Nude Pictures Vol I

I opened up my e-Mail to see a message by some random guy telling me how he admired my "hot figure so sexy". Not thinking much of it I ignored it and carried about my daily routines which consist of redditing and watching old French films.
Next day, I got another similarly worded e-Mail by that guy. Somewhat creeped, I decided to ignore it yet again.

Then, I got a message by that guy on Facebook. 
"Hi I like you I wanna make friendship. 
I saw some sexy pics of you in the bathroom do you wanna see?"
This was what he sent me, albeit with more spelling mistakes and horrid grammar.

I was pretty shook up but I still chalked him up to various other Facebook creeps a moderately average looking girl faces in her life. (pls note modesty)

Later that night he sent me some pictures but I didn't open them because I wanted to ignore him so he would go away. The next morning he sent me another message.

Today, I opened these messages just to get rid of the annoying notification. I saw 4 photos that hadn't loaded yet. I wasn't aware that he sent me pictures too.
They loaded.

And I saw.

Pictures of me. Naked. In sexually explicit poses.
Pictures I clicked as a 15 year old teenager at the height of  her sexual discovery.
Pictures I would never want even my boyfriend to possess.
Pictures of an unconsenting minor.

My heart was beating fast. All blood rushing, time was frozen.
I kept staring at my breasts, my hands, my face, my body.

I'd only read about this happening to other people. All looping around the same thread of words around their minds like beads of a holy rosary.
"Why me?"

How did he get those pictures? How did he find my identity?
How dare he?

Immediately, I started thinking about the girl in school whom everyone stopped talking to because her nudes leaked.
I thought about The Fappening. I thought about the girls reported in news who end up killing themselves or running away because their pictures got distributed.

Is this what I'm going to be?

Rhonda Jones (Short Story)

I always knew there was something strange going on with Rhonda. Maybe it was the ever present distant look in her eyes that made me ponder so or maybe it was her frequent absences from school.  Nevertheless, it came as a shock to everyone when she blew out her brains with her dad's .44 Magnum.  She did always talk about going out with a bang. 

I never could have thought of taking it in the literal sense, of course. 

The signs are often laid out in plain sight, demanding to be heard, but not a soul pays heed.

Rhonda Jones wasn’t a goth or a punk, she didn’t have a disarrayed family and she wasn’t a lonely nerd. Rhonda Jones was the charismatic, beautiful all-round achieving girl that people think only exist in movies or in dreams. Which is why people stared unbelievingly when they first heard of her suicide.

She used to live 2 blocks down the street from me. We'd been together since the time she moved into our neighbourhood with her family from Nottingham when she was six. Though, we failed to preserve the close bond we had as kids as we grew older. Before anyone could notice, our frequent playdates that used to ultimately stretch to sleepovers transitioned into rare hello's in the school hallways.

I still remember the sound of the bullet shooting out from the gun when she pulled the trigger.

I still hear the bang in my nightmares and watch myself running to the source all the while thinking how good of a story it would be to tell Rhonda.

I still am struck with flashbacks of the sirens of the ambulance, the shriek of her mother, the silent sobs of her father and the curious prying eyes of the neighbours.

And I still invariably shudder when I remember myself standing under the oak tree that stands in front of Rhonda’s room, wishing with all my might that it wasn’t what I expected, that it wasn’t whom I expected.

Silently, I shook violently as I saw the plight of her body lying lifelessly on a stretcher, blood still pouring out of numerous indiscernible sources - her nose, her head, her mouth. Even her eyes seemed to be crying tears of blood.

That image has been stuck with me forever. Not a day has passed, when I don’t suddenly remember it. every minute I spend laughing with others, I spend in guilt when I'm alone. Thinking and pondering on what-ifs. 

What if I had done something sooner?

What if I had tried to make an effort to salvage our relationship earlier?

What if I had acted upon those signs instead of playfully dismissing them? 

What if I had paid more attention, tried to rise my head up from my ceaseless self-absorption?

I don't know why she killed herself and I never will. All I can hold on to are the summer days we spent under her oak tree when we were children. When we didn't and couldn't care, living in a place stuck in spring with blooming flowers and exquisitely coloured butterflies.

Rhonda Jones dissipated the pain and turmoil by dividing and distributing it to three other people to carry.

Her parents and me.

Shatter and Clatter (Short Story)

7:42 pm

"I'm sorry. Please, Jake. Please stop, I'm sorry!"

"NO! LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. LOOK AT WHAT HAS BECOME OF US! IS THIS WHAT YOU HAD WANTED, BITCH?!"

