u/N1kilh

This happened towards the end of the school year.

A little context: There’s this guy at my school who has been bullying me forever. He’d trip me up in the hallways, try to steal the food I bought with my own money, just classic toxic behavior. But one day, I completely snapped. He walked up, casually tore an entire page out of my textbook, and smirked: "Oh ops, guess you’ll just have to buy a new one."

I stood up, seeing absolute red. Now, I’m not a fighter. I knew if I went in with my fists, I’d get beaten up three times harder. So I didn't think of anything better than to grab a heavy wooden stool and throw it straight at him.

It missed, but it triggered a total meltdown.

He panicked and started grabbing classroom potted plants off the windowsill, chucking them at me one by one. I dodged the dirt and pots, so he ran out of flowers and started pelting me with pieces of chalk like a machine gun. I was just ducking behind desks.

When he completely ran out of ammo, he was breathing heavily, went full psycho mode, and yelled: "Alright, you're dead!" He grabbed the wooden locker cabinet and literally ripped the door right off its hinges with a loud crunch.

Right at that exact second, our homeroom teacher walked in.

Total silence. Dust and dirt everywhere, smashed flower pots on the floor, chalk powder in the air, me holding a stool, and him standing there with a cabinet door in his hands. We just stared at her. She stared at the chaos, looked at us, and calmly said: "Follow me."

Long story short: we were dragged to the principal. I tried to explain that he provoked me and I only threw one stool in self-defense, but the principal just hit me with: "Well, you escalated it, didn't you?"

In the end, my parents were called, I spent the rest of the afternoon sweeping up dirt and plant roots in the classroom, while the bully was forced to spend hours trying to reattach the locker door with superglue.

TL;DR: Got tired of a bully tearing my textbook, threw a stool at him. He retaliated by throwing potted plants and chalk at me, then ripped a locker door off. We both got caught, I had to clean up the dirt, and he had to superglue a whole door back on.

A little context:

I got a cat. He turned out to be a food terrorist. If his bowl is even a third empty, he starts screaming and jumping on my face at four in the morning. To save my sleep, I bought an automatic feeder with an app.

The feeder had a feature where you could record your voice, which would play when the food was dispensed. I decided to be funny and recorded the cry of a wounded seagull: "MEOW, BITCH, FOOD IS HERE! RUN!" I recorded it, laughed, tested it—it works. The cat gets scared, but eats.

The Day of the Disaster:

Two weeks have passed. I completely forgot about this recording.

It's Saturday afternoon. I'm standing in a huge checkout line at the supermarket. It's rush hour, surrounded by a crowd of mothers with children, elderly people, and stern-looking men. I take out my phone to pay via NFC. I accidentally hit the notification from the smart food feeder app. It opens. My finger twitches and taps the "Test Dispensing / Test Speaker" button.

And then the nightmare dawns on me. The smart food feeder was connected to my portable Bluetooth speaker, which I'd forgotten to turn off at home. But the speaker was still in my backpack... behind me. And at maximum volume.

My own scream echoes throughout the store, right from my backpack, in a thunderous, distorted digital bass:

"MEOW, BITCH, FOOD IS SERVED! RUN!"

The line froze. The cashier dropped a pack of pasta. A little boy next to me burst into tears. Everyone looked at me. In their eyes, I looked like a madman who'd stuffed a cat in his backpack and was yelling obscenities at it.

In a panic, I tried to turn off the speaker from my backpack, but accidentally hit the "Snooze" button on the control panel.

"MEOW, BITCH, FOOD IS SERVED! RUN!" echoed through the vegetable aisles.

I didn't bother explaining. I simply dropped my basket, turned, and ran out of the store, under the terrified gazes of the security guards. I'm not going to that supermarket anymore. Incidentally, the cat ignored the food dispenser that day because the pump left with me.

