This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Born-Beach on 2025-05-05 21:54:47+00:00.

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I fell through a hurricane of broken memories.

My body stretched, snapped, stitched back together wrong. Voices shrieked and sobbed across the darkness. Colors tore through me like glass.

Pain, I could handle.

Pain was simple.

This... this was something worse.

I fought to stay afloat, but the void dragged me under, its pull like an event horizon.

The dark began to bleed—sickly red, like a dying sun. The wind carried a smell I knew too well: autumn rot. Fading leaves. Dust and grief.

I stopped falling. I stopped flying.

I arrived.

Home.

The Crooked House loomed, an impossible carcass of wood and stone, stitched together around a pale, dying tree. Its towers sagged outward like broken limbs. Its windows stared blankly, like wounded eyes stitched up with boards.

And at its heart, rising higher than the roof itself, grew the Wither Tree, its bark bleached bone-white against the bleeding sky.

I had never seen the House from outside.

And now, it had seen me.

The Ma'am's fingers clamped around my wrist, cold as iron.

Without a word, she dragged me forward, across the cracked stone path, past thorn-choked gardens.

Toward the trees.

Toward the waiting maw of the Thousand Acre Wood.

“Can I at least bring a lantern?” I pleaded. 

“Course you can’t,” she said, wrenching me into the trees. “You’d just drop it when you died and burn the whole wood down, wouldn’t you?”

The deeper we went, the more the sunset faded. The forest swallowed the glow in greedy gulps. Branches knotted above like clenched fingers while roots snarled beneath the path like coiled rope. The air turned thick. 

I swear I heard laughter. High, bright. Childlike. 

Only it was wrong. Sanded down to a raw edge. Like the joy had been boiled off, leaving only the sound of teeth behind.

Soon, it was only the Ma’am’s lantern lighting the way, flickering dimly like it knew it didn’t belong out here.

“How deep are we going?” I whispered.

“Deep enough that you’ll never find your way out,” she said.

A sound cracked the air. A snarl. Then a low, wet whine.

Something moved in the trees. I whipped my head around, caught glimpses of it. Shapes in the dark. Snouts. Jaws. Bones.

“I think a Hungry Thing’s following us,” I stammered.

The Ma’am smiled, slow and dark. “Oh yes. There’s more than one. A whole family is out there—your family. Your miserable brothers and sisters, other disobedient brats devoured by the wood.”

My chest ached. So that’s what Gran had meant when she told the Ma’am I wasn’t another of her monsters. Deep down, she knew I wasn’t a boy. That I wasn’t even a story. That I was just another Hungry Thing wearing a mask.  

The branches groaned above us, and from the shadows, something stepped out.

It was tall. Slouched. Furred.

Its body was stretched like melted wax. Limbs too thin. Spine too bent. A pig snout jutted from its face, twitching with each breath. But its teeth… they weren’t right. Long. Curved. Sharp as keys.

And its eyes—God, its eyes. Not two. Not human. A cluster of them. A whole web. All of them blinking at once, like spider hatchlings.

I stumbled backward.

The Ma’am’s hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of my hair. Held me in place.

“Not another step,” she said softly. “Not unless you want it to gobble you up.”

The creature loomed closer. Bones crackled in its limbs with each movement, like someone reassembling it wrong with every step. Its snout sniffed. It crouched low.

And then it spoke.

The voice was wrong. It sounded like a little girl who’d been dragged face-first through gravel.

It sounded like… 

“Gretchin?” I whimpered, horror seizing my lungs. 

The Ma’am knelt beside me. Her arm draped across my shoulders, light as silk and cold as a blade. “You recognize your sister, do you, Boy? Good. This is what failed drafts become after they’re devoured by the wood. It’s what you’ll become.”

She leaned in. Whispered in my ear. 

“Do you know what it sounded like? Listening to your older sister get chewed alive by these very trees?” She smiled. Not smug but fond, like she was remembering an old family recipe. “It sounded wet. Noisy. Perfect.”

I slammed my eyes shut.

I couldn’t look. Couldn’t breathe.

Gretchin sighed. “Ma’am not bring… Food…”

Then, with a final snap of twisting bone, my older sister straightened. Her snout turned toward the dark. Sniffed. And just like that, she was gone. Swallowed by the forest again.

