Don't Read This Thread in the Dark

dpool666 wrote:Dude, what cute little dog raped you as a child?!

Wathafukk

"The Imposter" Pt. 1

A few months ago the lease I shared with my boyfriend “Sean” ran out and we decided to find another place to stay. We had previously been sharing a townhouse with a few other people, and were looking forward to getting a little lovenest of our own, made complete with the addition of our new cat. If you’re already gagging, take comfort in the fact that everything cute about this story was already summed up above. What remains of this tale recounts the most terrifying and viscerally disturbing and utterly wrong experience I’ve ever had. I’ll take it slow.

The apartment we settled on was one on the edge of town. It had recently been remodeled after being in disuse for a period of time. It smelled like someone had picked it out of a rack at K-Mart and looked like it was hecho’d en Mexico. Sean and I reasoned that the cheap remodeling probably accounted for the low rent that matched more dated local complexes.

Since we had a few days left on our lease when our move-in date rolled around, we took our time moving our possessions, and kept sleeping/bathing/eating at the old place. Finally the time came to make the big switch, and we piled all of our big stuff and our kitten into a truck and made the move final.

That night we both had trouble sleeping. It was pretty uncharacteristic for either one of us to feel uncomfortable in the dark, but after a bit of hesitation Sean couldn’t help but turn on the lamp beside our bed and comment that he was feeling a little weird. We discussed the bad juju feeling for a bit, and I remember remarking that the place somehow felt naked, as if we weren’t really in an apartment at all, but somewhere under the stars, open to the elements. I chalked this up to getting used to the new place. Still, long after Sean fell asleep I stared at the ceiling in the lamp light, hearing creaks and groans in the floor and expecting at any moment to find myself in a nightmare.

The next day I worked during the day and Sean worked the night shift. We didn’t get a chance to see each other between our shifts and I felt even more isolated in the apartment once I got home. Our cat, Jazz, made me feel a little better with her excitement and curiosity about our new place. With her around, it felt almost like home. Feeling a bit braver, I decided to shower.

Normally showers are not all that interesting. Most people just think of them as something they lose time to every day. Before that apartment I felt the same way. Didn’t ever think about it, just turned the water on scalding and stepped inside. Now just typing the word gives me the creeps.

"The Imposter" pt. 2

That night when I took a shower I tried not to think about the uncomfortable feeling that place exuded I tried to focus on some happy thoughts. But I kept hearing things. A distant creak in the living room, a cupboard door closing, and then a strange thump on the floor just in front of the bathroom—it was starting to get to me. Soon, I noticed that my skin was covered in goose bumps. Thinking I was letting my imagination get away with me, I called to Jazz, hoping she would reply and raise my spirits.

From the bathroom doorway I heard a “Meow.” Something in my intestines lurched, and I felt a shock of adrenaline enter my blood. Was the water muffling Jazz in some strange way? The response from the doorway didn’t sound like my cat at all. Trying to control myself, I mewed gently, something I’d taken to doing when Jazz was still a kitten. The reply came again. Again, the sound was something odd. A different timbre. A different tone. A tiny crack in the vocalization. It came again, and it was wrong. All wrong, like something with twenty times the bodily resonation of my cat trying to impersonate her, trying to use her voice to plead for me to come out of the shower and into the open.

And it was closer than before.

I had a barrage of possibilities flooding my mind— the Meower, a meth head who had broken in and was now having a bit of fun before he raped and killed me. The Meower, a crazy creature from out of a “Spawn” comic. I could practically see it, a disgusting huddled mass at the threshold grinning insanely. And I was trapped.

Something inside of me, some hysterical thing from beneath my skin and struggling through my constricted vocal cords made my hand go to the shower curtain. Was it my imagination or my hand on fabric making the shuffling sound just outside of the shower? With a sickening succession of clacks shower curtain rings rushed to one side of the rod and I stood wet and completely vulnerable in the face of…

Nothing.

