SCARY STORY CONTEST WINNER: Grachya Dilanyan, Freshman

Blood. I am sitting in a chair covered in blood, inside of a room with a metal door which is being torn apart by who-knows-what.

My name is Kriss Koss; I am news reporter for the website portion of CNN. I am currently inside of a closed down building in the outskirts of Europe. It used to be a prison for schizophrenic murderers, pedophilic kidnappers, psychotic cannibals and other people that were put into straitjackets. Apparently, this place is some kind of a haunted house, a demon’s lagoon, an entrance to Hell, or whatever people call it these days. I didn’t believe any of it, nor did my supervisor who thought exploring this, so-called demon’s lagoon, is a great idea for a front page article. We were wrong.

I ran into someone… or something… a thing… It had claws instead of fingers, chains tight around its muscular body. It had a mouth without a jaw. It was over seven feet tall, always bending its back, however. I don’t know what it is, I still don’t either.

I entered the building at 10:30 PM, as noted on my phone. Anyway, it was dark, the only thing I could see were things close enough for my phone’s screen to project. After a few minutes of bumping into fallen chairs I figured out that I was in the reception area. Slowly I saw a candle peeking out of a doorway in the hallway ahead of me. A few seconds later, I saw… it. That thing was walking, or should I say dragging, itself out of the room with the candle in its hand. The chains were creepily shaking as he moved opposite to where I was standing. I was shocked; I had my mouth wide open, and involuntarily, I gasped. It stopped, and then slowly started to straighten its back, reviling his frightening height. Seven feet tall. My God. I realized my hands were shaking. That thing’s body was… torn… with chunks of meat hanging out of its back. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What happened next was nothing I had expected. I saw it move its head around, slowly, 180 degrees, facing me, at the same time having its back turned towards me. It stared, with its tongue hanging from its jaw-less mouth. Its eyes almost had no pupils. It took me a couple of seconds to distinguish little dots in the center. The eyes were dry. Dead dry. They didn’t reflect any of the light coming from the candle. The thing, that giant chunk of deformed meat, started breathing heavily and in an instant, started to yelp inhuman words as it fast-walked towards me.

I was afraid, I didn’t know what to do but scream and run. I ran up the stairs involuntarily… Like my body was being controlled by somebody else. I couldn’t get myself to exit out of the entrance. I ran and ran, into the darkness that my eyes became used to, until I found a room lit up with a single yellow, flickering light bulb. That is the room where I am writing this from.

The room is pretty small, and it has a single chair in the middle covered in dried blood. To the side is an aluminum mobile cabinet with wheels. I quickly shut the door and locked it when I first entered in. I then proceeded to search the cabinet, but I only found broken torturing tools… Why are they here? I didn’t know what else to do at that point but to sit in the chair. The floor wasn’t pretty either, so I decided to sit in something that is the least disgusting of the two incredibly disgusting places to sit in. Christ, I’m still making jokes even though I am a few minutes away from an inevitable death. After I sat, I heard the chains again… Now I am hearing loud banging in the door as I write this. My phone has no reception; therefore I have no way to communicate with anyone. This room has no windows – there is no way for me to escape. Hopefully someone will find this on my phone if that thing doesn’t smash it to bits. I wish Microsoft Word was a smarter application… that it could somehow mean what it says – press “save”.