I Need You to Make Me Feel - A horror short story

Taken from Chris Burton's "Club Hellhole: Stories of Horror and Weird Fiction."

***

My lifelong fascination with dark and disturbing things began at an early age, though I’d never quite found out where this concerning obsession had originated. My guess was that it might have had something to do with how my personality and my worldview were shaped by the different little traumas on the way. I’d say I had a fairly decent upbringing without any ground-shaking tragedies to knock me off my feet, though shit does happen to everyone—no matter who you are or what you do, no one is getting through intact. The human mind is a black box, and you never know what the end result will be of all those depressing and terrifying experiences thrown in, stirring and morphing and distorting and gnawing off pieces of the soul.

Secretly watching Courage the Cowardly Dog on TV as a child did give me the chills, but at the same time, I had to realise that it scratched an itch in my brain I had not known needed scratching. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me. It sure as hell gave me several sleepless nights, yet I always seemed to return for more. My parents had forbidden me from watching such „scary nonsense”, but I always found a way to get some spookiness into my system.

*

Kids in elementary school love scary shit. As my friends and I got a bit older, we transitioned from cartoons, through creepypasta stories—those were very popular back in the day—and proper horror films, starting with the classics, like Friday the 13th, The Exorcist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Saw franchise, then moving onto the more mainstream kind of contemporary movies we heard were messed up at the time, like Insidious, Sinister, and Grave Encounters, stuff like that.

We believed it was “cool” to watch horror movies. I guess it filled us with some sort of pride to have witnessed good old Jason Vorhees in a hockey mask stab and slash and mutilate the poor people, so we’d gather at one of our places in the evenings to stare at demons and ghosts and unsolicited violence and unexpected jump-scares and scenes of comically exaggerated bloodbath. It was fun, though for me, the fun didn’t stop there. At one point, I began to crave more of the substance.

*

After a while, I started to watch movies on my own from time to time. Not many at first, just here and there, maybe one or two films every week. Then, of course, it got more frequent. I wasn’t fully aware of it, but the dark world of terrifying imagery began to consume me in a way I found exciting. My eyes were opened to a whole new underground universe that had been existing right below our feet, hiding slightly out of sight for the average person.

At first, the movies I picked to watch alone were more like your casual horror movies—the kind of rather commercial and easily digestible films you’d see them play at the cinema. I was mainly into psychological horror movies and dumb, over-the-top, gory slashers, though sometimes I’d pick something less accessible and more surreal, something absurd and artsy, just to keep things interesting.

It went on like this for a year or two. I kept searching for new movies to be added to my “to-watch” list, but the growth rate of this collection couldn’t possibly keep up with my hunger for horror—it kept running dry. At one point, I’d watch three or four films a night, and maybe that was when I went overboard because soon, it all started to become stale. I kept on chasing the high I used to get from watching fucked up things happen on the screen, but most of these movies featured the same recurring tropes and storylines. I seemed to have developed a sixth sense that could foresee the plot twist coming from miles away. Also, most of the kills felt mediocre and uninspired.

Eventually, I grew bored. I felt like I’d seen it all. These films no longer did it for me. I wanted to be disturbed again. I needed to be shocked. I thought maybe I could try something new.

And so, the true descent began. I became a true gorehound.

*

“Banned horror movies”, I typed into the search bar one day. Several promising “top 10” articles popped up, and I started browsing through them. Most of these titles were new to me. Maybe I’d seen a few of these titles mentioned on internet forums or something, but I couldn’t quite remember. 

For a first—but undoubtedly long-lasting—taste of true human depravity, I picked everyone’s “favourite”: A Serbian Film. Unexpectedly, halfway through the movie, I got on the very verge of a full-blown panic attack, so I slammed my laptop shut and ran out into the streets to calm myself down. Let me tell you, it fucked me up pretty badly. Well, at first. Then, after a week or two, I returned to it. Now, although I felt utterly sick and disgusted throughout—especially during that final scene—I was able to stomach the entire thing. I remember I had an irrepressible urge to take a scorching hot and thorough shower right afterwards, but honestly, it would’ve been best to just go and pour a glass of bleach into my eyes to clean off all the mindless bestial savagery I’d made myself witness. I felt dirty, nasty, and straight-up rotten, but soon, when the initial wave of shock started to subside, I realised that this experience was exactly what I’d been looking for. It did scratch that itch in my brain. 

Of course, it took a few days to chew well and digest fully, but afterwards, it wasn’t that much of a surprise to find that I was already ready for more. I felt like I was back on track. I created a new list of all the banned and controversial shock movies I wanted to watch, then began to scrape my way through, starting from the more well-known titles: Salò, Martyrs, Cannibal Holocaust, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and so on, you name them.