Shatter and clatter, I hear sobs and shouts. With every syllable escalating in its decibel, I shudder and cringe.

"I told you I'm sorry!" She sobs. Her voice cracking. "Sarah can hear you. She is only a child. Don't do this to her. Don't do this to us. Please stop, I beg you!!"

"DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I HAVE HAD FUCKING ENOUGH OF THIS HOUSE. I KNOW ABOUT ALL OF YOUR PLANS YOU SLY WHORE!"

"Jake, I swear to God I didn't do anything. Ple-Please, Jake, please! DON'T TOUCH ME! STOP IT!"

I hear her gut-wrenching cries from under my blanket. I have heard people say that once you experience something on the daily, you become accustomed to it. I never understood why this particular daily house activity couldn't sink and wear down to the accustomed ones.

2:17 am

"C'mon, honey. Time to wake up," I hear my mum hush to me, waking me from my stupor.

"Mummy it's still dark outside. Why do I have to wake up in the night?"

"We're going to a nice place. Put on your coat quickly, sweetie," she says to me kissing the top of my head.

I can hear her breathing hard and fast. She's almost shaking as she clasps my hand tightly. We tip-toe across shards of broken glass and splinters of wood. Beer bottle glass, whiskey bottle glass, tables and chairs. A shattered photo frame here and there occasionally. All in ruins.

She didn't have to tell me to keep quiet or anything. I was smart enough to understand what was happening even if I was only 5. I'd been dreaming of this moment for a long time now. It's exhilarating to feel that my wishes were finally coming true. Maybe there is a God after all.

Once we are through the gate, mum spins around towards me, grabs my shoulders tightly and says, "Now remember, baby. We have to walk as fast as we can to Rosewell Street. We can't stop at all. I know it's a long way but we can do it. I have a rental there and then we can be free. Sarah, we can be as free as the birds." 
As free as the birds. I don't know why but that line makes me start bawling suddenly. I can't believe it. Our freedom is so close; it's almost like an unachievable dream.

"Mum, I can do it."
"Oh, my little girl, I never doubted it." She kisses my hands.

3:58 am

"I can see it, ma. I can see it!"
"Shh, I know."

It was old beat-up car. Hell, the only other thing I remember about it is that it was blue. That's it. Not that I even cared at all. Though, looking back now, I would like to know what kind it was.

We run to the car with elated hearts. Freedom is so close.

We have been in the car for barely 5 minutes when mum notices something odd in the mirror. Her brows furrow in worry and concentration. I look back to see it what it is.
It's a red Camry. Our red Camry. 
 I KNOW ABOUT ALL OF YOUR PLANS YOU SLY WHORE!
Oh. . . .

I can feel all the blood drain out of my body. I have goosebumps on my arms. My heart is racing and it's not from the running. 
Is this what true terror feels like?
My mother is speeding the car to escape dad. She's in so much of a hurry that she all but forgets about the still slick road from the rain. Our car crashes into a tree. Before my eyes close, I see a hint of a smirk in the rear view mirror of the car.

Our freedom is here.

I Think About it More Than I Forget (Short Story)

I lay down on the bed with the book once again in my hands. Staring but not reading. Page number 26. The bookmark's been on this page for 21 years now.

 Exactly 21 years.

And she wonders but never asks. Too ridden by my retreating into my shell so frequently. Only staying with me for the sake of little Jake.

Memories are merely instances that fade over the passage of time.

 That is the reason why I agreed. She thought she could heal me. I ought to have forgotten by now.

I try to, but cannot. The time I shared with Amelie was and still is too perfect to be forgotten.

I do not know whether she knows what's on page 26. She still thinks I need time to heal.

I met Amelie at Camp Smith-Bird (go ahead and laugh at the name, but just so you know, the people there were more queer than the name)  when I was 17. She was 16.

She was nothing special. Average looking, but a guy like me was mighty lucky to have someone as unlucky as her.

The only way I can describe her is that she was someone you would keep growing closer as time passed. Like parallel lines; it never ended. 

There was a new thing to discover, a new adventure everyday. Our love growing lovelier as we grew fonder each day.

It wasn't like how rabid young couples get married and grow wearier of each other's very presence by the day.

I still remember how my life diminished to ruins.

We snuck out of our house in the midnight, a bottle of my father's whiskey and our hearts overflowing with love for the world. Two teenagers full of hope and envisioning a bright and happy future for themselves.

We hiked up the hill to our spot, we could see the unhappy town, everyone in the grips of sleep. How we couldn't wait to run away and start a life of our own. 

