I love reading horror stories on Reddit and Creepypasta. Recently, I decided to try my hands on writing my own. This is one of the few I’ve posted on Reddit r/nosleep.
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It happened 3 and half years ago. I was newly transferred from our Manila office to the firm’s headquarters in Nagoya, Japan. It was an exciting move for me – for the first time in my 30 years of life, I would be living by myself. And the idea of becoming part of the main design team was motivating
I had very low Japanese skills, so I didn’t make new friends right away. But it was a good timing for me to learn how to be independent. The solitude was actually freeing and refreshing.
The first friend I made was Rica, who was working at the accounts department of our firm. She was married to a Japanese guy and they had one baby boy.
It was Rica who suggested I use Tinder in the first place. It was where she and her husband met, and she thought I could also find my true love there.
I had just gotten out of a long-term toxic relationship at that time, so I wasn’t interested in dating. I guess you could say I had PTSD – it was a traumatic time of my life.
But Rica was as stubborn as I was, maybe even more so. Eventually, we made a Tinder profile for me, and she even guided me on how to filter out the creepers based on their photos and bios.
I admit, it was kind of fun. And even though I swiped left a lot more that I swiped right, I still had a decent number of matches. It was also easier to flirt on chat. I had always been more comfortable writing down my words than actually saying them.
So, when one of the guys (let’s just keep his nationality private – he’s not Japanese) invited me for an actual date, I was both excited and freaked out. Of course, I’ve read about those internet stories about blind dates gone awry, and I was prepared for that. I asked him to meet at Sakae Station when it was usually crowded. I thought that if he turned out to be a creep in real life, I could just scream and run.
But all my fears were unfounded when we finally met. His name was Lucas and he was everything his bio said he was: athletic-looking but still had that hint of nerdiness. He was a scientist of some sort – studying sleep patterns and dreams in relation to mental health. Honestly, his line of work was a little confusing to me at that time.
We had a lovely time. He was very fluent in Japanese after living here for almost 10 years. We had a laugh at the waitress’ confused look when she tried to ask me (very Asian face) our orders and he (very foreign) answered for us. And it seemed we had a lot of shared interests in books, films, and places we wanted to visit.
It was the best first date I could have ever asked for. We parted ways at the station as I declined his offer to drive me home. When I got home, he sent me a message that, at that time, I thought was very sweet, “Had a great time with you. I hope you’ll dream of me tonight as I will surely dream of you. Good night.”
Well, you guessed that right, I had a vivid dream about him that night. I wouldn’t go too much into details, but I remember it was like the extension of our date. We were sitting on my couch and talking about the things we didn’t have time to share before. He asked about my favorite flowers, and I told him “lilies… the blue-violet kind of lilies.” He smiled in my dream and that was the last I remember of it.
Lucas and I continued to chat and talk over the next few days. He was sweet, kind and the complete opposite of my ex. I felt safe and comfortable whenever I talked to him. His work kept him busy even during weekends that we couldn’t go out again. Still, his daily “good morning” and “good night” never failed to make me smile
After a while, I noticed that he would always end his messages with a little lily emoji. I asked him about it, and he said, “It just reminds me of you.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt a little nudge that something was off. I brushed it aside as simply a part of the walls I built after my last relationship. I was wary of getting deep into another relationship that might end up with me brutally battered mentally.
So, I kept it casual with Lucas. We talked when we can talk, and most of the time, we were chatting on Line. We met a few more times, for dinner or sometimes a movie. His busy schedule sometimes kept him stuck at work late at nights. Even so, I felt like I could take our relationship on the next level. On our conversations, he seemed like the perfect man for me. Even in my dreams, Lucas was a very prominent character almost every night. I really thought I could lower my guard for him, and then I met Alex.
Alex was also a foreigner on Japanese soil. We met in the Japanese class I took weekly. He was working in a factory, but he wanted to work in an office, so he was taking Japanese language lessons.
Alex was older than me, but he had a very youthful energy. I felt a different kind of calm when I’m with him. With him, I didn’t have to think about breaking down my walls – they simply fade away.
When I told Lucas that I won’t be seeing him anymore, I thought he would be mad. I was wrong. He simply said, “I understand. I’m happy that I met you. And I will continue to dream of you.”
The first night Alex stayed the night, I had another vivid dream about Lucas. It was weird, it felt real. He was talking to me and persuading me to think about our relationship again. He was talking about Alex too, “He will never understand you like I do. He doesn’t even know that you love lilies. He gives you roses, but you don’t like roses because of their thorns. He will never deserve you.”