Around that time, I became aware of a new, unfamiliar, and unusual feeling that would creep up on me occasionally. Every now and then, I would find myself trying to avoid the strange impression that the world around me somehow seemed a little more… colourless than usual. A bit more grey. Numb? Lifeless? Most of the time, this feeling just came, took its time and then passed by, and even though I found it weird, it didn’t bother me as much to take it seriously. Looking back now, it should have been an obvious warning sign that I was heading in a direction no one should be.

*

From the relatively well-known banned shock movies, I moved on to the Asian obscure ones, like that Japanese film series with “hamster” in their titles—no, it was “guinea pig”. Regardless, I think that was where I crossed the line for good. There are no words I could use to describe all the shit—sometimes literally—I put my brain through. I won’t even try. But, of course, eventually, I got used to the substance again. The fake piss and blood and vomit and tears and stomach acid and God knows what else no longer gave me the thrills I needed to thrive. Yet again, it was time to up my dose. I had to take another step up—or rather, down.

*

I knew I was about to cross into possibly illegal territory—or grey, at best—so, to play it safe, the first thing I did was to download a VPN application on my laptop to mask my IP address and conceal my location. 

“Real gore”, I typed into the search bar. There were several promising shock sites to pick from, and I knew none of them, so I chose randomly. Twenty minutes later, I had to run to the toilet to puke. I took a day off, and then I returned. I always did. Beheadings, cold-blooded murders committed with hammers and ice picks, recorded with shitty telephones, body dismemberment, animal cruelty, necrophilia—do I need to go on? I’d seen it all. Yet again, in a month or so, it was no longer enough.

More. More. More. I didn’t yet know how, but I knew I wanted more. I needed more.

*

Of course, the answer to how was evident, so I installed a specific internet browser recommended for activities like the one I was about to indulge in. Everything went way too smoothly, and even though I was thrilled that I could successfully connect to the dark web without any hassle, it was both mind-blowing and deeply concerning to see how easily accessible all these indescribably abhorrent photos and videos—and basically anything else you can or can’t think of—were. A quick Google search and there you had several articles and forum posts describing everything about the setup and connection process in great detail. You would install some stuff, click here, then type something there, and you’re good, you can go on and enjoy your videos of…  things you should never watch.

On the dark web, it wasn’t easy at all to navigate between the different websites and actually find stuff you were looking for—apparently, it was for a reason. At first, I couldn’t really find a proper search engine site there, but “fortunately”, I stumbled into an out-of-date looking forum on the public internet where shady people were having shady conversations about very, very, very shady pages, so I jotted down some of the site addresses that seemed intriguing—or maybe “intriguing” is not the best term. No, it’s definitely not. It shouldn’t be

So, in like twenty minutes, I was in. You’d think you know what to expect, but believe me, you have absolutely no idea. The things I’d witnessed there were way more mindless, sickening, loathsome, and most importantly—real. These videos were actual recordings of true human degeneracy and vileness. I crawled deep into the snuff film rabbit hole. For some of these, it was very obvious that the creators had an actual budget to work with because, despite the gnarly subject matter, many had a relatively good production quality to them. Jesus fucking Christ, people pay to watch this shit, I thought at first. I was absolutely sure that paying for content like this was a line I’d never cross. I would never be able to do such a thing. And I hadn’t—until I did too.

Soon—who would’ve guessed—the freely accessible material got tame again. That’s when I bought a couple of paid movies, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was hitting a wall again. The extra money spent didn’t bring much extra satisfaction.

*

One day, I was browsing around in the endless maze of dark web links when I came across a site that advertised offers of different kinds of “live experiences”. It caught my attention right away. I read through them, then started to think, then consider.

“Am I in this deep?” I asked myself. “Well… it certainly looks like I am,” I figured. And I was right.

I scrolled through the list of these offers. Many of the options I saw made it sound like the “live experience” could potentially end with the customer dead in the process. Weird fetish, but that’s not what I wanted—I didn’t necessarily want to kill myself, so I chose one which was said to be “beginner level”. Based on its description, the danger would be real, but I’d also have a good chance of escaping the situation intact.

According to this advertisement, the point of the game was that you—the customer—had to escape from a forest on the outskirts of the city—my city—while being chased by an unarmed, middle-aged, and average-built man—this is important—who was out for your life, or at least acted like he was. It wasn’t that expensive either, though I wasn’t sure if the chaser would actually kill the customer or if it was just a marketing strategy. All things considered, it promised a moderately difficult, achievable, yet dangerous and intense experience. I closed my laptop and pretended to think about it for an hour, and then, of course, I ended up visiting the site again and signed up.

After I completed the checkout process, the website thanked me for the purchase and informed me of the game rules in more detail, which were as simple as a rock. There were two roles: the Bunny—me—and the Butcher—him, whoever my chaser would be. After arriving at a field next to a forest, the experience would begin once both the Bunny and the Butcher had made it unmistakably clear that they saw each other and kept an appropriate distance between them for the Bunny to get a proper head-start. Then, the Butcher would count from ten to zero loudly, giving the Bunny a few moments to prepare to bolt. The objective was to get through the forest, cross a cornfield, then reach the first street on the outskirts of the city and stand under the first street light—without getting hunted down, obviously. A successful escape was one of the two possible endings, but what would the other option be? I had no idea, but I was willing to find out.

