Disclaimer: You know the drill.
"Carly?!" Spencer screamed as loud as he could, trying to make himself heard over his sister's own screams. He knelt down next to her. "Carly, calm down! Stop for a second and listen! You had a dream!"
"NO!" Carly shrieked madly. "NO! I WASN'T DREAMING! SPENCER, PLEASE! DON'T GO BACK! DON'T GO BACK!"
"What's going on in here?!" The doctor and three nurses burst in, the commotion being audible from all across the hallway.
"She just started screaming…" Sam said quietly. It dawned on her in a way it never had before that things were very wrong.
While the doctor and nurses struggled to get Carly under control and considered anesthetics, Sam stood frozen in the doorway. Where did it all go wrong? It seemed like she never really asked herself that- or maybe she did and forgot in the cacophony.
"Sam!" Spencer's yell brought the girl back to reality. "Come over here and help me out! What are you doing?!"
()()()
Freddie grazed two of his fingertips across the steak knife he took from the Shays' kitchen cabinet. They bled a little and he sucked eagerly on his fingers. He liked picturing his fingers slowly losing their color, withering and falling off his hand like old, abandoned strawberries.
He wasn't afraid of being lonely anymore. He convinced himself of that. He'd always hated Sam, ever since the first day they met all the way to the last. He convinced himself of that.
The knife dug a little deeper into the tips of Freddie's fingers, hitting the bone. How could he love a sensation he hated so very much?
He sat at the table and inspected the cuts on his left fingertips. It hurt too much, but he wanted to pull the lips of his wounds apart to look at the sinewy muscle. He wanted to see his pink insides. Freddie Benson wanted to feel what he'd been looking at for all these months.
Sprinkles of blood littered the table. Eventually he gave up on his fingers and licked away at those sprinkles. He was thirsty.
()()()
Sam walked away from the hospital ashamed. It was 7 AM, pitch black in Seattle. Despite her energy, she felt tired.
She didn't want to admit to herself that Spencer was right. "She needed to hear your voice, why didn't you help me?! Why didn't you talk to her?!" It was her fault Carly was back out of consciousness. It was her fault her friend's sanity was being questioned.
Just like the way it had been for her whole like, everything was her fault. From her mom's divorce to her friend's mental breakdown.
Sam was supposed to be strong. It didn't make sense, the way she locked up in that room. Spencer saw that too- he wouldn't have been so angry if he were expecting that to happen. Something in her just froze up.
Eventually, the young girl made her way to the apartment building. She couldn't stand the thought of going home right now. She wanted something familiar, something inviting, somewhere she felt safe and wanted.
There was a voice behind the door of Carly's apartment. Sam's hand gripped the doorknob tightly. Just what she needed.
()()()
Carly woke up unable to breathe. She was floating limply in a room filled with blood. It went all the way to the ceiling, leaving no surface left for Carly to breathe in. She couldn't see exactly where she was- the blood was so thick it distorted her vision.
The feeling of drowning intensified in her chest, yet she somehow wasn't losing strength. If anything, she was getting stronger. More frantic. Eager to escape. She flailed and flailed until her hand brushed something solid. A wall? She drifted back over and felt it with both her hands. A wall.
She guided herself along until the pain in her chest reached down to her stomach and crippled her. The girl slowly floated to the ground. It was unbearable. She couldn't go on. Her lips parted by themselves. The rancid taste of blood rushed past her teeth. If there were anything in her stomach, she would have thrown it up.
The frantic adrenaline that was once carrying her had failed. She couldn't move but she was still alive. But then she noticed something else; the blood around her was turning solid. No, not exactly solid- it had become a jelly. The smell was absolutely overpowering- now that she could breathe it was obvious.
Carly huddled herself into a little ball, feeling the blood jelly weigh her down. Somehow the bright redness of the jelly was completely obvious, when it should have been pitch black in the room.
Carly was staring at what should have been the ceiling when two hands parted through the jelly. It was Freddie! She wept. He vomited blood.
