Warning: This work has been rated 16+.
SIDENOTE: This is a STORY I wrote for a forum called "/r/nosleep" (where I go by the /u/Cosmic_Hitchhiker, if you want proof I can get you some). It is supposed to have believablility and also be somewhat scary. I know it's not really terrifying but I think I did a good enough job making it seem plausible that it could be scary. Reviews would be great for future reference, however I plan to leave the story as it is here, thank you and here you go.
So, when I was 12 years old our house burned down. To this day my parents say it was all random, shitty, but random. I still don't believe that.
It all started with the leaky faucet.
We moved to the 'new' house (it was built in '28) because my dad had gotten a new job or a promotion or something. Anyway, I was pissed. It was on the other side of town and even though I could still see my friends and even stay at the same school, I didn't want to leave the 'old' house. But I was 12 and didn't get a say. So we move into this house and start unloading our stuff and I decided I had to take a piss. So I go to the bathroom next to my room and see that the faucet is dripping. I didn't think it was too unusual, but I remember making note of it, probably to tell my dad later.
That night, I went to bed in my new room. There are boxes everywhere and they're casting scary shadows and it was a new house and it creaked weird, I tried pretending not to be scared and just going to sleep. Then I heard that damn faucet dripping. The walls were thin but it seemed so loud in the dark. I got up and went to the bathroom to try turning it off, but both handles were in the "off-position" so it was going to keep dripping.
The water problems only got worse from there. Other faucets started dripping. My dad tried fixing all of them but nothing seemed to stop the dripping for long. Then, one day all of plumbing hell broke loose. My sister was using the toilet. I heard a flush and a few seconds later some gurgling and a scream.
I ran upstairs to find her, hands clasped over her ears, the toilet backing up. Then the downstairs toilet started to make the same noise, I drag her out of the bathroom and run back down to find that the other toilet doing the same thing. Then the sink and tub faucets make this sick rumbling noise and start puking water.
At this point I'm shitting my pants. I grab my sister and run outside to try and find my mom or dad.
"MOM! DAD!....MOM!" finally my dad comes out of the garage wiping his hands on a rag. "She took [my older brother] to football, whats up?" "THE HOUSE IS..." I just started talking gibberish at that point and ran back inside dragging him behind me. My dad walked in and by now there's like half an inch of water on the floor and it's starting to drip through the ceiling. My dad makes that 'dad panic' face and begins to run back outside, me on his tail.
He calls a plumber who comes out after what seems like forever. This guy turns off the water and tears apart our plumbing system. He comes outside to the driveway after about an hour carrying a bundle wrapped up in a towel. He lays it out in front of us and it's a bunch of bones. He says he thinks an animal curled up and died in the pipe and after it decayed, its bones got caught in a big mass and clogged the pipe.
Luckily, the water hadn't gotten too high and the only carpet was up a few stairs so clean up wasn't a huge deal except for the ceiling.
So we were left with this pile of bones and a damaged ceiling. My dad called someone to fix the ceiling and we turned out attention to what to do with the bones. My sister says bury them, my brother says burn them. They compromised by burying them in the fire-pit. After a few months we forget about them.
That summer we decided to build a fire and roast marshmallows as It was almost my 13th birthday.
BAD. FUCKING. IDEA.
About 2 weeks afterward I get woken up by my sister who said she smelled smoke. We run to the stairs where we see the back wall of the lower floor is on fire. We wake the rest of the family and get out safe. The house and our stuff wasn't so lucky. The house went up in a matter of minutes and the Fire Department couldn't put it out quickly enough.
My parents tell me the events had nothing to do with each other or the bones and they were just freak accidents. I think something evil was lurking in that house trying to tell us something, but I'm still to afraid to look it up.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
This is hilarious. I love the tone and I died laughing many times.
I really like this sentence - " My dad makes that 'dad panic' face and begins to run back outside, me on his tail" because the description is perfect. There's a really strong voice in this story and it makes it a fun, enjoyable read.
Hello, Emoticon.
First of all, I want to start by saying I absolutely adore creepypasta and nosleep stories. I read them far more often than what can been seen as normal or even healthy. I'm so happy that I stumbled upon your story, because it's currently 2 A.M and all I want to do is read. Also, please keep in mind that I review as I read. Let's get started then.