I collapsed to my knees. “Please…” I begged, clutching the hem of her dress. “Please don’t leave me here. I promise I’ll be good. I’ll be good.”

She looked down at me with mock surprise. Then crouched. Cupped my cheek.

“Yes,” she said gently. “You had better.”

Her thumb traced the spot where she’d struck me earlier. “Because I’m a kind woman, I’ll give you one more chance. That’s it. Break another rule… and I’ll feed you to your sister. Am I clear?”

I nodded so fast it hurt.

She turned. “Then come.”

I followed, and the forest watched us. I could feel it. Every branch an eyelid. Every shadow a snare.

“Why did Gretchin turn into that?” I asked. The question fell out of me before I could stop it.

To my surprise, the Ma’am didn’t look angry. She looked… pleased. “Because I gave the girl hunger, then let her starve. That’s the trick, Boy.”

She twirled as she walked, like a child in a summer field. Her dress flared around her like black petals. “Monsters born from want never stop chewing.”

She glanced back at me, grin widening. “This whole wood is full of my monsters. And just like I did to them, I can end your story any time I please. Remember that.”

By the time we reached the Crooked House, the sun had fled.

The sky bled purple and black as the silhouette of that shambling monstrosity rose before us. It loomed like a gravestone. Jagged, enormous. An omen of death. 

The Ma’am said nothing. Just unlatched the door, pushed me inside, and locked it behind us.

There was no supper. No voice. No mercy.

She shoved me down the hall and into my room. It was a closet in everything but name.

Peeling wallpaper.

Mold on the ceiling.

A rotted mattress that oozed when I sat on it.

A single slot window sat near the ceiling, boarded tight. I used to think it was to keep me in. Now I knew better.

It was to keep them out.

The door locked behind me with a sound like finality.

Click. Clack. Slide.

And then I was alone. Alone with the dark.

I curled into a ball, wrapping the moth-eaten blanket around myself like a bandage. The room smelled like mildew and fear. Outside, I heard the woods whisper.

The Hungry Things hadn’t gone far.

Their sounds rose through the night: snorts, snarls, bones cracking in the trees. Sometimes laughter. Sometimes chewing. Always near. Always waiting.

And Gretchen… 

The thought of my older sister broke my heart. I curled up, cried. Quietly. Not sobbing—just the kind of crying where the body leaks and trembles.

I didn’t want the Ma’am to hear.

I didn’t want her to remember I even existed.

I must’ve drifted off because at some point later the lock clicked. 

My body tensed.

The hinges creaked. The door whined open. Then came footsteps. Slow. Uneven.

The floorboard groaned beside my bed.

I clenched my eyes shut. Held still. The Ma’am. Had she changed her mind—decided to drag me back into the Thousand Acre Woods after all?

Maybe if I looked asleep she’d go away.

Maybe she’d think I’d learned my lesson.

Then—hands in my hair. But they were gentle. Fingers ran through my tangled curls, soft and shaky. A touch full of care. Lips pressed to my scalp. A kiss. Featherlight.

Not the Ma’am. Couldn’t be. 

A woman’s voice rasped. Worn, weak—but unmistakable. “Happy birthday, Levi.”

Carol…

The words broke me. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The door creaked closed again, and when I rolled over, something waited on the floor beside my mattress.

A teddy bear.

Hand-sewn. Lopsided. Beautiful.

Its button eyes caught the moonlight bleeding through the boards. It looked like it had been stitched together from old blankets and worn-out clothes. Like love had held it together more than thread. I pulled it to my chest and held it tight.

It didn’t feel like fabric. It felt like armor.

Like safety.

Like someone still saw me as something worth saving. And for the first time I could remember, I fell asleep not as a brat or a monster or a failed draft. But as Levi. 

A boy who was loved. 

The memory burned away, taking with it the love, the warmth, the teddy bear. 

Giving me madness in return. 

Fractured worlds spun around me—shards of shattered dimensions tumbling through a black void. Portals clawed at my skin, my bones, my name, each one a gaping maw desperate to rewrite me into something else. I wasn't falling through space, I was being yanked apart by stories, each one howling to claim me.

Then crack.

A bang

A Big Bang. 

The portals collapsed inward. The fractured...

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