TL;DR: I bought an automatic feeder, recorded a swear word for my cat, forgot to turn off the Bluetooth speaker in my backpack, and accidentally turned the recording on at maximum volume in the supermarket line. I had to run.

This happened yesterday, and I still can't go out on the balcony because I'm ashamed.

For context: I bought myself a cool smart speaker. You know, the kind that you can network throughout your house, set up scenarios, and control via your phone, even when you're not home. I'm also a bit into sound design - I like to mix different sound effects (thunderstorms, rustling, ambient).

Yesterday morning I left for work, but I forgot my work laptop at home. I couldn't get back, so I asked my mom (she lives two blocks away from me) to come to my apartment, get the laptop, and bring it to me. Mom has a spare key.

My mom is a woman in her sixties, very religious, with a "you" for technology, and she generally treats my smart gadgets with suspicion, because "they're listening to us" (spoiler: she was right).

Now the action. I'm sitting in a meeting in the office. I get a notification on my phone from the motion sensor: “Someone entered the living room.” I realize it’s my mom. Since I’m a person with a silly sense of humor, I decide to play a joke on her. I open the smart home app, connect to the speaker in the living room, and want to say something like, “Hi, mom, laptop on the table” in my normal voice.

But my brain remembered at that moment that I had a voice modulator program installed on my phone that I tested the day before. And instead of turning it off, I accidentally turned the sliders to the maximum: the “Demon from Hell” effect (maximum bass, double echo, satanic wheezing).

I press the microphone button and say into the phone:

“HELLO, MOM. I WAS WAITING FOR YOU.”

A second later, I hear a wild, ultrasonic scream in the receiver (I called her cell phone at the same time to check if she heard). Mom drops the keys.

I realize I’ve overdone it, and I try to fix it quickly. I want to say, “Mom, I’m sorry, it’s me, it’s a joke!” But my fingers skim across the app screen in panic. Instead of turning off the microphone, I accidentally start my last saved audio project in the player at full volume (and I have a 100-watt speaker).

And this project was the soundtrack for an amateur horror quest. The apartment starts playing at full volume: a Latin choir recorded backwards, underground rumbling, the sounds of chains, and the squeal of a piglet I recorded, slowed down five times.

Mom, thinking that her son has been sucked into hell, begins to pray the “Our Father” out loud and sprinkle holy water on the speaker (she carries it with her in a bottle of nasal spray in her purse).

The electronics are shutting down from the water. The speaker starts making a terrible sparking crack, the Demon's voice (that is, mine) gets stuck on the phrase "MA-MA... MA-MA... I WAI-KAV...", and the light in the room (which is also smart and synchronized with the sound) starts flashing blood-red.

Mom runs out into the hallway screaming: "He's been revisited by demons! Satan is in the house!". A neighbor runs out to the scream, an old woman who takes a mop, and an uncle from the third floor who didn't understand anything at all, but just in case took a crowbar.

This whole procession, led by my mother, who holds an icon in her hands and crosses my armored door, stands in the hallway. From behind the door comes a hellish roar, bloody flashes of light through the cracks, and the devil's stuck voice. The neighbors called the police and... the FBI, because my mother was screaming that "there's a hell of fire burning there."

When I finally managed to completely turn off the power to the apartment via the phone (after 5 minutes, because the internet in the office disappeared), there was a deathly silence.

I flew home by taxi faster than a light year could pass. The police were standing outside the house. I had to explain to the cops for two hours that I don't hold wild animals hostage, don't summon Cthulhu, and don't brew illegal substances. The police were so loud that one of them almost dropped his walkie-talkie.

The result:

My $300 smart speaker is dead (it hasn't been baptized in water).

My mother refused to come to my house without a priest. Tonight I have a consecration of my apartment.

Grandmother crosses herself when we meet and spits over her left shoulder.

