Many chilling stories happened a long time ago. Not this one. This one took place just over a year ago. Doubt my story? Don’t. I’m the one who was in it… I remember clear as yesterday the new, sleek white touring bus whirring into a deserted parking lot. A 30-year-old tower shot up from the ground. It was mustard-yellow, dirty and the off-white gutters were smothered in mucky mildew. Ivy crept along one wall, and the moon was a crescent. When I was younger, I had a nightmare about a hotel. Every time, even when I was older, I would make sure no room looked like the one in my room. And I would always, always refuse to sleep by the window and the radiator. We were loading off of the bus. We would only stay in this hotel for part of our choir …show more content…
All was well. Well, unless you count the creepy old woman glaring at me from the welcome desk. She wasn’t really that welcoming. I pushed the up button on the elevator, and a tattooed man in a black, torn wrestler’s tank-top smiled at me. He was missing several teeth. Piercing were lobed in his ear, nose, eyebrow, lip, and basically everywhere possible. The majority of his hair was a dark buzz-cut, but the center was gelled up in black oily spikes. We got in the elevator, and it rumbled up to the second story. I read my key-card. I would be in room 223. The room looked like the one in my dream so many years ago. I gasped.
My two roommates were already there. My third one was out getting ice. As soon as I saw the room, I begged to have the bed furthest from the window, but my two roommates refused. I didn’t tell them about the dream. How could I? They would’ve thought I was insane. Instead, I warned them that they didn’t know what they’d done. My friend was already sleeping by the bedside table because of her glasses, so I had to sleep by the radiator. And the window. Everything I had worked four years for, avoiding every hotel room, had been all for nothing. The beginning of my dream had already come true. All the way up to
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The lights were on. The phone was unplugged. The radio was unplugged. The radiator was unplugged. So was the T.V. Only the lights were plugged in. I whispered with my friends until about 4:00 in the morning, considerably calmer. The phone rang. Stupidly, I picked up. “Hello?” I called. “I’m coming for you.” The events began to unravel again, similar but worse than the time before when only I could know what was happening. The girl wanted all of us now. The lights turned off, the air grew chill, the phones rang, classical music switched on, the radiator made noise, and the little girl was coming out from behind the curtain. Slowly she emerged. My friends’ eyes were wide. “You were right!” one shouted. One threw up. Her knife was glittering in the moonlight. She raised it and I felt the suspense dragging me down. I felt the icy cold blade hit my stomach and felt a warm sensation. Blackness. That’s all I saw. Pure plain
There’s this really small highway town in New Mexico called Cimarron, and it’s small now but in the late 19th century it was a bustling crossroads for all sorts of people – gold speculators, ranchers, oilmen, and especially those vagrant characters, like Billy the Kid, seeking refuge from whatever lawman was on his tail. In Cimarron is this hotel, the Santa Fe Hotel, and they say that this place is the most haunted hotel still in operation, in the west. The lights flicker on and off, and people, visitors just say they encounter really weird things – like if you go in this one room, you might see a woman out of the corner of your eye, sitting on the windowsill and looking out for someone. And when you turn to face her, she disappears, but all of a sudden you smell a subtle waft of strawberry-scented perfume. Weird – yet you still not sure if this is true? Sounds sketchy, I know. Oh – I should say this hotel is haunted because 23 people have been shot to death in the hotel, either from a bar-fight or card-game or something. Well I went to stay at the hotel for a night, before I headed on to a nearby Boy Scout camp. I went with my troop, and we all got our own rooms. Guess what room I got – the strawbe...
I remember it was Freshman year [in high school] and all the upper class lacrosse girls told us to meet at one of the girl’s houses because we were going to go to a party. We met up there, and got into three different cars and started driving. The van I was in had 6 other girls in it and I was pretty good friends with the senior driving it so it didn’t take long for the senior to tell us that we weren’t really going to a party – and that we were going to go visit an abandoned insane asylum. I had never heard of Glenn Dale Hospital and the entire trip, we were told of how many unexplainable deaths used to occur at the hospital and how if you go there today, you can still hear the screams of the patients throughout the halls. I don’t remember what road we ended up on, but next thing I knew – it was all of us freshman walking through a long field seeing a large building in front of us. The closer we got… the slower we walked. We started talking about everything we had heard in the trip up. One girl mentioned that there are still bodies and papers left in the hospital and that the place was abandoned after the workers refused to keep working there after so many inexplicable deaths. Another mentioned that there are always cops patrolling the place and you can get arrested for trespassing. Ironically, as soon as the girl finished talking about the cop, we heard a loud voice from the other side of the building.