()()()
Sam woke up tied to a chair. Her head hurt, and she could feel a vague moistness on it. She recognized her prison as the studio where iCarly was filmed. It looked brand new. Apparently, Carly hadn't even so much as touched the place since the show stopped filming.
She didn't remember why she was here or what put her here. The last thing she recalled was opening up the door to Carly's apartment. Then the flash of a baseball bat… it was all black after that. It occurred to Sam Puckett that someone caught her off guard, and she went from scared to really pissed. No one- absolutely no one- caught Sam off guard and walked away.
The knot tied around her wrists to keep her on the chair was strong. But with some effort she spread her arms out enough to stand up and get them out from around the chair. After getting loose from the chair, she wondered how she was going to escape. The door had to be opened with the handle, so all she could do was turn around and back through.
As she was contemplating this, Freddie entered the room. His shirt had stains of blood on it, and Sam knew right away it was her blood. He was casually knocking on the floor with his baseball bat. Her move.
()()()
"Dude, did you hear about iCarly coming back tonight?"
"Yeah! I read the announcement Freddie posted on the website! I'm totally stoked, that show was like my fucking childhood, dude."
"I know! Remember we used to watch that shit all the time, back in middle school!"
"Those were the fuckin' days, man! We're so old now, I'm going to feel like the biggest creep ever watching that show."
"Shit, dude! That's crazy, everyone loves iCarly!"
"Loved, you mean."
"Well, I mean, after those last few shows, they probably pissed a lot of their viewers away. Remember that one night where Carly barely said anything?"
"Dude, don't fucking remind me. You're going to make me not want to watch the revival."
"It was ridiculous! She spent the entire time pacing around in the background while Sam did a viewer Q&A-"
"They did like fifty of those before the show shut down!"
"I hope they don't fuck this up."
()()()
In a flash, Sam was on him. Her kick to Freddie's face came before he could swing his bat and he hit the floor. She stomped on his chest and stomach as he writhed and tried to roll away from the furious girl. But Freddie's head was too clear with purpose while Sam's thoughts were soaked in blood and terror.
He grabbed her foot and she fell backwards. A hiss escaped her clenched teeth- the head wound throbbed and stung when it connected with the wood floor. With her arms tied, she couldn't pick herself up before Freddie was standing over her with his bat. "Taste aluminum, cunt."
The camera boy savagely beat Sam without care for where he hit her- as long as it wasn't her head. He had too many plans for her tonight on the brand new episode of iCarly!
Sam's screams were like a siren song to him; the more of them there were, the more he craved them. They were like Lays- he couldn't have just one! She rolled and gasped and screamed- but she didn't plead or beg.
As soon as this thought occurred, Freddie stopped and looked at the assaulted former friend with utter helpless disdain. There was one thing he wanted from her the most- and she would never give it to him. She would never beg him to stop. Because even though she was bruised and broken, with tied hands and hoarse breaths, she was stronger than him. It pissed him off more than anything else in his life had before.
But he had his plans, and he had his dream, and in a matter of hours, he would make her scream. In time.
()()()
"AAHHH!"
Carly woke very quickly from her drug-induced sleep and let a scream so horrid it punched Spencer in the belly. The clumsy man, who passed out from exhaustion in the armchair right by Carly's bed, shrieked and fell down, startled.
"Carly?!"
"Spencer, Sam is in trouble!"
Spencer looked his sister in the eye as best he could while the young girl was in a frantic state. "It was a dream, Carly. Sam is okay."
"No!" Carly said immediately. She struggled against the binds the hospital put across her bed. Spencer wondered briefly whether they were even allowed to do that. "No, she's at the apartment! She went to the apartment- I told her not to go to the apartment!"
Before the conversation could press on any further, two nurses came rushing into the room. "What's wrong?!" The younger nurse, about Spencer's age, shouted.
Carly tried her best to put on a calm face. She couldn't become frantic or they'd dose her with tranquilizers again and Spencer wouldn't go help Sam. "I had a terrible dream, but I'm okay."
