"You have one new message, received this morning at 1:13AM."
The Message
By
Darkstone57
Sunset groaned, her eyes straining to open, at the sound of her phone’s ringtone going off on the desk, on the other side of her bedroom.
After the day she’d had, it was last thing she needed. Her hair a mess and her purple nighty sliding off her left shoulder; she tossed her bed quilt off of her with force and dragged her legs out of bed.
As her feet touched her carpet floor, the ringtone stopped, to which Sunset merely rubbed her eyes and tried to gain her senses, now that she was woken up.
She decided to ignore her phone and head to the kitchen to get a drink.
With an long and contagious yawn, she trekked across her apartment into her kitchen, turned on its light, picked up one of her glasses left on the drying rack, filled it with cold water and the tap off lazily.
Sunset took one big gulp of the glass of water before deciding to take the glass with back to the bedroom, turning the light off as she left the kitchen.
On the way back she decided to take it slow, the softness of the apartments carpets she had fitted were soft and comfortable, with every step she relished the softness as it cushioned her feet, step after step.
Eventually, she made it back to her bed and placed the glass of water down on her night stand. As she began to get into bed, Sunset heard the phone vibrate on her bedroom desk.
She looked at the phone incredulously as she thought, ‘Who on earth would leave a voicemail at this time of night?’
Deciding to get it over with, Sunset got off her bed and wandered over the desk, swiping the phone up, glaring at the bright screen as it said; ‘Voicemail; 1 New Message’.
Sunset rolled her eyes as she began to input her keycode, ‘Probably some cold caller from overseas, wasting everyone’s time...’
Placing the phone to her right ear, folding her left arm around her waist, Sunset waited.
“Welcome to your EE Voicemail,” The female automated voice began, “You have one new message, received this morning at 1:13AM.”
‘Go on then, who is-‘
“Hello, Sunset...” Her thoughts were cut short as a deep distorted voice spoke to her.
“How’ve you been? It’s been a long time.” The voice spoke to her calmly. Sunset became concerned, she couldn’t ascertain as whether the voice was male or female.
“I’ve heard a lot has happened to you, Sunset,” The voice sounded genuinely impressed as they went on, “Head of the science department at Canterlot University, eh?” They chuckled lightly, sending a chill down her spine.
“I wonder....” The voice took a moment to consider something, “Do you still wear that biker jacket? After all these years?” Sunset was beginning to get scared...
“But, I also wonder, do you remember what you did back then...?” The voice’s tone lowered before it asked, “Do you remember... what you did to me?”
Sunset began to tighten her grip on her nighty as she continued to listen.
“Let me tell you... It took me a long time to get over what you did to me.” The voice was strained but angry before going silent for a long... but few... seconds...
“It wasn’t all bad after our last... meeting...” The voice began to sound more calm, “Took me a while, but, I decided to give life another chance. Became an investment banker, man, all those hours memorising numbers... And then, through that job, wouldn't you know it, I met the love of my life.”
Sunset began feel the fear crawl up her as the voice chuckled happily, “You two would’ve got on so well with each other...”
“Not long after that, we got married and had a beautiful little boy.” The voice reminisced with a content sigh, “I suppose we both got our happily ever afters, eh?”
She didn’t like where this was going...
“But,” The voice’s tone became dark, “We both know that in the real word; happily ever after never lasts at all...”
“God...” The voice became strained as they tried to speak, “To think... it’s been a year since that crash...”
Sunset gasped, placing her left hand over mouth in shock.
“I woke up to find... nothing was left for me...” The voice was saddened, as they painfully recollected those events, “No partner, no little boy, no life... Nothing...”
The voice gave a heavy sigh, “Do you know what that’s like; to literally lose it all? And, have nothing to help you get through the day?”
Sunset said nothing as she sat down, still shaken.
“All I have now... is pain, Sunset.” The voice was starting to get angry.
“The pain of the loss of everything I had worked so hard for... And...”
Sunset gulped,
“The pain of what you put me through...” The voice said with venom.
She began to shake in fear as the voice continued, “For the longest time, I couldn’t go a day without that picture flashing through my mind, the pictures of what you did and the image of your face...” The voice took a deep breath, “Eventually, they went away. But, now, those images are coupled together with their faces...” The voice strained as they yelled down the phone, “And I can’t stand the sight of it anymore!”
She listened intently as the voice took deep ragged breaths before inhaling a long one, “There is only one thing left for me to do now... I’m going to come find you...”
Sunset's mouth hung open as it said darkly; “I’m going to come find you...”
“To listen to the message again, press-“
Sunset hung up and dropped the phone in place.
She began to shiver more erratically, trying to process it all.
Suddenly, her thoughts were cut off as a bright light seeped in through her blindfold and swayed to and fro for a minute before it stopped.
Taking a long deep breath, Sunset apprehensively stood up and pushed two of her fingers through the blinds gap and separated a pair apart to see outside.
She gasped fearfully at the sight.
There... across the street, under the light, was a figure clad in black, their face covered by the hood of their jacket, who was waving at her window, methodically, with a phone in their hand. They stopped... And pressed down on the screen of their phone...
Seconds later, Sunset’s vibrated to life by her foot, which made her jump.
