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descriptions of blood and mild nudity
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Yesterday the sea was laid flat, as were my emotions, almost as if one were a reflection of the other. Today was more of the same. It was a tedious drawl of mundane existence that left me aching for something more. My best friend of just over 6 years had once again gotten her phone taken away, meaning I had no one to talk to. Now you might call this an unhealthy dependency but Nell was the only person who I felt really got me.
We were so inseparable in high school that when she moved, nobody was surprised to find out that we had been skipping school to see each other whenever we could. However, our midday rendezvous became difficult to do once I started university. She had moved again, this time about 3 hours away from me and because she had chosen to work and I was busy with school, we had less time to see each other during the week. Even then, we had decided to meet up at least once on the weekend, which we had been for several months now. Recently Nell had taken a liking to the beach so that's where we spent most of our time. When it came time for our weekly meet-up, I figured she would have gotten her phone back so all I had to do was wait.
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Just as I thought, by the time we were heading out, she had gotten her phone back. I never minded the silent wait. It was a frequent occurrence that whenever my phone went off I would immediately know it was her. After all, it had always been just the two of us...until it wasn't. She had been insisting on inviting one of her friends. I was admittedly curious about who she had met in her new town so even though I didn't really want them to come, I decided to just roll with it. Her name was Yena. I knew Nell had talked a lot about me to her and I knew that Nell saw this girl as a younger sister of sorts but that was about it. Yena was a year younger than us and she seemed like a nice enough girl so I figured I could get used to it if Nell wanted to bring her along more often. At least I hoped I would.
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Before I could really get used to her, Yena thought it was a good idea to bring along one of her friends as well. I was never a very social person and being unexpectedly surprised like this made me rather nervous. It wasn't until I found myself sulking by the shore that I remembered that I do in fact have friends other than Nell. so I decided to ring them up, not wanting Nell to be the only person I knew there. I don't think she was too happy with it. I could tell that our friends were trying to make things work for our sake but I still felt kinda bad for bringing them along only for Nell to start going out of her way to make things uncomfortable for them.
It was a side of her I had never seen before and I'm not sure if it was just a nervous reaction or simply how she acted in a group setting. When everyone had moved further down the beach, I took the opportunity to pull Nell aside and tell her to tone it down. She seemed offended that I would ask such a thing of her and only responded with,
"But they're annoying us. Aren't they annoying you too?"
"What? Of course not!" Mildly irritated at her assumption, I sighed and began walking ahead of her, not wanting to continue the conversation anymore. "Just try and get to know them a little. I'm trying with Yena, can you please just do it for me too?"
She didn't respond, she was definitely more unwilling but I knew she didn't want to fight with me either so she dropped it. When we walked in silence to the secluded little are of the beach that we had planned to check out. Nell thought it would be a good idea since people rarely ever went that far so we'd have it all to ourselves. When we got there, I saw Yena waving around a little glass bottle. Inside was a piece of paper bound with a red string.
"What's that?" Asked Nell.
"It just washed up. Maybe it's a treasure map!" Yena joked.
Yena pulled out the paper inside and tossed the bottle to the ground. The passage of time was evident on the paper by the way it's yellowing edges curled up as she unraveled the string around it. We crowded around her to see what was on the paper. Who knows, maybe a good treasure hunt is just what we need for everyone to get along!
What we saw though, wasn't the cartoonish treasure map we were hoping to find. What we saw was a photo of a woman. We couldn't tell who it was because her back was towards us. The only identifiable feature was the little mole on her side. Her white swimsuit had been stained by the blood oozing out of the ugly welts that spread across her back. It looked like she had been beaten. To make matters worse, her hands had been bound by a thin red wire, similar to what had been tied around the paper. It sunk into her wrists deep enough for the skin around it to have turned blue due to the lack of circulation. If the sight of the mystery woman covered in her own blood wasn't unsettling enough, beneath the photo was messy, faded writing that consisted of a single sentence.
"Turn around."
The instinctive desire to whip around and make sure nothing was behind us was quite strong. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the dread we felt was stronger and so no one dared to move. Instead we stood there, frozen to the ground like statues. Nell was the first one to break the heavy silence that settled between us.
"This must be some sick prank..." She was trying to sound unfazed but the way her voice got quieter as she spoke lent fuel to our growing unease.
"Y-Yeah. Let's just get rid of it," I suggested.
