Tales From The Dark Forest
Scary Stories Told In The Rain | Black Screen For Sleep | Dim The Lights For Sleep | Rain Sounds
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Welcome back, everyone, to the channel. Tonight's terrifying video, I am bringing you three terrifying stories told in the rain. Now sit back. Relax. Dim those lights, and let's get spooky. Nikolai came into the house I shared with a dozen other employees of Bureau 39. I could see the bulge of his gargantuan black pistol he always kept holstered under his suit jacket. He rubbed one calloused hand over his freshly shaved head before taking a deep drag of his cigarette and flicking the ashes all over the wooden floor. He smoked Eve St. Laurent, a brand of cigarettes that Kim Jong-un also loved. They cost $60 a pack, the equivalent of the month's wages for most North Koreans. We lived in very cramped conditions. I slept on the floor on a blanket, feeling the hardwood floor like a bed of nails under my back. Computers and tables took up the entire front room in the two bedroom house. Nikolai pointed at me and my brother with a half-smoked cigarette. He narrowed his cold blue eyes at us. They looked like the eyes of a Siberian husky, the fading color of melting glaciers. "Moon," he said, nodding at me. "Take your brother's shin and come with me." Shin pushed his large, black framed glasses up his nose. His greasy black ball cut flew across his head as he turned away from his laptop, jumping up without a word. I got up just as fast. We were never allowed to leave the embassy here in Cambodia. We were kept as virtual prisoners. Everyone in Bureau 39 was at the top of their field. We had hackers, programmers of ransomware, manufacturers of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and much darker trades than that. Throughout its history, the Bureau had solid chemical weapons, biological agents, nuclear secrets, torture, and murder. To get the cash back to North Korea, we would use diplomats from the embassies, since they had immunity and couldn't be stopped even if caught carrying millions of dollars. In North Korea, the average person makes about 1,000 a year. Most have no electricity in their homes, most often defecating in bushes or in buckets. An all-farm labor is done with animals and antique plows. Going to the rural areas is like taking a time machine back to the 1700s in a way. So people signed up for the Bureau 39, or any other elite agency by the droves, in order to escape these intolerable living conditions. The government had the pick of the litter. To get into the capital of Pyongyang, a citizen of North Korea needs a special permit. Only the elites are allowed to step foot inside city limits. And yet, even here, electricity only runs for about two or three hours a day. According to North Korean law, if a building is 10 stories or less, it doesn't need an elevator. Not that an elevator matters much in a country with barely any electricity for civilian purposes. But this means starving people are regularly climbing up dozens of stories and buildings with no electricity, central heating or air conditioning. So even though Bureau 39 agents are kept like prisoners at the embassy, we still have luxuries the average North Korean can only dream of. Perhaps 30 or 40% of their entire North Korean GDP goes to nuclear and intercontinental missile research. Even in the military, the soldiers regularly eat grass, snakes, rats, and other pests. North Koreans who have escaped to South Korea often have advanced parasite infections from eating such garbage all their lives. The South Koreans recently found 35 feet of tapeworm in a single starving North Korean soldier who drove and then ran across the DMZ, getting shot multiple times in the process. So perhaps you understand why I preferred the work at Bureau 39 at a foreign embassy rather than stay in North Korea. Bureau 39 exists for only one reason. To give hundreds of millions of dollars to Kim Jong-un for mansions, cars, women, luxury cigarettes, exotic foods, and whatever else he desires. It is a slush fund for the great leader. While the rest of his people starve and live in freezing poverty without medicine or hope, Kim Jong-un lives like a god among men. At each of his many mansions, he has harems waiting for him filled with all the most beautiful girls in the country, taken out of schools by faceless agents of this Stalinist Kingdom. Nikolai walked out into the tropical Cambodian sun. I felt blinded for a minute. I saw Shin shielding his eyes and blinking rapidly as if he had just woken up from a long nightmare. "Please enter your password." The female robotic voice said in a tone so cool, it reminded me of ice cream on a scorching day. The alarm will sound in five seconds. Sweating heavily in the heat, Nikolai straightened his collar and began pressing a series of numbers. Once he realized I was watching, he swore at me and tried to cover the pad with his other hand. But I had seen the code. 2023. It was just the year. I repressed an urge to laugh. "Come on scumbags," Nikolai said, taking his designer sunglasses out of his front suit pocket. "We have a meeting to attend. I'll explain on the way." He unlocked the Mercedes Benz with the North Korean diplomatic plates on it, and we got in. The car still felt cold from the air conditioning. The smell of Nikolai's overpriced cigarettes and even more expensive cologne hung in the air. I got in the passenger seat and Shin got in the back. We drove out through the open gate. Once the car had passed the end of the private drive, sensors automatically caused the gate the swing shut, locking the other North Korean prisoners inside, including my wife. We drove past the Buddhist temples and modern skyscrapers of the Cambodian skyline, a combination of ancient stone and gleaming glass. Nikolai lit up a cigarette and, without looking at me, started speaking, as if to himself. "We have a deal bigger than any we've had in a long time," he said, staring ahead at the heavy traffic of tuck-tucks taxis and farmer trucks and cars. He swore as he checked his watch. A group is willing to pay handsomely for the serum. I looked up sharply at those words. "The serum is not ready," I protested. Shin stayed silent in the back. I spun the sea his expression. His glasses magnified his wide, shocked eyes to owlish proportions. Nikolai swatted his hand at my comment, as if chewing away any imaginary fly. "Haven't human subjects responded to the effects of the serum?" He asked, his tone turning icy. "You've had over three years and tens of millions of