I heard a blood-curdling scream and I jumped. I felt silent tears running down my heavily scarred face, but they weren’t out of sadness. Mostly. They were a mixture of pain and fear. I ran into the eerie, blood-splattered room and screamed as I felt cold fingers grab my neck. Before that night, I didn’t believe in the paranormal. Now I sure as heck do. I had been chased out of my house after a fight with my step-parents because I wasn’t doing well in school (I had dyslexia), and I had taken shelter in what seemed like a normal house. I realized what I had gotten into after the sun set. The doors locked without a sign of anyone going near them. A cold draft filled the room I was in. The house turned into a horrific scene, and I knew I would never get out alive. It was the Asylum. There’s a rumor in our town, a rumor that started when someone made the observation that everyone fit in. No one was considered strange, homeless, an outsider. That doesn’t seem possible, you think. In my town, there are tons of people with no homes, or people that don’t belong, you think. Well, think again. Those homeless people? Think about how many there are. They fit in with each other. Those people that don’t belong? Once again, they fit in with each other. But then, you
On a cold night in December, Linda, a cutthroat investment banker, was walking home late at night from her luxurious office in Houston, Texas. The night was Christmas Eve, but Linda had to work late to finish up a big deal she was closing. It was lightly snowing outside, and as Linda liked snow, she decided walking the short distance to her apartment rather than driving would be relaxing. Her husband and two children were eagerly awaiting her arrival to spend Christmas Eve together as a family. As Linda was walking, she began to have the strange feeling that someone was following her. As she looked behind her, there was one man walking a few hundred feet back on the otherwise empty sidewalk. This frightened Linda a little, and she quickened her pace slightly. The man followed suit, increasing the speed at which he was following the nervous woman. Linda wasn’t quite sure what to do; this had never happened to her before. She turned around a second time, and felt a wave of horror pass over her as she saw the mans face, dark and fierce. She also saw something in his gloved right hand, long, silver, and shining dully in the dim streetlights. Linda knew that the object was indeed a knife, and now realized that she was in serious trouble. As she rounded a street corner, she began to sprint. The mysterious man rounded the corner, looking down, and saw a pair of high heels laying in the middle of the sidewalk. As he looked up, he saw Linda running as fast as she could, her bare feet kicking up snow. The man took off after her, furious that he had let her gain so much distance between them. Linda tried to open her purse in order to use
Unlike many of the short stories we read, “A&P” by John Uplike displays the familiar effects of anti-Feminism and unnecessary conformity in both female and male characters. The story is placed in the 1960’s in a grocery store on a sunny afternoon. Three young, beautiful ladies walk in wearing their bathing suits and begin stir up controversy in the quite store. Even though none of the three girls have done anything wrong still everyone working and shopping in the store, with the exception of Sammy and Stokesie, seem in some ways disgusted with the girls attire. Of course this affects me and other young women; knowing that in the 1960’s women were treated with disrespect about their bodies and are still today treated this way. A mixture of bland setting, contrasting characters and a fairly uneventful plot the story unravels into a powerful story that brings out the negative and anti-feminism attitudes in a corrupt society.
The night was tempestuous and my emotions were subtle, like the flame upon a torch. They blew out at the same time that my sense of tranquility dispersed, as if the winds had simply come and gone. The shrill scream of a young girl ricocheted off the walls and for a few brief seconds, it was the only sound that I could hear. It was then that the waves of turmoil commenced to crash upon me. It seemed as though every last one of my senses were succumbed to disperse from my reach completely. As everything blurred, I could just barely make out the slam of a door from somewhere alongside me and soon, the only thing that was left in its place was an ominous silence.
