl slid the photo to the back of the stack and looked at the next one. The photo was of the same man now standing a bit closer. The girl flipped through the next several photos quickly. With each one the man in the picture came a bit closer and his features were a bit clearer. Turning the last corner to her house, the girl noticed that the man in the photos seems to be looking at her even when she moved the stack from side to side. It frightened her, but she kept flipping them over, one by one. By the nineteenth picture, the man was so close his face completely filled the frame. His expression was the most horrifying the girl had ever seen. Walking up the driveway, she turned to the last photo. This time, instead of an image, there were two words: “Close enough.” Hearing a scream, the girl’s brother rushed to the door and opened it. All he saw was a pile of photographs lying on the doorstep. The top one looked like an extremely pale version of his sister, but she was standing too far back for him to be sure.
Passing Silence
Two months ago I visited my aunt in the Midwest. She greeted me at the airport and gave me a lift back to her house. The drive was around ninety minutes, which we spent chatting about this and that. As we walked from the car toward her house I noticed that her voice, and indeed the various background noises sounded a bit fainter than before. When I remarked upon this, my own voice was fainter still. I wondered for a moment if I had started to develop a hearing problem, but this though was driven away when my aunt went pale and uttered, “Oh, God, not now!” By now any noise was barely more audible than a whisper. She rushed me inside, locked the door behind, drew the shutters, and motioned urgently that we were to get under the kitchen table—for now the air was completely silent. Not a second after we had done so, the house darkened significantly, and it shook lightly every few seconds. This went on for five whole minutes until light and sound began to return to normal, and another ten minutes before my aunt would budge from under the table. For the rest of my visit she refused to speak of what had happened.
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