A scammer pays the price

This story uses Tristan’s character, Vladislave, with his permission.
Philip Chaney, sitting at the computer in his home office, decided to finish his work and watch some videos or play some games. One of the tabs on his computer was open to the home page of his website. It bragged that he had thousands of followers, but this was a lie as he barely had a couple hundred. However, that wasn’t the worst of it. The followers he did have he stole from. He told lies to try to convince others that he was a great person fighting against evil people and he needed money to help his fight. He didn’t care about the innocent people he lied about or the people left without funds as long as he got money and attention.
As he continued, his computer screen started to flicker. Confused, he started checking the wires. Soon, however, the computer turned off as though someone had pressed the power button. He checked the plugs before looking back at the screen. The screen was black at first, but then a horrifying image of a dragon’s head showed up for a few seconds, startling him.
He was more startled to hear a voice behind him ask, “Having some trouble?”
Philip rapidly arose from his chair and looked around, but there was no one in sight. “WHO ARE YOU!? IS THIS A JOKE!?”
“No,” the voice replied. “I turned off your computer because I have business with you. Here, let me make myself visible.”
The invisible figure allowed itself to be seen. Philip was horrified to see the voice came from a dragon with dark blue, heavy skin. He had sharp claws and there were spikes on his tail and in front of his legs. His head had sharp teeth, red and orange eyes, and antlers. He wore a black and red shirt with a zipper, and in one of his hands he clutched some kind of crystal.
“Hello,” the fearsome dragon told him. “My name is Vladislave.”
Philip thought of the loaded gun he kept in his desk drawer for protection. He thought about getting it and firing it at this intruder. He was shaken when he heard Vladislave’s voice inside his head telling him, “Go ahead and try it.”
He reached into a desk drawer, pulled out the gun, and fired it at Vladislave, but the bullets had no effect. He soon felt a twisting motion. He looked down at the gun to see it was being twisted by some unseen force. The twisting became more forceful; this caused his finger to get caught in the section holding the trigger, filling it with sharp pain. He then felt the gun get yanked off his hand. He watched the gun float until it was above the dragon’s hand. Vladislave fired a ball of blue fire onto the gun, causing it to melt. The hot liquid metal poured onto the floor and burned through the carpet.
Philip stared in shock and horror. When he looked up from the pool of molten metal, he noticed Vladislave pointing to the computer. As Philip looked, he saw the computer turn on by itself. The screen glowed a light bright blue for a moment before ghastly images appeared on the screen. The screen showed every door in the building, but each one had a grotesque-looking dragon guarding it. Some of the dragons had an excessive number of limbs while some had four or only two. Some of them had limbs that appeared broken or twisted. While they all had different appearances, each one appeared ghostly. Vladislave let Philip drink in the sight of the numerous spectral dragons, then explained, “You may wonder if they’re real or just illusions. The truth is it doesn’t really matter. The point is there’s no way for you to escape this building. You won’t even be able to escape this room.”
Shaking, and not knowing what else to do, Philip reached for his cell phone to call for help. However, Vladislave swiftly went over to him. The dragon hit him in the throat and snatched his phone. He squeezed tightly and the phone shattered into hundreds of pieces.
When Philip tried to speak, he found his couldn’t speak above a whisper because of the throat injury. This prevented him from screaming for help. “Wh-What-What do you want!?”
“To make you pay for your wrongdoings.”
“P-please!” he begged. “I haven’t really hurt anybody!”
“Yes, you have. You’ve lied, spread hatred, and stolen money from people. Even as we speak there are people hungry and shivering in the cold because you convinced them to take what little money they had and give it to you! You tricked them into thinking you deserved their money more and now they’re suffering! The people you lied about are also suffering!”
“I… I haven’t hurt that many people!”
He smirked. “Oh, so now you admit you have hurt people! You bragged on your website that you had thousands of followers who had donated money to you. Was that a lie?”
“Yes! I don’t have that many followers! You can check!”
Vladislave laughed. “Do you think I hadn’t?  I know all about you! You really are lying about how many followers you have, but that doesn’t change the fact that you have scammed and deceived and lied about so many people and planned to keep on doing it! Do you really think saying, ‘Okay, I did scam my followers, but there aren’t that many!’ makes it okay?! Whether you conned ten followers or ten thousand, you still knowingly hurt people!”
He glared at Philip with increasing anger and disgust before continuing. “I once attacked someone who had poisoned people, but I went easy on him because he had repented of his previous evil. You, however, aren’t the least bit sorry for what you’ve done. You’ve lied and scammed, and now you are going to pay!”
“Just take the money and give it back to the people I conned!” He coughed as his strained voice finally gave out.
“I plan to after I’m done with you.”
Philip felt a sharp, burning pain, similar to a paper cut, on his arm. Shortly afterward, he felt uncomfortable and his head began to swim. Then he started to have hallucinations of ghosts coming to haunt and tear at him.  Vladislave announced, “These are psychic cuts that inflict both physical and mental pain. Just two or three would be bad enough, but you’re going to receive one for every follower you lied to and cheated out of money.”
Philip’s fear grew, but he thought that as bad as a couple hundred of those cuts would be, he could manage. However, he nearly blacked out from terror as Vladislave smiled and added, “You claimed on your site you had thousands of followers, right? Let’s go with that number.”
Philip's followers were surprised to get up the next morning and discover there were two new posts on his website, both of which were simply signed "V". One of them was an announcement that Philip was a lying con artist and that those he had conned would be getting their money back. The other was a picture of Philip lying in a hospital bed. He was alive but unconscious with an expression of terror on his face. 
By Raidra
Category:Horror stories
Category:Raidra