u/SL3ND3R_W0MAN

All my life I have been 'the weird kid'. I was raised on creepypastas and mud pies. I grew up and still live in the Rocky mountains of Colorado. And with all the stories and personal experiences I can't deny the paranormal. Genuine paranormal experiences are few and far between. But that doesn't mean they don't happen. Although, I honestly believe most of the horrors in the world are not paranormal at all, no not at all, most true horrors are the product of humanity.

As I mentioned I was raised on creepypastas and I frequented sites like 'best gore' and 'live leek'. From a young age I was reading Jeff the Killer, Smile Dog, Candle Cove, and all the classics- while simultaneously viewing Cartel style executions and grown men chopping off their penises.

One Creepypasta really stuck with me though, it was my favorite, Slenderman as seen in Marble Hornets and various stories. A real classic. Now, most people say the morbid fascination with these short internet stories goes away and you grow out of it. Maybe for most people it's true. But I only found myself digging deeper into gore and horror and true crime as I aged. In middle school I started to recreate some of the gore videos I saw online, I cut off my pinky toes and have chunks missing from various parts of my body. I sometimes made my own videos to send in to gore sites, maybe you've seen me. Hell, I even had friends that partook in the activities with me. But again, they all grew out of these twisted little games. And they have told me they regret their 'dumb teenage edginess'. They think I've grown out of it too. But the truth is I just hid my macabre interests deep down in the pit of my stomach.

In high school I tried to 'self-delete' a lot. Mostly due to ongoing depression and mental illness- but I won't lie that it was partly because of my obsession with pain and death.

Now I'm 21, living alone, and a severe alcoholic. I forgot about my gore driven addictions for a while and focused on drinking and smoking and a tiny bit of hard drugs. But one night when I was home alone on my computer, and quite a few drinks deep, I received an email. No title, no body text, just a link. I'm not an idiot. I didn't click it. Well, not at first. The first thing that ran through my mind was a little laugh at the old Smile Dog creepypasta.

"It's the curiosity that gets you." I chuckled drunkenly to myself.

Then I examined the email closer, my vision spinning and waving, I realized the email address was my old personal email from middle and highschool. Down the quirky usage of 3's in place of the letter E. This puiqed my interest, maybe I had set a timed email? You know, the ones that wait 30 minutes or in this case years to send your email through. I used to send timed emails to myself all the time as reminders for little things I need to do or videos I wanted to watch later. So maybe, just maybe, teenage me sent this link for 5 years in the future. Being as drunk and high as I was I didn't consider that the new email address I was using was only 2 years old and I couldn't possibly have sent myself this email. But it doesn't matter. It's all the same. I still openned the link.

And as I suspected, there I was on screen. Maybe 15 or 16 years old. I had my hair in that early 2000's emo side part, and a clearly crocked nose ring made from a paperclip. I was in my old bedroom, bland white walls with posters and notebook paper pinned up. My blue eyes staring directly into the camera, darting down into my lap a few times to look at something I was holding just out of frame. I touched my face on the screen. I swear I felt my pimply teenage skin instead of the crisp screen, but I must have really been laying it on thick with the drugs. Once I pulled my hand away that girl on screen had a red-ish mark on her check that wasn't there just frames before, and she absently scratched her the red blotch with those cheap press on nails. I shivered a bit, silently asking myself if I measured my drug and alcohol intake correctly.

The video went on like this for about three minutes, I look at the camera, look at an object in my lap, lick my chapped lips, and rub the red blotch on my face. I looked at the video length and it said the video was HOURS long. Files like this usually don't send well. But that was another thing I overlooked as I continued to view the girl I once was.

Finally, the camera frame panned down to show a collection of concerning items in my lap. A full bottle of Benadryl, a bottle of Everclear, a rusty nail, and a razor blade. I winced as I recalled the nights in which these object were my best friends, my only friends. It had been a while but I still had the scar tissue to commemorate these nights. It was then when I believed I knew where this video was going. I thought I remembered it all. But how wrong I was, have I really forgotten so much? How could I forget what I did. Regardless, someway, somehow, I've been sent this video to remind me.

Stay tuned for part two.

Author's Note: Some aspects of this story are true. More of than I would like to admit. The following parts to my story will be found on my profile. Part 2 up now.