Today, I'm going to tell you some scary stories.
The kind that sink into your bones and stay there long after you've closed the book. But before we get to them, you need to understand something.
I'm not just the writer here. I'm also the prisoner.
My name's Mr. Megatoons, and I've been trapped in my own house by a cursed typewriter.
Yeah, I know how that sounds. Silly, maybe even funny, like something you'd laugh off over a beer. But listen—if you're going to stick with me through these stories, you need to believe me when I say this: the monsters are real.
It all started last month, on a day when I was looking for inspiration and found trouble instead.
The shop was one of those places that seem to pop up when you need them—or when they need you. A pawn shop, though calling it that feels generous. Really, it was just a crooked little building shoved between a laundromat and a shuttered diner. Its windows were grimy enough to blur everything inside, like the glass was hiding its own secrets.
The bell over the door gave a weak jingle when I stepped in, the kind of sound that feels more like a warning than a welcome. The air was stale, thick with dust and the faint smell of mildew. The place was crammed wall-to-wall with old junk: chipped vases, brass lamps that hadn't shined in years, portraits of people long dead—or maybe never alive.
And then I saw it.
The typewriter.
It was sitting in the corner, half-buried under a stack of yellowed newspapers. Big, black, and heavy, like it could have been pulled straight from a writer's desk in 1920. Its keys were worn down, the letters smudged away by a thousand forgotten hands. I couldn't stop staring.
When I brushed the dust off and ran my fingers over the keys, I swear I felt something move beneath them. Not mechanically—more like a shiver. As if the machine had been waiting.
That's when the old man at the counter cleared his throat.
"You might not want that one," he said. His voice was low and scratchy, like dry leaves blowing across pavement.
I turned, half-smiling. "Why's that?"
He hesitated, his eyes darting to the typewriter, then back to me. "They say it's haunted."
I laughed. That's the thing about warnings—they always sound ridiculous until they don't.
"How's a typewriter haunted?" I asked.
He only shrugged, a strange little smirk tugging at his lips. "You'll see."
Creepy old guy. Still, I bought it. Writers are like magpies when it comes to things that feel like stories, and this thing practically hummed with it.
When I got home, I set it on my desk like a trophy. My shrine to possibility. I've been in love with horror since the first time I read Stephen King—The Shining, to be exact. A writer haunted by his own words. That book got under my skin and never left, maybe because I understood it. I understood the idea that stories could be dangerous.
I told myself this typewriter would be the start of something. Maybe even the end of my writer's block.
But the truth? The truth is that I sat there for hours, fingers hovering over the keys, and nothing came. Every monster I thought of felt like a cliché. Every plot, a dead end. The longer I stared at the blank page, the emptier my head became.
Writer's block. My oldest enemy. My nightmare.
Frustrated, I slammed my fists on the desk—and that's when it happened.
A folded piece of paper slid out from inside the typewriter. No sound, no warning. It just fluttered down, as if it had been hiding in there all along, waiting for me to notice.
The words, written in jagged, spidery handwriting, read:
Every author must finish their stories. Every author has doors. Inside those doors are tales that must be told. You will tell them, or they will tell you. If you don't finish a story, your monsters will hunt you until you do.
I read it twice, then a third time. My heart was hammering in my chest. This wasn't a metaphor. It was a threat.
And then I saw them.
At first, just shadows moving outside my window. But shadows don't stare back. These did. Faces pressed against the glass, pale and hungry. One was tall and thin, its fingers too long, its smile too wide. Another was broad-shouldered with glowing red eyes that burned like coals.
They were mine. The ones I'd started to imagine and never finished. My monsters.
I froze, and they stood there, silent, until in perfect rhythm they began to knock on the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Slow, deliberate, like a heartbeat.
And then came the voice. Or maybe not a voice, exactly. More like a chorus of whispers, growls, and sighs all layered together into one terrible demand:
"Tell our stories… or we'll come in."