One by One

When I think of the work “elimination” I simply synonymise it with the word “out.” However, it’s hard to define what being “eliminated” means. It depends on what you are being eliminated from. You can be eliminated from a game that you and your friends play, or you can be eliminated from life. 
Recently, I’ve been reading a bunch of these pastas here and I find it extremely hard to make a video game scary because you know that it is probably fictional and no one on earth has ever died or gotten severely harmed from interactions with these so called “entities”, and “demons” on an online platform. By the end, the story ends up sounding like a joke and no one is able to take the genre seriously anymore. 
However, the scariest thing is when the situation in the game sounds perfectly normal, and nothing goes wrong. Then you realize, as it dawns upon you, the true meaning of the story. The more you think about it, the scarier, and the creepier it gets. You will never be able to look in the mirror the same way ever again. You can go to bed, but not sleep a wink. You may doze off in class, but your mind is repeating the denouement of the story. 
The setting is within an innocent children’s game, while the actual meaning is far more sinister because it applies to the real world as well. The storyline now has a powerful weapon that can make you shake, and make your blood run ice cold. It now has truth. The fact that whatever happened to the main character can definitely happen to you.
Any day....
Any hour...
Any minute...
Any second...
People can go paranoid over it and it slices through their minds at random moments and it makes them stop dead in their tracks. That is the power of truth and reality. 
Well, I don’t wanna take too long with my sidenotes. It was just last night when I recalled this memory. This was from my childhood years, and I never found it creepy until now. Probably because I was just a little kid who didn’t know true danger. It started when I had nightmares for weeks on end. It may sound normal to some readers out there. However, when the nightmares become more disturbing by the night, you start to panic. The first one was simply me falling and waking up when I hit the floor. That’s a common nightmare that I’m sure that many readers have had. 
It was the last one that made me recall this memory.The last nightmare was me walking through a grassy track through a dark forest, with a bunch of rotting bodies hanging from the trees around me. They had bags over their heads so I can’t see their faces. More and more bodies would drop from the tree at random and I kept trying to get out of the forest which seemed to have an indefinite area. I would scream in hopes of seeing civilization somewhere within the endless forest, but no noise was emitted when I screamed and cried for help. No matter how many times I would shout at the top of my lungs, I would just continue to see the endless forest of dead hanging bodies hanging from trees. 
I didn’t know when I’d wake up. It was just a random moment when I just jerked myself awake. 
Yes, even though we are just avatars from an online platform, we still have dreams, thoughts, and feelings. I don’t think many people know that. It’s probably because they just see us as objects that they can move by force. They treat us like objects and that’s how they define us. 
The thing that scared me more than this dream, was the fact that the next dream I had was happy. I was with my parents on Christmas Eve listening to carols with a cup of cocoa in my hand. Why did it scare me though? 
I realized that my dreams had a pattern. It was supposed to get worse by the night, but the nightmares suddenly stopped. What was supposed to come next? Was that dream that I had that night supposed to prepare me for the worst? 
The next night, I didn’t have a bad dream or good dream.
I had no dream at all. It was just darkness and an endless void of nothingness. I’ve heard a bunch of stories saying that dreams can fortell the future. It’s in the Youtube videos, news, books, articles, and it’s even in religious texts, like the Bible. So I got desperate enough to ask God about what was happening to me. 
The next day, my parents left to get stuff from the market. I stayed at home, and watched the fire burn the timberwood in the fireplace. They came back 2 hours later with the usual milk and bread. However, I also saw that they had bought needles and thread. Along with some make up. I guess mom was running low on both things. She knew how to sew and she was one of those women who knew how to take good care of herself. At the bottom of the bag was simply some peach colored clay which dad used to create sculptures. He was very proud of his works and he had great skill with the sculpting knife. 
They were extra nice that night. They let me stay up a little later than they. My parents went into their room while I was left to watch some TV before going to sleep.
The fire crackled and popped as the TV continued to play. That’s when I noticed that there was a terrible smell. 
