Who Murdered Me?
The moment I woke up, I felt my heart pounding deep inside my chest, beating harder and faster than ever before.
The first thing that hit me was the smell—a stench of blood, death, and decay.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness surrounding me, I felt the air thick with an unexplainable heaviness, pressing down on me, making my breathing harder with each gasping breath.
I glanced across at the clock on the small bedside table next to me; it was just past midnight.
A strange compulsion urged me out of bed, and despite the confusion clouding my mind, I found myself walking towards the front door.
The hallways of my student digs were eerily quiet, the silence oppressive. Shadows danced on the walls, elongating and contorting with every flicker of the dim overhead lights.
My footsteps echoed, a hollow sound that heightened the sense of isolation surrounding me.
As I made my way to the basement of my student residency building, an inexplicable dread washed over me.
My hand trembled as I turned the door handle and stepped inside. The sight before me froze me in my tracks. There, lying in a pool of blood, was a lifeless body that looked exactly like me!
His skin was pale, and his eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. A scream caught in my throat, but no sound escaped.
I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.
How could this be?
As I stood there, paralysed by shock, I noticed strange symbols smeared in blood on the walls surrounding the body. They were occult symbols—disturbing, ancient, and filled with a dark energy that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
The symbols seemed to pulse faintly, as though they were alive, as though they were watching me.
Panic set in, and I stumbled backwards, my mind racing. I had to figure out what had happened. How had I ended up here? Who had done this to… him?
Desperation clawed at my sanity as I began retracing my steps from the previous night, hoping to find some answers.
I remembered going to the library after my evening classes. I had a research paper due and spent hours buried in books. The librarian, Mrs Jenkins, had been there, giving me her usual disapproving look for staying so late.
I left the library at around 9 PM, heading immediately back to my room without stopping off for the usual sneaky kebab. I remembered feeling more tired than hungry and just wanted to get home for an early night.
Everything seemed normal then. As I continued to walk the empty streets of the campus in confounds of my mind, fragments of conversations and fleeting images suddenly flashed before me.
Faces of friends, professors, and classmates blended into a surreal tapestry of confusion.
My closest friend, Sam, had seemed distant lately. Had we argued? I couldn’t remember.
A sharp pang of loneliness struck me as I realised how isolated I had become.
Desperation gnawed at me as I considered my options. Should I check the body for any sign of life or identification? A mobile phone? A student ID card? Or should I call someone—security, perhaps, or even the police?
But something stopped me. I wasn’t sure why, but instead of seeking help, I decided to head back to my room.
My dorm room was untouched, everything in its usual place. I found my phone on the desk and scrolled through my messages, hoping for a clue that would help me understand just what was going on. But there were no unusual texts, just the mundane exchanges of student life.
My head throbbed with frustration. Suddenly, I remembered a strange encounter from earlier that week.
A new student, Lily, had approached me in the cafeteria, asking odd questions about the old myths surrounding the campus. She seemed fascinated by the tales of ghosts and haunted places.
Could she have something to do with this?
Maybe I was clutching at straws – but I didn’t have any other leads or anything else to go on – so I thought it was worth a try.
Determined to get to the bottom of all this insanity, I decided to make my way across to Lily’s room. It was late – almost one o’clock in the morning – but I didn’t care!
I knocked, and she opened the door, looking rather surprised to see me. Her eyes widened when I told her about the body in the basement.
She invited me in, and as we talked for hours, I learned more about her. Lily had moved to this campus specifically to investigate its haunted history.
Her own sister had disappeared under mysterious circumstances at another university, fuelling her obsession with the supernatural. She had always been drawn to the occult, her curiosity piqued by a family tragedy.
Her sister, Mary, had vanished five years ago after exploring an abandoned building rumoured to be haunted. This had led Lily to dedicate her studies to uncovering the truth behind such legends, hoping to find clues about her sister’s fate.
Lily revealed that she had been researching the paranormal activities on campus and had discovered something disturbing.