"Ma'am, we heard you yelling from the other side of the hall," said the older, stern-looking nurse. "I think it'd be in your best interest if you had more sleeping medication."
Spencer got up from the floor. "Now, wait a minute. Don't you think you've given her enough?"
"I'm okay." Carly added. "I can go back to sleep. Just watch." The girl made an obvious attempt at getting the nurses to leave by pretending to fall asleep immediately. It didn't work.
"Alright, look," Spencer said as one of the nurses approached Carly with a needle full of some substance, "I know what you're doing can't possibly be legal. I want to see a doctor right away."
The nurse backed away.
()()()
Freddie looked into his reflection in the Shays' bathroom. His hair was matted to his head. The nerves were getting out of control, making him sweat. It was going to be his first time hosting iCarly! Though the show had been retired for several months, it was still among the most popular shows on the Internet. Freddie had a lot to live up to.
He ran a hand through his hair. It came back slimy with grease so thick it reflected the light above the medicine cabinet. He hadn't taken a shower for about a week. Sam could escape in the time it would take him to bathe, and that wasn't the only thing that stopped him. The bigger part of it was apathy. Yeah, his hair was a grease trap and his face was a minefield of pimples. Who cared anymore?
The episode of iCarly was going to be unique, and a great follow-up to the much-maligned viewer's choice night. He was going to dissect Sam Puckett live on camera, then kill himself. A few tears escaped his eyes. He couldn't wait. He couldn't wait.
()()()
Spencer walked home in the late, dark weather. He didn't know it was the same path Sam walked down to get to her fate.
The streets he found himself on were streets he never thought he'd enter in his life. Ever since the day he was born, he avoided these places out of what was starting to feel like cowardice. His knuckles clacked together and he only barely realized it. The sound should have been obvious to him in the deathly quiet of the night.
He felt like he wanted someone to walk up to him. He wanted to be held at knifepoint- maybe even gunpoint- on a lonesome street where desperation was a lifestyle. There was something in him he didn't want to dump off just anywhere. A bitterness and resentment towards life was bubbling up inside his throat.
Why Carly? Why not him? Why not Sam or Freddie? Why did it have to be his beautiful little sister? He didn't feel any guilt about wishing that it had been anyone instead of her. He loved Sam and Freddie, but it was different.
Spencer dared someone to attack him, deep down inside his gut. It just didn't outwardly show. He walked briskly and kept his eyes mostly averted from trashed homes and the people that were chained to them. Yet he imagined himself lashing out, throwing his hardest right hook. It didn't matter who won. He just wanted to feel something else.
The sad truth of the matter is that he no longer believed his sister would get better. The doctor told him about her physical and psychological issues. Even if she healed from whatever was bothering her physically, the stuff that was hurting her mentally would sideline her. Spencer blamed himself for not being the authority figure he should have been. While his sister was starting her mental breakdown, he was stuck under a giant fork.
()()()
Carly's half-lidded eyes itched. She wanted to scratch them but she couldn't move her arms.
The room hurt. It was a blur of medicated light masquerading its fluorescence as illumination. Focusing on anything was impossible. Faces floated around in front of her, mouthing words. Some of them were human.
She didn't want to close her eyes, because when she did, she saw the mess at the studio. It was a wreck. Beanbag chairs thrown around, props scattered all over the floor, the blood stains- it was unbearable. Carly tried so hard to cling to consciousness.
A TV hung off the wall opposite her bed. It was turned to some local news station she never really watched. The anchor talked in slow motion baritone about a trash bag full of woman found in a garbage truck. Apparently it was so mutilated as to be unidentifiable except through DNA.
It didn't shock Carly when they revealed the body's identity to be that of Marissa Benson. She already knew. But the more the news report wore on, the more her head began to hurt. Her nose was about to start bleeding again. She had to tell the next nurse to turn the TV off.
But really, she knew there was only one way to get rid of it immediately. She went to sleep.
