Lights Out (Into Darkness, #1)
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Read between April 4 - April 6, 2025
3%
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On principle, I didn’t trust anyone who didn’t like cats, so they’d never be around to judge me anyway.
DR
Real
3%
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thanks to horny book lovers and lusty lurkers like me.
DR
Interesting description ig????
3%
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Or better yet, to come home one day and find him taking up this very couch as he waited for me in the dark, covered in blood, light glinting off the steel of his knife?
DR
Girl..
3%
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I wanted it in a way that probably wasn’t healthy, but after all the ugly shit I’d seen working in the trauma center, and even before that in my fucked-up teen years, it was only natural that my tastes were starting to skew heavily toward the dark side.
DR
Fair
4%
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It was happening. The day I’d dreaded since starting a secret social media account two years ago had finally arrived. My online life was colliding with my real one, and I was about to be found out.
DR
HELP
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It allowed me to work from home, with flexible hours, leaving enough time to pursue other hobbies. Like making thirst traps for all the other mask enthusiasts out there.
DR
Crying
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My dad was a fucking monster, and there was no disguising it. He’d only gotten away with his crimes for so long because he targeted marginalized women, was handsome, and could put on a good show for short periods. Just long enough to convince the sex workers he frequented to get in the car with him. A lot like his idol, Ted Bundy.
DR
Ew your dad
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It was his idea to move to this city and start over when people at college figured out who I was. His exact quote was, “Fuck ‘em. Let’s bounce,” so I didn’t think he was serious at first, not until he filed transfer paperwork to switch schools and started sending me listings for off-campus housing.
DR
Thats sweet
6%
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“I would like to thank the algorithm for bringing me here.” “I’m on season six of this video.” “Well, this has me feeling feral far too early in the morning.” “The way I would CRAWL to him.” “Boom. There went my ovaries.” “This is the horror movie I would die in. Everyone else would be running away while I sprinted straight toward the danger instead.”
DR
Okay thats kind of funny
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Was this how it started? Just a quasi-innocent fantasy about ravaging a woman somewhere that no one could hear her scream? Would it get worse from here, and my desires would progress past that to fucking her and choking her a little at the same time? And after that, squeezing even harder until I watched the life blink out from her eyes while I pounded into her?
DR
Oh! Dont go turning into your dad bro
6%
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“This man is always coming onto my FYP and never on me, and that is a tragedy,”
DR
HELP MD
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I’d learned how to do it as a teen so I could sneak into my therapist’s office and see what he’d written about me – a mistake because I wasn’t ready for what I’d found, but at least I’d learned a new skill in the process.
DR
Yupp think on the bright side
7%
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This was fucking crazy. Full blown batshit. And yet, I couldn’t seem to stop myself as I lifted the magnets and got back to work on her deadbolt. After what felt like a small eternity, the magnets caught, and the lock slid open.
DR
Very much you are actually.insand
7%
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An unholy yowl split the air. Fuck! Aly had some sort of demonically possessed canine after all, and it would probably rip through my pant leg and splash my blood all over the goddamn house for the cops to find. I grabbed the doorknob and was about to tear out of there when a small, fluffy shape darted into the room and stopped short. A cat. Aly had a cat.
DR
giggling
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This small fluffy creature would be so easy to kill, yet I had no desire to harm it. That had to be a good sign, right?
DR
Yay you dont hate animals.. Would be a red flag if yoy did. But i mean you already are a red flag so..
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I let out a relieved breath and half fell to a squat to get a closer look at it. The thing was kind of…cute, with white patches above its eyes that made it look like it had eyebrows. Right now, they were drawn together as the cat half-lidded its eyes and butted against my leg again as if looking to be petted. Had I ever thought anything was cute before? Maybe the better question was, had I ever let myself before? “Sorry if I fuck this up,” I said, lifting a hand to scratch the cat between the ears and then stroke down its back like I’d seen other people do on TV. This was the first time I’d ...more
DR
Aww
8%
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It was time to find out just how serious Aly was about wanting to walk into her house and find a masked man waiting for her in the darkness.
DR
Ykw at least youre not just randomly.jumpscaring her. Baby steps guys
8%
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I’d even mentioned it to one of the cops who regularly got stationed here, and instead of thinking I was a weirdo, he’d agreed with me, telling me he and his coworkers saw something similar. They’d get a slew of people who had almost no traceable connection to each other committing virtually the same crime one week. The next, it would be a new group doing something else.
DR
Huh thats weird
9%
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It was even worse this time because I couldn’t stop picturing him filming it in my bedroom.
DR
GIRL IT IS YOUR.ROOM
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I’d had about enough of men’s voices lately.
DR
REAL
9%
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“I have that comforter. This could have been filmed in my bedroom. Let’s goooo, bitches!”
DR
IT LITERALLY WAS FILMED IN YOIR BEDROOM
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With that in mind, I stopped out of arm’s reach and leaned forward, freezing in place for the second time in less than a minute. There was a mask on my bed. And not just any
DR
Oooo girlll
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My vision swam in and out of focus for a heartbeat. What if…what if all the blood in his videos wasn’t fake? What if none of this was a fun little kink for him like it was for the rest of us? What if he was some sort of serial killer hiding in plain sight, and he used his platform to lure his victims to him? Was I about to be next? Was this the beginning of some twisted game of cat and mouse?