There was a legend about a student who had died in the basement many years ago, and their spirit was said to possess the living, forcing them to relive their death endlessly.
She mentioned old occult symbols she had seen around the campus, which might be connected to the legend.
As the pieces of the puzzle all began to fall into place, a chilling realisation dawned on me. The legends were true, and I was the latest victim of this malevolent spirit. But who had summoned it? And why was I chosen?
It was now approaching 4 AM, and the sense of dread grew stronger. We had to do something about the body—we had to tell someone—but who?
Lily insisted on going down to the basement to see the body for herself. Reluctantly, I agreed, and we descended the stairs together. But when we reached the basement, the body was gone!
All that remained was a pool of blood on the floor and the strange crimson symbols smeared all across the walls.
Panic surged through me like a jolt of electricity. Who had taken the body? What had happened to it? Did someone else find it and report it? Yet, there were no signs of the police or any other disturbance.
Was it real? Had I imagined it all?
But Lily’s pale face told me otherwise—she had seen it too, or at least the aftermath. I guessed I wasn’t losing my mind – that was something of a relief!
The body had to have been here. But did it really look like me?
As we stood there, the symbols on the wall seemed to pulse with a life of their own, drawing our attention.
Without thinking, I reached out and touched one of them. A cold, searing pain shot through my hand, and I jerked it back, gasping in shock.
Lily’s eyes widened in horror as she stared at me, and I followed her gaze. The blood on my hand had formed into the exact same symbol that was on the wall.
The room began to spin, and suddenly, memories that weren’t mine flooded into my mind—memories of a life I hadn’t lived, and of places I had never been.
I staggered back, my heart pounding. This wasn’t just about a haunting or a possession—something much darker was at play.
Then it hit me, a twist of cold realisation that froze me to the core.
Lily wasn’t investigating the supernatural; she was part of it!
She hadn’t just been researching these symbols—she had been using them, manipulating them. She had summoned the spirit. And now, I was trapped in the web she had woven.
But there was more.
As the memories continued to flood into the forefront of my mind, I realised the truth: I wasn’t just a victim of this curse—I was the vessel for something much older and darker.
Lily’s family had been involved in occult practices for generations, and her sister’s disappearance was no accident.
Lily had been preparing for this moment, for the time when she could summon and control the ancient spirit that had claimed so many lives before. And I was the key!
My soul, my essence, had been marked from the moment I met her. She had manipulated me, drawn me into her twisted ritual, and now I was bound to the darkness – forever!
I backed away, but it was too late.
Lily’s expression shifted, a sinister smile curling on her lips as she stepped closer.
“You wanted to know who murdered you?” she whispered, her voice chillingly calm.
“It was always meant to be you. You were chosen, long before you ever came here. This is your fate.”
I looked down at my hand, now trembling uncontrollably. The symbol on my skin burned, and I could feel it—something inside me, something dark, awakening.
In a flash of horrifying clarity, I realised that I wasn’t just the victim—I was the vessel, the host for an ancient, malevolent force.
The body in the basement wasn’t mine because I hadn’t been possessed; I had been transformed, twisted by the ritual into something unrecognisable.
I had killed before, and I would kill again, forever trapped in a cycle of darkness, bound to Lily and the curse she had unleashed.
As the last piece of the puzzle clicked finally into place, the world around me dissolved into utter despair and darkness. The last thing I saw was Lily’s eyes, cold and victorious, before everything inevitably turned black.
THE END
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Author’s Thoughts
Finding your own body would be frightening, wouldn’t it?
That was the premise behind this story.
Then one thought led to another, then another—and suddenly it was practically writing itself. 😅
But here’s the thing.
What if you’d been murdered and were staring down at your own body?
You’re still here. You can think. You can feel.
But can anyone see you? Hear you?
How do you find out what happened when you’re not even sure what you are anymore?
Then someone notices you. Listens to you. Offers to help.
You’d want to trust them, wouldn’t you?
But what if the person helping you find your murderer already knew the answer?
Just something to think about.