Before you start celebrating, I should point out that by “Nothing,” I mean exactly that. To my horror, I realized I had let Jazz outside before my shower. She hadn’t been in the apartment at all.

(Alright, I’m taking a break from this story for now. Even though I’m not in that apartment anymore it’s freaking me the hell out and I need to wait until daylight tomorrow to finish.)
I lied. I really feel like I need to get more out of me. It took walking over to the gas station to see a friend, but I feel ready to go at it again.

“The Imposter” Pt. 3

As time went on, my fear—and somehow, memory-- of this event dulled. It didn’t make any sense at all, and since Sean and I had similar shifts on most days I didn’t have to shower alone all the time. Within a week I had convinced myself that I had heard Jazz or some other cat through a window, and the distance had distorted the sound. Or something.

It sounded good enough to me at the time.

Then I began to notice the whispering. It would happen when I ran the tap. At first I thought it was “just pipes.” One evening I put my ear close to the wall where I knew the plumbing ran through and realized the whispering was coming from elsewhere. I left the tap on and tried to follow the sound.

I ended up in the middle room just off of the kitchen, at a closet that was built onto a wall. Desperately hoping that somehow the pipes snaked through the apartment and behind the closet, I opened the doors leading inside. Barely registering that the whispering had stopped, I choked back a wave of nausea caused by the rancid stench of rotting meat wafting out of the compartment. After I closed the doors, it took a moment to compose myself. I knew I hadn’t seen any meat in that closet. It was completely bare. Not to mention, when I closed the doors it seemed to completely disappear. To make matters worse, I could once again hear a low whispering from the closet. Preparing for the worst, I opened the doors again.

Nothing.

The smell was gone. Truly wondering if I was crazy at that point, I woke Sean up from a nap. I took him over to the closet and had him listen. By that time, the tap water running in the kitchen sink had gone from hot to tepid. Confused and bleary-eyed, Sean walked with me to the closet. Only now the whispering was gone.

Before I could even open my mouth to explain, Jazz darted past us from the bedroom where Sean had been sleeping and cowered in a corner, her huge pupils fixed on a window by our bed. Looking where her gaze was directed, I froze and felt again that shower-terror I had a week ago.

A human silhouette crouched on our balcony. Its outline was barely discernible against the black of trees and night, but what was terrifying, truly terrifying, more than the fact that someone had spooked our cat, more than the fact that someone was looking through our bedroom window, more than the fact that some large thing the color of the very void itself was on our balcony, were the eyes. The tapeta lucidum eyes that glowed like a cat’s as our bright kitchen shone on them. The eyes that gazed inward at us without emotion or apology. They were dead eyes, but impossibly alive with light at the same time. I was transfixed, completely. In that moment Sean and my cat might have been on different planets. Fear had begun to flex its muscles, and every muscle in me seemed to stop. Those loving eyes.

And then it was gone. The shape slid away into darkness. I heard no sounds of running, only a tiny whisper of what might have been fabric or breathing as the shadow disappeared. Its eyes were on mine even as it swayed out of sight.

I turned to Sean, every hair on my body standing on end. I wasn't trying to speak, but words came out anyway.

"Did you see that?" I felt like I was in a dream.

Sean turned to me, from where he was examining the closet. He could see I was upset and looked to the bedroom, where my finger was pointing, again, nearly without my knowledge of it. "See what?"

It seemed impossible, but Jazz and I were the only two witnesses to the thing in the window. To this day, Sean still claims that he was only looking in the closet for two seconds after the cat ran into the room with us and before I asked him if he had seen what I'd seen. For me, it had seemed like minutes. (still more to come. This is nerve-wracking to type)

"The Imposter" Pt. 4

After the incident with the thing out the window that no one but me and the cat saw, I felt a bit like I was alone against this thing. Sean hadn't heard the whispers in the closet and no reason to believe anything was amiss with the apartment (aside from previously mentioned minor misgivings our first few nights there). I did the sensible thing. I called the landlord and demanded to know if there were any unsavory elements living around our neck of the woods, falling short of actually asking about cat-imitating crack-addicts in particular.

