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malcolmteller-blog · 8 years ago

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[HORROR] Things on the Internet

You never imagine that strange things will or even could happen to you, when you live a life like mine. Me? It’s been cookie cutter and bland, all the way through. When I was in high school, I never had any amazing, formative adventures or experiences like you see in all the TV shows and movies. It was just this boring slog of go to school, go to class, come home, play video games, go to bed, wake up, repeat. Same deal with university - go to class, come home, hang out on the Internet, study, and repeat.

So you can imagine how surprised I was when, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, when I was working at a bookstore after I’d graduated from university, the strangest things in the world started to happen to me.

I should explain why I was where I was at. I graduated at the age of twenty-two with a largely useless degree in Political Science. I had no real connections or relevant work experience, so off to retail I went. I may not have achieved my full potential, but I still had to pay the bills, y’know? Be honest with you, I was pretty much aimless at that point. I knew I wanted more, and I guess I knew deep down that I could be more, but I didn’t know how to achieve it.

Then I found Chatroom Pandemonium.

See, I’d never really had a lot of friends. Well, I’ll just come out with it: I was kind of a loser. Still am. So, I sought refuge on the Internet. By the time all this started to happen, I’d be spending tons of hours on it every night, just reading on my various interests for hours, in addition to streaming Netflix and reading comic book scans.

It was on a March evening that I somehow - I can’t remember how, now - stumbled upon an odd website. It was said in a number of these alt-culture message boards to be ‘the most amazing thing ever’ and ‘everything a person could want’. I go there, and… nothing. Blank, black page. ‘Bullshit,’ I muttered to myself, and navigated away. I then decided to watch some Netflix, so I streamed one of those popular superhero shows for three hours then turned my computer off and went to bed.

I slept peacefully, and woke up early - oddly early, given I’d only gone to bed like three hours before. It was three in the morning, and the first thing I noticed was that my computer was on. It was so strange, because I knew I’d turned my monitor and tower off before I went to bed. How could it just turn itself on? But there was something else - it was on the page that I’d closed before, the one where there was nothing on it. Only now, there was a text box there. I slowly got out of bed and walked over to my desk and sat down, squinting my eyes as I leaned in to read what was on the screen. I soon understood that it was a box for me to type a username into to chat in a chatroom, one called ‘Chatroom Pandemonium’.

So, very much curious, I did so. I entered the name “JohnTheMonk” (an old handle of mine from when I was in high school) and clicked ‘JOIN’.

Chatroom prompt shows up, and I noticed it only had one other person in it. His handle was THE_BELIEVER. To make this go simpler, I’ll type up the chatlog and intersperse it with my own feelings and reactions that I had at the time.

THE_BELIEVER: Welcome:)

Now, I had no idea who this guy was, but I was mildly curious. So, I decided to spark up a conversation.

JOHNTHEMONK: hey, sup

I waited a few minutes - oddly long, where chatrooms are concerned (at least in my experience). Finally, he responded.

THE_BELIEVER: im happy youre here. i can tell already that youre a special one

Now, this got me kind of creeped out. I mean, this guy didn’t even know me, but he was saying all this stuff about me?

JOHNTHEMONK: umm..okay.

His next response came immediately.

THE_BELIEVER: im going to come see you. then we’ll have a real good time :)

At this point, I’m basically like “K, fuck this.” So I just logged off, closed the browser, and went back to bed. Didn’t even say goodbye. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.

Except it wasn’t.

I woke up a few hours later, got up and showered, got dressed, the whole deal, and went to work. Day went by pretty casually. It was just boring, you know? Bland with not much happening, same as usual for my life. Customers come in, ask about books, I ring them through the cash register, I socialize with my co-workers, that deal.

So I get off work in the evening and I’m walking home. Then my phone dings, so I check it. It’s from a private number and it reads, “it was really rude of you to leave the chatroom without saying goodbye.”

What. The. Fuck.

How the fuck did this asshole get my number? This was getting really scary, and I wasn’t okay with it. But I had no idea how to find out how he got my number, so I just set my phone to not accept texts or phone calls from private numbers. I also resolved to strongly consider changing my phone number later on.

Here’s the thing, though: it didn’t end there.

I was at the comic shop a week later, looking to get a certain item. That’s when the next phase of things started happening.

“Hey,” I asked the clerk who was standing behind the counter, “Do you guys happen to have the latest Hellblazer trade?”

The clerk nodded, pointed out where that title is usually kept, and off I went. I get there and I’m scanning the shelf, and then… then I heard something.

