If The Price Sounds Too Good To Be True, Then It Is Too Good To Be True. I Learned That The Hard Way.

Update

There is no escaping them. Escaping me, and my fate. Whichever horrible fate it is.

They’ve been here all day. I haven’t left the condo, but not for lack of trying. I didn’t sleep at all last night or the day before. I stayed in all day. I tried to call the police, but as soon as I started to dial out and wait for a ringing, I was stabbed in the ear by the extremely loud hiss-laugh of the old woman. I tried my home phone then, and there wasn’t much difference. Only this time, between her horrible laughs, she spoke.

“No choices, Mr…” she hissed my name again. “No choices and no way out. Choose, Mr…”. I hung up before she could say anymore.

Regularly through the night and the day, I would get phone calls I wouldn’t answer. There were loud bangs on the door almost every hour, on the dot. I didn’t answer them either. After the first time I went to the peephole and saw my own head on the other side getting blown apart, I didn’t go to the peephole again when I heard knocking. I put boards and whatever else I could find over the big windows. I didn’t have much, so I started to tear my furniture apart to construct makeshift barriers. To keep out my dead selves. And they were there. Reenacting their deaths one after the other on my patio. Always staring right at me as they bled or broke or burned.

As I had put up the last of my broken couch against the windows, I saw the last dead me right in front of my face, just outside the glass. He looked exactly like me. Same two-day-old beard. Same disheveled hair. Same dark circles under his eyes. Same dirty undershirt that I was currently wearing. The only difference was his wide grin to my morbid depression. His smile was so stretched and big it split his bottom lip in the middle and cracked both sides of his mouth. He grit his teeth and began to turn his head to the side slowly. As he neared an angle that was not normal or healthy for his neck, his teeth ground together so hard that a few of them cracked and shattered in his mouth, causing his gums to bleed like a fountain. Just as I rushed to block him out, I heard a loud, wet pop and his head jerked it’s final few inches. He snapped his own neck and collapsed right in front of me. I heaved a little from the sight of it, but didn’t have anything in my stomach to vomit up.

The condo is now dark and desolate. I unplugged all my electronic devices, due to the fact they kept coming alive and screaming at me. Not just making horrible noises, but actually projecting screams. My screams. My TV didn’t want to stop, even after I unplugged it, so I smashed it to glass powder and metal parts with a stool. My tablet was the only device that didn’t want to unhinge my mind, but even that won’t work for very long at one time before the screen flickers on and off in long intervals and it’s near impossible to use.

I’ve tried to leave a few times. The first time, I waited until I hadn’t had a banging on the door for at least two hours. I inched slowly towards the door, my 1911 drawn and the hammer cocked back. No noises from the other side of the door. And I’d have definitely heard it, I was so silent I could’ve heard a spider breathing. I got to the door and put the gun up to the wood, barrel first. I peeked through the peephole, and there were dark figures. The light in the hall was dim and I couldn’t make out any discernible features. Except for wide, shiny white grins. Just staring, waiting silently for me to step out the door and into their awaiting grins. I felt my spine try to squirm out of my body and I quickly backed away from the door.

About an hour-and-a-half ago, the scratching started on the windows and door again, and it hasn’t stopped since. It’s only grown louder and more persistent. Sometimes there’s banging and I can hear the wood splinter or the glass crack a little. They’ll be in here soon, and I don’t know how I’m going to stop them. Well, I guess that’s not completely true… I know one way to keep them from getting me. I told myself I wasn’t the type of person to take my own life, regardless of the situation. I’ve always felt like it was a waste. There’s always another option. I’m starting to think the other option is a whole lot worse, this time. I don’t want to know what they plan to do with me. Maybe kill me in all the ways they died. Or take my life right out of me, in payment for the ones stolen from them. All I can do now is wonder in anxiety and crippling fear what atrocities are on their way. And if I’ll end up deciding not to wait.

Whether they get in or I go the other route, this’ll probably be the last time you hear from me. I won’t get ripped apart or cut to ribbons or shot and stabbed full of holes. That much, I’m sure of. I don’t know if bullets will work on fucking phantom versions of me, but if they get in, I’ll find out. And if I see that goddamn old lady and smell her stench again, I’ll wring the bitch’s neck. I guess wish me luck, although I don’t feel like luck has anything to do with this goddamn condo. I suppose, if you take anything from what’s happened to me, just be weary of condo’s with prices too good to be true. You may get a hell of a lot more than what you paid for.