Creepypasta

It's been forever since I've written anything, but reading some creepypasta collections inspired me to try a few of my own.

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.

Lucid

I turned in the final draft of my short story today, so now I'll post it. Beware: It's eleven pages in in Word, so I can only imagine how long it'll be here.

*****
Keys clicked in the lock to the apartment and the door swung open. Stefan stepped inside and tossed his backpack on the floor. “Uh, what a day,” he groaned to nobody in particular. “Rainstorm, a quiz, and I swear my humanities teacher hates me.” He stumped wetly upstairs to his room, shucked his raincoat, and ferreted through the clutter for his journal.
“January fourteenth again. I fell asleep during history, so now I have an extra dream to record. It looks like the ninja dream series has ended. Too bad: it was just starting to get really interesting too. This afternoon I dreamt I went into the city and met a couple of people my age. They were nice enough, and the girl was hot. I wish I could meet girls like that in real life.”
That evening Stefan fixed himself a sandwich for dinner, finished his physics assignment, asked himself for the hundredth time why he had bothered to attend college in the first place, and checked his email just before falling asleep.

“Hey, Stefan.”
Stefan blinked. He was stretched across a beige couch in what could be a living room. Rubbing his head was a casually-dressed, red-haired girl. Behind her and to the left stood a lean boy in a Metallica shirt. If he had black hair and glasses he would have resembled Stefan. The college freshman shook his head and sat up. “Oh, you guys again? I saw you yesterday afternoon.”
The girl smiled. “We know. You spent, what, the whole history period chatting with us? You had a nice time, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess it was one of my more enjoyable dreams.” Stretching, Stefan rose from the couch.
The other boy extended a rough hand. “I don’t believe we ever got around to proper introductions. Name’s Eric.”
“Eric. Pleased to meet you.” Stefan took the hand. Eric had a strong, friendly handshake. “And you are…Allison, right?”
“You remember. That’s a good sign,” Allison smiled. “Come on. You’ll be waking up in a few hours. Let’s go have some fun.”
“Yeah, sure,” Stephan started toward the door. Then something struck him. “Wait. You—you know I’m dreaming?”
Eric laughed. “We may be your thoughts, but we can still think for ourselves.” Seeing Stefan’s expression, he laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s find something to do….”

BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT!
Stefan was jolted awake. After several seconds of blind flailing he managed to find the off switch on his alarm. “Gah. What good are scientists when they can’t invent a less obnoxious alarm clock?” he moaned. After another minute of slowly waking up he rolled out of bed, threw on a shirt, and grabbed his journal from the floor.
“January fifteenth. Last night’s dream was kind of weird, but boy, did I have fun! Eric and Allison are really great people….” After a few minutes of writing, he recalled how the dream had ended. “Allison said to me, ‘See you soon.’ Am I going to dream about them again? Even if I am, how would she know?”
The next day in the cafeteria, Stefan sat down next to an acquaintance.
“Oh. Hey, Stefan.”
Stefan nodded back. “Hello, uh, what’s-your-face.”
“Dennis, you moron. I’ve been in your class all year.”
“Oh. Right.”
Dennis munched an apple. “What brings you over here? You usually find a deserted corner.”
“I don’t know. I just felt like having some company today.”
“That’s interesting. I can’t remember the last time you actually sought out classmates.”
“Well, any conversation I had would just devolve into an awkward silence. I’m not exactly Mister Charisma.” Stefan sniffed his sandwich and winced. “Bologna. Gross.”
Dennis nodded. “What did you expect? Bring your own lunch.” The two of them spent a few minutes eating in silence. “Listen, I should probably get going.” With that he ambled off.
Stefan sighed, “No difference there.”
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, unless you consider more rain and a C-minus on the quiz to be notable events. Stefan didn’t. No sooner did he get home from school did he jump into bed and don a set of sleepers. As hoped, his friends were waiting….

