Do you see that the disgust in my cousin's voice. Maybe turn around,
But I didn't notice anything unusual, just a sewer grate clogged with dead leaves
and an empty sidewalk. There was a rat, big one. My cousin
Laura shivered. Hate those things? Are there a lot of them in a
city? I don't think so, I shrugged. But then again, it's
been raining a lot recently. Maybe the rising water made them come up out
of the sewers. I thought of slimy, flooded tunnels that would never see
sunlight and the blind, chittering creatures crawling through them, and shuddered. I
didn't know that they could even get that big. My cousin Laura had a
special gift for finding something ugly in any given situation. Here we were on
a beautiful fall morning, strolling through the park beneath golden leaves, and she
was talking about giant rats. The truth was, I wasn't even sure what
Laura was doing here. We had an exactly been close when we were younger.
She'd always whined and rolled her eyes whenever the adults made her take care
of me, and I hadn't heard from her in over ten years when she
sent a text along asking to come visit me in the city. There was
something ominous about how short and insistent the message was, but it felt wrong
to turn her down. If she was trying to reconnect or make up for
the past, I figured I should at least give her a chance. I
should have known. Laura had shown up with a single, packed to bursting
suitcase, glancing over her shoulder like she expected someone to rob her at any
minute. She was thinner than I remembered. It looked like it had been
a while since she'd slept. After an awkward hug, I invited her in
for coffee. My cousin eagerly accepted, but we soon discovered we had little
to discuss above our steaming mugs. Less than half an hour had passed before
I suggested we'd take a walk, mostly just to get away from the uncomfortable
silence in my apartment. The change of environment seemed to do us both good.
Laura walked more lightly, like a heavy burden had been lifted from her
shoulders, at least until she saw the rat. It was all downhill from
there. Laura kept glancing nervously at every sewer, great repast as though she
expected a pack of rodents to come swarming out and attack us. Sometimes she'd
kick her feet and the fallen leaves, like she'd just felt tiny paws running
over her shoelaces. Her behavior was so odd that people were beginning to stare
through gritted teeth. I suggested we take a rest and admire the foliage.
Laura eagerly accepted, but I noticed she checked beneath the bench before she sat
down beside me. I was about to ask her what was wrong, but
she stood with a shriek, clutching her ankle in agony. Laura, you
okay? What happened? The rat it bit me? There was no sign
of injury on my cousin's leg. There was certainly no mangy rabid rats running
down the sidewalk. Laura's eyes started back and forth, as though she could
see thousands of rab in his beady eyes watching her from beneath the trees.
I found my wondering about the real motive for her visit. The dark circles
under Laura's eyes and her nearest skeletal thinness her telltale signs of drug addiction.
It was the only explanation I could think of that made sense. I wondered
if the rest of the family knew. I wondered how long it would be
before she hit me up for money. I chose my next words very carefully.
I guess she should probably see a doctor. Huh. If I could
get my cousin admitted to a hospital, I thought, maybe she'd get the
help she needed, not for her imaginary bite, but for her mind.
You can't see them, can you. The light in Laura's eyes was a
mixture of pity and contempt. Don't worry you will. At first I had
been afraid, and now I was angry. Babysitting my weird, attic cousin
through her bad trip was not what I had signed up for when I invited
Laura to stay with me. I got to my feet, not sure whether
I was going to yell at her walk away or threatened to call the police
if she wouldn't get help. In the end, I did know of the
above. To my surprise and embarrassment, Laura had started tearing at her clothing,
still screaming about rats that no one else could see. They're under my
clothes, she howled, They're under my fucking skin. Angry, red gashes
appeared on my cousin's body, where she clawed herself. I spotted two park
policemen jogging towards us, muttering into their radios, but they didn't get the
Laura in time. Suddenly, my cousin stopped flailing and collapsed amongst the withered
leaves. The autopsy revealed that her heart had stopped beating, a response consistent
with shock, but there were no signs of any drug in her system.
I called my cousin's parents from a grimy police station phone booth. I kept
my explanation vague, partly because I couldn't find the words to express the nightmare
I'd experienced, and partly because I secretly hoped that their response, or to
veale, if they'd known what was wrong with Laura there stunned horror sounded genuine.
According to them, the only indication they'd had that anything was a miss
in their daughter's life was that she'd missed her weekly call home on Sunday.
They hadn't even known that she was planning to visit me. If the answers
weren't in Laura's personal life or her autopsy results, maybe they were in the
massive suitcase she dumped in my apartment. As numb and exhausted as I was,
my heart pounded faster. When I finally walked through my own front door.
Laura's suitcase was right where she left it, casting a long, ominous
shadow on my wall in the evening light. With trembling fingers, I tugged
on the zipper. Laura had crammed it so full of stuff it practically flew
open, revealing a haphazard pile of junk. It looked like my cousin had
just thrown in whatever came to hand. I reached out to dig through the
mess, then froze. I could have sworn i'd seen movement in there.
I waited for several agonizing seconds, but the pile in the suitcase stayed still.
