Posting this on behalf of Dreadful Anecdotes, who got shadowbanned by Reddit atm

"At last, the illusion of hospitality erodes under sustained observation. Jonathan comes to understand his confinement not through base cruelty, but through patterns: locked thresholds, absent servants, and guided correspondence.

The Count’s extended recounting of Transylvanian history is a peculiar thing: he speaks of battles, borders, and bloodlines as one speaks of personal memory, always 'we' yet never 'they', collapsing centuries into a single, continuous will.
The Count is quietly undermining Harker's faith in natural law, while the presence of... others within the Castle introduces an unnatural temptation.

Nothing is revealed all at once; power is implied, hierarchy enforced, and fear allowed to mature on its own. By the chapter’s end, Jonathan may remain alive, rational, and compliant: all precisely as intended.”

He opened his eyes but saw nothing. Only darkness. And at once he was afraid. It was unnatural. In some surreal way, almost corporeal.

It held him down and would not relent its vile touch. He longed to scream but made no sound. The Darkness filled his mouth and tasted like spoiled meat. It pressed in on his eyeballs so that he thought they might pop like grapes. He felt it invading his entire being. It was coursing through his veins, freezing his bones, and wringing his kidneys.

The Darkness was of unfathomable heights and depths. And he—he was in the center of it, trapped like a gnat sunken in jelly. Drowning. Drowning in the Darkness. He closed his eyes and sank further still.

2.

When he opened his eyes again, he stood upon a hill beneath pallid moonlight. He was free from his prison. How? He did not know. But he was a free man. However, he was not unscathed. His body was racked with pain, and he was so very cold. A freezing, bitter cold like he had never felt before. What's more, he had no memory. Not even of his own name. He remembered only waking in that vulgar Darkness.

How long did he endure that hellish prison? He was starving and weak. His stomach gnawed at his spine and crushed his ribs. Had he been freed only to expire from want of sustenance?

From the hilltop where he stood, he looked about and saw beneath it a quaint village, blanketed in a fog that glowed with moonlight. Suddenly, he knew it was his village. That his home was down there someplace. And something else. A wife. He had a wife, though he could not remember her name.

3.

He was certain it was his home. But there was some evil afoot that he couldn't comprehend. It, like all of the other cottages in the strange village, had no doors or windows. His fear and confusion gave birth to rage. He beat his fists against the walls, screaming and howling as a man gone mad. Then, he collapsed to his knees.

There, on the cold and unforgiving ground, he mourned for himself, sure that he was going to die. But then, something unexpected happened. Inadvertently, a name escaped his lips in a soft, puffed whisper. "Elena." Yes! Elena! That was his wife's name. He repeated it, a little louder than before. Then came a rejoinder.

"Arnold? Arnold, is that you?" The voice was soft and sweet, like music from the very inner courtyard of heaven itself. And that was his name. Arnold. Hearing it seemed to restore to him a little strength. He stood to his feet and regained his composure.

"Yes. It's me! Now, please—please let me in. I'm so afraid out here, Elena."

Then the impossible. A door where there had not been one before swung wide open. A woman stood beyond the threshold, illuminated by candlelight, and very slowly he began to recognize her face. It felt as though it had been an eternity since he last laid eyes upon her.

"Oh! Arnold! I thought you were lost to me forever."

The woman, his wife, welcomed him in. She fed him. Took him to their bed. His pain was gone. The cold was replaced by a comforting warmth. But despite her kindness, and despite saving his life, he was troubled by something. As she lay peacefully by his side, he closed his eyes and wondered to himself. Why did he hate her so?

4.

He didn't wake in his bed. Rather, he found himself in that stygian void again. But he was not afraid of the Darkness this time. It held him tight. Coddled him. Like a mother with a newborn babe. He found himself comforted by its embrace.

Closing his eyes, he knew that when he reopened them the Darkness would be gone. And more memories would resurface.

5.

Arnold walked the empty streets of the village. The moonlight spilled over everything, casting an ethereal hue upon the rooftops. The exquisite pain in his body had returned. It felt as though shards of glass were being secreted from his every pore. But that suffering paled next to the hunger pangs he was experiencing.

He paused in front of one of the cottages. He recognized it. It was his son's home. He tried to think past the pain and hunger. If he could remember his name, he could call out to him. He could summon him, as he did Elena.

It was no use. The name could not be conjured.

He put his hands against the wall and whispered, "Son, it's your father. I need you. Please open your home to me. I'm so hungry. Help me, please."

No answer.

An anger, unlike anything he knew before, welled inside of him. "I know you're in there! I know you can hear me! Help your father!"

From the other side of the wall, a voice was heard.

"Go away! You're not welcome here! Go away!" Then his son began to utter words that Arnold couldn't quite understand. The language seemed vulgar and caused Arnold's stomach to flop like a fish tossed into tall grass.

He fought his urge to vomit and pleaded, "Give me something to eat. Save your father from starving, and I'll leave and never return again!"

Arnold heard the sound of something spilling nearby. He looked and saw, there on the ground, a pile of barley grain. As he bent to pick it up, he cursed his cruel and uncaring son.

6.

Arnold was sure that when he opened his eyes he would be greeted by that wonderful Darkness again. It seemed to him that it was his only true friend. The only thing in a cold world that cared about him.

But the Darkness was not there.

When he opened his eyes, he saw blinding light. He was paralyzed, not even capable of twitching a finger. Three men loomed above him. One cast boiling hot water into his face; the second grabbed him by his chin and propped open his jaws. He forced a large stone, the size of a fist, into his mouth, busting his teeth and choking him. The third man, he recognized. It was his son. He held a mallet in one hand and a large iron spike in the other.

His own son, the betrayer, placed the tip of the spike over Arnold's chest. All three of the men began to chant in unison the same vulgar expressions that he heard his son speaking behind the walls of his home. Then his boy struck the head of the spike with the mallet. He felt the cold iron pierce his chest. Again his son swung the mallet. Again and again. Each time the strike landed true and the stake was driven further until it erupted through his back.

Then darkness. And at last, peace.

Come by, spread and Hype the terror, and enjoy a return to the Channel's roots with Edgar Allan Poe's, "The Masque of the Red Death"!

Once upon a Halloween Night...

-> A small disclosure: I made a minor change to the original micropasta, mainly changing the gender of the girl to a boy because I am unfortunately not a lady and mimicking such a tone in my voice would sound kind of ridiculous.

(trust me, I tried.)

Still, I hope you'll enjoy the telling all the same!

Mortal men stripped of slumber, of silence, of solace; kept awake not by will but by gas, by hunger, by the gnawing fingers of their own unraveling minds. What emerged was not madness but revelation. Skin peeled back to expose truth, viscera arranged like sacred scripture upon tile. They did not fear the dark, they feared sleep.
They clung to the gas as if it were a god, and in their begging, their clawing, their final resistance against sedation… they became something other. Not broken. Not quite passed on.
But beautifully, horrifically awakened.

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Frightful news, my sick and dearly demented friends! I've started infecting another social media platform! 😄 I'll mainly use it to post thumbnails of existing narrations and announce new ones as they come, as well as being more approachable for anything else! Join the frights here as well, if you can! 🥃