Allison chuckled. “The chemistry class actually melted the windows? That is impressive.”
Stefan easily replied, “Yeah, and the best part was that I made eighty dollars from it. Some other students and I had a pool on when that classroom would finally suffer some severe damage.”
Eric clapped Stefan on the back while Allison clutched her sides laughing. “Wonderful. Really wonderful.”
“Thanks. You two are great. You know, I’ve never been able to interact with real people as easily as I have with you.”
Eric said, “Come on, Stefan. Don’t make me remind you again: even though you dream us, we are real. You can walk with us, have fun with us, engage in intelligent conversation with us…we’re real.” He took a moment to stretch his arms. “But enough of this heavy philosophy. What else have you done today?”
“Let’s see…I had a calculus assignment due, and…D’oh! I forgot it entirely!” He thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “Well, it’s just one more error. No big deal. It’s not as though I have a set of straight A’s to maintain.” He paused again. “Hey, Allison. Last night you said, ‘See you soon.’ How did you know you would be coming back?”
“You need us,” Allison responded. “Your mind will keep dreaming us up because you need us. Don’t believe me?” She didn’t wait for a response. “The first time we appeared in your dreams, you had already invested so much into us that we gained self-awareness. Don’t worry, Stefan. We won’t be going away anytime soon.”

Stefan woke up still thinking about the promise, “We won’t be going away anytime soon.” Not even bothering to check his backpack for his books, Stefan left his apartment for classes. Two weeks and a failed test later, Eric and Allison were still keeping to their word.
“January twenty-ninth. I hardly know why I bother to keep this dream journal anymore. My serial dreams only persist for a week at most, but this has been going on for two weeks now, and I don’t hope for my mind to move on anytime soon. Allison and Eric are becoming better friends than I ever had in real life. As a matter of fact, the only real purpose of my being awake anymore is to eat.” He sneezed on a cloud of shavings as he emptied his pencil sharpener, and then he had an idea. “Maybe I can do something about that as well. There’s an upperclassman who deals various illegal substances….”
On his way to history the next week he was accosted by Dennis. “Hey, Stefan! I’ve got to talk to you about something!”
“Oh, hi, uh…” Stefan rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry; I’ve forgotten your name again.”
“Dennis! Do you really spend all your time in an isolation chamber?” Stefan reached for the classroom door handle, but Dennis held him back. “Listen. In all seriousness, you need to talk to someone. The professor asked me to be the person because I’m the only one here who even seems to know you anymore.”
“Wha?”
“You barely talk to anyone, you haven’t done anything about the last eight assignments we’ve received, and lately you smell like pot,” Dennis blinked. “Come to think of it, you never struck me as the kind of person who would smoke. Why did you take it up?”
“Because I can’t sleep all the time,” Stefan replied.
Dennis cocked his eyebrow. “You smoke marijuana because you can’t sleep all day? I’ve got to hear this.”
Stefan began to dig through his backpack. “It’s not the sleep per se, it’s what I dream. I dream about the same people every night, and I have a better life asleep than I ever did awake. Ah!” He reemerged holding his dream journal. “Find January fifteenth and start reading.” As Dennis looked over the entries, his brow furrowing, Stefan continued, “My body just won’t allow me to sleep all day, so I tried to bring Eric and Allison into my world instead of the other way around. I thought that I could do that by getting high.”
Dennis handed back the journal. “Stefan. This dream obsession…it doesn’t sound healthy. Have you considered talking to someone about this? I mean, more seriously?”
“More seriously? You mean—wait a minute! You think I need to see a shrink!?”
“Not necessarily…but now that you mention it, yes. I think that could help you.”
Stefan snorted. “I’m all right, Dennis. I don’t think I need any sort of help.”
“I’ve talked to several people who have seen you. They say otherwise. You keep going like this and you’ll destroy yourself. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m not joking! I’ll even pay for your first shrink session. How about that?”
Stefan narrowed his eyes. “This is my problem, if it even is a problem, and you haven’t convinced me of that. It’s not even any of your business. Why do you care?”
Dennis shook his head. “You’re right, Stefan. I only came to talk to you because I was asked. It’s not my business. At least it wasn’t before you explained to me exactly what’s going on. Now…it’s like you came up to me and told me you were planning to slit your wrists. I can’t not do anything about it! If I just stood aside and let you do this I would never be able to forgive myself.”
Stefan sighed. “All right. If it’s that important to you, I’ll go. Just leave me alone from now on, all right?”
Two days later, Stefan was lying down on the sofa in the psychiatrist’s office. “Well, the reason I’m here is that people say that I’m dream-obsessed and that it’s hurting me. Sure, my life is falling apart on some level, but I say that it’s worth it to see my friends.”
The psychiatrist frowned. “I see. I believe you mentioned something about self-awareness earlier?”
“Oh, yeah. That. Eric and Allison seem to know that they’re my dreams. They don’t care; they just remind me from time to time that they’re still real even though they’re not real…Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. I dream about them every night, and it gets to the point that I’m no longer waking up; I’m going back to sleep in an alternate life.”
The psychiatrist inquired, “What was your life like before these dreams began?”
“Kinda lousy. I was averaging a C-plus in my classes. I didn’t talk much. I guess you could say I only had a couple of friends. Not to mention I hate my room—cramped, smelly, you get the idea—and job. I needed some money, so I became a school janitor. I don’t know what the minimum wage is, but it feels like they don’t even know there is one.”
The psychiatrist raised an eyebrow. “Stefan, it sounds as though you have not been putting much effort into your life. If that is the case, then it is understandable that your subconscious would attempt to project an alternate life for you to live. That would explain your tendency to have serial dreams. Now that you have fallen into one of these mental traps, you are destroying your real life. I suggest you attempt to clean up your act. If you do that, your dreams should return to normal.”
“Thanks.” Stefan grabbed his coat from the chair and left.
That night, Stefan found himself being shaken awake.