As it turned out, the landlord was a remarkably honest person. He admitted that the house had previously been in a degree of disuse that *may* have led drug users to use it as a flop house. However, he assured me that it had been gutted and its internal structure checked for lasting damage and emphasized that it had not been used for meth (a real concern here in these real classy parts of the country).

In addition, he mentioned that we were the first tenants to rent out our apartment, as that portion of the complex had just been finished.

So now I was going with the idea that some displaced former inhabitant was after our hides. Brilliant.

I began keeping my cell phone with me when I took showers alone. Despite the weird happenings in the house, after a month had passed since the last "sighting," I was getting comfortable. With my cell phone around I felt safe enough to not even really feel uncomfortable while showering. Then one night, in the usual place, I began to have this strange feeling I was being watched.

It was as if I could see outside of myself and see a horror movie reel was beginning to play in place of my life. My skin was prickling into gooseflesh again and I had that familiar feeling that was a cross between adrenaline rush and panic.

"MEOw?"

My evening had gone from normal to profoundly disturbing in less than a second. The sound of the shower suddenly seemed deafening as my ears struggled to take in every detail of my surroundings.

"MEowWw..."

It seemed to be toying with me now. The meow was becoming warped, as if the facade was no longer important.

My cell was on a soap rack above the shower head. Did I dare move? Somehow it seemed the meower would sense the air vibrating with movement and take that moment to pounce. Even as I formed that fear I heard the soft pad of bare flesh against linoleum. In my state I could discern that whoever, whatever this was it was walking on all fours, the soft sounds coming from the pads of palm and finger, squeaking sounds of knee and foot following closely behind.

A shadow fell over the shower curtain. (To be finished SOON, I promise)

"The Imposter" Pt. Sorry this has taken so long

The shadow against the shower curtain was when it finally became real to me. In retrospect, everything I had seen and heard before had simply been me experiencing something that was like a movie. I had been outside of myself, experiencing something unreal, a spectre, an imagination-fueled fright. When the shadow appeared, it was as if I could see the actual imposter before me, crawling across the floor.

It was less than a foot away.

And then it was right on the other side of the curtain. It made some sound, similar to a cat's sub-vocalized meow. Except it kept going. The meow became a tiny moan that stretched on and on. And that's when I became angry.

The way I figure it, there is only so long that a person can be scared before their brain gets bored and goes to something else. Mine snapped into a panicked rage, and I screamed, "GET OUT! JUST loving GO! WHAT DO YOU WANT!? LEAVE ME ALONE!" I meant for it to come out strong and intimidating, but it was tinged with hysteria and cracking pathetically.

Miraculously, the thing jumped at the first yelled syllable. It stayed frozen, motionless until I was silent again, and slid away. Immediately I was reminded of the way the thing in the window before had moved in the same fashion, as if it was on wheels and could simply roll off into nothingness.

And then I heard it in the other room. A growl. A low, low growl. It was almost a relief when I heard Jazz hiss from another spot in the house. And then a maternal fear for my little kitty's life.

Against all better instincts I walked out of the bathroom. No towel. What was a towel going to do to protect me? I wanted my hands free to defend myself. To my dismay, I realized that my cat and that thing were in the middle room, it was dark out, and that the light switch was on the other side of the room. poo poo. Fortunately, adrenaline was my wingman that evening. I rounded the corner of the bathroom and looked on as my cat stared, tail puffed up almost comically and back arched.

A dark shape huddled against the wall. As I watched in horror, its eyes turned slowly on me, reflecting the faint light in the room inhumanly well. It had no mouth. No nose. Only eyes that revealed nothing, had no expression. Thinking back, the eyes were perhaps revealing exactly what the thing was. A copier. An imposter. My body felt as if it had been completely electrified with fear. My urges were so many and varied it was all I could do to remain motionless. In the face of this impossible thing my mind could not come up with an appropriate response.
As if to remove all shadow of a doubt that I was in a face-off
with my stalker, the thing meowed again, softly. And then it darted toward my cat.

