Finally, you're clean. 


Hands 


When you come across it, half-buried in the grass by the side of the 
walking path, the first thing that stands out is how comically out-of- 
place it is. The hideous ochre rust that adorns its surface is in sheer 
contrast to the small ring of bright yellow flowers that surround it. 
You lean in for a closer look. It appears as if someone hastily dug a 
pit for it and then jammed it in there before fleeing. 


You carefully dig it out of the ground. Perhaps when you get back 
home, you can sell it to that antique shop down the street. Or maybe 
you can give it to Enrique for his upcoming birthday. He’s a big fan 
of old things. 


As you scrape the dirt away, you get a better look at the object. It’s a 
bell shaped like a cartoon anvil. You grasp it by the large ring on top. 
Oddly enough, it doesn’t ring. Curious, you turn it upside down. The 
clapper has been taped to the side. Briefly you wonder why, as you 
remove the tape and ring it a couple times. 


The sound is mellow and gentle, with a clear, high pitch anda 
pleasant waning note. Almost immediately, you sense the gaze of 
some flesh-craving crime against nature. You look around, like a 
startled rabbit, but there’s not a soul in the woods save you. The sun 
is sharp and bright, but suddenly you’re aware that the trees all but 
blot out the sky, and there isn’t a creature to be heard at all. It’s just 
you and the miles and miles of suddenly very empty forest around 
you. 


You stand up, still clutching the bell by the clapper, and start 
walking. You can feel your heart throbbing in your chest. You are 
also suddenly very aware of how squishy it is. You walk slightly 
faster, eyes flashing from side to side. There it is again; the feeling 
that something is watching you, seeking to messily devour your 
flesh. What little sun remains is swiftly blotted out by the unbroken 
canopy of dark green trees that tower over you, but the path is well- 


defined. You just have to follow it. 


As you quicken your pace, the lack of sound becomes ever more 
disconcerting. Where are the birds, the bugs, the squirrels? It’s the 
middle of summer; you shouldn't be able to go more than an inch 
without startling something. But the only noise being made is the 
sound of your feet thumping on the dirt. Is it just you, or are the trees 
leaning in towards you? You hear a sound and your heart almost 
stops. You stifle a plea for mercy and look at the ground. You 
stepped on a twig. 


You chide yourself for your paranoia and ridiculous train of thought. 
You chuckle to yourself nervously, but you can’t quite help but feel 
foreign eyes observing you. You take a look around you. The trees 
aren't getting closer. They’re sitting plump on the edges of the path. 
The forest is completely empty, with nothing around you except the 
plants. Yet you can also sense that it is getting darker, and the clap 
of thunder spurs you into action. As you return to your car, your 
pace isn’t quite a run, but neither is it a leisurely walk. 


Almost as soon as you shut the garage door, the increasingly grey 
sky turns a deep navy, and in a fashion akin to the world’s largest 
zipper, tears open. It’s like God’s showerhead; thousands of gallons 
of water on jet setting pulverize the ground, punching gashes into 
the earth, which bleed rain. You consider writing this down; maybe 
you'll take it to that poetry competition next week. You turn around, 
planning to get a- wait a minute, what the hell is that! 


Enormous grey, emaciated, puckered hands with fingers sharp 
enough to cut rock are curled around the doorframe on the far end 
of the room. They are attached to the body of a leper, half peering 
around the door. You can see ribs and even pulsating organs 
through the ash colored, inhumanly thin torso. Huge scars line it ina 
hideous patchwork fashion. The legs are even worse. You can 
clearly see the bone through the thighs, which are far too scrawny to 
support the rest. The feet, scarred and stitched, boast three 
triangular toes. The face is a hideous, grey hairless mess. Two 
bulging, white orbs with pinprick pupils stare back at you from within 
lead-colored sockets sunk deeper than the Titanic. There is no nose, 
only a long, thin gash. The mouth leers jaggedly at you, with crisp, 


white, shark-like teeth. The whole thing rests upon a two meter tall 
frame. 


For a moment that appears to be an eternity, you lock eyes with hell 
itself. Then you rub your eyes. The creature is gone. You stare at 
the door for a little longer. The door refuses to stare back, because 
doors cannot stare. You let out a nervous chuckle, telling yourself 
that from now on, you'll stop reading horror novels and eating those 
spicy pretzel bits before bed. There are small scratch marks on the 
doorframe. 


You can’t stand making real dinner, but TV dinners taste like motor 
oil. You weigh your choices, an hour for preparation and cleanup for 
a warm, savory meal, or ten minutes for a microwaveable box of 
tasteless processed stuff. 


