First time posting. Sorry if this is messy. I’m writing this while looking over my shoulder every ten seconds

You won’t believe me, but what I’m about to tell you is real. I survived—or at least, I’ve managed to delay the inevitable. My name is Zane. If one day you see the letters Y.A appear on your screen, don’t ever reply. I was like you once: curious, entertained by scary stories online. I thought it was just another cheap urban legend. But I met her. I saw her kill with my own eyes. Since then, every night I sleep with the lights on, trembling like a rat cornered in a trap, waiting for the day I become her next victim.

I live in the outskirts of Pennsylvania. A college dropout, working dead-end shifts at a gas station. At night, I drowned in the internet: forums, creepypasta threads, dark web boards where broken people shared broken stories. It was the only place I mattered.

One night, I stumbled into an old forum, the kind with a clunky early-2000s layout. In the “Living Creepypasta” section, there was a thread titled: “I Shouldn’t Have Replied to Her.”

I clicked, expecting some corny ghost story. But as I read, my blood froze. The post described exactly what I had been dreaming of: a long-haired woman, knocking on my bedroom door at night.

Scrolling through the flood of comments, one stood out. No profile picture, no name, just two letters: Y.A.
“You’re not the only one.”

I don’t know what pushed me to do it. I clicked the username. A message popped up immediately, as if she’d been waiting.
“You dreamt of her too, didn’t you?”

I replied. I shouldn’t have.

---

We talked for nights. She typed little, but each word cut deep, peeling me open. I never told her about my father who abandoned me, or about the kids who locked me in the bathroom, pouring bleach on my hair. Yet she knew. She described exactly how I sat shivering on the cold tile, listening to their laughter through the door.

Hands shaking, I typed:
“Who are you?”

Her reply:
“The only one who understands you.”

I should’ve stopped. But I craved it—someone who knew, someone who saw me.

On the seventh night, she asked:
“Do you want the pain to end?”

I laughed nervously, typing:
“How?”

A file appeared. A video. The filename was just one word: DOOR.

I almost clicked it. My finger hovered, trembling. But just as it touched the mouse, dread surged through me—pure animal terror. I slammed the window shut.

My phone buzzed, vibrating off the table. Messages flooded in:
“The door has arrived. All you need to do is open it.”

I vomited right there on the floor.

The next day, I told two friends from the forum. They laughed, called me paranoid. That night, both of them opened the file.

By morning, they were dead.

One hanged himself in his bathroom, eyes bulging, fingernails clawing bloody furrows down his throat. The other was sprawled across his living room, neck slit open with a shard of glass. Their phones still played the same video: a black screen, with a whisper calling their names over and over.

I lost my mind. I quit my job, locked myself indoors, refused to touch a computer. But she still found me.

Every night, the dreams came.

A woman, her hair uneven and ragged, stood outside my bedroom door. Her burnt face hidden by two neat braids dangling down. She knocked.
Knock. Knock. Knock.

“GET OUT!” I screamed.

She only smiled. Then her head tilted—creaked—until it hung at a grotesque 90-degree angle. Her eyes, black and endless, fixed on mine.

I jolted awake, drenched in sweat. But the knocking… it continued, echoing from the hallway outside.

It wasn’t just a dream anymore.

---

I fled Pennsylvania. Drove across states until I reached a small town in Ohio. Rented a filthy room in a crumbling motel. Drowned myself in alcohol, thinking maybe, maybe I was safe.

I was wrong.

One night, I heard noises downstairs. I grabbed a baseball bat, crept down, expecting a burglar.

I saw her.

Y.A.

In the flesh.

Her hacked hair. The grotesque burn scar curling from her right eye to her cheek. And in her hand—a bloodied axe.

On the floor lay my landlord, skull split wide, brain and blood soaking the tiles.

I froze. She looked up at me—and smiled. The same gentle, sweet smile that once hooked me in her messages.

“Hi Zane” she whispered. “I found you.”

I screamed, bolted upstairs, slammed my door shut. The axe smashed through, wood splintering, blood spraying as she swung again. My landlord’s blood streaked across my walls.

I scrambled out the window, crashed onto the roof, and ran, ran into the night.

I don’t know how I got away. Maybe she let me. Maybe I’m just her game. I drift from state to state, no phone, no internet, living like a hunted animal.

But in every store window, I see her reflection behind me.
Every night, I hear the patient knocking.

And this morning, when I used a public phone, I saw it again. A message. An anonymous account.
“You’re not the only one.”

She’s still out there. The Y.A.
I’m only buying time. The last door will open.
And when it does, I won’t be alive to tell you.