Not taking any chances, I grabbed my high school hockey stick and used
it to poke through my cousin's stuff. If there was a nest of vermin
in there, the last thing I wanted was to get bitten, just like
Laura had been. Suddenly, the suitcase felt like a trap, a trap
full of squirming, hairy creatures with wormy tails, razors, sharp teeth.
It was whatever I might find and They're really worth the risk. The shadows
on the wall across from me shifted suddenly, like something had just skittered away.
I realized that I wanted no I needed to know what had happened to
Laura. Tangled between two bras and an old raincoat, I found it my
cousin's diary. Now that I was actually holding it in my hand, however,
I hesitated opening. It felt like disrespect to the dead and invasion of
Laura's privacy. And yet if I only looked at the most recent parts,
that wouldn't be so bad. Wouldn't my cousin have wanted someone to know what
happened to her. Straining my eyes against the dying light, I began to
read. For the most part, the purple notebook in my hand could have
been the diary of anyone around my age, struggles with financial insecurity, self
doubt, feeling lost in life. Then something caught my eye. October twenty
fourth, Rainy, It's almost Halloween. I want to do a horror movie
marathon, but I'm too tired to focus. I slept so bad last night.
Something kept waking me up. Sounded almost like scratching in the walls.
So I'll have to pick up some mouse traps after work. October twenty fifth,
more rain. Forgot all about the mouse traps last night, I got
drinks with Ryan instead. He's cute, but I can never out what he's
thinking. He invited me to a Halloween party, but with a stupid little
grin of his, who knows if it's a date or not. I give
up. I'm sure about the noise now, there's definitely something moving in the
walls, because I'll have to warn Ryan about it when he stays over.
Hello. October twenty sixth, cold but sunny, it's past midnight. I'm
sitting in my room with the lights on, towels stuffed under the door,
and I'm so freaked out right now. Went to the kitchen for a glass
of water. Saw a giant rat creeping across the counter. The thing was
bigger than a chihuahua. And then when I turned around, there were two
more pairs of rat eyes watching me from the bathroom. Hell no, I'm
staying in here until morning. Then I'm calling Past Control. October twenty seventh.
That was a scam. The so called exterminator says there's no evidence of
rats anywhere in the apartment. He looked at me like I was crazy when
I said that I could hear them crawling inside the walls. Whatever, I'll
just have to figure something else out. Who knows, maybe the whole town
has a rat problem. There were a few more of them around the dumpster
at work gross October twenty eighth. It was in my freaking bed. I
wasn't even sure why I woke up until I felt its cold nose on my
belly and its tiny teeth. And it wasn't alone. They're on my shelves,
inside my slippers. When I ran out of the room, one jumped
on my back from the sofa. I started the scratch marks, but the
doctor said he couldn't see them. I guess they weren't as deep as they
felt. I couldn't spend another night in that apartment. I don't even know
what I've got in the suit case. They clawed and bit at me the
whole time I was packing, like they were trying to keep me there for
a goddamn midnight snack. I told my landlord, fat chance that she'll do
anything about it. Claire from work is letting me crash on our couch while
the whole thing gets sorted out. What a mess. I turned the page.
Laura had stopped using dates at her entries for getting a more haphazard.
Her writing so precise at first, it becomes slanted chicken scratch. I can't
even remember the last time I got a full night's sleep. Every time I
close my eyes, I can feel them pawing at my skin, nibbling at
my toes. Claire kicked me out, says that I keep screaming in the
middle of the night. I tried my luck at a hotel, but the
rats are there too. I could hear them in the walls. Must have
knotted off on a bench in the park. I had a dream in and
I was staying with my young cousin downtown in some big city. We were
talking, laughing, having a good time until I started to feel sick.
I ran into the bathroom and felt something big, slimy and hairy sliding out
of my throat. I coughed up a rat into the sink. When I
lifted up my shirt and looked in the mirror, there were more of them
squirming under the skin of my belly. The words on the next page were
soiled by something, maybe rain, water, tears, got fired from work
after what happened with Claire. My ex coworkers aren't answering my calls. I
don't know anyone else here, but spending the night where I can always big
open spaces that I can see them coming. I know that no one else
can see the rats, but does that even matter when I can feel their
teeth gnawing on me. Can't tell my parents to have me committed. Got
to find someplace else to go. Haven't thought about my cousin in years,
So I had that dream. What was it last night? Two nights ago?
I've lost track and he used the Wi Fi in the library to write
to her. Oh if she gets back to me, she's all I got.
The last entry was two days ago. My cousin must have spent Halloween
night crammed into an overnight bus with a crowd of strangers trying desperately to reach
me. Now I understood why she'd look so pale and haunted, but I
didn't understand how it has all started. As far as I could tell from
Laura's diary, she'd been fine one day, and the next she was surrounded
by monstrous rats that only she could see. Fear of them had taken her
career, her relationship, and finally, her life. No one else could
see what was hunting Laura, but that didn't make the pain any less real
for her. My hands clenched into fists. It didn't make sense. It
wasn't fair. Things like that weren't supposed to just happen to people for no
reason. There had to be some cause, some logic behind it. I
was still wondering what that might have been when something scurried across my foot.
Hey, their kids, it's me, mister creepy pasta. And I want
to tell you thank you so much for watching tonight's video if you're watching on
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