“I haven’t forgotten you.”

It was a thin, small, kind of high-pitched voice. I jumped, kind of, and looked around quickly. No one was around me. Then I heard it speak again.

“I hope you haven’t forgotten me.”

I looked around more. No one there.

I was getting freaked out at this point, so I needed to get out. So I did. Before I knew it, I was out the door and pounding down the sidewalk, trying to shake this. Now I was hearing things? The hell?

But it didn’t stop. The voice kept talking. “I’m going to be there soon, and we’re going to have so much fun.” It sounded almost giddy.

How did I feel at the time? Well, my heart was pounding, and my blood was pumping, and I felt completely on edge - goosebumps all over. What the hell was going on? Two possibilities: something from beyond (as crazy as that sounded) was stalking me, or my mental state was broken. Neither was a comforting thought.

As I walked and desperately tried, and failed, to ignore the voice speaking more and more into my ears and head, I tried to work this out. This all started with that chatroom, and that started with all the postings on the Internet that were gushing about that URL. Nothing about that site had been normal or typical. First time I go there, it’s a blank page. Then my computer and monitor turn on by themselves and navigate back to the website, by themselves, where now it’s a chatroom login page.

This didn’t make any sense, and it was scary as hell. I was on edge the entire walk transit commute home, especially because this voice just would not shut the fuck up. The entire bus ride, it kept telling me all excited how it was gonna come see me and how I’d be ‘changed for the better’ and how ‘pain can be beautiful, and you’ll find that out too’ and all other sorts of horrifying shit. When I got home, I immediately dug out my headphones, put them on and plugged them into my phone and turned on some music to max volume to drown out what I was hearing. It worked.

So, what to do? After some thought, I guess I convinced myself that this had to be a mental health crisis. Like many people, my mind defaulted to the ‘logical’ explanation. I wasn’t at the point where I could convince myself that this was an actual spiritual entity. I just wasn’t wired that way.

So, long story short, I made an appointment with my doctor, got some meds, and everything quieted down. No more voices. At that point, I was satisfied - everything was fine and good, and so was I.

So, back to my boring old life. I went back to the drudgery that was work, while also trying to think on how I could improve my life. Maybe I could go to grad school. Maybe I could try to, somehow, launch a career based on the qualifications and credentials I had now.

So, one night, a week or so later, I was doing web searches for job postings and internships I could possibly take up when I heard something from my living room. I looked at my slightly open door and focused my ears. It was… my TV? How could my TV be on? I specifically remembered having turned it off when I got home that day.

So, I walked out to the living room and checked the TV. It was on to a channel of static. Idly picking up the remote control from the coffee table, I started changing the channel. All static.

‘Well, shit,’ I thought to myself. I immediately assumed it was a problem with the cable company. So I slid my phone out of my pocket to call them, when… I heard the voice.

“You keep running from me, Michael,” it said. My eyes immediately went wide with fear, my blood running cold and freezing inside of me. I, frozen in place in a mix of abject terror and shock, looked up at the TV, which now had a figure on it. It held a basic humanoid shape, but it… it couldn’t be human. Though the figure was largely cloaked in shadows and darkness, I could see its shape. Its head looked misshapen, like there were horns or something coming out of it. As well, the way the sides of its head looked… it looked as if the skin was ridged or something. Logically, the immediate conclusion would be that this was an elaborate prank, but deep down I knew - I knew - that it wasn’t. This was real, and horrifyingly so. I could write off the texts. I could even write off this. But I couldn’t write off the combination of this and the texts and the voice speaking to me out of thin air.

As I dwelt on this, the figure on the TV continued speaking. “I’m going to be arriving soon,” it said, with a happy edge to its voice, “real soon. We’re going to have so much fun then.”

Then the TV switched off. After a moment of me standing there dazed, I hesitantly turned it back on, and it turned on to the standard TV service, like nothing had changed.