()()()
She woke up in her and her brother's apartment. It looked clean. Unnaturally pristine. She was drawn to the stairs as if an outside force were pushing her. They took her straight to the third floor, skipping the second entirely.
The stairs weren't right. They would wind and twist in ways that made little geometric sense within the context of the building. The girl climbing them wasn't completely privy to this- instead she had only a vague feeling of wrongness. Not like she wasn't used to it.
After several minutes, the girl made her way to the third floor. Behind the door of the iCarly studio entrance, she saw… nothing. It was solid black. That was normal; whoever left the room last was always expected to turn the lights off. What wasn't normal was the hand pushing through the glass, visible despite the darkness inside and outside the room. The girl didn't see it until it was too late.
It shattered the door and grabbed her by her hand, she screamed but her voice wouldn't happen. With manic strength, she bashed her hand against the unknown wrist and fled up a staircase that wasn't supposed to be there.
On the fourth floor, there was another studio door. This one was a polar opposite of the last one- there was blinding, pure white light emanating within.
She approached slowly, cautiously. Her curiosity got the best of her and she knocked on the glass. Goatse materialized behind the door, shattered the glass and sucked everything in its path in like a black hole. The girl screamed, but it was inaudible and with nothing in her path to hang onto, she was sucked in.
It smelled unbearable, but the sensation of bones being smashed against the tightness of goatse guy's asshole negated it quickly. "Ha ha! I will crush your bones to make my bread!"
()()()
Spencer walked into the lobby of his apartment building to hear weeping. It was coming from behind the door of Lewbert the doorman's office. The brother of Carly had been looking forward to going up and getting some sleep, yet he was disturbed. He'd never heard anything like it coming from Lewbert before. It wasn't like his usual screechiness; it was low and warbled like a whammy bar was being played on him.
His curiosity and compassion having gotten the best of him, Spencer knocked on the office door. Immediately, the crying stopped. There were some sounds of shuffling, and then Lewbert answered the door. The face of the man shocked Spencer, partly because he was used to it being tightened in scowl or scream. He actually looked vulnerable. Human. For a moment the sight flooded Spencer with guilt for the trouble Carly and her gang sometimes brought him.
"Lewbert, what's up?" Spencer asked. His tone sounded dulled by his own worries, but the words were enough to take Lewbert aback. He expected to have to deal with more nonsense.
"Haven't you heard? Marissa's dead."
()()()
Sam awoke from bat-encouraged unconsciousness strapped haphazardly to a table by rope. She was naked, but the rope covered everything except her head and stomach. This was the room Lewbert rented Freddie. The heater was off.
The footsteps were so quiet, but she could hear them like explosions. Her captor was outside her field of vision. Whatever Freddie was about to do, it was definitely not a spur of the moment sort of thing. That creeped her out immensely. Not only was Freddie about to do something horrible, he'd been planning it for no telling how long!
It took all of her willpower not to do what her instincts screamed at her to do. Sam wanted so badly just to struggle against the ropes, but she knew how unlikely it was she'd get away. She was going to have to do something that was nearly impossible for her even without the frightening situation; think.
"Oh, you're awake," Freddie said beaming. Sam felt like ice cubes fell into her stomach. "Good timing. The show is just about to start."
Freddie cleared his throat. "In 5, 4, 3, 2…"
()()()
After a brief heartfelt with Lewbert, Spencer went back to his apartment for a rest. What he found instead was an obvious break-in. There were things moved around, the table had a knife on it, little chunks of rope littered the living room.
Spencer checked all around the apartment to make sure the culprit wasn't around. The final room he checked was shocking. All over the floor of the studio, blood, more rope, and clothes. Immediately, Spencer recognized the clothes as Sam's, and a chill of horror shook his entire body.
"Shit, shit, shit," Spencer whispered to himself over and over. He felt like he was hyperventilating. He had to call the police. His hands shook so much it was hard to dial the phone. When he got the number dialed, it was hard to even speak, but they understood him. As he put his phone back in his pocket and tried not to faint, he noticed a piece of paper. It was taped next to the studio door.