I didn’t know where it was coming from, but I was sure that it wasn’t from me. It smelled like something was just rotting. Maybe some milk that was left too long in the fridge, or vegetables gone bad? Or it could be the fact that there are still leftovers sitting on the table from this morning that can’t last too long out in the open.
It wasn’t any of that.
Maybe it was from my room.
It was not, because I turned the place upside down trying to find what was emitting that ghastly scent. 
It wasn’t the bathroom. The bathroom was pristine with the toilet flushed, sink counter clean, and the shower was flawlessly white. I checked the living room once again, and that’s when it hit me. The smell was coming from the fireplace. I walked over and I saw pieces of an unknown substance that was burnt black and it smelled like burnt meat. I removed the ghastly smelling wood, and replaced it with fresh wood and sprayed air disinfectant to get rid of the smell. 
That night, I heard noises from my parent’s room as I was going to bed. There was a buzzing sound, and something else that sounded like scissors cutting paper. I shook it off and that night, I dreamed of nothing once more. Ever since the nightmares stopped, I’ve been dreading the night that it would come back as an even worse dream. 
Now, I was on my 3rd day of dreaming about nothing. At that point, I got way too scared to sleep. I just can’t do it due to anxiety. 
Honestly, I wish I had gone to sleep that night. 
I laid in my bed, but I continued to hear a strange sound.
Like scissors cutting through paper. It was continuous, annoying, and loud.
I had to see what was making all that noise. 
It turns out that it was once again coming from my parent’s room, for the second night in a row. However, I managed to open the door without making a sound, and slip out. 
The floor was carpet so it silenced my footsteps as I advanced to my parent’s room. Now, the doors all had small windows to take a peek through. I was just tall enough to see through the small window.
Mom and dad were both chuckling and laughing while standing and mom had the scissors from her sewing kit and dad had the sculpting knife in his hand. They were also holding pictures of themselves that was from not too long ago. 
That’s when I saw it. There were pieces of flesh and skin on the floor and I saw my mother stick the scissors into her own face and rip off part of her face. 
She used her hands to tear at the rest of her skin on her face. However, she turned towards my direction and I saw her real face. It was burnt black and there were wrinkles, and holes in it. I was able to see her face muscles under the black, burnt, and deformed skin. Even if she was in the form of a pixelated character, the mere sight of her true face could have made a real human gag and freeze in fear. 
My dad did just about the same thing. Or at least, the creature that looked like my dad did the same thing. He stuck the sculpting knife into his face and tore it all off in one motion. He laughed, chuckled, and cackled. At the same time, he also tore off the skin of his scalp and I could see his brain under a thin layer of skin. His eyes looked like they could fall off, and he had no teeth in his mouth which sunk his lips. He grinned, and his grin was sinister, cynical, calloused, and belligerent. It was void of mercy, and it got wider, and wider, until the sides of his lips nearly touched his eyes. He opened his mouth, and he was able to open his mouth so wide to the point where it was like he had no jaw. He let out the most demonic laugh, and at that moment, I couldn’t take anymore of it.  
These aren’t my parents…..
Where are my real parents?
More importantly, who are these creatures?
I was sleepless once again that night. I was paralyzed with fear for hours on end. 
The next day, I had dark bags under my eyes and I looked terrible. 
I looked at the kitchen counter and I had to try to not think of what I saw last night. I also saw the computer, and opened it to the homescreen. That’s when I noticed something. I saw a red object that was in the small houseplant we had. 
It was a USB.    
I plugged in the USB and it was a video file. It was footage from one of the cameras in the store that my parents went to the other day, the day I stopped dreaming.  
My parents were about to walk out of the store, and one glitch later, they disappeared. The camera then switches to a white room. The white room had 4 men in suits, and my parents were taken into the room. My dad was stern faced, while my mother was crying.
“Please, we’re so sorry! He isn’t old enough right now!” My mother was screaming and crying.
“Oh, you know damn well that we can definitely take him right now.” There was a woman in a suit and sunglasses talking to my mom. 