DR
Guys he may be weird but he wont murder you trusf
10%
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Wait, no. I needed to stop right the hell there. That road led nowhere good. This invasion of privacy was bad enough without adding sexual predator to my list of crimes.
DR
HELP
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I popped up a second tab and split my screen, watching Aly duck down and look under her bed, gun leading the way while I typed in a quick internet search. The results were not good. Yup, this was where I’d fucked up. According to Google, Aly was probably terrified, angry, and felt like her home was compromised, violated even, turning from a sanctuary to yet another place where she felt unsafe.
DR
Bro.. I CANT
11%
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Oh. Fred was her cat. My jealousy deflated, and I unclenched my hands from where they had a death grip on the arms of my computer chair.
DR
LMAO
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See? She’d started it.
DR
Ypure the professional hacker bro
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Hey, Aly, it’s me, the man who broke into your house. I was just watching you through the camera I hid in your room, and I wanted to let you know that you are correct. I am not, in fact, a serial killer. Jesus Christ. I knew I should have argued with my therapist when she said it was time to wean me off the anti-psychotics. Clearly, they’d been necessary if one of the first things I did once they were out of my system was start stalking someone.
DR
CRYING
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Hey, Aly, it’s me, the man who broke into your house. I was just watching you through the camera I hid in your room, and I wanted to let you know that you are correct. I am not, in fact, a serial killer. Jesus Christ. I knew I should have argued with my therapist when she said it was time to wean me off the anti-psychotics. Clearly, they’d been necessary if one of the first things I did once they were out of my system was start stalking someone.
DR
CRYING
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I lifted my eyes just in time to watch Aly drop her phone on the comforter and place her head in her hands. “I need so much more therapy than I’m currently getting.” I grinned, because same.
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Aly was fucked up too. Hallelujah.
14%
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He didn’t like or trust most people, especially men (who could blame him?), and he’d run from or hissed at every guy I’d ever invited over. A stranger being in his space when I wasn’t even here must have scared him shitless.
DR
Woah josh is like the chosen one
14%
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Sleep tight. Alyssa.
DR
Oop
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The power had cut off sometime during the night. Had he somehow triggered it and used the cover of darkness to sneak inside? No. It must have been a coincidence. He’d have to be a top-notch hacker to pull something like that off.
DR
About that..
15%
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Mom would have taken one look at him and said something inappropriate about him being a man who could give her strong Italian grandchildren.
DR
HELP
15%
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Bro, you are literally stalking Aly right now, I reminded myself.
17%
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You sent me home defense tools? After breaking into my house? Are you serious right now???
DR
I mean at least other people wont break in
18%
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“What the fuck?” she said. “Are you listening to me somehow? How the hell do I disable the microphone on a laptop?” Well, I’m certainly not telling you, I sent back. “I hope you’re enjoying yourself, you son of a bitch,” she snarled. Immensely, I responded, adding a smiley face emoji for good measure. “I am going to find you, and I am going to make you regret this.” Sounds kinky.
DR
Giggling
19%
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Right until I glanced down and noticed that he’d added a caption to one of his videos for the first time ever. It read: When she’s mad at you. Oh, hell no. This motherfucker better not have been talking about me.
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When I say I would forgive this man for literally anything. “Ha,” I said, my tone humorless. “You say that now, but just wait until he murders me and comes after you next.”
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Well, that was also partly thanks to the Faceless Man. Was he watching me even now through the hospital security cameras? Probably not, but just in case he was, I flipped the bird at the one in the corner of the breakroom. My phone chimed with a text message. I pulled it up to see an unknown number and a single word: Rude. I nearly choked. He’d hacked into the hospital cameras. How good did someone have to be to pull that off? How obsessed did someone have to be to go this far?
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Are you watching me right now? Maaaybe, he said, followed by a wink emoji.
21%
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I thought I’d give you a ride home. The weather is shit, and you must be exhausted. It’s not safe for you to drive right now.
DR
Thays sweet in a creepy way
21%
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Say it, Aly, I thought. Say it, goddamn it. Just fucking tell him to stop like the mentally healthy, rational person you used to be before his videos took over your social media feed.
22%
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My entire life was devoted to caring for others. I wanted someone to take care of me for once. I wanted someone to want me. No, need me. I wanted a man so obsessed that he hacked into cameras to watch me when he couldn't sleep. I wanted him to monitor my location data, order me a home security system so no one else could break into my house, and threaten to murder anyone who hurt me. I didn’t want him morally grey. I wanted someone with a soul as black as night. Someone who would burn the world down for me and not lose a single minute of sleep over it.
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A glance at the gun showed me her finger was nowhere near the trigger. Not that anything would happen if she pulled it. I’d replaced her bullets with blanks. I was horny, not suicidal.
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She shook her head as if trying to clear her thoughts. Dirty thoughts? “Did you think you were being funny by posting such a sappy thirst trap after what you did to me?” I nodded vigorously this time, glad she couldn’t see my shit-eating grin.
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Why did it feel so good to care for her, even on such a micro level? Was it because I’d never had anyone to call my own before? Or was this some inborn instinct all men had that, up until now, was suppressed by the cocktail of prescription drugs I’d been on since puberty?
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Men were idiots. That was the only explanation.
DR
Trust me i thinm we all knew that
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She eyed me for a long moment before setting the gun down to take it. “You’re deranged. You know that?” I shrugged. Deranged. Protective. Same thing.
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