You descend to the cellar, where all your groceries are kept. It’s still 
the only place in the house with a concrete floor, and as your feet 
cringe from the chill of the concrete, you consider replacing it with 
hardwood. You bend down, open the freezer, and search through 
the various processed edible plastics. You pick out what looks like a 
mildly edible Hungry Man and close the freezer. As you turn towards 
the staircase, you see what looks like ash-grey socks sluggishly 
ascending ahead of you. For a second you pause, but then you 
dash after it. That Hungry Man in your hands is probably tough 
enough to incapacitate an intruder. But when you reach the top of 
the stairs, there isn’t a soul except for you. Then you notice the cuts 
in the wood. 


As your head hits the keyboard for the fourth time, ruining a vital 
push, you reluctantly accept that you need to get some sleep. The 
roars of dismay and racist, homophobic slurs that blare through the 
speakers only confirm it for you. You quit the game and shut the 
computer down, then get up out of your chair, stifling a yawn and 
stretching your arms skyward. The rain is still pouring down, and you 
can hear it drumming on the roof. You stagger out of the room, 
pulling your shirt and shorts off and tossing them to the ground, and 
force yourself towards the bathroom. As you perform your nightly 


ablutions, you start hearing some noises. As if someone is tiptoeing 
upstairs. 


You take a look at the mirror from an angle. Leering at your 
reflection from your bedroom is the leper, tilted and peering through 
the doorframe. It has no eyes, and something red is splashed over 
the mouth, giving a hideous impression of lips. And it is still smiling. 
Those enormous hands are wrapped around the doorframe. As you 
startle backwards in fright, all thoughts of sleep gone, the toothbrush 
dropping from your mouth, it pulls back into the bedroom. You 
immediately peek through the door, but as usual, there is nothing 
there. Nothing except the gashes in the frame. 


You are huddled in the bed. Every light in the house is on, which is 
probably a terrible idea since the storm is really getting underway 
now. Thunder is smashing and crashing, while the lightning is 
flashing at every second, sure to fry the circuits in your house very 
soon. But you don’t care. Your eyes zip around, sure that with every 
flash, the creature will be back. You aren’t even sure why you’re in 
the bed. You’re about to get up and make for the car, and then you 
realize you might encounter the thing on your way. And who’s to say 
it isn’t waiting in the car? 

As the hours pass, your eyes start to lower. Your mind starts to 
wander. And then you fall into the half awake, half asleep twilight 
that comes from unwary sleep. 


A sound startles you out of your half-sleep. And then, for one split 
second, your nose is touching the gash in the face of the leper. It is 
wet, limp, and soggy, with a rubbery texture. Your eyes are 
centimeters away from the empty, ragged sockets. And you can 
taste the warm, wet breath on your lips. It smells of urine, rotting 
meat, and putridness. This time, your scream most certainly 
awakens the dead. But you have no time to enjoy the exaggeration, 
as the entity flees the instant it notices your wakefulness . This time, 
you grab the axe at the bottom of your bedstand. It was a gift from 
your father, who claimed that you could never be too careful. You 
snorted then, but now you appreciate his prescience. With the 
cutting tool in your grasp, you pursue the creature into the hallway. 
But once again, it’s gone. You stand there, in the middle of the hall, 


breathing deeply. You’re tempted to pass it off as some sort of 
hallucination. And then you recall the gashes in the wood, the 
sounds from the day, and above all, the smell and the feel of that 
beast against your skin. It was like touching decay and death. It felt 
wrong. And now, it’s vanished without a trace. But you know. You 
know. It will return. It will be back. 

You cannot touch it. But it can touch you. 


As you stand in that lit hallway, in a twilight between wakefulness 

and slumber, carrying an axe in the middle of the night as thunder 
and lightning rage outside your sheetrock cage in a crescendo of 

brilliant destruction, you wail. 


And then, with a brilliant flash of insight, it hits you. This is all 
because of that bell. Everything started when you rang that bell. You 
knew there was something wrong with that. This thing wants the 
bell. But then, you realize, the bell has been sitting on the dinner 
table the whole time. It could have taken the bell anytime it wanted. 
It's playing with you! So you do the only rational thing. You snatch 
the pair of pants from the ground and don it hastily. Time is 
everything. You snatch a flashlight from your bedstand, and then run 
downstairs. Quickly, you find a scrap of paper and a pen and write a 
note. You aren’t even sure what you wrote, but you are sure that it is 
important. 


