Bad Habit

Mr. CreepyPasta is narrating “The Last Unwrapping Party on Earth”, one of my longer tales from Habitsville. If you like whodunnit style mysteries, strange casts of characters, and mummies, be sure to check it out. 

Whatever you do, don’t let The Antiquer know you’re lost. 

Read the story: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/j28uxq/dont_let_the_antiquer_know_youre_lost/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

As soon as my foot touched the linoleum stage floor, a series of things happened.

First, the lights on the stage grew brighter, so bright I could actually hear the buzzing of the electricity. I had to cover my eyes, and as I did, I heard a strange sound—a loud THUMP. Then, the sound faded, and so did the light. I removed my hand, blinked a few times, and then took in the intensely disturbing sight that was now before me.

For one, although the equipment was still unmanned, the seats in the audience were no longer empty.

There, sitting in rows, hands politely folded in their laps, were twenty-two wooden mannequins.

They had hardly any detail—in fact, they looked like human-sized artist’s figures, the kind you can bend to make different poses for reference. I couldn’t tell where they had come from, until I saw the slight glimmer of thin string coming from their wrists, connected to something so far up in the darkness above that I couldn’t see it.

But that wasn’t the weirdest thing.

The weirdest thing was that the teleprompter had changed. Instead of a flat black screen, it now read, quite plainly:

Tell Us A Joke

I hesitated. The ‘audience’ was completely still, and the only sound in the air was my own rapid breathing. Tell them a joke? Was this some sort of prank?

My instinct was to leave, but as I turned back towards the door, the one that led down that hallway, my blood ran cold. It was gone—that same inky blackness that lined the studio had creeped in, covering my only escape.

I turned back to the wooden crowd. I cleared my throat.

“Uh,” I started, unsure of what to say. It was really stupid to try this. I knew that. But here went nothing. “Where does the general keep his armies?” I asked, my voice hanging hollow and solitary in the dead air. There was no movement.

I smiled weakly. “His sleevies.”

I waited a moment, my pulse hammering hard in my head and my chest.

And then, I heard it. One, low, stifled snicker.

Hello everyone! No new story tonight, but there will be a new one coming very, very soon. There's no such thing as rest in Habitsville, as you all know.

I just wanted to remind everybody that Sam has a twitter! Although I update this  with new story announcements, narrations, and other things fairly often, I am tweeting throughout the day. So if you like extra content and faster updates, give me a follow.

For instance, today I shared this video-- a narration of my story, "The Butternut Bakery Does Not Serve Human Flesh" by renowned narrator Mr. Creepy Pasta! It sounds great, and it's also available as a podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It makes me happy that people like my content enough to do something creative with it. If you have narration requests, don't be afraid to ask!

I'd also like to remind everybody that they can feel free to post on my subreddit, it's not just for me to talk about my own stuff! I'd love to hear from all of you. Have you seen something strange around town? Did one of my stories remind you of something odd? This is the place to share it.

We've got the "Something Strange" flair for just general oddities, and the "Odd Sightings" flair for a post about something you've seen around town that's given you pause.

There was a loud click like a switch being flipped. In that moment, the three mirrors in front of Derek all flashed, one simultaneous bright light. I saw another flash in my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t tell what emitted the light. I had to blink a few times after it was done in order for my eyes to readjust, but when they did, I saw an odd sight.

Derek had stopped posing, and now was standing completely and utterly still. Not as if he was trying to hold still for the work the tailor was going to do. It was as though he was no longer a human being, and instead was a mannequin.

There was a sound of a door opening, and through my gap in the curtain, I saw Nestor joining Mr. Chatter in front of the statuesque Derek. “Is the bucket empty?” Mr. Chatter asked, to which Nestor silently slid the metal container over to him.

Mr. Chatter made a small tsk of disappointment. “Well this is no good at all,” he said, stepping once again around Derek. “There’s just hardly any meat on these bones. Not much to work with.” He sighed heavily. “We’ve got another one in the dressing room. His mirror should have stalled him too.”