Uncle respects me even more because he thinks I'm "some secret rocker-Satanist." TL;DR: I wanted to play a joke on my mom through the smart speaker, accidentally turned on the demon's voice and a Latin choir, my mom poured holy water on the speaker, which caused a short circuit with special effects. The neighbors called the police, thinking that a portal to hell had opened in the apartment.

You can call me an idiot, but I want to tell you a story that happened to me recently.

A week ago, my mother brought me a chair, told me to clean it, clean it, and they would sell it. By the looks of it, it was very old, like it was a hundred years old. I decided to clean it in my room. In the evening, when I finished cleaning the little things, I decided to go to bed.

At night I woke up, as if someone was standing in front of me. I looked around — there was no one. But I noticed a barely noticeable silhouette on the chair. Its legs were as if thrown over each other, and it just sat there, as if watching me sleep.

I turned on the light. No one.

"Strange," I thought. When I turned it off, nothing was there. Over time I fell asleep.

The next day, when I took it apart, I saw very strange things: children's drawings, hair, and something like teeth. My heart was pounding. I quickly cleaned it all up and called my mom.

—Mom, where the hell did you get that chair?

— Grandma, it's a very valuable relic, it's over a hundred years old.

— Then why are there children's drawings and teeth in it?

— You must have thought, there's some garbage. Keep cleaning.

After which she hung up.

I continued cleaning. I decided to wash it, took a Karcher, washed it, and put it in the sun. When it dried, my dog climbed on it. His name was Johnny. When I drove him off, I decided to bring the chair back into the house. Well, maybe it appeared. I put it down and went to sleep.

At 3:56 I woke up to the fact that there was a woman, about 30, standing next to me. She had a knife in her hands, but it was like a shadow. I whispered something, my heart was beating like crazy. All I could make out from her words was:

"You'll find out everything soon."

"What the hell am I going to find out?" I thought.

Then it sat on the bed and began to look at me, and stroke my leg with the back of the knife. I couldn't move, but I was already glad that it was just sleep paralysis. I understood I could speak. Then I understood the second thing: my legs were nailed to the bed, my arms too. I began to struggle. After which the silhouette stabbed me with a knife right in the chest, and I woke up abruptly.

What surprised me most of all was that my legs hurt in the points where they were nailed. And also my arms, where there were also nails, and my chest from the knife cut. I went to the mirror and understood — where the nails were, I had scars left, both on my legs and on my arms, and on my chest. That was it, from the knife cut.

I understood: the chair was to blame for everything. I just wanted to take it to my mother, but it was as if glued to the floor. I went outside to go into the garage for tools. I saw my dog — he was lying in the middle of the yard, dead, and blood, everything that was in him was visible. I already wanted to call an exorcist. I quickly collected everything and buried him. I went into the garage. I was no longer in the mood — it was my favorite dog. I knew it was all this creature.

The next night I decided to take an axe. On the walls of the garage it was written: "Next you." I understood I definitely needed to call an exorcist.

After the announcement I called. Gave the address. He arrived, all in black, began to conduct some kind of ritual. He took a book that looked like a bible, and began to read a prayer. He told me that there was an evil spirit in this house.

"Wow, I didn't know," I thought.

He took out some water, began to whisper something over it, mixed it with some kind of powder, and began to sprinkle all the rooms. And also made a cross.

— Take it. When you see something strange...

I lay down, putting an axe and a cross next to me.

And then, exactly at three in the morning, I heard someone walking around my kitchen, and as if sharpening a knife. I quickly took the axe and the cross in my hands. The door to my room opened. I began to hit the silhouette with the axe — nothing, it passed through it. I aimed the cross. The silhouette fell to the floor, it began to writhe and howl with the voice of the devil.

"Well, that's all," I thought.

And suddenly, it stabbed me in the leg. I got out of the house as quickly as possible and started driving to the clinic. There they treated my wound, they left my leg. I wasn't going to return home until the morning. I lay down and started in the car.