After I clicked a button to accept the rules, I was given a GPS location, a date, and a time. By now, I already had a huge rush of adrenaline pumping through my veins. For a long time, I hadn’t felt this intense mixture of anxiety, fear and overwhelming excitement. I was onto something.

*

The day came suddenly, and that night I decided to leave my apartment around 11 PM, ensuring I’d arrive at the given location about twenty minutes before the appointed time of 1 AM because I wanted to have some extra time on my own to have a look around at the terrain and to prepare myself as much as one possibly can in a situation like this. I took the subway, then after many stops, I switched to a bus, then disembarked again about thirty minutes later. I was glad no one approached me on public transport, because in my nervousness and excitement, I probably wouldn’t have been able to give a coherent response. At last, I walked an extra few kilometres towards my destination, leaving all the city lights behind.

When I got to the edge of the forest, I took my phone out and double-checked the GPS coordinates, making sure I was at the correct spot. I couldn’t think clearly. I was restless, shaking, and scared. I looked at the time on my phone—still had fifteen minutes until 1 AM. I glanced around, then quickly decided to move about fifty metres away from the woods and onto the field, giving myself plenty of free space to ensure I wouldn’t be caught off guard.

It was the middle of the night, but in the beaming moonlight, I had a clear view of the space around me. I kept scanning all directions when all of a sudden, I spotted someone walking towards me from the far end of the field, treading through the uneven terrain. It was him—the Butcher.

From the distance, I could tell that he was wearing a seemingly oversized hoodie, so I had no clue at all what he looked like. When he was about a hundred metres away from me, he stopped, waited for a few seconds, and then raised a hand high. In an abrupt wave of panic, I looked around, hesitating and considering backing out, but somehow, I managed to calm myself down just enough to convince myself to raise a hand in the air. He acknowledged the gesture and raised his other hand too. And I followed.

“Ten,” he shouted with a hoarse but thin-sounding voice. As per the rules, he kept holding his hands in the air. “Nine, eight, seven…”

A choking wave of nausea washed over me. Sweat began to run down my spine. The blood in my veins started to rush at an uncontrollable speed.

“...five, four…” he continued, sounding increasingly worked up.

No, fuck fuck fuck fuck—

“...one, zero!” he shouted, dropping his hands and taking no time to begin marching towards me with quick, agitated steps.

I turned as fast as I could and headed straight towards the dark forest. Right before I reached the line of trees, I looked back at my chaser—he was running now. I rushed into the woods but immediately tripped over a thick branch, hitting my left elbow in the process—thank God it was my left arm. Afterwards, it hurt like a motherfucker but at first, the adrenaline seemed to have numbed all the pain, so I jumped back up as if nothing had happened and continued my way through the darkness.

As I ran, I could hear the leaves and tiny sticks crunching not too far behind me as he followed me. He was faster than I was, and as the unnerving seconds passed, he kept drawing closer and closer. At one point, I decided to take a sudden left turn and hide behind a wide tree to wait for him to pass me by. 

The rustling noises grew louder and louder, and then halted at once—he was now standing somewhere on the other side of the tree I was hiding behind. I was sure he didn’t know I was there—otherwise, he would have jumped at me right away, and I couldn’t have done anything to save myself—so I waited for him to walk past.

Soon, he did move past me as I had expected, heading in the direction he thought I had gone. Oh Lord, was he wrong.

When he appeared a few metres in front of me, I grabbed the hammer I had been hiding under my coat, rushed up to him from behind, giving him no time to turn around, and bashed the hammer into his hoodie-covered head. Crack. The sound of the impact was nasty. With a loud, painful and startled yell, he collapsed immediately, falling forward, and the colour of his blue hoodie began darkening around the point of impact, the bloodstain spreading through the textile fibres. He begged me to stop and told me I had won, but I knew I hadn’t. Not yet.

I should have turned back right then and there, but I didn’t—there was no stopping now. The hammer came down again and again, leaving a horrible fucking mess in its wake. I should have stopped and walked away, but I couldn’t. I had never known when to stop.

At last, my ventures seemed to have achieved their goals. Finally, I could feel something. It was not a good feeling, though. No. Not at all. It was utterly horrific, disgusting, loathsome, and despicable, but at the same time, it scratched an itch in my brain that I knew needed to be scratched.

***

Dear Reader, if you enjoyed this horrible story, make sure to check out my full horror short story collection, "Club Hellhole: Stories of Horror and Weird Fiction." You can grab it on the following link: Amazon

If you liked this one, there is another piece I think you'd enjoy. It's called "The Cure for Hunger."

Thank you so much for reading.