#FF0000 ">Grammatical Corrections
#00BF00 ">Highlights
1: I don't exactly agree with beginning your first sentence with "So". I understand the conversational tone that you're trying to portray, but the opening off-sets the sentence and creates a sort of awkward speaker-reader connection. This is purely opinionated, but my suggestion would be to nix that word completely. With that opening gone, the sentence reads much more smoothly and avoids unnecessary bulk.
2: You need to put in a more effective stop here. The comma does not provide a pause long enough to stop the sentence from running together. My assumption is that this sentence was meant to be read as "To the day, my parents say it was all random... shitty, but random." Now, I don't really know which break would be most efficient. In the example I gave, I used an ellipse, but a hyphen could also work perfectly; any punctuation can be used that separates that ending phrase from the rest of the sentence.
1: I don't really see the need for the quotes around "new". It just looks a bit weird and also adds emphasis on that word that comes off as gauche.
2: I have a feeling that stating when the house was built might be important later in the story, so I don't suggest removing it if that's true, but I do suggest removing those parenthesis around it and finding a better way to insert that fact into the story. Honestly, I just really hate parenthesis outside of essays. They just look gaudy.
Write out numbers.
1: Watch your tenses. You put this into present tense by adding "are" and "they're", those words should be "were" and "they were" respectively.
Be careful of repetition. I've highlighted the repeated words. Here I also corrected your tenses because you were slipping back into present tense again. I won't point out every instance on tense change in your story from here on, but please go back over this and make corrections. I've found that reading stories out loud have helped to detect mistakes.
All caps inside of a story are not a good way of portraying emphasis. Italics would work fine to get a stressed point across.
I'm assuming this was a mistake, but just give the brother a name.
New paragraphs should come before and after quotations.
The grammatical errors in this story were not abundant, but they were constant and repetitive. Mostly, you're missing a few commas here and there - or maybe I just like commas - and your word-tense tends to swing back and forth.
There's a good story here, but it needs development, both character and story wise. There are loose ends in the story, no real explanation behind why what happened occurred, and the characters seems a bit one-dimensional. I thought the story was good, I liked the idea behind it, but my only recommendation would be to add more development and fix some errors made. This has the potential to be so great, and while it wasn't scary, I didn't get the impression that it was meant to be "scary". I peg this story as one that's meant to give off more of a mysterious atmosphere, and you're well on the way to developing that.
Happy writing,
RP.
Hello there, Abel here to review.
I really liked this story because of the depth you reached. You infused more elements than a simple story would have. The leaky faucets, animal bones, fire; the transition from water to water being the final disaster was genius, and relating it to the animal bones which caused the water problems was also nice.
Your grammar cannot and should not be criticised because it's obvious that you intended this piece to have an informal air.
Overall, this is pretty good and although not scary (as you claimed) it still possesses an element of superstition.
Cheers
Hey!
It's my first review, so let's hope I do this right.
To be honest, your story wasn't really scary at all. Sorry! I think you've got a good idea, but the way you put it together just wasn't frightening. It seemed more like a Reddit post (which I understand it originally was) than a piece of literature. Grammar-wise, there were a couple run-on sentences (minor stuff) that I won't bother pointing out.
Moderate story short: you have a good backbone for something truly eerie, but this particular piece felt too rushed and boiled down to the point where it just wasn't horror.
Unfortunately, I see from your description that it looks like you don't want to re-write it. I think if you took your time you could make this a fantastic piece.
Thanks for the story!
Hello, Review here. Great story thing.
I know it's not much of a real review im doing, but im gonna call it that.
I love scary type stories and it is true, it's not much scary but is a little, not to where I'm scared though!
Anyways have a nice day!
-Pandabear7-
'So we move into this house '
LOVER OF EMOTIONS 
~
'So we moved into this house..'
I know you said that you weren't going to change anything, but this isn't the only problem I seen so I'm not going to point them out.
On the other hand, I love it. It was a little scary with the fact that the plumer found the dead bones, and the whole it catching on fire. I wouldn't look it up either. And it really does seem realistic and I see why the title is Leaky Faucets.
This isn't much to a review and I'm sorry about that.
~:D