What would it be like if someone were to fall asleep, and wake up in a completely different place? This is what happens in Nightmare Academy. The book has a great ability to grab attention and make someone second guess their thoughts on any character, as well as make the impossible seem possible. In this report, there will be an explanation of how the book is able to grab someone's attention, as well as how the book would make a person second guess the characters, and finally, how the book is fictional yet lifelike, or in other words impossible yet possible. But first, there will be a basic summary of the book.
A woman was huddled in the corner of a house, a knife in one hand and a baby in another. The baby was crying, and there was a look of terror on the woman's face. Suddenly, a banging sound made the woman's head jerk up. An inhuman scream followed, causing the woman to grip the knife tighter.
Squatting on the ground, I was weeping. I couldn’t see anything, not even my hand although it was not far from me. I made my eyes widely open to make sure if my eyes went blind or not. When it was around 8pm, I started looking for the window. Touching my hands on the corners of the room, I finally found it. I used up all my energy opening the window, but it was covered with hard dust and it was rigid. I fell down, and cried a lot. I couldn’t sleep throughout the whole night, because I was hungry and thirsty. In addition to this, it was cold in the middle of that night. I was shivering and coughing persistently. Time passed, and it was early in the morning, but nothing
It felt so dragged out because all I wanted was to see him and tell him the news. Our connection felt different, phone calls were made shorter and they weren’t as frequent. I missed him. Two nights had gone by without a phone call or even a message. This wasn’t typical of Luke. I was becoming increasingly worried. I tried to distract myself from the situation and went to Atlanta to visit my parent’s for the weekend. This provided a distraction from my despair. When I arrived home, the flat fell silent. I sat aimlessly on the sofa, starring at the telephone, hoping that maybe it would ring. I tried turning my television on but I was oblivious to anything around me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I knew something was wrong. Fifty-five minutes passed, as I stared at the phone. That was when I heard it
I woke up to the pungent smell of hospital disinfect, invading my nostrils. The room was silent apart from my heavy breathing and the beep beep sound you often hear in hospitals that indicates you're alive. I slowly opened my eyes, squinting in attempt to sharpen the blurred images before me. I glanced around and took in the deserted, blue and white colour schemed hospital bedroom. How long have I been here? I shut my eyes, trying to remember what had exactly happened. Then it all hits me with a bang. The memory of it all starts to occupy my thoughts.
I awake to lukewarm water dripping down my forehead from a damp towel. I feel a thick liquid against my back. I scan the area, Unfamiliar. I find myself lying in a cot in a filthy room. The sight room itself was depressing, not that it was in extremely bad conditions but it was all…brown, the kind of brown that makes you feel depressed. It reeked of fish and motor oil, one of the queerest combinations of scents I have encountered. My ears start to pick up the deep monotones of a man speaking in other room. In my drowsy state I couldn’t make out exactly what he said but I did manage to g...
A short story is a fictional piece of writing that can range from 1,000 to 20,000 words. Unlike a novel, he reader should be able to read a short story within a short amount of time. Because the length of a short story is shorter than a novel, it usually has one main character (minor characters can be added in limited amounts) and focuses on one plot, setting, and central theme.
The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman focuses on a young woman’s psychological downfall and her fascination with the wallpaper within the house she and her husband are living in. The woman begins to believe that the wallpaper is coming alive, which leads her to become confused with reality and fantasy. Gilman selects the crazed woman as the narrator of the story. Furthermore, Gilman uses first person point of view to effectively convey the woman’s emotions and feelings during her mental decline.
Six long hours after departing Hotchkiss, we finally reached our destination. We pulled into the parking lot of the Super 8 just off Interstate 76 in Sterling, Colorado. Since I had been to this hotel on a previous trip to Sterling, I began wishing I had brought my swimsuit along. Mom and dad went inside and got the keys for room 129. I was so sick of riding in the car that I did not care what the room looked like as long as there was a bed for me to sleep on. As we entered the room, on the left there was the bathroom sink, a mirror, and a place to hang our "good" clothes. To the right, was the miniature bathroom. There was not enough space in there for a midget. Stepping out of the entranceway, there was a wooden dresser with a 27-inch television. By the large window, there was a small table. Two queen size beds sat on either side of the nightstand. The purple patterned quilts were quite shocking compared to everything else in the room.