the last transmission

1. The Broadcast
The video was uploaded at 3:17 AM. No description, no tags—just the title: "HELP."

I found it scrolling through obscure forums, the kind where people trade creepy VHS tapes and police scanner recordings in a thread where users trade snuff films and morgue photos. I like surfing the dark web. The thumbnail was a freeze-frame of a man’ face half-lit by a flickering camera, his eyes wide with something between terror and disbelief.

I clicked.

The footage stank of digital decay—grainy, glitching, as if the camera itself was rotting. was it a radioactive area? i thought to myself. A man in his late 20s, his flannel shirt stiff with dried sweat and "something darker, filled the frame. His fingernails were torn off, exposing the flesh beneath.

"If you’re seeing this… I’m already dead."

His voice was raw, like he’d been screaming. Behind him, the motel wall pulsed. Not a trick of the light—the wallpaper "breathed" , bulging between the seams as something pressed against it from the other side.

"I thought it was sleep paralysis. The shadow in the corner. The whispers." He wiped his mouth; his sleeve came away smeared with thick, bile-yellow spit. "But then it started following me in the daylight."

The camera panned to his motel room door. Deep scratches ran down the wood.

"I tried to outrun it. But every time I close my eyes… it gets closer."

A thud off-camera. Daniel flinched.

The shadows behind him twisted, knitting together into a spindled limb, its surface shimmering like oil on meat.

2. The Rules
The man’s name was Daniel Carter. A trucker. He’d been hauling cargo through the Nevada desert when he picked up "something" at a rest stop. which he shouldn't have.

Daniel’s hands shook as he lifted his shirt. His stomach was a latticework of cuts, some shallow, some deep enough to glint with peeks of rib. But the worst was his navel—a fist-size hole, the edges puckered and black, as if something had burrowed in and sewn itself shut behind it.

"It doesn’t like light," he whispered. A drop of blood swelled from his nostril. "It doesn’t like noise. But most of all… it hates being seen."

The camera panned to the motel door. Not just scratches—deep and jagged, flecked with shreds of fingernail and clumps of greasy black hair that wasn’t human.

A thud. Daniel whimpered as the lamp flickered. In the strobing light, something unfolded in the corner—a slick, jointed thing, its spine a segmented curve, its mouth a vertical slit splitting its face from chin to forehead.

"It’s learning," Daniel sobbed. "Last night, it spoke in my wife’s voice. Don’t listen. Don’t—"

The lights died. For a half-second, the camera caught it lurching forward, its jaw peeling open like a gutted fish, revealing rows of needle teeth dripping with saliva the color of motor oil.

Then—*static*.

---
3. The Second Tape
The next video was uploaded an hour later.

Daniel crouched in a bathtub, his left eye gone—just a crater of clotted blood, tendons dangling like frayed wires. His remaining pupil was blown black, the iris swallowed by the void.

"I looked at it for too long, I should not have done that." he rasped. A black tear rolled down his cheek. "It’s in my head now. I can feel it… nesting."

He gagged, then vomited a knot of hair and splintered bone onto the porcelain bath tub.

A wet crunching echoed through the walls, like teeth grinding on concrete. The sink faucet twisted on, spewing a thick, syrupy fluid that stank of spoiled meat and copper.

"They’ve been here longer than us," Daniel whispered. "They’re in the wires. The pipes. The dark between your eyes when you blink."

The doorknob rattled. Then—scratches, frantic, from every direction. The ceiling, the walls, even under the tub.

Daniel pressed a rusted box cutter into his palm, sawing until blood pattered onto the tiles. The droplets twitched, then skittered away like beetles.

"Light hurts them. Blood confuses them." He grinned, his teeth cracked and bleeding. "But nothing stops them for—"

The door opened inward, slightly ajar . The camera caught one frame:

A hand, its fingers too long, knuckles swollen like tumorous growths, claws hooked and glistening with mucus.

Then—the light goes out, a sudden darkness.

4. The Final Upload
The last video was 12 seconds long.

No sign of Daniel. Just the motel room, the walls webbed with pulsating black veins, throbbing like infected arteries. The carpet had dissolved into a festering mat of hair and decayed skin.

The camera lay on the floor, tilted up at the ceiling. Something dripped—a tar-thick drop that stretched like melted rubber before snapping onto the lens.

A whisper, gurgling, as if spoken through a mouthful of organs:

"You’re next."

Then—the shadow unspooled from the ceiling, a living oil slick, its surface rippling with half-formed faces screaming in silence.

The video ended. The account vanished.

watching the clips felt like a curse.

5. The Knock
I didn’t sleep, I couldn't.

At 3:17 AM, my bedroom door creaked open.

From the hallway: a wet clicking, like a tongue probing a fresh tooth socket.

Then—a whisper, in my mother’s voice:

"Look at me."