dollars to experiment. I know you two are some of the best biologists from the entire country of North Korea. Now are you telling me that you have made no human progress?" "Of course not," I protested. "But we still have some kinks to work out." It has some of the properties that the supreme leader requested. It's just that some subjects have different cellular membranes, and it could lead the quite horrifying reactions. Nikolai laughed, a deep, booming laugh that cut off my protestations. "I don't give a crap about the side effects. We are selling the serum right now, today. If not, you can consider yourself experiment over. We have a group, let's say, who is willing to pay $100 million for a single crate of it. My jaw dropped. And what will happen to our project if we sell some of the serum?" Shin asked, speaking up in his nasally voice for the first time. "How often do you compare yourself to others? It's easy to envy friends' lives on social media when you only see the good parts. But comparison is the thief of joy. Online therapy can help you focus on what you want instead of what others have, because your best life is always better than the idea of someone else's. 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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Project Wailing Banshee is not yet complete. We need more time. Nikolai turned to us, grinning like a hyena, his faded killer eyes sparkling with glee. If you sell the serum to our good friends, Nikolai whispered in a low psychopathic voice, "Your funding will be guaranteed for the next two years." The serum doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to work. I sighed. I had no real voice in the matter. I turned the Nikolai and gave a brisk nod. I saw Shin do the same. Good. I'll have a panel van bring it over to our meeting area now. These men we're dealing with might have some questions for you. Just answer them and let's get out of here. No problems, all right? Right. Shin and I both said in unison. An icy wave of dread ran down my back, a premonition of things to come. We arrived at the warehouse at the edge of the city at dusk. The sky glowed a bloody red, reflecting off Nikolai's dark sunglasses. I saw a black panel van moving close behind us with some more of Nikolai's armed goons sitting in the front. An intercom buzzer stood at the side of the garage door. Nikolai pressed it. After a few seconds, a voice boomed on the other end, slightly obscured by static. "Who is it?" A man with an Arabic accent asked. "You know who it is. Open up," Nikolai said. The door rolled up slowly, revealing only a curtain of shadows. We drove in and got out. I heard my shoes clicking against the concrete floor. The place looked abandoned. An open floor stretched out for hundreds of feet in every direction. A few men dressed in all black with balaclavas on their heads walked out. I saw they all had automatic rifles slung around their shoulders. A small boy in the same attire followed closely behind the group. Nikolai's two goons got out of the black panel van. I saw them reach under their seats and pull out micro-ooses. The tension and the air felt electric. No one said anything for a long moment as we surveyed each other across the dark no man's land between us. "I'm glad to see you made it," Nikolai called out, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. I jumped. Next to me, Shin looked down at the ground, nervously chewing on his lip. "Did you bring it?" The man asked as they strode purposefully towards us. "Where is the serum?" "Hang on, hang on," Nikolai said, giving them a crooked half smile. "I need to see the money first." He motioned with his head to the soldiers. They raised their oozies. The leading man called out something in Arabic, and more black-clawed soldiers came out of the back office, dragging dozens of heavy black bags. Nikolai and his goons walked quickly forward. I followed close behind, taking Shin's arm and pulling him along. Nikolai unzipped one bag. I saw that it was stuffed to the brim with stacks of hundred dollar bills. The next big bag over was filled with euros, and the third with gold and diamonds. I never seen so much money in a single place in my entire life. He kept going through each one in turn, and I saw more precious stones, all sorts of gold bars, Canadian dollars, Japanese yen, and some other currencies with Arabic riding I didn't even recognize. Nikolai grunted. "Can't you guys ever just give us US dollars or euros? Do you have any idea how long it's going to take me to count this? And what am I supposed to do with all these diamonds? Are they marked with lasers?" Nikolai asked. Their leaders shook his head furiously. Nikolai sighed. "Go get the serum. He motioned to his goons. They practically ran to the van, desperate to get this deal over with and take their share of the profits." Nikolai's goons pulled out a small crate, only a foot across. I heard the jingle of many shatterproof vials stacked carefully inside. It was over 90% of our entire stockpile of serum, the fruit of many sleepless nights as many dead test subjects. The leader called out to the little boy in Arabic. He grabbed the crate of serum, cracked off the lid with the crowbar. He looked down excitedly at the containers laid out in front of him. I saw the leader pull one of the vials out and put it up to his eye. The liquid shone a robin's egg blue in the headlights of a car. It sparkled as he turned it, as if with thousands of pieces of glitter. The leader gave a short prayer in Arabic, his face splitting into a grin. He pulled out a syringe and called the boy over. "Hey, you should wait until we leave too," Nikolai protested, but the leader waved him off. Without a moment of hesitation, he filled the syringe with the serum, raised the boy's sleeve and injected it into his arm. He spoke a few words in Arabic, and the boy responded, nodding, still smiling. Then his face began the change. The boy's eyes widened, his mouth opened in a silent scream. His hands clenched in the fists, the fingernails biting deep grooves into his skin. Blood trickled down onto the floor. He started the turn blue, falling down on his back with a thud in a whoosh of air, seizing and kicking. The men in the Balaklavas started shouting at us, raising their guns. I put my hands up. "Wait," I cried, and surprisingly, they did. Only the boy's choking, gurgling cries broke the silence. The leader looked at me expectantly. The transformation takes a minute, this is expected. The leader nodded, looking back at his men and raising his finger. They lowered