The Correctional Society

As a child, I never exactly hung out with many kids. Most of the time I just did my homework and did whatever I wanted inside the comfort of my own home. When I turned 12, it came to the point in which I finally was encouraged by my parents to begin interacting with more people and actually hang out with some of them. Once I took this advice, I enjoyed myself quite a bit for a while and met some genuine friends. After a few months, my best friend invited me on vacation to his beach house in the southern part of Florida. Since he knew I was not a fan of large groups and meeting lots of people, I was the only one invited. The property was secluded from most of the other homes and it was a private property. Once my parents gave their approval, I figured I might as well enjoy myself and accept his offer.

This was possibly the biggest mistake I ever made.

Recounting a traumatic experience is not something I am particularly talented at or had any experience with. To be perfectly honest, I have only told one other person about the following events I am about to recount to you. I could tell you how much I believe that my whole story is true, and that you should believe me as well, but to be honest, it doesn’t matter. The one person I told suggested that I had to spread the story to more people and not keep it too contained. He also suggesting finding other people who have had similar experiences, which led me to believe that posting my story on popular blogs and various sites would gather a better chance of being noticed. Without further ado, I might as well continue where I left off. I suppose I can’t put it off any longer.

After a couple hours on the road, my friend, his father, and I parked our car and walked a very short distance to the beach house. It was small, but incredibly beautiful, coupled with the lovely view of the ocean behind it and the forest not too far from it. There were two bedrooms, and one of them happened to have bunk beds, so my friend and I started unpacking our stuff in that room.

The room was cluttered with articles and papers of all sorts, most just scattered about with no particular trend in type of article. One would be about the Super Bowl, another about an escaped prisoner, another about the results of a political election from a couple years ago, and so on. However, what caught my eye was not an article at all. As I was putting the last of my things away, I dropped my phone and it fell under the bottom bunk. I didn’t really like my phone, but I needed it or my parents would ground me for weeks, so I looked under there to grab it and I saw it… It was just a piece of paper with a symbol on it, nothing particularly much. The symbol was odd, but I didn’t really draw much attention to it at the time. I recall how vividly it resembled an eye to me at first. I created a quick recreation of it in Paint (as the symbol was made up of 2D shapes that could easily be recreated in Paint) just to show you the lack of detail. I paid not much attention to it and just grabbed my phone, dismissing it, as I assumed it was just a random drawing my friend had done.

All things went extraordinarily well for the rest of the morning and afternoon. My friend and I hung out at the beach and talked, and I never once mentioned the symbol (as I had no reason to bring it up). However, that night I realized the dangerous situation I was in and the situation became truly traumatic.

My friend and I had stayed up for a long time, but eventually, my friend was clumsy enough to fall and hit his head on the metal part of the base of the bed. Luckily, he was okay, but he figured that it was time for him to sleep. He dozed off, and I figured I should sleep as well. However, as my eyes closed, I heard a sound that sounded a bit too familiar.

Paper rustling.

In my sleep-deprived state, I kept my eyes closed and dismissed it before hearing the same sound. Paper rustling. This time, it was louder.

I began to get skeptical, but again, I figured it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. I kept my eyes shut.

A couple seconds later, I heard it again. Paper rustling, except this time, it went on longer and seemed to be even closer. At this point, I knew that something was in the room. I did not have the courage to open my eyes, so I kept them shut and stayed as still and quiet as possible.

A few minutes passed, and I heard no rustling. I let out a quiet sigh of relief, and once again tried to finally fall back to sleep.

Suddenly, with a loud bang and the sound of paper rustling, I jerked up and looked to see a glimpse of a shadow running out of the room, papers in his hand and what appeared to be a handgun in the other. My friend was woken up by this too, and when he asked me what it was that made the noise, I decided that I couldn’t risk him getting involved. I wanted to find out who that figure was, and I figured that if I included him, we might make too much noise (especially when I considered how clumsy he was earlier and how much more clumsy he could be without any sleep). Therefore, I lied to him.

“Sorry, that was me. All is fine, just go back to sleep.”

He believed me, and went back into his deep sleep. Once I was sure he had dozed off, I crept out of bed quietly and began to walk carefully towards the door, making sure to be as quiet as possible. I eventually got dressed into clothes more suitable for outside, grabbed a flashlight his father had laying near the entrance, and crept out the door the silhouette had so carelessly left open.

I noticed a couple papers on the ground, appearing to be going in the direction of the forest nearby. Remembering that the man appeared to be holding papers, I gathered my courage and followed the small trail, picking up the papers to see what was on them.

To my surprise, every single paper I found had the symbol on them. I was dumbfounded as to why this person would steal all of these papers. Was the symbol supposed to be a big secret? What was the significance of the symbol? Unsure as to what I would find, I continued following and picking the papers up.