This was the point where I decided to go to work figuring out what was going on. I spent the next three days, all day, reading up on that website, what people had said or written about it. After a day, I found one piece of information that I found really helpful. I’ve decided to copy and paste it here:

POSTED BY: TheNightMan Lots of people wonder about what the Pandemonium website leads to, because it appears as different things to different people. But those who have gotten through… well, different things happen. One person got through, and according to reports, months later murdered his entire family before killing himself, but not before talking online about having contacted something. Others report friends or family getting through and talking to people - or figures, whatever they are or whoever they are - and then shortly after their mental state undergoing a rapid deterioration until they had to be institutionalized. Then there’s the murders. One person reported being stalked by some figure from that site, online and in their dreams, until one day their remains - their ripped apart, torn apart - remains were found in their apartment, with no leads on who did it. So, the question remains: who or what is behind the website? I found one lead, in the writings of some hackers from the early nineties who were involved in the occult. It’s… well, it’s batshit crazy, but I feel the need to include it. One guy, who called himself ‘a Cyber-Mystic’, says that there exists spirits - demons, entities, whatever - that exist online, wholly online, in the electronic signals sent to and from across computer networks. Then, when they want to, they show up in the real world. Crazy? Yeah. But I’ve tried to figure out what else could be at work here, and I’m all fuckin’ out of ideas.

It was crazy and insane, but it wouldn’t leave my mind. Now, I should describe my mental and emotional state at this point. At the end of the three days of researching, finding out what I just laid out and other possible ways out of this crisis (but none that I was really all that certain would work), I was just fucked up. That’s the best way to put it. I couldn’t sleep. Every small noise made me jump. My heart was constantly pounding its way out of my chest and I’d never been so afraid. Nights were a terror to get through, because every small bump in the night made me certain that this, this thing had finally shown up to come get me.

It all came to a head two days after I finished doing my research. I was getting ready for bed, and had just finished crying my eyes out in utter terror because I was so terrified that I was fucked with absolutely no hope. I had just finished doing minor chores and other stuff around my room, and had crawled into bed. I shut my eyes and tried to force myself to go to sleep. An hour passed, and I was still awake. As I was starting to despair of ever sleeping again, I… I heard it. A very, very loud sound like a rushing of wind and flame. I opened my eyes and saw in front of my bed this column of flame, that lit up my entire room. Then it disappeared, and, well, there it was. The thing that had been stalking me. I can’t describe it. It was so monstrous, so horrifying. Its long claws, and its razor sharp teeth that dripped blood, and its skin with ridges all over. My heart was pounding so hard I was afraid I was gonna have a heart attack any minute, and I knew - I knew - that this was it. I was done. It was gonna kill me, or take me back to where it was from, or what the fuck ever, and at that moment I wished that I had been a religious person so I could have some protection.

It tried to move forward, to crawl onto my bed to get me. It tried. But it stopped. Something was stopping it.

I realized what happened, and my fear disappeared. Son of a bitch, I thought to myself, the seal worked.

As it shoved itself against the invisible barrier more and more, presumably trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, I felt relief flood through me that that protective measure I’d found in my research on all this had actually worked. First I grinned. Then I laughed - a confident, mocking laugh. I was safe! Then I decided to push my luck. I spoke the incantation of the Mother’s Heart, and just like I expected, the demon was engulfed in bright, vicious blue flame. Its screams sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. If I had to try and describe it, I’d say try to imagine the cry of a lion mixed with a high-pitched scream, but even that isn’t really close. I watched, my eyes wide open and this big ass smile on my face, as this thing flailed and threw itself against the invisible barrier in all directions, the blue flame eating away at its skin and form. Finally, after a few minutes, it fell to the ground - dead.

I slowly got out of bed and crept over to the corpse. I looked at it. It looked ugly as fuck, to be honest - I mean, not only was it ugly when it was alive, but now it was burned to death. As I looked down at it, I noticed that its flesh wasn’t just burned, it was burned well enough that it was cooked. As I smelt its roasted smell - something like steak - I got an idea. Like, okay, it was a really, really fucked up idea, but equally cool. After as few moments of consideration, I - with a giant smile on my face - went to work putting it into action.

Anyways, now it’s the evening of St. Patrick’s Day, and everything’s fine. I didn’t even have to dispose of the body, it just dissolved into white powder by itself within twenty four hours. That considered, it’s a real good thing I managed to cut off a bunch of the meat from the bones before it all dissolved. You’re probably wondering how the demon meat tasted. Honestly? Like fish. Weird, right? But, hey, now I can say that I’ve done something nobody’s ever done.

But some weird stuff has happened. I feel great - real great. Better than I’ve ever felt in my entire life, than I ever imagined I could feel. Some other stuff, too. My eyes have been changing colour, and I’ve started to notice odd ridges and bumps showing up beneath my skin. I suppose I should be concerned, maybe even scared, but for some reason I can’t find it within myself to give a damn.

So, that’s how my past while has been. How about yours?

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