their rifles. Nikolai wiped a heavy trickle of sweat out of his eyes. His gaze flitted from me to the boy and back again, like some sort of deadly metronome. I knew if the boy died, I would die also. The boy had gone silent, his lips turned blue, his pupils dilating. He gave one last choking death rattle and went still. I checked my watch, raising a finger like I had seen the leader do. Ten seconds, I said. The room had gone deadly quiet. All I could hear was the frantic thudding of my heart within its cage of bones. Five seconds. I counted down, praying to a god I didn't believe in for this to work. The boy jerked, taking a deep breath. His eyelids fluttered open. I saw his eyes had turned pure white. He grinned, showing off the many twisted, vampiric teeth jutting out of his blackened gums. With the hiss, he pushed himself off the ground, flying through the air and landing on his feet ten feet away. "So thirsty," the boy growled in a demonic voice. His lifeless eyes flittered towards one of Nikolai's goons. In a blur, he jumped across the room and landed on a hulking figure. The man tried to fire his Uzi at the boy, but the boy swatted it out of his hand without any effort. Hanging off at the man's chest like some giant tick, the boy grinned down at him and then bit him deeply into his neck. A torrent of bright red rushed out, soaking into the man's suit. I could hear the boy's throat working as he drank furiously, sucking each precious gulp of blood with fluttering eyelids. "Kill him," Nikolai screamed. Automatic rifle rang out from all around me. I couldn't tell who was shooting at or at what. Screaming, I ran and crawled under the panel van. I waited, my ears ringing. Another burst of gunfire rang out and then rapidly got cut off. I saw a body fall only a few feet to my right. I looked over and saw Nikolai laying there, staring blankly ahead with sightless eyes, his throat torn out. I started whimpering, trying to cover my mouth to keep any sounds from coming out. I heard soft footsteps approaching. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see my own death. Yet a moment later, I heard the shrieking of metal. I waited a few moments and opened my eyes, seeing streetlights stream in. I waited in baited breath, not believing it. A few minutes later, after I still hadn't heard anything, I crawled out from under the van, checking all around me for any signs of movement. Everyone was dead. I saw Nikolai and his goons with their throats torn out. Some of the black clawed men with their hearts ripped out of their chests, the bones jutting out like razor wire around the edges of the cavernous wounds. Ryan Reynolds here for Midmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Midmobile unlimited, trimming wireless, heavy to get 30, 30, big to get 30, big to get 20, 20, big to get 20, big to get 20, big to get 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. So, give it a try at midmobile.com/switch. 45 dollars up top for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time, unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month, close. Full turns at midmobile.com. My brother Shin had his head twisted all the way around. The skin spiraling up in a nightmarish way. I bent over and retched, my mind swimming in these disturbing visions of mutilation and gore. I looked at the entrance and saw the boy had ripped the locked door off its hinges and walked out into the tropical night. And then it struck me. I was free. I looked back at the money, laughing and dancing. I grabbed a bag of the cash, feeling just how heavy it was. I marveled at the stacks of hundred dollar bills inside, each fresh and new, smelling like hopes and dreams. A shadow fell over me. In the doorway, I saw the boy. His clothing hung in tatters around his rapidly changing body. As I watched him, he grew taller, his arms and legs lengthening. His tanned, Middle Eastern skin lightened until it shone to like bleached bones. Claws ripped their way out of his fingers and toes. His cheekbones rose into prominent bulges as his face seemed to sink in on itself. All the hair on his body fell out as his mouth opened and a sound came out. Either a laugh or a shriek. I couldn't tell which, and I guessed it didn't matter anymore. The ten-foot-tall vampiric abominations stood before me, gruesome and emaciated with teeth like nails and claws like razor blades. I stepped back, terrified and pleading for my life. "Please, please don't kill me," I said. My wife is pregnant. She is back at the—in a frenzy. The abomination ran forward and slashed at me. I felt an icy numbness run across my arm. Looking down in shock and horror, I saw the monster's claws had slashed through the meat, all the way down to the bone. Four deep gouges ran through my flesh. The monster growled, shaking the floor. My life flashed before my eyes as it advanced, opening its mouth and showing far too many twisted razor-sharp teeth. Its breath smelled like dead meat. My eyes watered. And then a man yelled something in Cambodian. A dozen other voices followed. The creature and I both turned. Dozens of police and SWAT gear sprinted into the warehouse, all pointing their guns at the creature. It hissed and spat at them, jumping onto the nearest one and biting his face shield. I heard a crack like the snapping of bones. A moment later, the police officer's face exploded into fountain of blood and gore as the creature's dozens of teeth grounded into his head. The police opened fire on the creature. I ran towards the back of the warehouse, praying that I would find another exit there and find a way out of this chaos and bloodshed. In the darkness, I saw the red lights of a fire door. I pushed my way through it and found myself in a fetid alleyway. The sound of automatic rifle fire and men screaming in agony followed me down the street as I ran. I escaped that monster, but I fear for the future. Because there's a lot more serum coming and I know from experience that Bureau 39 will sell it to any buyer. Pedro flicked the lighter, moving it under the spoon. The translucent glow at the moon spilled in through the open door of the shack. Trails alike glowing on the dirt as white as bones. It gave Pedro's tanned face an eerie skull-like cast. His sunken eyes stared out from two swollen, purplish eyelids. I couldn't remember the last time we had slept. The cane and the spoon gave off a subtle smell of cloying peppermint as the water bubbled. Satisfied, Pedro grabbed the needle and shoved it into the center of the cotton. Ah, the water of life. He said as he flicked the air