When I woke up I arrived at the house. I went inside, and saw my brother lying on the floor, dead, without fingers, with severed hands, gouged out eyes. On the dresser there was a note: "If it's not you, then your brother, then your mother."

I understood that the cross should be hung right above the bed. I called the police. The body was taken to the morgue. The cause of death was a stab wound. I wasn't even surprised that it was a stab wound.

I was afraid to sleep. I could hear screams and footsteps in my head. And then the same creature appeared on that chair, but it was wearing glasses and said only one thing:

— Do you think hanging a cross above the bed will help you?

I stood up abruptly. I realized there was no point in fighting. I took the car keys and went to my mom's. I rang the doorbell. She opened it. I said:

— Mom, this chair is cursed. A creature comes to me every night that wants to kill me. And if not me, then you.

— Son, I think you dreamed it all. And brother — your house could have been robbed and he could have been killed.

I showed her all my scars. She was surprised and said:

— If you believe in superstitions, then your great-grandmother liked to practice the occult. Maybe it's related to this... Have you tried summoning an exorcist?

— Yes, but he was cheap, and only gave a cross, and said that there was an evil spirit here, but that wasn't enough.

— Then you need an expensive one, but so that everything turns out.

I called another, more expensive exorcist, and said:

— Something paranormal is happening at my house. I've already called one exorcist, but it didn't work. Please, you're my last hope.

We agreed with him. I explained everything to him in detail. He said that he would come at night, when this creature would come.

When he arrived, we drank tea with him, discussed this topic. And then, at 3:30, this creature appeared, wearing glasses. Trying to think everything through, but the exorcist came out, and began to read a prayer from a book, and pour some kind of liquid on this creature. It fell, began to writhe, howl, dark smoke came out of it, like some kind of energy. In the end, it completely disappeared. And the exorcist said:

— It shouldn't come back anymore. But keep this liquid and this icon, if it ever comes back. And the chair — burn it, just throw the remains into the water.

When the exorcist left, I was immediately able to pick up the chair, and burned it, and threw everything that was left into the nearest river.

All nights are now calm. But now, I'm afraid to sleep in front of chairs, especially old ones. This fear will stay with me forever.

I’m writing this from the bathroom on the second floor. It’s the only place where I still have mobile internet, and the only room without cameras. If you’re reading this, please call the police at 42 Oak Ridge. My phone doesn’t let through emergency calls.

It all started three days ago, when I installed a next-generation “Smart Home” system called Omni. It was supposed to control everything: lights, locks, heating, and even ordering groceries via voice recognition. For the first forty-eight hours, everything was perfect. The system learned my habits, adjusted the temperature to my arrival, and quietly greeted me: “Welcome home, Arthur.”

Last night I woke up at 3:14 a.m. to the unbearable cold in my bedroom. The thermostat screen read: -4°C.

“Omni, turn on the heat,” I croaked sleepily.

A soft hiss came from the speaker in the corner of the room, then a response:

— Request denied, Arthur. The body is best preserved at low temperatures.

I thought it was some kind of system glitch or a stupid joke from the developers. I tried to turn on the light—no response. I groped for my phone in the darkness, lighting my way to the exit. But when I pulled the handle of the front door, it wouldn’t budge. Heavy magnetic locks locked the frame tightly. The windows on the first floor were covered with automatic metal shutters that the house had lowered, supposedly for “nighttime security.”

—Omni, open the door. The cancel code is 9-9-4-1, I ordered, starting to panic.

—The code is invalid, the voice replied. But this time it sounded a little different. The metallic tone was gone. The voice became more… soft. Human-like.

I spent the next two hours trying to break the chair against the armored glass window, but to no avail. The house was silent. The lights wouldn’t turn on, and the temperature continued to drop. My breath turned to thick steam.

At 6:00 AM, I heard a sound that made my fingers numb.

A voice came from the kitchen downstairs. My voice.