After about 15 minutes of walking, the papers finally led me to a small cabin. It was very run down, and clearly very old. I was incredibly unsure about entering, but I knew that at this point, there was no going back. I snuck into the cabin very quietly, unsure if the figure was still in there.

I let out a sigh of relief as I looked around and saw nobody. I scanned my surroundings. Like the beach house, there were tons of papers around, except the papers appeared to be all in stacks. I wandered through the small cabin a little bit, trying to step over all the stacked papers before seeing a desk with what appeared to be a very old folder on it. I opened the folder and, being able to read it because of the moonlight shining through the window above the desk, began to read.

What I found was so horrifying that I have been haunted by the experience ever since.

It appeared to be just a diary, but the contents of it were disturbing beyond belief. The author of the diary described that he and his fellow “members” had formed a very odd group, titled “The Correctional Society”. The author claimed that the society was formed to “correct the wrongs of modern life” and “test people for the greater good”. However, what they described in the diary was absolutely horrible.

The author described (in great detail) the extent of all the crimes the members committed. He and the members would randomly drug people or kidnap them to do testing, just for “the greater good”. By trying to “correct the wrongs of modern life”, the author insisted that one of the wrongs was their inability to “continue genetic and scientific progress”. These members would continually torture and test on kidnapped people, going to the extent of removing limbs and forcing those people to perform whatever sick tasks or digest whatever terrible concoction they gave them. The worst part was not only that these tests were also being performed on children, but the fact that the author viewed all of the event as positive things that would be “beneficial”.

At the very end of the diary was the symbol. What I had assumed was just a harmless drawing of my friend was actually a sick symbol for a disgusting society. Since my friend was never around his beach house, I assumed that the figure had hid files in that room with all the articles before we came and he realized he had to evacuate those files.

As a kid, these files were incredibly scarring. However, what launched this experience into absolutely traumatic was right when I finished the diary.

I had just closed the diary when the moonlight shining onto the desk suddenly disappeared. I opened the diary and now could barely make out a word. I looked up at the window to see what happened to the light…

I was face to face with a man, staring directly at me through the window. I jumped at the sight of him. His face was scarred beyond belief, and he was completely bald. However, what was worst was his wide grin as he saw me and left the window. I grabbed the flashlight and ran out of there. I ran through the forest as fast as possible as he chased me from not too far behind. I heard him saying things to himself, muttering how I was to be “the next subject”. He even had the handgun I thought he had earlier and tried to shoot me a couple of times.

I ran for over 10 minutes before I lost him. I no longer saw or heard him, but I still began to walk back with the terrible fright that any moment, he would appear to take me away. I found the beach house rather quickly after I found an exit to the forest, and I made it back to my bunk. My friend was still asleep, but I stayed up the whole night with the knowledge I had learned. The next day, I called my parents to come pick me up, telling my friend and his father that my stomach was feeling terrible and that I had the flu.

As I left in my parent’s car, I could have sworn that when I looked out the window, I saw what I could only assume was the man in the forest. Not moving, but just standing there. Watching me, with his gun in hand.

I never told anybody about it for a few years. I hid the truth from my best friend, my parents, and anybody who even mentioned that night. However, once my friend and I became old enough to drive to places by ourselves, he asked me if I wanted to go to the beach house, as he had never been back to it since that day I had my experience. I said no, and when he asked my why, I explained what happened that day. He didn't completely believe the story, but he thought it would be a cool thing to investigate and find out some hidden secret. He also suggested, as I mentioned in the beginning, that I should write my story and see if anybody else knew of the society. As much as I tried to convince him not to go, he decided to take a visit (with a pocket knife just in case he ran into the man) to the beach house, promising to call me if he ran into trouble. The events that occured afterward led me to put off writing my story for a while.

I haven’t heard from him since he left to go to the beach house, and it has been a little bit more than a year. I have called him on the phone and received no response countless times. I kind of feared that something would happen, but I had no idea that he would completely disappear from the face of the Earth. I even contacted the police, and they never found him. I never told the police about the story, but I did tell them about the cabin. Apparently, when they arrived to the location near the beach house, they searched the forest over and over, and they never saw a cabin. Assuming I was just crazy, they dismissed anything I said about the location of the cabin.

As time kept passing and no more answers or clues were found, I accepted the explanation the cops gave: that he had just ran away to another country or possibly even drowned. However, a couple days ago, I received something that leaves me in constant fear of my life.

About two days ago, I was hanging out in the apartment I had bought a few months ago when I heard my phone buzz. When I checked my phone, I was getting a call.

It was from my friend’s number.

I answered the phone immediately.

“Hello?”

After a few seconds of complete silence, I suddenly heard a voice.

“The Correction Society has chosen you as the next test subject.”

Moments later, I received a picture text.

It was the symbol.