I anxiously turned to look at the mirror against the wall of my dressing room. That must have been the flash in the corner of my eye, but since I was watching Mr. Chatter, I didn’t get whatever treatment poor Derek was currently under the spell of.

“We better get going,” Mr. Chatter said.

Then, he pulled out a pair of small, delicate scissors.

SCRAPE

The audience’s heads turned to the right of the theater. There had been a distinctive sound this time. A sharp scrape, coming from the wall.

“What was that Mommy?” the small boy in front of me asked his mother.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” she said, though her face was lined with worry.

Because of Haumea’s distance from the sun, it has a temperature of negative 241 degrees Celsius, or negative 402 degrees Fahrenheit.

As the video passed through the last of the rocks that made up the ring, the rumbling I had felt deepened. It now reverberated in the hollow of my chest, and I could even feel it in my teeth. Then—

SCRAPE

We all turned our heads to the left this time, as the squealing sound of metal being bent resounded from the other side of the theater. The children had shrunk down in their seats now, obviously frightened, but this time, their mother offered no words of consolation.

Since Haumea’s discovery in 2004, there has been no sign of life on the planet’s surface.

Until, around two years ago.

SCRAPE

The sound came from behind us now. We all twisted around to face the back, but only saw the back of the Planetarium. My hands were shaking now, both from the heavy rumbling that now made it difficult to hear the voice over the speakers, and from my own fear.

Then, I saw something.

It was a large, black shape, that traveled from the top of the screen overhead to the bottom at the very front. It was so quick, it could have been a flicker of the film. But it didn’t take up the whole space, and when it reached the front, we heard it again, right there at the start of the theater.

SCRAPE

The following presentation is rated R. View discretion is advised.

But still, Luke continually vouched for the place, saying that it had even become a nightly routine of his to finish up his work at the paper then head down to The Piano Bar. And at first, I didn’t think too much about his newfound passion.

But then, I noticed the holes in his mouth.

I hadn’t seen them initially. I believe this was because it was the back molars that went missing first. But after a few days, the gaps began creeping in towards the center, until I couldn’t not see them. So, even though it seemed sort of rude, and I didn’t know Luke all that well, I decided to ask.

“Luke,” I had started, as we were about to leave for the night. “Do you mind if I ask you an... odd question?”

He smiled at me, that bright smile of the young and disillusioned, minus a few teeth. “Go for it,” he answered. I tried to keep my gaze from drifting to the peeks of thrashing tongue I could see through the dark spaces in his gums, and instead strove to maintain eye contact.

I cleared my throat. “What’s happened to your teeth?”

To my great surprise, he didn’t seem offended or even taken aback by my sudden inquiry. Instead, his broken grin only widened. “I told you. I’ve been going to that piano bar every night.”

I waited for more details to come, but none did.

“And that... took your teeth?”

He laughed, a wet, soft sound. “I know it sounds weird, but trust me, it’s worth it.” And then he said something, something that for the life of me I couldn’t wrap my head around.

“If you give the Piano Man a tooth, he’ll play you a memory.”

“You shouldn’t go in there Heather,” I said, thinking of Phil’s monstrous wound. “I know this sounds crazy, I know.” I took a deep breath, then said: “But I think the Butternut Bakery is serving human flesh.”

Or, at least, that’s what I meant to say.

I could hear the words as they came from my lips, though they were not the one’s I had chosen at all. I said, “But I think the Butternut Bakery does not serve human flesh.”

I stood there, horrified. Heather furrowed her brow at me, one foot still on the doorstep of the building. “Yeah, Sam, I know. You told me before. The Butternut Bakery does not serve human flesh. I think it’s great.”

I blinked. “I told you before?” The fear that was rising within me was quickly turning to panic. I had thought Heather had been the first one to say the phrase to me, only a few days before, and never did I think I had said it back to her. “What, when you mentioned it a few days ago?”

Her frown deepened. “You’ve been talking about the bakery for over a month, Sam.”

“I have?”

I mustered up whatever ounce of bravery I had left within me, and said that classic and futile phrase: “You’re not going to get away with this.”

Regus’ smile widened. “Do you really think this is the first time I’ve done this?”