She was also wearing a mask that covered her entire face. 
“He’s perfect right now.” The woman pulled out a gun and shot both my father and mother in the head with a pillow to silence the gunshot. Another glitch later, she was alone in the white room, staring at the camera, and opened that wide mouth once more to show rows of teeth all pixelated and with a grayish-blue substance dripping from it. 
The clip ended there.
I pulled out the USB and the back of the USB stick says “Elimination No. 257”. 
I then heard the car door slam on the driveway. I put the USB back into the houseplant and shut off the PC. 
My parents were their 257th elimination. I was probably the first one to find out about this. However, if this gets too far into the neighborhood, the creatures might suspect something from me. 
Now I had to hide my knowledge of who they were. I could only imagine how many couples in my area are in fact hiding their true selves.
Their charcoal black skin…..
Their bulging eyes…..
Their protruding brain…..
Their devilish grin and unnaturally wide mouths…
And their demonic laughs that make your blood run as cold as ice…
My thoughts were interrupted as the creature with my mom’s face asked me, “are you working on the computer?”
“Yes,” I lied. If I told the truth, chances are, I would not have been able to live to tell this story.
“Good job!” She replied. She stared at me with a stale smile. It was getting wider and wider until it was nearly like that inhuman smile as the sides of the lips were almost at the corners of her eyes.
I just sat there, confused and creeped out. That’s when I realized that she wasn’t staring at me.
She was staring at the figure behind me.
The figure posing as my dad was holding a black tiny object with a red blinking light that he took from behind me. The object was hidden in the book racks. He went into their room with the other figure and got their computer.
I froze, because I realized that they had a camera on me. I was being recorded.
They plugged in the camera and watched on the computer. I decided to book it out of the kitchen, out the door, and try to get to a neighbor’s house. I ran, and I didn’t look back. All I heard were the footsteps of the figures.
They were getting faster…
and faster….
and faster….
until I was sure that they were no more than a few feet behind me. I made it out of the house, and I hit the streets. 
However, after a few seconds, something felt off. My right leg, and arm became as stiff as stone and then the left side of my body was now paralyzed as well. One potion later, I was blacked out.
I gasped for air after the momentary unconsciousness and I was on a hospital bed with IV fluid flowing into my arm. My best friend from school was there. He gave me some juice and set food on the table, and I could tell that he was worried. He left and I laid there for a say or 2 to recover. I actually moved in with my bestfriend because in this world, as long as you have 2 people over the age of 9 in a house, you can live together. That’s not the point. The point is that there are some questions that are left unanswered.
I was sure that those figures were behind me. Why didn’t they just kill me? Maybe they thought I was not ready yet?
However, I don’t wanna complain because I’m alive and well today, but this story is something that just popped up in the back of my head, but I never really thought about it in detail like this. To you readers out there, I just want you to look at your parents a little closely next time. Does something seem wrong, or do they smile a little too wide sometimes? Maybe you have heard snipping from your room or had nightmares/dreams that suddenly stop. I don’t know, maybe that’s just me, and 256 other parents who were eliminated. 
Who knows, it sounds like something that would happen in the human world. Maybe your parents slipped out one day, and were not themselves when they came back. Maybe everything went right and as planned, but you can probably detect some small differences. You can sense it in the way they laugh, talk, smile, and live in general. 
Or maybe, you can smell rotting material and you can feel uncomfortable.
Stuff like this makes you doubt even the people who you love and are the closest to you, because they may as well be the monster that has midnight black skin, a sunken nose and mouth with no teeth. Along with that inhuman smile that gets their lips to touch the sides of their eyes, and the widest mouth with multiple rows of teeth, and grayish-blue spit. Their demonic, and hellish laugh can echo through your brain, and just as you are about to forget about it, it comes back, louder, and louder, until it’s the only thing you can think of. 
Category:BlueHeart7693
Category:AASPT 2020 entry
Category:Creepypasta
Category:Supernatural
Category:Requesting for comments