The stars were twinkling brightly and the pale moon shined bright (for it was the time when pollutants in the air were quite less). Alcohol and adrenaline pulsating through our arteries instead of blood.

Amelie and I were lying on the grass naked, holding hands. We'd just made love and my heart was still racing. She turned to look at me with her eyes blazing with passion and a hint of sadness.

Her family was moving to America in less than a quarter of a year. No one mentioned it in the fear of ruining the Moment.

The Moment was perfect. It was out of a soapy romance film, a heart-breakingly beautiful book, a picture which makes you get jealous and go search for true love. It was what the kids of today would've called infinite. I could not let the Moment get away. I had to memorise it and imprint it into the back of my eyelids.

I had to stay in that time for ever. 

It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't seen the hint of sadness. I wouldn't have remembered. I couldn't let her go away from me. 

Love was for two and I was nothing without her.

She could NOT leave me. I will never let her.

She had to stay in the Moment forever. It was enchanting, exquisite and excitable.

I remember the time. 0026.

I killed her at 0026.

A silver thread of a tear travels from my eyes, down the curves of my face, into page number 26 of Wuthering Heights.

Observe

Take a look around and observe your surroundings. Where are you right now? Are you sitting inside of a dark room? Is there anyone else with you? Are you all alone? Most sources indicate that a majority people read tales of horror by themselves. Something about this genre and medium compel you to experience it in a quiet room, all alone. But why is this? Why subject yourself to fright in solitude? What compels you to purposely scare yourself, to fill your mind with visions of the grotesque and supernatural?

Do you enjoy feeling a sense of, what some deem as, “paranoia”? What thrill can come from becoming suspicious of that shadow moving in the corner of your eye? That shadow that you think “isn’t anything”. Listen closely; is there a noise you hear that was or wasn’t there all along? Take a look around. Is there anything you didn’t notice originally? Is there something different? Is something out of place? That feeling on the back of your neck: is it your imagination or is it just too faint to pin-point?

When you read you expand the limitations of your mind. Clear of auditory and visual distractions, it can push your consciousness to perceive at levels you do not normally reach. The longer you read, the more you become aware. Maybe of things you thought weren’t there. There is a reason why your brain would block out these sensations. No one can be sure why. Maybe your mind is warning you. Maybe there are things you weren’t meant to see. Things you didn’t realize were there. Things that cannot be unseen. Things you cannot forget. Things that shouldn’t be.

Take a look around.

Faultry Wiring (Short Story)

It wasn't long ago I noticed a strange noise coming from the air conditioning unit, in the wall of the living room. At first it was almost imperceptible from the other noises such a device would typically make. It started out as a slight clanking sound, only when it was first turned on. I had just accredited it to the age of the apartments and the appliances within. Realistically they weren’t all that old in the grand scheme of things, but without constant upkeep things break down and fall apart relatively fast. Everything in the place made at least some kind of noise. The washing machine shook, the dishwasher sounded like a jet taking off and the fridge would kick on every few minutes and hum so loudly I’d have to turn the television up to hear anything over it. So you can see how it wasn’t such a big deal for the air conditioner to rattle a little. So I put it to the back of my mind as just something that comes with age.

That was until it started making it more and more often. I first noticed it when I turned it on and the rattling didn’t just go away after a second or two.

‘I had better tell the landlord so maintenance can come fix this’, I thought. After about a minute it once again stopped and the thought faded into memory.

A few weeks passed and I began to notice other strange occurrences, scratching in the walls, the electricity flickering in and out, the occasional thump in the night. Again things that could all happen due to the age of the wiring, maybe a mouse had gotten into the walls, or a noisy new neighbour had moved in. All pretty explainable, I thought. Besides, I worked a lot and really didn’t have a lot of free time to do much, so it didn’t bother me. But when things started to go missing in my tiny, one bedroom, apartment, I started to worry.

I hadn’t been home in what felt like a couple weeks, between work and friends, I was barely there at all besides to sleep and bathe. I figured I should do a thorough search of the place and see where my things could have gone. The TV remote, a calculator, several pairs of socks, and one shoe, were apparently misplaced. So I went through, room to room (which was really only 4 rooms) searched high and low to find my things and as I did this I noticed more and more small ineffectual things were also missing.

‘Strange’, I thought. ‘Where could these things have gone?’ I hit the power button on the TV and sat down in my once familiar armchair, now a stranger in my own forgotten home, and noticed something. The TV wasn’t on. I flipped the light switch up and down but nothing.