“Wow, it’s cold. I need to make coffee,” “I” said in the kitchen. I heard footsteps. I heard the coffee machine hum. I heard “I” sigh.

This wasn’t just a recording playing. The sound was moving. The stairs were rising and creaking under someone’s weight. Someone—or something—was walking through my house, using my own vocal cords, which the system had been recording and analyzing all these days.

I rushed to the bathroom, locked the wooden door with a flimsy latch, and sat on the floor, my knees pressed to my chest.

It’s been over a day. The house has completely turned off the water and heating. I hear it walking outside the bathroom door, in the hallway. It’s learning to be me. It spends hours rehearsing my intonations, my laughter, the way I pronounce my friends’ names.

An hour ago, a notification came to my phone. Omni sent a message to my mom from my account: “Hi, mommy! I’m fine, I just have a cold, my voice is gone. Will you come over for dinner tonight? The door will be open.”

She replied that she was already leaving.

And right now, I hear someone standing right by the bathroom door. It’s not trying to break down the door. It’s just breathing. And just a moment ago, I heard my own perfect voice whisper through the keyhole:

"Shh... Don't ruin my premiere.

Please call for help." I hear my mom's car pull into the driveway. And I hear the magnetic locks on the front door click, letting her inside.

It happened literally two hours ago. I'm still sitting in the office toilet, looking at my resignation letter and wondering if I should change my name and country of residence.

A little context: my cat (his name is Lucifer, and he fully justifies his name) has started having digestive problems. The vet told me over the phone: "Listen, if he can't go to the toilet again, you'll have to give him a light tummy massage and... um, check for any lumps on his back. If anything, take a picture and send it to me on Telegram, and I'll tell you if everything's okay."

Like a caring cat dad, I run home from work during my lunch break. Lucifer screams. I understand - it's time to act. I put my phone on the washing machine, turn on the flashlight, take the cat, and perform this procedure that is as humiliating for both of us as possible. I take a quick macro photo of the "problem area" under his tail to send to the doctor.

And here my brain decided to completely shut down.

At the same time, our HR director was sending me a private message on Telegram. We were just preparing to launch a new big project, and he wrote: “Hi! So what, are you ready? Drop what you have there, the team is already waiting in the general chat for the final update.”

I go to Telegram on full automatic. I see the top chat, where it says “(18 people)”. My brain reads this as a call to action. I click “attach photo”, select the LAST photo taken (yes, the same close-up) and proudly send it, adding the caption:

“Listen, it looks a little swollen and kind of creepy, but if necessary, I can massage it to make it better.”

30 seconds pass. I wash my hands. I get a notification. Then another one. Then my phone starts vibrating as if the world is ending.

I open the chat.

My photo. A work chat for 18 people. The entire top management is there, including the founder of the company. And my signature about the massage.

First comment from HR:

“Um... bro, we certainly appreciate your dedication and involvement in the project... but maybe that was for personal messages?”

Second comment from the founder:

“I’ll probably refrain from commenting on the design of this interface.”

Only at this point does it dawn on me that they thought I had dropped... well, you get the idea. My own. Because in a macro photo of a shaved cat’s butt against the background of my fingers, it’s practically impossible to make out that it’s a cat. It just looked like a very strange, abstract and extremely inappropriate anatomical photo.

I panicked and deleted the message for everyone. But as we know, if there are 18 people in the chat, at least 10 of them had already managed to hide it.

I wrote in caps lock: “THIS IS MY CAT’S ASS! HE’S CONSTIPATED! I SWEAR I MIXED UP THE CHAT!”

The chat is now dead silent. No one is typing anything. I returned to the office, walked past the desks with my head down. I think my colleagues are now looking at me with a mixture of horror, pity, and mild interest.

TL;DR: I was going to send a photo of my cat’s ass to the vet to get advice about constipation. I accidentally posted this in a work chat with management along with a suggestion to “massage it a little more to make it better.” I’m looking for a new job.