CREEPYPASTA

I Am Being Hunted

Do you ever wonder exactly what it is that goes on in the dark corners and hidden cracks of our world, what it is that lies behind the curtain? We have a strange disposition not to try and peek behind the veil don't we? Somehow we've been convinced that there's nothing going on behind the scenes and we scoff at the imbercils who even suggest that there is a curtain. I suppose that's what they mean when they say 'the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he does not exist'. Apholith is an arm of the government, one that most certainly does not exist.

I suppose I don't exist either, scrubbed from the records. I died in 2007, not that anyone noticed. My parents, my friends, loves, all gone by then. I was commemorated by a diminutive obituary squeezed between an advert for tomato soup and a ninety seven year old man with fifteen grand kids. I was mourned only by a civil celebrant at a funeral no one attended, and my coffin was quietly lowered into the dirt at the foot of a rock that read only 'Malcolm Delaway, 1978 - 2007.

Apholith specialises in human experimentation and weaponization, the brutal deconstruction and reassembly of unwilling human participants into monsters. They are far from the only shadow organisation acting under the government, though you'd find very little evidence to prove the connection. They are however, the one I joined on a rainy evening in 2007 while halfway across the state no one cared that I had died. Eleven years later and I still don't exist, and before long I'll most likely be dead again, permanently this time. It's been four months since I left Apholith, managed to escape after they decided I was no longer needed and tried to have me killed.

There are numerous projects being carried out all across the world under their label, shit that would make you pale and dizzy if you really knew what was out there. I was employed for protection, not research. I'm no scientist, but Apholith took an interest in me for the 'top secret' covert ops I had run in my military career. I made sure none of the grotesqueries we developed got out, and you know what? Sometimes we fucked up. There's stuff that got out and through a series of circumstances we never managed to recapture or put them down. Now I'm just like those that escaped. Hiding out, the company that made us breathing down our backs, you may have walked right past us and you'd never have any idea. We're out here all by ourselves. Just me and the monsters.

I've seen first hand a test of project: Hooper. Hooper had been a comatose patient following a critical stroke. He was taken for testing purposes, his family informed that he had died. They grieved over his loss while Apholith stripped away his skin to mimic project: Vincent. Vincent was a test of what they referred to as 'full corporeal astral projection', that went out of control and had to be shut away in a hidden bunker. Hooper is now a mindless weapon, Apholith deploy it with an area and a radius and it kills until there is nothing left to kill. I was part of the 'clean-up crew' that were sent in to ensure there were no survivors once Hooper had finished being tested. I've done some terrible things. The things I saw at the test sites I've tried my best to repress, but shredded corpses and the stench of fresh blood is something you never forget.

I've been to a place known as 'the city' to Apholith and Hereco (another shadow organisation, specialising in understanding and opening gates to other dimensions). It was only a handful of times when Hereco required our help, but I'll never shake the eerie feeling of that place. It's clearly man made, closely resembling the skyscrapers and latticed streets of New York, but it's absolutely deserted, save for the so-called 'lost souls'. The buildings disappear at their highest heights into a black fog, and the streets between them have canals instead of roads. The water that fills them is red as blood, and occasionally you might see a body (or body part) floating by. I watched a man touch the surface and simply be sucked into the depths.