“Hey! Wake up!”
He opened his eyes to find a read-haired head inches away from his nose. “Whoa! Give me a little personal space, huh?!” Stefan blinked a few times, rubbing his eyes to clear out any accumulated sleeping-grime. “Oh. Hi, Allison. Eric.”
Eric’s mouth was a hard line. “We heard you had a chat with a shrink today.”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
Briefly cracking a smile, Eric lightly smacked Stefan across the head. “We’re your dreams. If you know, we know. Remember?” Eric paused and looked Stefan in the eye. “I trust you didn’t listen to that ‘advice.’”
Stefan rubbed his head. “The psychiatrist did have a point. I really ought to clean my life up, and these dreams don’t seem to be helping. No offense.”
Allison said, “Think! Do you really want to kill us? Just like that?”
“Kill you?”
“We may be dreams, but we are still real! When you go to sleep, we are alive! We can think for ourselves! This shrink wants you to kill us, to exchange a bad life and a good life for a decent life and no life. You can’t do this to us!”
Stefan found himself at a loss for words. “But…you…you’re just my dreams. Don’t I kill you every time I wake up?” Stefan pondered this for a moment, and then blanched. “Oh, god. How many people have I killed?”
“Don’t think about that,” Allison said. “You can’t do anything about waking up, but you don’t have to erase us. Our lives are important, too!”
“Yeah,” Eric added. “You have to think about the good of many over the good of one, and you can still come here when you sleep.”
Stefan shook his head. “No, the more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve been wrong this whole time. When I’m here…I’m only fooling myself.”
“You can’t do this to us!” Allison repeated. “You’ve built a world in your mind over the last few weeks, and you can’t destroy it just like that!”
“I know what this will mean, but I’m still more real than you are. I have to do this, and you can’t guilt me out of it. I’m so sorry.”
Allison slumped down onto the bed, her head in her hands. “This world is going to disappear…I can’t believe it. Our world is going to disappear.”
Suddenly, Eric stood up. “No, it’s not.” He swung a fist at Stefan’s head. Caught off guard, Stefan had no time to dodge. The blow caught him squarely on the temple and he toppled over, lying motionless on the floor.

