It was a Friday. My family were in Melbourne for two nights. I stayed up late by myself watching weird videos my friend had told me about on the internet. For a lot of the sites I had to give out my email to I could unlock the videos. To be honest, by the time I had lost the enthusiasm to continue searching for these strange videos I was quite unsettled by the things I had already seen. But they didn't really matter. It was when I decided to look for one last thing before I went to sleep. As soon as the thought had passed through my mind, I received an email.
It didn't say who it was from, no subject was displayed, and it didn't even say that it was sent to me. It was just a blank email, with one attachment, no writing. The attachment was named 'face'. It didn't have a file type, it was just 'face', but opening it revealed it was a movie of some kind.
It was a low resolution movie, it had bad lighting and it seemed to be in the middle of the day. The setting was a low budget kitchen. The camera view was from the floor looking up at the kitchen. There was a woman washing the dishes. She seemed very calm and focused on these dishes. This went for almost exactly a minute, before she had finished the washing. She silently watched the dishes for ten extremely quiet seconds, and then screamed at the top of her lungs.
I had my headphones on and the volume was quite loud, so I got quite frightened by this. She then picked up the plates she had just washed and started smashing them all over the floor, cutting her arms and scraping her legs. She was a bloody mess before too long, but then something very strange happened. She just stopped completely, and the sound of a door opening was heard in the background. Very slow footsteps trudged their way to where the woman was.
Suddenly, a pair of shoes came into the view, and they walked extremely slowly and heavily. The shoes belonged to a dark skinned man, who was so tall that anything above his waist was concealed by the camera view. He stopped and stood there for about a minute, and just about when I decided that it was bedtime, a face popped up on the screen.
It looked as if it might have been the man from earlier in the video. His eyes were gouged out and he was screaming as loud and high pitched as the woman in the kitchen before, and he was slowly cutting his own head open with a knife. Blood filled up the screen. I had to quickly run to the bathroom to throw up, because although I am used to videos like this, the effects they used in the video were quite realistic. I was very sick now, I could tell, because I did actually vomit up a bit of blood.
I sat in the bathroom waiting for more of my tea to come spilling through my throat again, and a few minutes later I decided to go pack up and go to bed. I reluctantly returned to my room. My laptop was still open, and although I don't remember exiting out of the video, the screen was back to my desktop. My usual desktop was just the default picture, the one with the green hill and the blue sky. Upon closer inspection I saw a tall, dark figure on top of the hill walking very slowly toward me. Horrified, I searched for answers. Then I laughed at myself. The video was still open and it was playing the animation of the man on my desktop. I tried to close the video, but it wouldn't work.
I put my mouse on the x button and hammered away. 'This program is not responding.' claimed the Windows error message. It didn't offer me any options of anything to do as it normally would, such as 'close program' or 'send error report.' I'd had enough of computers for the evening, and was very frustrated as I needed to get to sleep soon. I continued clicking x and the message came up again. 'THIS PROGRAM HAS STOPPED LIVING' It said.
"...the dark figure..."
What the hell?! I angrily smashed the computer screen shut, and at the time I thought I had cracked the screen, but I was too furious to really care. However, even though I had closed the screen and everything should have turned off, it was still flashing little lights at me everywhere and making computer noises. I picked it up and went to go put it in the lounge room. And then, alone with my thoughts, I began to realize that the person who made the film I had watched must have accessed my computer at some time, because all of my files and folders on my desktop were also shown in the copied version in the film, when the figure had been walking towards the screen. It took around four hours to get to sleep.
I was in the dark, and it was so dark I could not see anything. I don't know how, but I could sense another human like object in the dark with me. It felt like if I waited a bit longer, then my eyes would adjust, and I could see everything and everyone around me, but it never really happened. I was feeling intense fear, and I could not move because of it. I had to stand there for years, wondering what it was that was breathing near me, my knees growing weak, and my eyes never quite adjusting. Suddenly, my eyes felt like they were starting to adjust, although I could not see anything yet.
It looked as if I was in a blank space, and I relaxed. I was no longer afraid of this place. I turned around, and there was the man from the video, standing about twenty metres away. I wasn't able to see his face, but the silhouette confirmed that it was after he attacked his face with a knife. My eyes started to adjust fully, but I could never see his face. Then my eyes seemed to over adjust, everything became more bright, and then too bright, and I realized I was screaming. I was hurting all over, the pain was so intense I wanted to die.
My eyes literally burst, and I felt a knife in my hand. I tried to slit my throat but I knew it wouldn't have killed me fast enough. I started trying to stab myself right through the head but I kept missing and instead sliced little pieces off. I started screaming so loud my voice box burst and I started choking on blood. I dropped the knife and started grasping for my throat. Suddenly my instinct kicked in and I was trying to stop myself from choking, but without success.
I woke up with tears all over my face, and my throat hurt. It was only 6 am in the morning. I checked the date to see if I had slept a whole day or two but my hypothesis was incorrect. I had only slept for an hour and a half, meaning that I had only dreamt for, at most, 40 minutes or so. I was white with frustration and anger. My fists clenched. I felt so hopeless, because I knew if I tried going back to sleep I would have the same dream again, and I could already sense I was beginning to go insane. Every now and then my mother's face would flash before my eyes, but it was not her usual, loving, caring face.
She seemed to be bored, angry and lifeless, all with one facial expression. For a moment I had thought to myself that it was her who was to blame for all of this, but I made sure to try and keep thoughts like that out of my mind. I had to focus on keeping myself occupied, for I had feared it was the best therapy for my mental state.
I walked to the lounge room and found my laptop. I had planned on playing some video games to pass time, but just before I picked up my computer, I remembered how I had cracked the screen.
"I hope it still works." I said aloud.