"Spencer. My old room. Freddie."
()()()
The room had thirteen doors and twelve staircases. She just walked through one of the doors. It couldn't be reopened.
It was a sky blue room as massive as a three-story mansion. The staircases were arranged like the M.C. Escher painting- some of them were impossible to use. They sprawled out over each other, winding and careening up and down.
She didn't know how she knew this, but one of these doors led to where her friend was being tormented. What she didn't know is where the other eleven led. The not knowing clenched her belly, but didn't stop her from moving forward. One of the staircases was normal, except for a C-shaped curve starting halfway up and ending at the last step.
Knowing that the easy path would probably lead to disaster, she forged ahead anyway. When she opened the door, it was pitch black on the other side. Hesitantly, she reached into the blackness. It didn't feel any different from the room she was already standing in. But that's because it wasn't.
When she entered the void and closed the door, the lights flickered on. To her amazement, she was standing right back where she started. As the horror started to sink in, she felt something pelting the top of her head and her shoulders. Instead of looking up, she looked down to see little off-white bits of chalk.
The girl clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from vomiting when she realized the room was raining teeth. It didn't become obvious until she saw the blood and chunks of gum on some of them. The room was going to be coated in them. She somehow knew they were Sam's.
()()()
I'll never forget the night of the last ever iCarly stream. It was a cold night in Massachusetts- of course- and you couldn't imagine how excited I was. My family was broke and couldn't afford to run the heater for more than a few hours a day, but I didn't even notice how cold it was in my room. I thought iCarly would never go back on air!
The stream loaded and I saw Freddie, the cameraman, standing over Sam with a small knife. Sam was tied to a table. She looked really, really scared, but she wasn't struggling or anything. He smiled at the camera and I felt like he was looking right at me. The knife slowly went to Sam's stomach, drifting along teasingly, until he pressed down.
I sat in front of computer with my mouth hanging open. My mind wanted to call the cops, shout for someone, do something, anything. But I couldn't move my body. I could hardly even breathe. That night, I watched Sam Puckett get disemboweled.
()()()
Spencer was far too anxious for stupid riddles at a time like this.
"My old room?" What did that mean? Was he talking about his old room in his and his dead mom's apartment? The last place he lived before moving here?
He had already called the cops before busting through the door of the Bensons' apartment. Someone else on that floor probably heard him, but that didn't matter. There was no telling what was happening to Sam right now, or what had happened.
The Bensons' apartment was absolutely thrashed. It was probably beyond repair, and the smell was overpowering. Not only was it a thick, greasy musk, it wasn't at all recognizable. It was a mishmash of so many things spread on the walls, floors and ceiling that none could pin it. Just a potpourri.
There was one thing in particular that caught Spencer's attention and managed to out-stink the rest of the house. It was a plastic bag sitting atop the counter. He didn't have to open it to realize he was in the middle of a crime scene.
()()()
Freddie could never begin to express how much he loved goatse. It was the thing that kicked open the door of his mind. He'd been living in a fake world with fake friends before then. It's not that the picture understood him- it's that it didn't. Through that, it made him realize he didn't understand himself. He was just plastic before the day they met.
He had it posted all over the walls of his tomb right now. Yes, he considered the room where he was killing Sam his tomb. He knew he was going to die here. Transcending reality to become the Internet was his goal from the very beginning. Freddie was going to be the ultimate creepypasta, the ultimate true-to-life shock image, and the legend. He wanted to be the thing that ended all message board conversations about the most twisted thing on the Internet.
With an intestine pinched off in his hand, he smiled at the camera. He could say something right now- a pithy one liner- but why?
()()()
It was Officer Coulton's first month on the force when he got involved in the Freddie Benson incident. Prior to that point, it had been mostly smooth sailing. He'd never been forced to see a horrific crime scene live in person. Older officers told him those tapes from classes he'd taken could never truly prepare him for a real murder scene. That scared him, but he kept his head high. He was sure that, no matter how brutal it was, he could perform.
