What is Scary Story #13 about? The synopsis will say it is about a spell.
A young woman was busy working in a day job and sometimes she stayed out in the evenings honing her skill in a hand racket sport. She nursed a faint ambition of becoming competent enough to enter competitions. Her family didn’t like her spending time on a remote goal.
One night, the woman was at home in her room, preparing for bedtime, when she discovered something strange.
She had her habit of fluffing out her pillow and feeling it for lumps. Don’t ask why, but she had an extra sense of insecurity and she had to check her pillow. All was well. There was nothing wrong with her pillow. She continued with her habit of checking her pillow, even just to calm her anxiety over her nagging feeling that something bad was going to happen to her.
One night, she was feeling her pillow, when her fingers touched something stiff in it. She took off the pillow cover and examined closely the naked pillow. There was a break in the stitching where the stiff lump was. As she peered closer, she saw that the regular machine stitching was removed and there were hand sewn stitches. She searched for her pocket scissors and proceeded to cut loose the thread of the foreign looking stitches. When the gap opened, she saw a piece of yellow paper.
The paper was folded. It was a small sheet, like a page torn from a pocket sized notepad. She unfolded it and saw scrawls, scribbles, big swirls and small swirls.
She felt fear. The hairs on her forearms and lower legs stood up. Goosebumps!
She didn’t know what was scrawled on the paper but she had an intuition that she had to remove that paper from her pillow.
She kept that paper in her handbag. She didn’t want to keep it in her room, where others may find it when she was outdoors. They may decide to hide the paper somewhere else in her room, where she was unlikely to search.
She had her mini sewing kit in her drawer and she took it out to thread a needle. She sewed shut the gap in her pillow and enveloped it with her pillow case. Nobody would be the wiser if they didn’t remove the pillow case to check for the paper’s stiff lump in the pillow.
She went to sleep, on her pillow, confident that she had removed the danger.
She awoke the next morning and went to work as usual.
She made it to mid-morning. Then she felt unwell – giddy and nauseous. She applied for half day leave to return home to rest.
Nobody at home acted surprised or asked questions.
The woman went into her bedroom, checked her pillow, and laid down to rest. She soon fell asleep.
When she awoke after one hour, she felt her symptoms had disappeared. She arose from bed, washed her face and did her activities at home, for the rest of her day and night.
When she awoke the following morning, she went to work. After her work day ended, she called her friend to make a meeting at a coffee house. There, she showed her friend the small piece of paper which she had found in her pillow.
Her friend said, “It looks like a magic spell. Those are often written in a secretive language which outsiders can not understand to decipher.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?” The woman asked her friend.
“You can keep it in your bag, until the day when you think it is time to throw the paper away,” she said.
The woman did that.
For a long time, nothing extraordinary happened to her. She continued her life as before. She didn’t confront her family over the paper found inside her pillow. Neither did they mention it. They probably saw it didn’t effect any drastic change and left the matter alone.
As time passed, the woman realized she couldn’t make the grade to competition level for her sport. She abandoned her fantasy and spent her evenings at home, now learning to write short stories.
The End.
*
Related:
This is my collection of scary stories, written to Rojie’s “scary story” prompt
I’m having a whale of a time with her inspirational prompts. Her motivating choice of words inspires. I can’t really explain why but when I saw her prompt “scary story”, it sparked this whole series of writings.
(1) https://artmater.com/rojies-prompt-series-challenge-august-1-2026/
(2) https://artmater.com/scary-story-chapter-2-she-defeats-her-demons/
(3) https://artmater.com/scary-story-chapter-3-man-in-her-dream-left-footprints/
(4) https://artmater.com/rojie-asks-to-write-a-scary-story-for-aug-24-2026/
(5) https://artmater.com/scary-story-riddle-guess-what-this-is/
(6) https://artmater.com/is-ocd-also-in-the-alternate-dimension/
(7) https://artmater.com/dracula-or-insomnia-keeping-her-awake/
(8) https://artmater.com/is-this-scary-image-made-by-natural-stain-phenomenon-or-etched-by-evil/
(9) https://artmater.com/it-doesnt-pay-to-challenge-spirits-scary-story-9/
(10) https://artmater.com/dont-ignore-astrology-after-youve-consulted-the-charts-scary-story-10/
(11) https://artmater.com/scary-story-11-for-rojies-prompt/
(12) https://artmater.com/12-for-rojies-scary-story-prompt/
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