You grab the car keys and bell from the table and race into the 
garage. The bell and note are stuffed into your pocket, and the axe 
into the shotgun seat. You turn the key as you push the remote to 
open the garage door, but the car isn’t starting. A particularly brutal 
flash of lightning startles you. You look to the side and see the 
demon, entering the garage from your house. The eyes are back, 
but blood is oozing from its pupils. It is still grinning at you, and you 
know for a fact that its hands have become longer. It is reaching out 
to you. But then, as it sees you see it, it stops, oddly unsure whether 
or not to move forward. That is all the time you need. The car starts 
up, and you smash the accelerator, forcing the car from 0 to 60 in 
three seconds. 


The car ride shreds what is left of your nerves. The rain is coming 
down in buckets upon buckets, and every time you look to the side, 


you can see the hellbeast, illuminated by flashes of lightning, 
standing at the edge of the road, reaching out to you and the bell. 
Providence smiles somewhat, as you do not encounter any 
obstacles. When you reach the walking path, you get out, hoisting 
the axe and flashlight. You don't bother to shut the door. 


You pound through the woods, the rain soaking you to the already- 
chilled bone. This time, the trees are definitely leaning out at you. 
But you don’t care. Fear has given your feet wings, and you race 
through. But even as you speed down the path, the monster still 
pursues you. Every time you dare to look back, it is shambling 
towards you, kicking up mud, following the pathway and the bell. 
You keep searching the ground with your flashlight. There! The little 
ring where you found it! You skid to a halt and fall to your knees. 
Hastily, you press what remains of the tape back to the clapper, 
securing it. Then you bury the bell back into the grass, far deeper 
than you found it. 


You stand up, but then slip on the wet ground. As you lie there 
triumphanily, slightly sunk into the mud with the rain splashing onto 
you, the flashlight illuminates a sudden movement. You look over, 
and burst into exhausted tears, as the flashlight illuminates the devil 
himself, strolling towards you. The face is grey, hideous, messy, 
rotting, and elated as the water runs down its awful visage. Its eyes 
have returned, and it stares at you with undisguised triumph. You 
can see water vapor being emitted from the ripped slit in the middle 
of its face. The mouth is upturned in a victorious leer, teeth deep 
black and rotting. You are too tired and exhausted to offer any sort 
of resistance. As it leans down to pick you up, the last thing you see 
before merciful slumber takes you are the beast's hands, great bony 
things, with the flesh, meat, and muscle completely degloved. They 
are growing. 


| Can't 


| can't feel your hair, the river streaming down 
Out of your head and into my open lap. 

It once was such silk, always soft to feel, 

But now so sparse and wired. 

How frayed, such disarray. 


| can't feel your face, the mask so perfect 
Upon your head and kept so flawless. 

It once was porcelain, almost mystical, 
But now so torn and broken. 

How cracked, so out of place. 


| can't feel your hand, a thing so fragile 
That it might break if looked at wrong. 
It once was dainty, so delicate, 

But now so bent and shattered. 

How singed, so pulverized. 


| can't feel your touch, something I've loved 
Ever since we had once met long ago. 

It once was stimulation, exhilarating, 

But now so gone and so far away. 

How far could it possibly be? 


| can't feel your pulse, the thing | miss most. 


| can't feel. 
| can't. 


| have something to share. 


This is not a creepypasta. 


This is a true story. I'm not writing this in character, kids. Were it 
shorter, I'd just make it a forum post, but as it is | feel like it deserves 
a page of its own. 


A few years ago, when | was seventeen or so, my grandmother still 
lived in the same house she'd owned since before my mother was 
born. She and her husband had never shown any interest in moving, 
and the house had been completely paid for years ago. It was ina 
nice neighborhood brimming with the trappings of middle class 
affluence, where the last bad thing to happen had been a major car 
accident on a nearby hillside in the mid sixties. All in all a boringly 
normal place for an older woman and her husband to live out their 
retirement in a happy miasma of suburban contentment. 


They'd never been much for pets. They took care of my aunt's dog 
for a week once, | think, but beyond that | don't recall my 
grandmother ever even considering owning a pet. Then, one day, 
when my entire family had been bundled and prodded into the car 
for the three hour drive to visit, we found that they had at some point 
acquired a... cat. 


There's a reason for my hesitation. 


The first time we encountered the cat was in the middle of a family 
dinner. Now, dinner with my family is a boisterous affair, with much 
passing of food and chattering and good-natured ribbing and usually 
a tantrum from at least one cousin, and this occasion was no 
different. But midway through the meal, we all stopped. As one, we 
grew quiet, and turned to face the still empty doorway. We could all 
somehow tell something was coming. My idiot little cousin actually 
dropped his fork with a resounding clang, but no one turned around. 
And the cat stalked in.