bubbles out of the clear water in the syringe. He pulled up his long sleeves. I looked in horror at the scarred wreckage of leaking wounds running across his arms like the blasted landscape of a nuclear holocaust. Black necrotic spots covered his skin in many areas where he shot the drugs. After taking off his belt and pulling it tightly around his right bicep'd, one damaged vein pulsed like a fat worm. He shoved the needle in and pumped the entire dose of cane into his bloodstream within seconds. The effect was immediate. He jumped up, grabbing at his heart. His teeth gnashed and chatted together as he walked in circles. As he paced, he kicked his feet high into the air like some macabre parody of goose-stepping soldiers. Rivers of sweat immediately started winding their way down his forehead. His long black hair shone with grease and filth. A smell like wet leather and old sweat always followed Pedro wherever he went. "They're watching us, man," he said. His dilated pupils filling around the shadows outside the dilapidated shack. "I could feel the eyes on me. They're all around us." As if to emphasize his point, a gunshot went off in the distance, followed a second later by a rhythmic screeching of a car alarm. Someone screamed off in the distance, and I heard various shouts. A few seconds later, the Timil died down. "Will you shut up and sit down?" I asked, flicking my half-smoked cigarette in his direction for emphasis. I have to plan tonight's visit. Of course, visit was really just an euphemism for breaking and entering armed robbery and, sometimes, murder. We had gotten a tip off that a local dealer would be purchasing a large amount of cane and meth at a safe house about a quarter mile from here. Our plan was to take it by any means necessary. I knew the dealer also had a wife and kid living there, and I really didn't want to have to hurt them. I thought back to the last job and shuttered. I didn't really like to use licks like Pedro. He was unstable, unpredictable, sadistic, and above all, a drug fiend. He was also cheap and not afraid to kill. I could pay him with a pound of cane from helping me from a hall that brought in 20 or 30 pounds. I was just afraid that one day he would sober up enough to realize that he could get a lot more drugs by just murdering me and taking them at the end of the job, even though that would also mean the end of the new assignments. Pedro pulled out his revolver and began playing with it, like a bored cat batting a toy. He opened and closed the cylinder, putting it to his temple as if he was playing Russian roulette. He pointed the gun at me. Bang, bang, bang. He yelled, jerking the gun from an imaginary recoil every time he exclaimed it. He laughed like a maniac, emitting an insane, high-pitched cackle that raised goosebumps on my body. Boy, my head feels like it's a million miles above the ground. "We shut the F up," I said, radiating calmness. He instantly went as still as a statue. His dilated eyes gleamed with bloodlust. He took a step towards me. In the moonlight, his silhouette looked as narrow and tall as a scarecrow's. He opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment, a rattling, diseased breath rang out from next to the shack. We both looked towards the front. There was no door. Someone had ripped it off long ago. Gang graffiti covered the inside and outside walls. A mattress growing patches of black mold laid in the corner. A wooden bench and a few folding chairs were set up against the back. I surveyed this situation and realized that this was no ideal place to get attacked. We had no door to barricade, nothing to take cover behind if the enemy started shooting. But it seemed ridiculous to get so worked up. Surely it was just an animal nearby and we could scare it off with a single cry. The rasping breath sounded freakish, but it was probably just something diseased. And anyway, I had my pistol on me, my lifelong companion. I nicknamed Speedy. Speedy had seen me through many hairy situations in the past, and I was confident that it would get me through this one as well. Well, mostly confident. "What was that?" Pedro whispered, his thin frame shaking with nervous energy. "Wild dogs?" The roaring, choking breaths came again even louder, this time directly outside the shack's dilapidated walls. Pedro couldn't stand it any longer. His skin seemed the shiver with nervous energy. He sprinted outside without a moment of hesitation, raising his revolver. He turned around. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile unlimited, premium wireless, head over to get 30, 30, ready to get 30, ready to get 20, 20, ready to get 20, ready to get 20, ready to get 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. So, give it a try at midmobile.com/switch. $45 up for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time, unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month slows. Full turns at mintmobile.com. Right, towards where we had heard the crying last. I heard him shouting and then his pistol firing in rapid succession. Five or six shots piercing the night within a couple seconds. The growling grew to a deafening cacophony. And then I heard a wet sloshing sound. Something heavy smashed against the side of the shack. I thought the shack would collapse on its meager frame. Derton spiders fell from the ceiling and droves. I stood shaking against the back wall. I had my pistol in my hand, yet I didn't remember taking it out of the holster. I didn't remember cocking it. I just remember staring at the empty doorway, seeing the cracked beams. The light streamed in from the cracked windows and broken door. I saw clouds of dust swirling in cyclonic whirls within the pale moon beams. The world seemed to hold its breath for a moment. I stepped forward slowly. "Hey, Dro?" I whispered, hoping against hope that he would show his grimy, greasy face at any second. But as I edged closer to the door, that ragged, choked breathing grew louder. Some blood-soaked animal crawled around the side of the threshold, dragging its bleeding broken body behind it. I looked down and, to my horror, saw it wasn't an animal at all. It was Pedro. He had deep slash marks down the side of his face. One eye hung limply from a destroyed mountain of gore, only connected by the optic nerve disappearing into his skull. His mouth formed into a grimace. He tried to whisper something, but blood continuously trickled down his lips. His remaining eyes shone with fear and agony and something else, something I had rarely seen, even on the faces of the dying. Perhaps the