I opened the screen and to my relief the screen was fine. I opened up the desktop and everything was fine, but it was kind of eerie as well. I had slammed the computer as hard as I could, I had even felt a shard of the screen hit me in the face, but it was fine. I checked my inbox, and there was no email. I used system restore to check if I had somehow deleted the email, but there was still nothing. I frowned at my computer.
I opened up the game I had planned to play. It worked. There was no sign of damage. This was too weird. I had the worst nightmare of my life last night and now all the evidence I had was gone. I was furious. I went into my dad's garage, found a hammer, and started bashing the computer. It knew this was coming.
Afterwards, I found some gasoline and a lighter, and set it on fire. This is exactly what it deserved. I accidentally burnt my hand in the process, and it left a huge, black scar. White with anger, I began to stomp the remains of the computer, and for some reason at the time it felt necessary to yell at the top of my lungs. This was good. I felt better now.
I walked into my room and sat in the corner. I looked at the clock and realized it was now 7 am. I hadn't eaten anything all day, and it felt like an hour at most had passed. I sighed, and continued thinking to myself about what a weird day it had been. I suddenly remembered that my family were going to be coming back soon, so I ran outside, picked up the burnt and smashed remains of the computer and sped to the tip to throw them in the garbage. I ran home swiftly, and jumped into bed and waited for my family to come home.
The plan was to tell them that I was sick so I wouldn't have to get up and show them my burns. However, they never came home, but I remained in my bed making sure as to not go to sleep, for I was certain another nightmare as horrid as the other one would return for me in my sleep. I managed to stay awake all night, but then I had school, and I was afraid of how that would turn out. I quietly hopped out of bed, and planned to go through the kitchen on my way to the bathroom to have a shower. But there was my mum, staring at me there in the kitchen with her horrible, lifeless face.
"Morning mum." I faked a smile. She stared back.
Frightened, I scampered into the shower. It was when I turned on the hot water that I realized how long it had been since I was warm. I felt absolutely amazing, and I began to relax, and realize how weird I had been acting over the weekend. I opened my eyes and saw mum's shadow cast over the shower curtain. She was just standing there, completely still, and it seemed she was staring in my direction. I felt violated in a way, as if the one place I could feel safe was completely intruded. I turned off the tap and watched mother's shadow slip away out of the bathroom.
"Finally." I sighed. I got dressed and headed out the door. She was there in the kitchen again, this time with my brother and sister, staring intently and lifelessly at me.
"What the hell is wrong with you guys!?" I screamed at them, beginning to cry.
They began to advance on me, so I ran back into the bathroom and sat against the door. They were banging extremely hard, so hard my back began to hurt. I was bawling my eyes out now.
"LET US IN." They said, all in a monotone voice. I heard my sister yelling extremely loud though, and she was saying all kinds swear words that I had never heard her say before.
I replied with even more cusses that sounded sick just to say. I was screaming so loud I could feel my voice box beginning to rupture, but I was not going to let my family take me. I was screaming so the neighbours would call the police, and hopefully they would get here in time. If my voice box was the price I had to pay, then so be it. I wasn't going to let this group of nutcases capture me.
I looked in the mirror, and my heart sunk. My reflection simply stared back at me with that horrible glare. I locked the bathroom door and hoped that would be enough to stop my family, and ran for the window. I was too late. My reflection grabbed me by my collar, making me choke and splutter. I was on my knees, coughing up blood, when I was kneed in the face by my reflection. He held me fast against the bathroom floor, pounding my head into the tiles. When I was in an inch of my life, my family burst through the door, before he gave my head one final thump, cracking the tiles and my skull.
We had been out for the weekend, in Melbourne, and it had been quite a holiday. The kids had lots of fun, I don't know why Ben hadn't wanted to come. He would have loved it, the poor boy. He spends far too much time on his computer, and I knew all he would be doing while we were away would be exactly that. I remember that morning, he had walked out fidgeting and whispering to himself.
"Morning Ben." I said.
He just looked right back at me, with a confused look on his face.
I heard him turn on the shower, and start talking to himself, or singing, I don't know. I waited a little bit, and then went into the bathroom to collect the washing I had put on last night. As soon as I had gotten the washing I noticed that he had stopped talking and had turned off the shower. Him being the oldest of his siblings, I assumed he was just going through some teenage phase of some kind. I walked out of the bathroom and put the washing over the heater.
I was making some fried eggs, and Peter and Molly were eating breakfast when Ben walked out, almost 20 minutes later.
"Ben, what took you so long?"
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS!?" He screamed, and went back into the bathroom.
"Ben!" I said angrily, and went after him, before he slammed the door right in my face.
I knocked on the door.
"Ben open up please, tell me what's going on!" I yelled above his demonic screaming and crying.
"What's wrong with Ben?" Molly asked me.
Before I could reply, he started yelling swear words that I hadn't heard since my childhood, all directed at Molly. Molly began to cry and ran into her room. Pete just sat there, dumbfounded.
I heard Ben lock the door and run, but the he tripped over. I started hearing loud thumps on the floor, and a few trickles of blood were splattering from under the door.
"Ben, we're not angry, just please open this door!" I had sobbed. I started trying to breach the door, and it worked. But I was too late. I saw Ben lift his fist in the air and bring it back down upon his head one last time. The tiles were all cracked around his head. I fainted, and Jim, my husband, must have awoken from all the noise and called the ambulance.
When I woke up I had found out that Ben had an acute brain problem, which often occurs in children who had been bullied their whole life or have had traumatic experiences from abuse. I was absolutely shocked. The police report had said that Ben had literally beaten himself to death, which is almost medically impossible. The funeral was held, and although not many people showed up, there was this very large darker skinned man wearing a hat and glasses who none of us had ever seen before.