Allison looked up. “What did you do to him?”
“I saved us,” Eric replied. “As long as we keep him unconscious he can’t possibly wake up. I did not enjoy knocking him out; he’s a nice guy. But I was desperate. I don’t want to die.”
The next day, Stefan did not appear in class in the waking world. So far had he withdrawn from the world that only Dennis noticed, but he thought that Stefan had merely taken some time off to set things in order. When Stefan was absent the next day as well, Dennis started to worry. The professor noticed as well. “Dennis, do you why Stefan is not here?” he asked.
“No. I would check up on him, but he never told me his address.”
Back in the dream world, Eric and Allison had taken it in turns keeping watch over Stefan, applying a light chokehold whenever he started to stir.
“Is it just me, or does Stefan look different today?” Allison asked after one shift. “He seems paler and thinner.”
Eric looked over him. “You’re right. Why would that be?” he wondered.
Unfortunately for all concerned, as beings of dreams, Eric and Allison had forgotten about the needs of the body. Trapped in his coma with nobody to come looking for him, Stefan was starving.
On the last day, as Allison walked away after delivering a particularly forceful knockout, she abruptly stumbled. “That’s odd. Just now I felt disoriented, as if my foot had slipped through the floor.” Looking down at herself, she gasped, “What’s happening? I’m blurred!”
“Me too,” mumbled Eric. He had lain down on the floor. “I’m…for lack of a better phrase, I’m breaking up.” He lifted his head. “So is the room…Something bad is happening.”
Allison cast a bleary-eyed look at Stefan, who was now flickering erratically. “Eric, Stefan is…oh, no.” She and Eric looked at each other. “He’s dying! We have to wake him up!”
Eric slurred, “We can’t wake him up. We can only hope he recovers on his own before he’s gone.”
At that moment, Stefan lifted his head. “What…what’s happening? I feel weak.”
Allison shouted, “Stefan! You have to wake up! If you don’t wake up soon you’ll die, and we’ll die with you!”
“Trying…can’t. I don’t have the energy.” He could barely manage to turn his head to look at Eric. “Did you…break something when you knocked me out?”
“No.” Eric was panicking. “No! I couldn’t have! If you’ve woken up in here, there must be a problem with your body that’s keeping you in a coma! What is it!?”
“…Drugs.”
Eric gabbled, “But marijuana doesn’t do that to you!”
Stefan coughed nervously. “Well…I did begin…experimenting with other…psychedelics just before I went to the shrink’s.”
Overcome with shock and despair, the two dream people couldn’t look at him.

Within half an hour, Stefan’s body had died in its sleep, and with the body went the mind. In their attempt to save their own lives, Eric and Allison had ultimately destroyed themselves.

I need to write, but I have nothing.

I need to write, but I have nothing. Why do I need to write? I wrote less than an hour ago, and again earlier today. Normally I would have attended class with Omnipotent and five other Venetians today, but it doesn't pick up again until next week. Too long! I miss everybody! I saw them, not everybody, but some Venetians a week ago, and we broke up even more recently than wold have if it had been a regular class day, but the space between then and now feels endless. I've made another friend over the last week. Thank you, Lilith. I mean, yes, I did know of you before, but only over the past few days have I really started getting to know you. Tangent. Why isn't the italics hotkey working? End tangent.

I need to write, but now I have something. Not enough. I need to talk. Can't talk. Writing will have to do. Math papers are waiting to be graded. They can wait. I have huge chunks of freedom tomorrow, and more on Tuesday, and more on Wednesday. Enough to finish grading easily, and then maybe to grade them all over again. Why would I grade them a second time except to prove a point, but not even then. There are other things I can do with my time. Like wonder if and how I'll be cast in Sweet Charity. Tangent. It's been a while since I wrote a long post like this one. End of tangent.

I still need to write. What to say? Names. Why not names? Peter. Trotsky. Tubal. Disconcerting. I am all these and more. Emperor of Carthage. Whoo, that's and old one. I forget whether Emperor of Rome (Poppet) was the first to bestow my title on me or I on him. I doubt he even remembers. I don't know why I even remember. It's pointless. I am afraid that any possible reason to remember is fading away anyway. I count on my fingers. Some 14 fingers, and 12 Venetian (+3 really, but they have, for all intents and purposes, disappeared). But as Finger 14 is rising, is Finger 1 dropping? I don't know what larger implications it would have, or even if it would have any, but I don't want to cut what may be my last tie to the first half of my life. No tangent this time.