Everyone agreed, already heading back up the beach. Needless to say, the already tense atmosphere had just gotten a billion times worse and nobody wanted to stick around. However one person lagged behind. I turned to see what was taking Yena so long only to see her silently reach down and pick up the wire she had tossed aside when she threw the bottle. When she did, her loose shirt raised and I caught a glimpse of a tiny mole on her side. I was distracted for a moment by rushed footsteps approaching me.
"Rani! Let's go!"
Nell grabbed my hand and began pulling me away. I never knew her to scare easily but I couldn't blame her, anyone would be unsettled after seeing something like that. When I looked back again Yena had caught up with us. I don't know what she did with the bottle but I didn't see it again and I didn't want to ask where it was. All I wanted to do at that point was go home.
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That night, I had a horrible nightmare. I was standing on the beach where we found the photo. Nell was holding my hand like she had been when we were walking away, except it felt unusually cold. I looked down to see her using her free hand to wrap that familiar red wire around our wrists.
"What are you doing!" I shrieked.
She paused, her hand tightening around mine. "What do you mean? I'm making sure you won't have to deal with those people again."
I felt anger begin to rise in my chest and for a brief second it didn't even register that this was all a dream. "What people? My friends?"
"They're annoying. Don't they annoy you? They were so freaked out we couldn't even enjoy the beach. We had to leave because of them. Doesn't that annoy you?" She repeated herself as she continued to wrap the wire around our wrists. "Why did you even invite those losers anyway? Whatever, let's just go back to the way things were. When it was just the two of us."
For a moment, it sounded nice. Just the two of us, no weird tension, no one to get in our way, just...us. Just as I was about to respond, I felt her yank the wire so tight that when I jumped back and forcibly pulled my hand out of it, my wrist had scraped against it hard enough for the skin to begin bruising. Though it was a dream, the pain was enough to bring me back to my senses and I began walking away angrily.
"What the hell man! That freaking hurt!"
"Wait! Where are you going?" I heard her call out to me but I didn't stop. "Rani! Stop! Turn around!"
As soon as the words landed on my ears the deep sense of dread that I had felt when I saw that picture came flooding back into my senses and I broke into a dead sprint back up the beach.
"TURN AROUND!" she yelled. "TURN AROUND!"
Her voice faded as I got further away and was replaced by a harrowing echo begging me to turn around, but before I could cave and turn to see if she was following me, I awoke, drenched in sweat, chest heaving as I struggled to calm down and possibly the worst part was the big red bruise, freshly made on my wrist.
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The nightmare haunted me all day, but I chalked it up to me just being spooked by what happened. Luckily for me, I had made an appointment some time back to have my tongue pierced today, so I figured it would be a sufficient distraction. When I first told Nell about it, I suggested we get something else, like matching tattoos, but she declined, opting instead to just come along with me since she never really had a good tolerance for pain.
Later that day, when I was preparing to head out, Nell had messaged me asking if I had received anything unusual in the mail. I thought it was a strange thing to ask out of the blue like that and I told her I hadn't. That's when she sent me a picture of what she had just pulled out of her mailbox. It was a small glass bottle, with a piece of paper inside, just like the one we found on the beach. My first thought was that she might have a stalker and this whole thing was just them trying to get a reaction out of her since none of the other people we were with mentioned getting anything weird themselves.
"What should I do with it?" She asked.
My stalker theory didn't make a whole lot of sense but I thought it would be better to not play into it regardless so I told her to throw it away. Several minutes went by and there was no response. Thinking that her impulsive nature had gotten the best of her once more, I could already tell what had happened. As if the thought were a premonition, a text came in right as it crossed my mind.
"Rani...I opened it...look"
She sent another image. It was of the paper spread out. On it was another photo, this time much more gruesome than the last. Another woman stood facing away from the camera, looking as though she had been drenched in water. She had curly hair just like Nell's but it was matted and messily strewn to one side. She was almost naked, revealing slashes that got deeper and deeper as they trailed from her neck to her back. That damned red wire seemed to be even tighter around this lady's wrists. So much so that it felt like if it were any tighter, it would simply have cut her wrists off entirely. Unlike the last photo, this woman had dozens of large, needle like objects skewering her legs and pinning her to the ground where she knelt in a pool of her own blood.
Her body was unnaturally twisted, like she was trying to look back at the camera but something was preventing her from turning her head completely. As if to mock her, the words,
"Turn Around"
were once again messily scrawled across the bottom of the paper. I messaged Nell, suggesting that she take the photo to the police and report it before whoever sent it could escalate their prank even further, but I once again got no response. I waited a while before messaging her again. Still nothing. Now getting a little worried, I tried calling her but it went straight to voice mail. I would try several more times throughout the day, but it would only ever yield the same result.