closest description would be existential horror. "Please," he said, reaching out a mutilated right hand towards me. All of his fingers except for his thumb were missing. It looked like someone had taken an axe to his hand. The stumps of his fingers spurted bright red blood in time with his frenzied heartbeat. "Don't let it hurt me anymore, please," he continued to drag his destroyed body towards me like a snake with a broken spine. As he pulled himself forwards another foot, I realized both of his legs were bent backwards, appearing almost like the legs of some freakish bird. I could see fragments of sharp bone piercing outwards through the skin. His feet were not only facing the wrong direction, but his calves had been bent upwards. The torn jeans were covered in blood. They spiraled up his shattered legs. "What did this?" I whispered. I couldn't imagine the amount of strength required to do this to a human body in the space of less than a minute. My voice sounded like it was coming from someone else's mouth. Everything felt slow and dreamlike. Pedro had nearly gotten to the door when his eyes widened. He flew back, dragged by some unseen hand. I saw him trying the claw at the hard earth with his remaining hand. The fingernails ripping out with a sickening, rending sound as he disappeared into shadow. I heard him screaming as if he was being burned alive, but within a few seconds it cut off. A heavy thud shook the ground from the other side of the bare wooden wall. A harsh death rattle marked the end of Pedro and the beginning of my struggle for survival. I looked out the door, trying to measure how far it would be to the nearest house. Streetlights streamed down in the distance, only a couple hundred feet away. In alleyway, covered in graffiti stretched out in front of me, strewn with garbage and covered in skittering rats. Police sirens drew nearer by the second. The dancing red and blue lines stroked through the dirty walls of the abandoned buildings on the nearby streets. I never been happier to see the pigs show up. Soft, dragging footsteps reverberated outside the small shack, seemingly in time with my heartbeat. I realized I had waited too long. The creature that had attacked Pedro came around the corner. I gawked as something from a nightmare slunk out of the darkness. It looked like it had put on a old woman skin, like a bum might put on a secondhand coat. The skin hung loosely from the hunched back frame, naked and still dripping blood from a dozen places. Its teeth shone like long, wicked nails. It had dozens of them and its grinning rictus mouth, each shining a cold cyanide blue. Its lips formed a grinning white line like a scar across its monstrous face. The eyes seemed to suck in the meager illumination of the distant streetlights, emanating a ghostly light that filled the orbs with a sickly pale radiance. They looked as white as an animal's eye in a car's headlights. In its hands, it was curving metallic claws like its teeth, each as sharp as razor wire and as blue as sapphires. Its breath rattled as its sunken chest expanded, its naked body quivering with excitement. Fresh blood streamed from where it wore the skin around its eyes, its fingers, its skeletal feet and its gibbering, gnashing mouth. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably less than a few seconds. I stared into its flat, bloody eyes, only the sound of my heartbeat and the choking breaths of the monster breaking the silence. The police sirens had turned off, but I saw the flashing lights bouncing off the street. My instincts screamed at me to act. I raised Speedy, my old friend, a tourist judge. I knew every inch of its black surface like the body of a lover. It shot four ten boar shotgun shells and could rip through flesh like butter, especially at point blank range. It had saved my life twice before, and I prayed the God that it would do so for a third time. "F you you crazy bitch!" I said, pulling the trigger twice. The first shot hit the abomination in the face, tearing away large chunks of the creature's costume of skin. The second ripped through its right arm. Underneath the covering of human skin, I saw more of that blue alien metal. It grinned wider, the skin pulling apart with the sound like ripping paper. It ran at me, seemingly unaffected by the shotgun shells, pieces of bloody gore flying off its body. Its white, lidless eyes seemed to take up the entire world as it drew near. I saw its metallic arm coming up, the fingers like blue scalpels rising to meet me. I ducked, but I felt its claws way across my scalp. A numb, cold pain shot through my head. If I had been a moment slower, it would have ripped my face to shreds, but instead, it just left four deep gouges through my scalp. I felt blood instantly soaking into my hair and running down my face. I tried sprinting past it, but it was too fast. I felt a sharp, burning pain as its claws dragged through the meat of my back. With speedy still in my right hand, I sprinted for my life towards the police cars. "Help for God's sake, help!" I cried. I couldn't see anyone on the street through the narrow view of the alleyway. I jumped over bags of trash, seeing mice and rats slink away into the shadows. Rapid footsteps sounded right behind me. I didn't dare look back, but I could hear the creature. It was fast and drawing nearer by the second. My foot caught a half-broken chunk of cinder block laying in the path and I went flying. I nearly reached the street by this point, soaring through the air I landed hard on broken glass and sharp stones. I felt countless small wounds biting into my flesh, but my adrenaline was so high that I barely noticed. I spun so that I could be on my back. The creature came down on me with a crushing suffocating pressure. I raised speedy, praying that my last three bullets would have more impact than the first two. As it raised its claw on metal hand, I pointed the gun, point blank at its heart, and fired the last shots in rapid secession. The hand hung over me like a looming guillotine for a long moment, the fingers flexing and shaking. Then the abomination fell back, twitching and kicking. Its wide eyes rolled wildly into their sockets. The last of its human skin had come off, and I saw something truly alien laying there. It had throbbing black veins running over its metallic blue bones. Its many teeth constantly bit and gnashed at the air. Ryan Reynolds here from Midmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Midmobile unlimited, premium wireless, headed to get 30 30, ready to get 30, ready to get 20 20, 20, ready to get 20 20, ready to get 15 15 15 just 15 bucks a month. So give it a try at midmobile.com/switch. 