Short Scary Stories

Ricardo's ghost.

“Play with me,” it said. I stirred in my bed, my eyes drowsy and heavy. A yawn blew out of my mouth. I was seconds away from falling deep into my dreams, but the voice shook me back to reality.

“Play with me,” it repeated, a child’s voice. One that I came to recognize early in my childhood. I laid with my eyes still closed, denying the fact that I woke up. I still felt exhausted and at the verge of passing out. If I just relaxed a little longer…

“Play with me,” it muttered, but his tone somehow changed. It didn’t come out with anger or hostility, but somehow it snatched my attention immediately. It sounded hopeless and lost, and it felt as if those same feelings provoked me at that moment. I imagined my bed forming lips right below where I laid. For some reason this image stuck to my brain.

Play with me. Play with me. The words continued to barrage my mind, leaving me restless and frantic. Now I wanted to open my eyes, but some mystical force kept them from splitting open. The lips on my bed moved and hummed. I felt a chilling vibration under where I laid. A tongue stretched out of its lips, and licked my entire back. I tried moving my limbs, but just like my eyes, they remained paralyzed.
Play. With. Me. The lips opened wide, and released a hot steam of breath. The air below scorched my entire body. My body sank deeper inside my bed, the sheets and comforts swallowing me whole. At this point breathing became an impossible task. The oxygen surrounding me grew thin. Darkness consumed my sight.

I opened my eyes.

Everything remained still. Nothing seemed disturbed. Well…except for me, of course. From the window above my head, the moon shone its silver light through my blinds.

My heart raced a million miles per second. With the help of the moon, I managed to scan my entire room for anything suspicious. Everything appeared normal and intact, thankfully.

Sweat drenched my entire body, making my pajamas and bed sheets stick to my skin like superglue. I thought about pulling away my blanket in order to cool myself down, but something told me it’d be better if I laid underneath my sheets. Maybe it was my childish mind pretending that my blankets can actually protect me from any monster or demon. Oh, how I miss the innocence of my mind as a kid.

The creepiness of what I just experienced settled on my mind. I shivered deeper into my bed, despite how hot my body felt. Some traces of my memory told me that everything was just some sick and bizarre nightmare. But I knew better than that. At that point in my childhood, I dealt with my fair share of paranormal experiences.

“Play with me,” I heard the child’s tenuous voice loud and clear. As calm and as gentle as the child’s tone sounded, it somehow pierced the silence inside my room like a sharp knife slicing through human flesh. Worst of all, it stimulated whatever emotion I felt the most at the moment.

And currently, anxiety took hostage of my conscious.

I peeked at the closet door that stood across from me. The moonlight provided full clarity of the entire wooden surface. Both doors remained closed, just how I left them right before I slept.

A noise came from behind the closet doors. It sounded like someone or something shuffling in between my clothes. The first levels of trepidation kept my body at bay. I wanted nothing more than to run away, but the child’s voice already drew me in with its mystical hands, and they refused to let me go.

The door creaked opened, the rusty hinges releasing a sour hiss, and the bottom of the closet door grinding against the hardwood floor. I rattled in my bed as if I was having a seizure.

Each second that passed by stretched farther and farther. More movement occurred behind the shadows the closet door created. I struggled hard to gather my thoughts, but they scattered themselves and blew far away from my mind like pieces of paper against an autumn wind.