ARGH! It's not enough! I still need to write! Why?! Why now am I possessed with this urge to write and write and wite and then to come back and write some more?! I'm going to look for and post one of those 50-word stories I had to write last year in Lit class. The funny one. Well, you might not find it funny. It's funny in a rather sick way. But the class and my Lit teacher liked it. I'll go look for it now.

Wow. I still have my notebook. My sad, ratty little literature notebook with six pages still attached and more written on the inside front cover than on the pages theselves. There's the beginning of on another poem in there, but I know I'm not going to ever finish it. It was going to be similar in style to the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I didn't even like that poem. But what matter? It's just another half-finished project. Another dead sheet of paper in the mass grave of such projects of mine. I'll get halfway, or a third, or a tenth of the way, and then drop off. But on to the 50-word story.

"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't write the story," I said. "Sure you can," Dave replied. "No, my disease is preventing me from writing," I countered. "What disease?" "Leprosy." "If you're well enough to come to class, you're well enough to write." I lifted my arm. "My writing hand fell off."

As a bonus, here are the other three I wrote that day. Yes, there is an element of morbidity here. I was by no means the only one with a morbid mind that day. One classmate wrote about a guy who takes a bite of a piece of bread with "butter" that turns out to be sodium! And then there's the "Time for you to say bye-bye" story. Dave wasn't surprised. He said that when you need to keep it short, morbid is easy. Now on to the other 50-wor stories. Really.

I sat down on Santa's lap unable to keep a grin off my face. Jovial as ever, he inqured, "What would you like for Christmas, little boy?" Imagine his face when I replied, "A five hundred-page book on demonic summoning!" Yes, we Dungeons & Dragons players are often misunderstood.

The janitor watched the tax collector enter the building. His employer escorted the guest into the next room. After the door closed, the janitor sighed and went ot get his mop. He returned to clean up the mess, wondering why they never learned: Assassins' guilds do not pay their taxes.

Having finished off all my classmates, he killer turned to face me. I leaped for the window, but his strong hand plled me back. Terrified, I shrieked, "Why are you doing this to us all?" His response chilled me to the core: "What else to do on a rainy day?"

The third story there was not my only assassin-related piece of writing last year. When we had sentence-writing competitions (adhering to structural guideline XYZ), my sentences were almost always assassin-related. My sentences almost always won. Coincidence?

Here's an example I found just now. We each had to write an extremely short sentence ("I am smart," for example). We then had to expand our sentences to 50 words or more without using lists. Here was my end result: "In those sleepy hours just before dawn on a Wednesday morning, the cackling and emotionally disturbed assassin whose divorced parents had molested him in his youth, utilizing sodium and a barrel of lukewarm tapwater, immolated the homeless, hapless, weepy-eyed orphan clad in only a few scant, oily rags, who wailed and wondered what sick twist of fate had condemned her to this most gruesome, even by pyrotechnic stabdards, of demises." Really, I am not wrong in the head! I promise!

I also wrote essays attacking Thoreau (specifically, referring to him as "an arrogant little snot" at one point) and The Great Gatsby. I believe both received good grades; I know the Thoreau paper did.

Whew! My need to write seems to have been sated for now. Back to the math papers for me!

Nothing? Really?

Looking back over what I wrote it seemed like I could use it to make something. I should work with it some more. Here's a go, and then I really need to hit the old bed.

Dark. Wet. Nothing else. I think. I listen. Is it really thinking? Is it too early? Or is it just nothing? Even if I did, what have I to think? I do think. I wonder. I can feel. I feel my skin and the walls around me. I'm being called. I hear voices and screams. I can't ignore it. I'm gone.

I eat. I can do that now. Tangerines. I always liked them. What can I do today? So much done. So much to do. Something happened. I can feel it. I'm bleeding. It's nothing. I always bleed now. I never bled then. All I could do then was think. Still, I can't let the bleeding continue. I'm gone.

Am I staying? Not for long. Soon, nothing. I think about all the things I've done. It was fun while it lasted. Even when I bled it was worth it. I'm wavering. Waiting. It's getting late. I realize there's nothing tomorrow. So much done, and now there's nothing. Ha. I can't ignore it. Nothing left but to give myself up now. I got only so much, but I made do. It will have to do. I'm gone.