Bogleech.com's 2013 Horror Write-off:

"The Creep"

Submitted by Anonymous

I shouldn’t have threatened them with a knife. That was a bit much.

But what was I supposed to do? They were throwing CORKS, for crying out loud. I was just trying to have my dinner, and as always they were occupying the kitchen, noisy, tipsy, sweaty. And then they started throwing corks at one another.

One of these things almost hit me. It was so… WHIMSICAL. I’ve never felt so disgusted, yet so frightened in my entire life.

No. It’s not their fault. They are normal. They have friends, they are friends. They like to mess around, to laugh, to make noises, to be with one another, all the time. Part of me hates them, but I know I shouldn’t, and I don’t want to. They’re just different from me. It’s not their fault that things look different to me than they look to them. That a flying cork is an outrage, that eight students in a festive mood inside a tiny community kitchen are intimidating with their intense, senseless TOGETHERNESS…

I was so revolted. I felt so very hurt. And that’s why it happened. Suddenly, I am standing there with a knife, crying threats at them, death threats, my eyeballs almost bulging out of their sockets.

They hadn’t liked me before that incident, make no mistake. When I had first arrived on the fifth floor, I had told them the truth, that I had been locked away in an asylum for years, that I am crazy, but that I wanted to begin a new life, continue my studies. And not feel so lonely anymore- but that I didn’t say out loud.

I don’t want to be ALONE, you see. I don’t want to be locked away from people forever.

After the thing with the knife, things got worse. They wrote letters to the management, demanding my immediate expulsion. My parents are important people. They managed to keep me in. I didn’t want to go. I wanted another chance. I was foolish enough to think there could be another chance.

I apologized. I apologized to all of them. I tried to explain. I told them I was seeing a psychiatrist again, as a condition for keeping my room. I told them I knew I was stupid, and a psycho, and short-tempered, and garbage, but that I would do everything I could to change. It didn’t sit well with them.

Everything I do is wrong.

They fell silent whenever I entered a room. They started looking at the floor. They grew pale. When I left the kitchen, sometimes I heard the girls cry. The girls are those who suffer the most in my presence, obviously, their minds filled with visions of a male psycho attacking them in their sleep.

I cleaned the kitchen. I bought enough groceries for the entire floor. I started greeting people, smiling at them. It made things worse. I was unpredictable. A monster.

I would be a liar to say a dark, self-righteous part of me didn’t enjoy it. To hear girls weep and guys twice as big as myself grow pale, their eyes weary. That’s the cost of being afraid of me, suckers. But of course it’s not their fault they’re afraid.

So I guess I deserve what is happening to me now. It feels unfair to me, but isn’t that what every convict would say?

I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was a gradual thing. Maybe I was slowly sinking into the abyss. I’m pretty sure they are the ones who did it, but what they did exactly, I can’t tell.

I’m still in the dorm. I don’t sleep anymore.

It’s always night now. There are no lights, besides a faint, blue glow coming in from the windows. I wander around, from room to room, from floor to floor. The place is deserted.

I wander around, with the knife in my hand, looking for something. I don’t know what it is I am looking for, but I cannot stop. I am filled with a strange curiosity. Maybe I could leave. Maybe there is a way out. All the doors are still there, the windows too. But I’m in no hurry to leave. There is always another room, another floor. Yes, I am searching the same places over and over and over. And yet it always feels like I should give it another try.

It’s almost funny. I have never been so sad in my entire existence, and yet I can’t stop.

My head is filled with the things the others would say. I can almost hear them telling one another how much I deserve all of this, how there was no place for creatures like me in any other world. They are right, of course.

I wander on and on, narrating to myself in an endless loop, in a language that isn’t even my own.

I shouldn’t have threatened them with a knife. That was a bit much.