It was an exhausting dream. I couldn’t argue back, it was only Lucas and his endless tirade of how Alex wasn’t the man for me. His voice was getting louder and louder until it was screaming in my head. It was unlike the Lucas I knew in real life. I woke up sweating and panting like I’ve just ran a marathon. Alex was awake beside me, his face full of concern. He said I was thrashing and crying, and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t wake me up.
I didn’t want him to worry even more, so I told him I just had a nightmare. We went back to a blissfully dreamless sleep.
The next morning, we had a surprise when we went out to go to work – there was a bunch of lilies outside my front door. A dozen or so blue-violet lilies carefully laid in a box and left at my door mat.
There was no card or anything, but I knew. I knew it was from Lucas. How or why? I had no idea. I sent him a message about it, but he didn’t reply. And when I tried to call him, the number was already disconnected.
The next few days, I would constantly find a lily anywhere I go. Even at the ladies’ room at work. At night, I would dream about Lucas – but it was a totally different kind of Lucas.
He would scream at me. He would tell me that Alex was just another guy who would break my heart. He would show me memories of my ex, but with Alex’s face replacing my ex’s face. And when I was a ragged crying mess in my dreams, he would hold me and comfort me. He still kept trying to persuade me to break up with Alex and come back to him.
I would wake up from these nightmares totally exhausted. I even had to take a few days off from work because I couldn’t function from sleep-depravity. I was afraid to sleep. The nightmares were like the sleep paralysis I had when I was a kid, but 10x worse. I couldn’t fight back, I couldn’t talk, and all I could do was cry trying to make Lucas stop.
Alex tried his hardest to comfort me. He stayed with me whenever he could, and even tried to take vacation time from work so he could be with me.
But even awake, I could feel Lucas’s presence. Before, the lilies would be somewhere public. I would find them at my desk at work, or outside my apartment door. After a while, they started appearing on my kitchen counter, my bath, and my closet. One time, I woke up from one of my Lucas nightmares to see a single lily at my bedside table.
I was exhausted beyond belief. I didn’t want to sleep, but I couldn’t stay awake. I was irritable and angry and I drove everyone I care about away. But Alex couldn’t be moved. He wanted to stay because he loved me, and I loved him too.
He suggested that I talk to a therapist, and that maybe the dreams were just manifestations of the trauma I had suffered from my ex-boyfriend. I agreed to humor him, but I knew it was not PTSD. I knew it was the real Lucas I was seeing in my dreams. And I also knew it was him who was leaving the lilies.
We found an English-speaking psychologist after days of research. I talked to her about my past relationship, and about Lucas. I told her everything except the fact that I knew they weren’t nightmares. I knew Lucas was somehow able to tap into my dreams to torment and torture me after I ended things with him.
Talking to the psychologist did help a little. She gave me some tips and exercises to try to calm myself whenever I get these nightmares.
After months of nightmare-filled nights, I finally knew what I had to do. When I went to bed that night, I immediately saw Lucas in my dream. I still couldn’t answer back, but after many nights of these, I could convince my subconscious mind that I was dreaming. I didn’t cry, instead I smiled, and I nodded in agreement with everything Lucas said.
I think it was that smile that took him aback. Suddenly I could feel air rushing into my lungs, and I could speak.
“Do you see now that I’m the right man for you?” he asked.
I nodded, “Yes. But I need proof that this is real. That what we have is real.”
Out of thin air, Lucas pulled a single blue-violet lily and handed it to me. “This is proof. I know who you are inside and out. I know everything in your mind. That Alex will never be the man I am for you. He doesn’t know you. He will never love you as much as I do.”
I held the flower in my hand, admiring the beauty of its petals. I felt sad that I would have to do the next step.
“You’re right, Lucas. Alex will never be the man that you are.” I smiled and held his gaze. “Because he is so much MORE than you.”
And then, I broke the flower in my hand. I crushed its leaves and petals and tore it into a thousand pieces. As I did, Lucas crumpled at my feet, screaming and begging. I continued to step on the broken flower until Lucas’s voice faded and my mind went blank.
In the morning, I woke up feeling rested and happy for the first time in so many months. In my hand was a single lily petal, crumpled and wilted.
Alex and I had a normal relationship, and we really enjoyed just staying in at nights watching movies until we fall asleep. I didn’t have any more nightmares, and I stopped seeing the psychologist. My dreams were filled with hopeful possibilities of my life with him.
A few days after that night, Alex and I saw the news on the internet. A very promising young scientist in the field of sleep analysis was found dead in his laboratory. The EMTs who found him were confounded about the cause of death: he was lying down on the laboratory bed, but every bone in his body was broken as if he had been trampled on. On his chest, they also found crashed and wilted pieces of a blue-violet lily.
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My Journey 