I Thought I Matched With A Beautiful Woman On Tinder, But It Turned Out To Be A Nightmare (Part 1)
Have you ever looked at a clock and it seemed to hold that second just a bit longer than the rest? It’s got a term for it, Stopped Clock Illusion or something like that. Our mind has this fascinating way of warping time depending on what we’re doing. Sometimes it’s during class, constantly glancing back at the clock to see if it’s time to go yet and you notice it. Other times, you’ve got a demon crashing through your front door and you have just a few extra seconds to react.
Well, I guess Julia or whatever the fuck this thing is decided it was tired of pressing a button for hours on end. By the time she stopped, it was well past 8 AM and the daylight eased my nerves. I carefully walked downstairs, checking every possible corner and window on the way down to make sure I wasn’t about to get eaten or fucked to death. The one thing about adrenaline is that as soon as you’re not freaking out anymore, you become extremely tired; especially after not getting any sleep whatsoever.
I walked into the kitchen and grabbed the biggest container of salt I could find along with some garlic just in case Julia turned out to suck blood too. (My friends suggested using salt and that maybe I had a “succubus” on my hands, whatever that is.) Better safe than sorry I guess. I walked around to every window on the first floor and poured a generous amount of salt right in front of each window in a half circle. I did the same thing with the garage door and was almost done with the front door when I saw the doorknob turn. I was experiencing Stopped Clock Illusion, but with a door as it swung ever so slowly, each second longer than the last as a woman in a white dress entered my field of vision.
A layer of strawberry blonde hair broken only by piercing silver eyes. The sun glinted off her perfectly porcelain skin as her lips curled into that stunning familiar smile. My heart was beating out of my chest, sweat pooling around my hairline. Her smile grew deeper and wider as her lips began to part and a row of impossibly sharp teeth emerged. Her eyes turned a horrible black tint with a white speck offset. Mouth opened impossibly wide, a shrill screech pierced the air as she rushed the door and stopped inches away from my face. This putrid stench of flesh engulfed me as she breathed hot air onto my face. My senses finally caught up and I bolted up the stairs back into the room I had been a prisoner of all morning. I realized I had fortunately been flinging salt everywhere as I sprinted upstairs, slamming and locking my door in one swift motion. I poured the rest of the salt all around my door and windows in my room and immediately dialed 9-1-1 while simultaneously shitting my pants.
The cops showed up 20 minutes later, which is usually the case in rural areas such as mine. They scanned the perimeter and did a sweep of the house finding nothing unusual. I honestly didn’t expect them to find anything after seeing how completely not human that thing was. They told me there would be a squad car patrolling the surrounding areas for the next few weeks and to just give them a call if anything unusual happened again. We walked to the squad car and I thanked them for their help as the car roared to life and went on its way. I turned around and looked back at my house. My bedroom curtain swayed a little. Julia looked down at me and smiled that impossible smile while the knot in my stomach tightened tenfold.
I immediately got in my car and drove to my friends place a couple miles away, explaining everything that happened as soon as I got there. Ryan didn’t believe me whatsoever. I tried to pull up the Tinder profile and show him what I was talking about, but when I went into my conversation list, it wasn’t there anymore.
Even though he didn’t believe me, he agreed to let me crash at his place for a couple days to unwind my nerves and to at least have another person around in case anything did end up happening. It’s been a couple of days without much incidents. Ryan works a lot, so he’s never really home. His roommate has been on a family vacation for a couple days now and he won’t be home for another two weeks, so I’ve been holding down the fort from 9 to 5 every day. Like I said, there hasn’t been much incidents, but the coyotes won’t stop howling.
As soon as Ryan leaves, they start yelping and howling and it doesn’t end until he gets back from work. The smell of sulfur keeps coming back every so often to assault my olfactory senses and from what I’ve read online, that’s apparently very bad news. Ryan got home the other night and told me he was on Tinder during his lunch break and matched with this stunning broad who’s way out of his league. He told me she seems really cool and that she’s into writing, indie films, cooking, and hiking. She’s got silver eyes, strawberry blonde hair, a great body, and a killer smile. I immediately told him to pull her up on his phone, but he told me she had unmatched him later in the day or something.
I asked him if he remembered what her name was. He told me it was Julia. I tried to explain myself when my phone started buzzing on the table in the other room.
“hi”
“hi”
“hi”
“hi”
“hi”
“hi”