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That night I crawled into bed, frustrated that I couldn't reach Nell. I silently cursed myself for not getting Yena's number so I could ask her to check up on Nell instead. Without much of a choice, I fell into an uneasy slumber. When I dreamt again, it was not for long. I was laying on the beach. In the distance I saw Yena and Nell. Their wrists were bound to each other's with the wire in the same way Nell and I were in my nightmare. They were facing away from me. Even when I got up and walked over to them, they still wouldn't face me.
"Nell?" I heard myself call out. "Yena?" I walked closer. "What are you guys doing?" It was only when I reached out to touch them that a loud, incessant ringing began blaring in my ears. Startled, I had inadvertently woken myself up, only to find that the ringing had been coming from my phone. I thought that it must have been Nell and hurriedly picked it up from my bedside table, squinting at the screen.
I was right. It was her! Scrambling to put on my glasses, I sat up and answered the phone, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
"Are you okay? Where have you been?"
"I need...do something...me."
Her voice sounded muffled like she was underwater. "What? I can't hear you!"
"Come...stairs."
"What? Stairs? Nell where are you?"
"Come down...stairs...hurry!"
Before I could ask anything else, the phone cut off. Confusion and worry swirled in my head like a violent storm but a surge of adrenaline filled me as I got out of bed and made my way downstairs despite the rising anxiety that boiled in my chest.250Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFWIPOwlskI
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The further down I went, the more a distinct, beachy smell rose in the air. The entire bottom floor of my house stunk of seawater. The scent got stronger when I moved closer to the door, where I could hear faint whispers. I can't describe it, but I just knew it had to be Nell, so I didn't think twice before moving to open it. It wasn't until my hand was hovering over the doorknob that I realized I was shaking.
I took a deep breath and pulled the door open...but...the only thing there to greet me was a small glass bottle with a neatly tied piece of paper inside. Call it a morbid curiosity, but the little voice in my head telling me to shut the door and run back upstairs was drowned out by the overwhelming urge to see what was inside, Even though I knew it was most likely more of the same.
My trembling fingers haphazardly untied the red wire and unravelled the paper. A disorienting wave of nausea and fear hit me when I saw the picture. The woman in the bottle looked like she was desperately trying to get up but she was being pulled down by a hand. It was messily sewn to hers with the red wire and made to look as though they were holding hands. Only the side of her body that was sewn to whoever was pulling on her was covered in gashes and her clothes were torn and bloody but the other side of her body was still clean save for the rivelts of blood that trickled down her fingers as she dug her nails into to the door next to her, struggling to get out.
The scent of seawater and blood began to creep into my senses as reality sunk in. At the woman's feet were a pair of now shattered glasses...just like mine. Just when the ground beneath me began to sway and I thought I would pass out from sheer panic, a faint voice called out.
"...ni...Ra...ni..."
They slipped their hand into mine and laced our fingers together. Their skin was so cold that I jolted, nearly dropping the paper. A rotting stench consumed me as they leaned next to me. Unable to tell if I was just dreaming or not, I looked down to see someone kneeling, their legs firmly skewered to the ground next to me. A sharp pain burst through my hand and I yanked it back only to have it pulled down and pierced again. I could see from the corner of my eyes that the person was violently threading the red wire through our hands. A cry heaved itself from my lungs but it sounded so desperate and panicked that I almost didn't recognize it was mine.
I reached for the door, trying to pull myself away from their iron grip. The more I struggled the more they dug into me, clawing at my arm and leg to try and pull me back. In an attempt to break free from them, I threw myself towards the door with all my strength, knocking my glasses off in the process. A loud crack filtered through above my screams but I was so high on adrenaline and fear that the I never registered the pain of my shoulder dislocating. At least that was up until my legs gave way and I fell to the ground, where the paper had fallen and lay soaked in blood and water. I was so close to getting out, the door was cracked open just enough for me to crawl through but it felt like if I were to pull any harder, my whole arm would be torn off.
Then I felt a shift. They were no longer sewing our hands together or clawing at my body. Instead they moved so they were on the ground right behind me. I could practically feel their breath on my skin as they leaned in and of all their distorted whispers, I was only able to hear the last words of their call as my gaze fell upon the bottom of the paper.250Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP6EUXd6K6a
"Turn around."250Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwpO8UYxPIh
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