45 dollars up front for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month slows full turns at midmobile.com. And it continued to swipe its deadly claws in front of its body. But from a torn pit in the center of its chest, I saw a torrent of dark fluid rushing out. It gagged its final horrifying raspy breath and then lays still. Shell shocked bleeding from dozens of wounds and still hyperventilating. I walked out onto the street. I looked both ways, seeing no one. I felt confused, and this area always had people on it. Then I looked down. I saw two murdered police officers laying on the ground, their eyes wide and staring, their pupils dilated. A blue metallic creature stood over them, carefully peeling off their skin with claws like saw blades. As silently as I could, I turned and ran. I left the city that night and took refuge far away into the countryside. And as far as I am concerned, the city with its ineffable nightmares and agonies can take care of itself. I was born to kill. Even as a child, a little boy no more than seven. I strangled my neighbor's cat and then burned their house down. I left the body of their beloved pet strung over their mailbox. The police never figured out that I did it, a mere child next door. But like many things in life, my addiction spiraled out of control. Just killing animals or starting fires would not make the cut. I wanted something more hands-on, more personal, and most of all, I wanted people. I hated humanity, every single disgusting person on this planet, except for myself of course, because I was different from all the weak babbling masses. I know myself to be superior, the overman predicted by Nietzsche. I killed my first homeless man when I was 16. I stabbed him. He screamed, flailing, trying to get up and stumble down the dark alleyway, but I ran quickly behind him, stabbing him in the back a few more times. He fell down, gasping, and pleading, and I flipped the bastard over with my shoe and knelt down to finish the job. I wrapped my gloved hands around his throat, tightening and tightening. I felt his thready, raspy pulse beating, beating so fast it seemed like his heart must explode. And then it started to slow, then stopped. I felt the life go out of him, the last heartbeat, the last dying gasp after I had taken my hands away. His lips had turned blue and his eyes bulged out of their sockets. It felt sublime, absolutely pure power and control, an almost sexual rush that made all the colors in the world seem bright again. But after a couple of days, the colors faded back to their dull monotonous tones, the sounds grew distant again, the good feelings faded away like puddles under the summer sun. And I began to think about the next one, planning the next one. I began to think about the future, my IQ tested in the genius range multiple times. When I took the SATs, I scored nearly a 2200 out of 2400, which put me on the top 1% of the US population. In hindsight, I wish it could have done things differently. I wish it could have used the intelligence to get a good job, lots of money, a mansion, maybe some power over the disgusting masses of humanity that swarmed all over the world. But instead, I followed my dreams. I followed the dark path that inevitably led me where I am now. It all started last night at about 11 PM. I had strangled a prostitute the death and thrown the body into my trunk. Then, whistling to myself, I went through my music collection and found what I was looking for. Norwegian Black Metal, a band named Bursam. The shrieking of fast guitars always got my blood up. Blaring behold the daughters of the Affirmament, on repeat, I lit up a cigarette, starting my car and pulling out of the graveyard where I had taken the young hooker, under the pretense of paying her for sex. I had no real interest in sex, however. It always seemed extremely dirty and disgusting, and who could possibly be worthy of someone like me? So instead, I had asked her to get out of the car to go to a nearby stone slab where one could lay down flat. When she sat down on it, asked me what I wanted to do. I pulled out a hammer that I had tucked into the back of my pants, hidden under my loose button-down shirt. I smashed it into her head with a satisfying crack. I heard the bone fracture as the metal of the hammer made a slight ringing sound. She had gun flying backwards off the stone slab, losing consciousness for a few moments. But by the time I had walked over to her, her eyes had opened once again. The eyelids fluttered, her stare flicking to the left and right rapidly, as if searching for help that would never come. I knelt down and finished her disgusting life. Her deep brown eyes kept meeting mine, as if asking, "Why?" as if I needed a reason. I knew of a nature reserve nearby with a dirt road leading into it. It sometimes had a chain lock on it at night, but I always kept a spare of bolt cutters, and then I draped the chain back over the gate so that any passing travelers would think that it was still locked. The nature reserve looked so beautiful in the day, but at night it looked eerie. The crooked branches of the trees reached into a narrow dirt road, scraping at my car and windows with a slight screeching noise. A foot trail to the left led to the top of a small mountain where people went to admire the view of the surrounding hills and forests. But I went straight, deeper into the forests. Eventually the dirt road ended, and I got out, grabbing my flashlight and shovel from the trunk. I gave the dead body of the hooker, now wrapped up in white sheep, a disparaging look before turning away and slamming the trunk closed again. I walked out a couple of hundred feet from the road, not on any human or deer trail, but randomly crashing through brush and prickers and spider webs. I never buried bodies anywhere near a trail. I dug a fairly shallow grave, maybe four feet deep. It still took me quite some time, and by the time I felt confident the hole looked deep enough, I found myself covered in sweat, my shirt sticking to my skin. Sign, I walked back the way I had come, opening up my trunk and slung the body of the dead woman over my shoulder. She couldn't have weighed more than 120 pounds, while I weighed nearly 200, but getting that awkward 120 pounds through the pricker bushes and past thick brush proved very difficult. After I got a little way into the woods, I started just dragging her by her feet, unsnagging all the thorns that kept threatening the rip the