Creepy Stories

Flower Clip

There was an event a few days ago in which my laptop completely stopped working. Just out of the blue. I figured, assumed and believed that the battery had run dry, and, after trying for weeks to get it repaired, realized no one was able to allow it to hold a charge for more than several minutes. True, I had other computers, but I liked this one especially, as I’d had it for several years and had gotten accustomed to the model.

One day at yet another computer repair shop, after yet another startup which would inevitably shut down soon anyway, I drew a small flash drive from my pocket. I’d just bought it at the store yesterday, and I plugged it into the USBport. Opening the drive and pulling up the drive’s content screen, I found that, although there were only six files, the drive was at maximum capacity. I was frustrated, as I’d just bought the supposedly empty drive from a nearby thrift store. As I double clicked one to open it, the computer shot into the oh-so-recognizable blue screen of error. Any other time I would expect this after the amount of time the computer had been up and running, but it just seemed awkwardly coincidental in a way.

I put it out of my mind, taking my hopeless laptop back home with me and sticking the flash drive back into my pocket. The drive home seemed awkwardly long, as I was a bit anxious to see what exactly was on that flash drive I’d picked up.

One thing struck me as strange: how did the files get on the drive if the package I’d bought it in was enclosed in plastic casing? It couldn’t have been opened. Assuring myself this was some sort of breaking-in glitch, I shook my head and pulled into my driveway.

Getting everything settled, such as putting the dead laptop away and turning the lights on, even making myself some coffee before attempting to debunk the mystery behind the flash drive.

I sat down at my desk, my other (albeit less mobile) computer waiting to aid me in my task. Flicking the power on, I slid the flash drive in the second I saw my desktop appear. A strange thought lingered in the back of my mind, half having expected the computer to receive the blue screen as well once I’d plugged it in. The screen opened just as I’d expected it to, and yet again there were six files. Looking at them more closely, I realized even though I hadn’t actually opened the package for a week after I bought it, the files were all dated to have been added yesterday.

This further puzzled me, and startled me in a way, too. My curiosity got the best of me, and I looked even closer at the files. There were two audio files, one video, one word document, and two pictures. All of them were labeled assorted gibberish with the exception of the video, which was titled “stop” in the exact way written there. No punctuation, no capital letters. Just “stop”. Just stop.

I started with one of the pictures. It was a normal .png file, a picture of a girl playing with some dolls. Since the picture had a date on it, from about two months ago. I assumed maybe this had been her mother’s flash drive, defying my earlier logic but still trying to find an acceptable explanation for the moment. There didn’t seem to be anything strange or suspicious about this picture, so I allowed myself to put to rest my fears that some sort of virus or strange phenomena was lurking in this flash drive. I opened the other picture, and it was another picture of the girl, this time without a date, playing with her dolls again, but wearing a forlorn and concerned look on her face, her eyes looking somewhere not visible in the picture, at something I could not see. Some of her dolls were strewn about on the floor, and she only held one, a simple rag doll that seemed rather old and musty, as though someone had given it to her as a hand-me-down.

I looked at the girl in the pictures a bit more closely. She was about seven or eight years old, from what I could see. She had black hair, short and trimmed to a bowl cut. In both pictures, she was wearing a yellow flower clip in her hair, though since the clothes she was wearing were different, I assumed they’d been taken at different dates.