Tentatively, she reached down for the phone that was facing down and brought it up to her. She turned it over and froze at the sight of what was on her screen.
A message sent about 10 seconds ago, saying; “See you soon.”
Quickly, she grasped the blindfold handle and forced it to shoot up so she could see outside. But, she only felt her heart sink in her chest.
The figure across the street; was already gone...
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I love it and I'd like this to expand into a full fledged chapter. Maybe three or four extra chapters.
8028630 Hmm, I'll think about it. But, I'm curious, who do you think it could be?
Made my skin crawl. So good in that sense. But so don't want Sunset to get hurt either, so...par?
Dam, just wow, that atmosphere and then the classic "I'm coming for you" speech really gave me that "why don't you just worry about it" feeling
8028666 Apologies. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. What do you mean by; "Why don't you just worry about it" 'feeling'?
I see what you were going for, kinda, but it just didn't work for me. For one, there was no pay-off. Nothing happened. A dude talked and gave this melodramatic, generic speech to Sunset and then... nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. I think it would have benefited by drawing out the messages and slowly wearing her down, building tension. Flesh it out by having multiple scenes of Sunset being stalked on with creepier and more garbled messages by the day. At the very least though something should have had happened to Sunset near the end.
Second, Sunset didn't do anything in this fic. She's the protagonist; Sunset has to be the one to drive the story forward. But all we have is a stunted scene where Sunset listens to a dude talk with minimal interaction on her part. Sunset could have started having an internal monologue , trying to figure out who this person was or what she did, or she could have tried calling them back and calling them out. If not that Sunset might have had dismissed it as a shitty prank caller, she's a pretty tough girl. I don't think she'd piss herself over something like this until it became serious, like my first suggestion.
All in all, it's not a bad idea but the execution could have been a little bit better.
Well, since you asked so nicely:
To be honest... It doesn't feel like a mystery to me. I assume the mystery itself is in reference to the identity of the figure? The only really useful things we get about that are that they knew Sunset in high school and that Sunset did something to them in high school. So I would guess either Flash Sentry or one of the Dazzlings, probably Adagio. But, unless I'm missing something completely, those are the only clues, and really that could refer to almost anyone. The only reason I've narrowed it down to those two is because they're important, so to speak. So, it doesn't really give enough leads to solve what little mystery there is (again, unless I've missed something obvious, but I've read it over about five times now).
Honestly, I'd say this lends itself better to being a horror with mystery elements than the other way 'round. But that's still a problem, for the reasons 8028772 has already pointed out. Nothing really happened. You've got build up, but no release, no climax, and to be brutally honest, in its current iteration not much of a story. It could do with a lot of fleshing out.
Also, mate, you used a lot of ellipses. 36, to be exact. You probably didn't need more than a quarter of those, at most. Just saying.
8028867
8028772
Fair enough. I appreciate you two answering me honestly and giving me contrusctive criticism to work with. It's not something that I get in most of my stories which is something I want so I can understand how to improve for the better. I know I'm not the best writer so, again, thank you for taking your time to tell me this.
Hopefully, next time I write a mystery story, it will live up to your expectations.
Thanks again, take care.
8028772 That first half of your rant is unoriginal and uninspired. Having nothing happen, while it wasn't the conclusion you were expecting, it still was a conclusion you weren't expecting. I say that having nothing happen yet during the conclusion was a brilliant idea, cause it didn't follow one of the old creepypasta tropes we've seen time from time again.
8028686
What I meant is that when a really dark character threatens someone he say something like "maybe I'll attack today, maybe tomorrow, maybe run a year, and maybe I won't attack, until then why don't you just worry about it."
8029136 i loved this it gave me goosebumps
Creepy. Intense. GOOD job !
8029307 Ah, Alright. Thank you for the praise.
This is creepy. Will there be a sequel?
8029399 I might do. No promises
8028662
8029273
8029307
8029350
8029385
8029399
So, who do you think it was?
8029444 Awesome. If you do, then I will read it. Unless it has too much detailed gore.
8029452 I'm trying to go with the whole; "Less is more." Leaving things to the imagination.
8029473 Yeah, that seems good.
8029444
8029273 As a guy who doesn't read much creepy pastas, can you elaborate on what cliched trope your talking about, please?
8029724 The cliched trope of having a legitimate something stalk the victim after ecievint some wierd, creepy message. I've seen it so much that my eyes bleed. Yours though takes the extra step (or a step back) and not follow that trend.
8029444
I'll not Answer ! Nope ! Nope ! Nope !
It was ME !
Before I read this, what is the Dark for ?
And how bad does it get ?
8042619 Stalking, that's it.
This is a great mystery dark one-shot. You told me the rest of your stories are meh. But what I see is a clear showcasing of someone who knows what he's doing.
Oh my gosh. This gave me serious shakes.
Normally I don't go for such dark stories, but this was written really well, and I.... really like it.
Nevertheless, I shall sleep with my phone in the other room, blinds drawn tight, and doors locked with double latches... for the rest of my life.
Nice work on this one.
To be honest this seems less of a story and more a suspense study. That’s fine, but it just doesn’t leave much of an impression of any kind.
8028635
Honestly.... I think it'd be either AJ or Twilight the most likely.... either them or Flash Sentry.