Creepypasta stories

She's Waiting in the Reflection

A/N this is a long one

I wasn't always alone. I used to have friends. Four or five, at least. Good friends, I mean, actual friends, the kind who matter to your life. I'm pretty sure I had four. I don't think there were five.

I'm going to tell this story as it probably happened. Otherwise, it'll be full of "I think"s and "I guess"s and "it must have been"s. So just know that this is true, as far as I can put the pieces together. There's a lot of guesswork and probably a bit of wishful thinking, but I've done my best.

The five of us were hanging out one night a couple of months ago: me, Marc, Bethany, Zoe and Andrew. It was a game night, so we sat around with beers and snacks and casually insulted each other all night, all in good fun. It was a comfortable, fun time, with friends who go way back. We'd already weathered the storms that had eroded the rest of our group — moving, kids, whatever. Bethany had dated Marc for a while, and dated me after that. In addition to Bethany, Marc had dated Andrew, too, and Zoe for like a week. I was the only one of us Marc hadn't slept with, and it was a constant joke that he wanted to collect the whole set.

We'd had plenty of hurt feelings in the past, is my point, but we'd come through it. We were all on easy, good terms with each other. We loved each other.

Andrew's the one who suggested the game. It was midnight or so, and no one was going home yet, but the card games had died down and we were all just lounging around.

Curiosity Killed the Cat, he called it. He made a spreadsheet and put it up online, and we all got our phones out to edit it. We each put our name in, followed by the number 10. Andrew hadn't told us why, yet, but with the name of the game, no one wanted to be the first to ask. Andrew just stared at us expectantly, though, grinning, and finally Zoe broke down and asked him what the deal was.

"It's simple," he said. "Last one on the sheet gets twenty bucks from everyone else, eighty dollars all told. Every time you look at the sheet to see the rankings, though, you've got to decrease your number by 1. When it gets to zero, you're out."

"I just won't look, then," laughed Marc.

Andrew smiled. "Two catches. No one ever has to tell you if you've won. So if you never look, we might all owe you twenty bucks that you'll never know about. And also, everyone's allowed to lie. I could tell you you've won — or that I have, for that matter. If you want to find out for sure, you'll have to go look."

"What's to stop me from just looking and not decreasing my number?" asked Marc.

Andrew looked hurt. "Basic honesty?"

"A sense of self-worth," I added.

"Not ripping off your friends?" offered Bethany, and Marc threw up his hands in surrender.

"All right, all right, no cheating! Got it."

"Last rule," said Andrew. "Everyone puts a link to the sheet on the front page of their phone. That way, we'll all have to think about it. Curiosity begins...now! Remember, all you have to do to win is just don't look."

"Oh man, I just won," said Marc. "I don't know how you all looked so many times already, but you guys all owe me twenty bucks."

We pelted him with popcorn.

* * * * * *

The first few days were easy. No one could possibly have been out so soon, so the urge to look was low. I would have forgotten about it entirely, except that every time I opened my phone, the little spreadsheet icon labeled Curiosity was sitting right there, waiting for me to click it.

After a week, I cracked for the first time. I had to know how my friends were doing with the temptation. And 10 was such a high number, it was hardly going to matter if I dropped it by one, anyway. If I wanted to, I could check it every week for two months and still be in the game.