sheet in the shreds. By the time I got back to the hole, the sheet had slashes and rips all through it. I was breathing heavily, totally exhausted and grateful to be done with the hard part. I threw the body down the hole and turned the grab my shovel to fill it back up. And yet, when I looked behind me, the shovel had disappeared. I hadn't seen so much as an animal this whole time, so I looked around frantically. I had to be alone out here at three in the morning in a nature reserve many miles long. I felt someone grab my arm and I screamed. Spinning around, I saw the body of the dead prostitute. The shredded remnants of the white sheet lay in the hole still, but she had crawled out. One of her eyes was swollen shut, purple and black. She had cleared dark handprints around her throat and crushed blood covering the area on the side of her head where I had hit her with the hammer. And yet, she somehow stood there in front of me. "Come, come," she said in a hissing voice. "Don't be afraid, Leon. I'm not your plaything. I'm just using her body so we could have a little chat." "Where's my shovel?" I asked frantically. I know, in hindsight, what a stupid question it was, but my brain had shut down from surprise and overload by this point. The dead girl just ignored my outburst and kept on talking. "My name is Forrest. My master has been impressed by your work. He would like to see you, in fact." The dead girl grinned, her blood stained teeth flashing under the bright LED of my flashlight. The grand looked like something sick, something evil and twisted. Then the dead girl grabbed my arm again, the freezing cold skin on her hands, pressing against my arm, and I felt myself falling. "Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing." Mint Mobile unlimited! Premium wireless! "Get 30-30, get 30, get 30, get 20-20, get 20-20, get 20-20, get 15-15, 15-15, just 15 bucks a month. So, give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch." 45 dollars up front for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. Slows, full turns at mintmobile.com. I closed my eyes, but I think I somehow fell right through solid ground. A few seconds later, I felt it stop. The butterflies in my stomach still fluttering. I opened my eyes slowly and found myself in a deep underground cavern with torches along the walls, and blazing fires scattered throughout. I looked over and saw a bloodless sheet-white man now held my arm in the same way the dead girl did. Blood-red irises surrounded his pupils, and his limbs looked twisted and inhuman, his fingers unnaturally long and pointed. "You have done very well," Forrest said. "No reason to be afraid, my master just wants to make you an offer." "An offer?" I asked. "Yes, you'll see." He let go of my arm. I felt the blood rushing back into it. Then he started walking forwards towards a blazing inferno a few hundred feet away. Black smoke billowed out of it, going up through many holes in the ceiling to whatever world lay above. As I neared it though, I realized I could see eyes in the fire. They looked like black holes in the middle of all that heat and light, two floating black eyes staring directly at me. I stopped in my tracks. Forrest turned around snarling. "Go forward," he screamed, and I did. When I got within a couple of dozen feet of the eyes, I heard a new voice. "Ah, Leon, Leon Aurora." "I have watched your work with interest," the voice said, booming from everywhere and nowhere around me. "What work?" I asked, though I knew. The eyes seemed to smile, and I heard an insane laughter echoing all around me. "Well, let's get this over with, shall we?" the voice asked. "I am not omnipotent, but I know many things, far more than anyone knows." First murder, you stabbed and then strangled a homeless man the death in Hartford. You left his body in the alleyway. Unsolved, police have no leads. Second murder, you kidnapped a prostitute from Boston and then burned her alive deep in the forests of the Berkshires. Unsolved, police have no leads. Third and fourth murders, you waited for two hikers on the Appalachian Trail. When they walked by, you shot both of them the death and left their bodies sprawled on the path. Unsolved, police have no leads. Fifth, six, and seventh murders. You found a rule home in the middle of Maine, took a drill and screwed all the doors shut. Then you soaked the entire outside in gasoline and burned the house down. Three of the family members inside died from suffocation and burning, including the father, mother, and their two-year-old daughter. One of them, boy a seven, escaped by jumping out the window and breaking his leg. Unsolved, police have no leads. Eighth murder, another prostitute kidnapped from Boston. You injected her with acids and bleach before strangling and dumping her body in the Berkshires again. Unsolved, police have no leads. Ninth murder, you used a hammer to fracture the skull of a prostitute from Hartford and buried her in the Nature Reserve in Massachusetts. Unsolved, police have no leads. The voice stopped, an eerie silence descending on the cave. I turned to look at Forrest, who smiled wide at me, showing far too many sharp teeth. "I didn't," I said. "I never did any of that," the voice laughed. "Everything is fine, my young friend. I have no problem with your work. In fact, I only brought you down here to offer you a job," the voice said. "Who are you even?" I asked. "What kind of job?" "Ah, how rude of me," the voice said, a noticed suppressed glee still in its booming voice. "My name is Forrest. We are looking for hard-working people like you. Though our work is slightly more intellectual than strangling prostitutes. But we pay well, a million dollars per contract." "A million dollars to kill a single person?" I asked incredulous. "I had been doing it for free all this time." "Indeed. Do you agree?" I nodded eagerly. "I'll do it," I said. "Where do I sign?" I found myself back in the Nature Reserve alone again. The dead body of the woman was back in the pit, laying on the tattered rags of the sheet. My shovel had even returned, though not where I had originally put it. I saw it line flat underneath the bush ten feet away. I finished my work quickly and returned home. When I got there, I found a note written in a beautiful old-fashioned cursive script. The note laid on my kitchen table, all the doors and windows still locked, with no sign of forced entry. Sign, I walked forwards and read it. "To Leon." "Your first task is to kill the old woman at 747 angle trace road. She is home now." I frowned down at the note, flipping it