Just as I had imagined, it walked on all fours, only as I watched it now its motions were jerky, as if it were animatronically operated by an ameteur. My cat jumped back a few feet but once more, stood frozen in terror as her attacker halted his appreached and gazed at her once more.

My eyes began to fill with tears. Everything I had known to be true-- that ghosts and demons and monsters didn't exist, had fallen apart. This was no human, I realized. I didn't know how to fight something that wasn't human, and so I fell on the only thing I did know-- what I had seen in movies.

I don't remember what exactly I said, but I remember calling on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost a few times (and I'm not religious), I remember telling it that this was our house and it was not welcome. All the while it stared in what I nelieve was a combination of predatory curiosity and ambivalence.

Then, in a last ditch effort, my vocal cords tight and every muscle in my body aching with tension, I asked, "Who are you?"

It disregarded the cat for a moment, and leaned toward me as if to bridge the six feet of distance between us. The thing took on the very essence of spite and disgust, and hissed.

.... to be continued again, dammit. Time for me to go to work until 12 am
To elaborate on the motion of the Imposter, if I could compare it to anything it would be the crawling of an infant. It simply looked like it shouldn't have been on all fours and wasn't good at it, as it was proportioned mostly like an adult human and while it moved quickly it also seemed.. stiff. Again, maybe that was due to the fact that its long legs and arms weren't suited to what it was doing.

"The Imposter" Pt. IT'S FINALLY DONE, EVERYONE!

As it hissed, the dark shape crept sidelong towards my cat. Its eyes flickered like coins suspended in a pool of oil as one hand moved over the other, its gaze still resting on me warily. That's when I realized something that, even above all other events of the evening, caused my stomach to drop to my knees.

It wasn't after me. It was after Jazz.

The thing stood between me and the rest of the house when I called her on that fateful first night I encountered the Imposter, perhaps poised to intercept. It was Jazz that was in the bedroom the night it came to the window. On this night, it crept away after it determined there was no Jazz to be found in the bathroom, and what was worse (for it), possibly even something that could interfere (me).

But what the gently caress did it want her for? I wasn't about to find out.

The thought of approaching the thing was too revolting to fathom. Even in retrospect, I can't imagine what it would have been like to touch it. Would my fingers have even made contact with something solid? I don't know.

Before I could come up with any ideas, Jazz broke out of her terror-induced torpor and ran for the living room. The thing lunged after her, grasping at air wildly, falling and dragging itself up again to resume the pursuit of its fixation.

I followed, still feeling as if I were chasing the devil, a ghost and my own death all wrapped in one.

Looking through the doorway I could see that it had Jazz cornered and was drawing closer. In the dim light of the hall lamp that shone beneath the door to our apartment, I saw my cat tiny and prone, her little sides moving up and down rapidly. Eyes weeping kitten terror as the shadow creature loomed over her, she uttered a tiny cry.

That was when I heard Sean's key in the lock of our door. Light flooded into our apartment, and the thing that was an imposter turned into an actual shadow, two-dimensional, and flitted across the wall...
But not before Sean had seen it hovering over Jazz. Turning on the living room light (something I guess I had completely forgotten how to do in my primordial fear), he ran over to me, asking over and over again, "Are you OK? ARE YOU OK!?" Just the thought of that moment adds a warm, wet blurriness to my vision.

At the time I was inclined to ask him why he wasn't asking Jazz that, until I felt a draft and realized that I was still completely naked

I'm not sure how I can convey the feelings that came after that. It's not easy to describe the relief of finally having someone else to tell me I wasn't crazy, having my cat fine, having me fine, and also knowing that I could talk Sean into getting the hell out of that place. And I had, and she was, and I was, and we did.