‘Oh for god sakes this is getting a little ridiculous’

I got up and twisted the knob on the stereo, nothing. I went around and tested all the appliances, to see if they were all still functioning. To no avail as not a thing in the place was still functioning, except, strangely enough the increasingly loud air conditioner. It came on with a loud rattle and ran that way for several minutes until it sparked, I heard a loud pop, and then it too died. ‘Maybe the power’s out and it will be fine in the morning.’ I thought half-heartedly. I had a hard time sleeping that night. The neighbours were especially loud and the being without power made me a nervous. I woke up the next morning to find that the power was still out.

I took a shower, got dressed and went over to my neighbours to ask if they were having similar problems. I knocked loudly several times but no answer. I decided enough was enough and went to the maintenance office to complain and hopefully resolve this issue. When I opened the door the smell of stale smoke swept into my nostrils. The place was a mess, papers and ashes all about the desk, peeling paint, smudges on the windows, and a TV with only static bolted to the wall. Sitting behind the desk was a thin, greying man who looked as if he hadn’t bathed in a week. I told him about how everything was suddenly not working but the A/C unit, until it sputtered its last. He gave me a sarcastic look and with a gruff he grabbed his toolbox and followed me back to my apartment.

“You see I would have called but for some reason nothing seems to be working, and I don’t think the electricity is out because the air conditioner was running and suddenly died.”

“Well let’s take a look at it.” he said. He went over to it and unscrewed the faceplate and peered inside. He clicked his flashlight on and went to work unscrewing and checking different things when he stopped suddenly and pulled out a tiny thing attached to a cord that didn’t look like it belonged. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“This yours?”
I couldn’t even identify what he was holding. “I don’t believe so, what is it?”
“It’s one of those little spy cameras, you haven’t been havin girls over, secretly tapin em have ya?” He gave a sly grin.
“No! What the hell was that doing in my home?!” I was getting a scared, and a little irate.
He shrugged “Well let’s see where this wire goes, huh?”
He followed the wired with his hand and stopped to look inside.
“There’s a little hole in here, it goes into the wall.”
He pulled out his hammer and got to work taking chunks out of the dry wall and following the cord. I was freaking out. ‘Who put that there?’ ‘Was this dirty old man watching me?’ ‘Are there more of those?’ All these things went through my head as I watched him work.
“Well that explains a lot” he said under his breath.
“What? What is it?” I exclaimed.
“Looks like somebody rewired your outlets over here.” He backed away to show me what he was seeing.
“But, why?”
“My guess, stealing your power. You sure you didn’t notice anything?” His calmness put me on edge.
I thought back to the odd noises in my walls, the thumping, the flickering lights. What had once seemed such a normal thing had my heart racing.
“I noticed a few things here and there but I haven’t been here a lot lately. I thought it was just an old place.”

He gave me a skeptical look and continued following the ever expanding bunch of wires and cables throughout the place. Some wires would branch off to more tiny cameras, hidden in vents and just in the shadows, one even wired into the eye of one of my pictures. ‘How have I not noticed these?’ My heart had started beating faster and faster as he discovered more. He kept going and, one by one, found all of my electric had been rewired into one central bunch that led to the bedroom. My heart stopped.

“How long have these been here?”
“Not long I’d say. We check all the appliances and outlets before we rent the places out.”
“Well where does it all lead?”
He kept knocking holes with his hammer and following the dreaded cables until finally he stopped and looked into the most recent hole he made with a flashlight.
“The space between the walls gets a lot bigger here. I think I can fit in here I see something glowing just around the corner.”
He smashed a hole big enough for him to squeeze through and disappeared into my bedroom wall. He appeared a few seconds later with a grim look on his face and his skin had gone pale. He was no longer the calm, apparently fearless, man he was before.

“You aren’t gonna wanna hear this, but there’s a little room back there. Bunch of monitors set up all over and all sorts of crap scattered around. Looks like somebody was livin’ in there but no sign of em now.” He swallowed hard. “This place is starting to freak me the hell out. If I were you, I’d move.”

I packed my things and left for my mom’s that day, not wanting to spend another second in that place. Over the next few days the police came and investigated the whole scene. They found twenty different monitors all linked up to VHS players in that little room in the walls. Surprisingly though no tapes were ever found. And neither was the thing that had been watching me all those nights.

A few weeks had passed and a box arrived on my mother’s doorstep. It was unlabeled but inside was all the little things that had gone missing in my apartment. I also found a dirty ripped piece of paper with a barely legible message scrawled on it:

I LIKE YOUR NEW PLACE MUCH BETTER.

Credit To – Hairy Monster Man