over and seeing nothing on the back. "I crap," I said, feeling tired and worn out. "I didn't know if I had to do it right now, but I figured I might as well." By tomorrow morning, I could have a million dollars cash in my possession, as long as I took out this old hag. I went to the bathroom and popped a couple of caffeine pills to wake myself up. I looked in the mirror, seeing dark circles under my eyes. I shook my head and flicked off the light. I went to the bedroom and got what I think of as a kill kit together. A ski mask, handcuffs, a crowbar, a knife, a drill, screws, rope, zip ties, needles, chemicals, a lighter, and a small canister of gasoline. That seemed to cover all the basics. If I couldn't get in, I could always just drill the doors closed and burn the whole house down with her inside. If she truly was that old, then the chances of her finding a way out in time was nil, especially if I got more gasoline and soaked the entire outside of the building first. I usually put the most gasoline on the windows of the first floor to prevent the people inside from using them when the fire started. But when I got to the house, I found the front door unlocked. This was a rural area, and perhaps people just felt safe that they didn't need to lock their doors. Whatever the reason, I found myself ecstatic. This task would be even easier than I thought. I had rubber sneakers on with cloth wrapped around them to muffle my footsteps as much as possible. I also used gloves, a hairnet, a ski mask, and totally black gloves that covered every inch of my body. I didn't want to take the risk of having a single hair fall around the crime scene. A hair which had my DNA and could potentially be used to put me in prison for the rest of my life. The house was pitch black. I took a small pin light out of my pocket, shining it around. Strange, twisted statues lined the hallway. I saw a metal sculpture of a woman being burned at the stake, her eyes wide and panicked, her mouth opened and some eternal shriek as the steel representations of flames licked the bottom half of her body. Next to that, I found one of a man who looks similar to the elephant man, with maybe a touch of sloth from the goonies mixed in. He had bulging muscles underneath the scarred tumors and tissue growing all over his body, but his smile looked genuine and innocent. In one mass of hand, he held a baseball bat with nails coming out of them on all sides. I heard a creak from upstairs. My breath caught in my throat. I turned rapidly, but I was still alone. I decided I better go upstairs now and finish this. There was no reason to press my luck by staying here any longer than I absolutely had to. I went up the stairs as fast as I could without making a sound. In one hand, I had the huge, recently sharpened butcher's knife I like to use for this kind of work. As I got to the top, I shone the pin light around and, to my horror, I saw an old woman standing there in the upstairs hallway, just staring at me and grinning. It was the old woman force had showed me a photograph of before I left the cave I knew. She looked like a walking corpse with stringy greasy white hair sticking out of her head. Deep sunken eyes and that same insane smile she had in the photo. I ran forwards, raising the knife to stab her, but she didn't flinch, didn't scream or try to run. She just stood there grinning. "I'll wipe that frickin grin off your face, you crazy old witch," I said, plunging the knife deep into her stomach. She didn't respond. Ryan Reynolds here from Midmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So, to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Midmobile unlimited. Premium wireless. I'm ready to get 30, 30, ready to get 30, ready to get 20, 20, ready to get 20, 20, ready to get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. So, give it a try at midmobile.com/switch. 45 dollars up front for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time, unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month, slows, full turns at midmobile.com. Except to grab my arm and twist it, still smiling. She pulled me close to her mouth and whispered in my ear, "If it was that easy to kill me, you don't think I would have done it myself by now." She asked in a raspy voice. Then she kept twisting. I felt a searing agony in my left arm as the bone snapped and popped out of the skin. I began the shriek, trying to kick and punch at the old woman, but it felt like fighting a metal statue. Blood poured out of her stomach, but it looked black and smelled like rotting meat. As I looked down at it, I saw countless white maggots writhing and dancing in the rancid fluids. That was when true horror filled me. I'd always thought myself to be above fear. That such weak emotions only came from the subhuman masses. But my experience in that cursed house changed that forever. She let go of my hand quickly. I stumbled back, slipping into the pool of rancid blood and falling. The old woman jumped on top of me in that instant. I thought she meant to kiss me as she lowered her face towards mine. As I opened my mouth the screen, I felt something wet and warm dribble into my mouth. I began the choke and rasp, reaching into my pocket for a syringe filled with hydrochloric acid. Without hesitating, I popped off the cap and shoved it into her eye, pressing down on the plunger. She hissed like a snake and fell off me, and I ran faster than I ever had in my life, grabbing at my broken arm. I ran all the way to the car and sped out of there at 100 miles an hour. Spitting as I went, trying to spit out the rancid taste of the blood she had spewed into my mouth. I needed the go to the hospital, but I went home first to get all the incriminating possessions off my person. I certainly wasn't planning the go dressed in all black with someone else's blood on my face. It would raise too many questions, but my arm throbbed and total agony. It was some of the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life, and the fear still stayed with me. I wondered if that woman would come hunt me down, but as I went into the bathroom to clean myself off, I looked into the mirror. Opening my mouth, I saw maggots squirming in my throat and threw up a torrent of black blood into the sink. As I looked down at my broken arm, still bleeding from where the bone had stabbed through the skin. I realized with horror that my blood had also turned black at rancid. The blood that leaked out of my body had tiny, swarming maggots in it, and stained the sink with foul streaks. And I knew I was changing.