They received the call fairly late in the evening. At about 11 PM, a frantic man called claiming he'd found his sister's friend's bloodied clothing in his apartment. They rushed right over and noticed the apartment across the hall had its door busted in. Officer Coulton and three other guys were sent into that place while the other three of their group went into the Shays' place.
Coulton and his guys found a man in his mid 20s fainted away on the kitchen floor. Two of the officers tended to the fainted man while Coulton and another guy searched around the apartment. There was a thick, implacable odor permeating within the place, and the officers secretly worried that a poison was involved.
The room that they later discovered was Freddie Benson's was a horrific pigsty, but Coulton didn't get time to discover its secrets when they heard a scream coming from the kitchen.
When they rushed in, they saw their fellow officers staring open-mouthed at a decomposing human head covered in some kind of milky fluid. It was starting to green, both of its eyes had been taken out, and the jaw was broken and hanging off of the head like an old-fashioned doorknocker.
Officer Coulton fainted. He quit the next day.
()()()
When Spencer's eyes opened, an epiphany shot through them both like a needle. Maybe the quickly realized conclusion was meant to distract him from the trauma he experienced in the Benson apartment. But it didn't matter. In any case, he knew where Freddie was now.
The only problem was he couldn't do much to act on it right now. He'd managed to end up in the back of an ambulance. Well, idn't this just the rest he be needin'? Not right now, unfortunately; a friend of his was probably dead and it was too late for him to help.
An EMT kneeling by his side began to open her mouth. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. "Welcome back, Mr. Shay. You fell and took a serious head injury."
Spencer would have laughed- he wanted to, even- but she wouldn't have understood why. It seemed like everyone was getting head injuries nowadays. Mrs. Benson, his sister- hell, they were making some kind of sick fad out of it. His eyes flicked over to his side where he could faintly see something protruding out of his arm. They were pumping him full of something, alright.
"Ma'am," he slurred, "there's a friend I have who needs help, too."
"Who?"
Spencer could barely string a sentence together, nor could he gesture without Herculean effort. His stomach burned and raged with urgency his mouth couldn't match. This woman had to know what he knew, but getting it across felt impossible. He slurred and drooled himself to sleep.
()()()
With little effort, the police busted down the door to Freddie Benson's torture chamber. Thanks to a tip from doorman Lewbert, they tracked down the boy, but it was too late. Sam Puckett was already dead. He stood at her side with a camera pointed directly at him, calm in the face of what he'd done.
The four officers pointed their guns and one got out their handcuffs. "Hands in the air! You're under arrest!" The smell of blood and shit was so thick it was hard to choke a gag back and sound authoritative.
Freddie ignored the officer's instructions and turned his body to look back at the camera. One of the policemen lunged for him as he lifted his knife, warm and red with Sam's blood, and slammed it hard into his stomach. He was knocked down the split second the knife pierced his liver. He spent his last second sure he'd be immortalized on the Internet.
He didn't know the stream had been cut off by their own server halfway through his murder of Sam Puckett.
()()()
I floated alone in a black space. When I spoke out loud, I couldn't hear the words. I couldn't even hear myself breathe.
Not even my own body was visible to me. I could lift my hand up in front of my face, but not see my hand. It was darker in this space than I could ever get used to.
I wanted to think there was something within the darkness, something that could be illuminated. Even if it were a beast from my most vivid nightmare, I'd know at least I'm not alone. That I'm not the only thing left with any self-awareness, any consciousness.
But the only thing to all sides of me was emptiness. Was I blind? Maybe I was, but that didn't explain why I couldn't feel or hear or even smell or taste. It was like all my senses were just shut down.
I remember reading about the heat death of the universe back in freshman science class. Is that what this was right now? Am I somehow alive while everything else isn't?
()()()
TO BE CONTINUED