Pastel Horrors
The Easter basket arrived this morning, though I live alone and ordered nothing. Inside, nestled amongst the garish plastic grass, wasn’t chocolate, but a single, impossibly large, milky-white eye staring up at me. It wasn’t glass; it felt disturbingly organic beneath my hesitant fingertip, cool and slightly yielding, veined with faint red capillaries that seemed to pulse with a sluggish, unseen life. I slammed the lid shut, my breath catching in my throat. My hands trembled as I shoved the wicker basket onto the cluttered kitchen counter, knocking over a stack of unpaid bills. Who sent this? Why? I’d retreated to this dilapidated cabin, inherited from a great-aunt I barely knew, precisely to escape people, to escape everything after the breakdown. Miles from the nearest town, surrounded by dense, whispering woods, solitude was supposed to be my sanctuary, my cure. Now, this… this grotesque parody of an Easter gift had breached my isolation, a violation delivered right to my doorstep. Easter Sunday was still three days away. The irony wasn’t lost on me. A holiday of rebirth and pastel cheer felt like a personal mockery in the face of my own stagnant grief and fraying nerves. My psychiatrist, Dr. Aris, had encouraged the move, called it a “geographical cure,” a chance to reset away from the triggers of my former life – the empty nursery, the sympathetic glances, the oppressive weight of what happened. But the silence here wasn’t peaceful; it was pregnant, filled with the rustling secrets of the woods and the creaks of this ancient cabin, sounds that my overwrought mind readily twisted into threats. I tried to rationalize the eye-basket. A prank? Some local youths testing the newcomer? But who knew I was even here? I hadn’t interacted with anyone beyond curt nods to the cashier at the distant general store. And the eye… it wasn’t something you could just buy at a novelty shop. It looked… harvested. Throughout the day, the basket sat on the counter, radiating a palpable wrongness. I avoided looking at it, busying myself with pointless chores – scrubbing already clean floorboards, sorting through boxes of my great-aunt’s forgotten belongings. Dust motes danced in the weak afternoon light filtering through grimy windows, illuminating faded floral wallpaper that seemed to writhe with hidden patterns if I stared too long. The air hung thick and still, smelling of damp wood, decay, and something else… something sickly sweet, like rotting flowers. As dusk bled through the trees, painting the sky in bruised purples and oranges, the sounds began. Not the usual creaks and groans of the old house settling. This was different. A faint skittering within the walls, like tiny claws on dry timber. Then, a soft thump-thump-thump from the porch. My heart hammered against my ribs. I froze, straining to hear over the frantic pulse in my ears. Thump-thump-thump. It wasn’t rhythmic like footsteps. It was… hesitant? Playful? I crept towards the front door, my hand hovering over the deadbolt I’d installed myself. Peering through the peephole, I saw nothing but the encroaching gloom and the gnarled silhouettes of trees. Yet, the thumping continued, closer now, seemingly right below the peephole. I forced myself to look down through the small glass lens again. Nothing. Just the weathered wood of the porch floorboards. Then I saw it. Tucked against the doorframe, almost hidden in the shadows, was a single, perfectly formed Easter egg. It was painted a nauseating shade of Pepto-Bismol pink. I recoiled from the door, a cold dread washing over me. This wasn’t random. Someone, or something, knew the holiday, knew the symbols. The basket, the egg… they were messages. But what were they trying to say? Sleep offered no escape that night. My dreams were a feverish kaleidoscope of pastel colours swirling into suffocating darkness, the disembodied eye floating before me, its pupil dilating, swallowing me whole. I kept hearing the thump-thump-thump, merging with the frantic beat of a rabbit’s foot, a sound associated with luck that now felt like a harbinger of doom. I woke repeatedly, drenched in sweat, the silence of the cabin pressing in on me, amplifying every tiny noise into a potential threat. The next day, Good Friday, brought a new horror. More eggs appeared. One was nestled inside my worn leather boot by the door, painted a sickly yellow. Another sat perched impossibly on the narrow ledge of the bathroom mirror, its shell a pale, veinous blue, like a robin’s egg drained of life. They were all perfectly smooth, unnaturally heavy, and cold to the touch. I gathered them gingerly, using tongs, and placed them in a metal bucket, intending to take them far into the woods and bury them. But the feeling of being watched intensified, a prickling sensation on the back of my neck that refused to subside. The woods outside the windows seemed darker, the trees closer, their branches like grasping fingers. I started checking the locks compulsively, peering out windows, jumping at every creak. My rational mind screamed prank, hallucination, stress. But the physical evidence – the basket, the eye, the eggs – argued otherwise. Was I losing my grip again? Was the isolation finally cracking me open? Or was something truly malevolent playing games with me? My great-aunt Elspeth… I barely remembered her. A recluse herself, whispered to be eccentric, perhaps even unstable. Had she experienced something similar here? Sorting through another box in the dusty attic, searching for anything – a journal, a letter – I found a child’s drawing tucked inside an old photo album. It was done in crayon, depicting a crude, unnaturally tall rabbit figure with long, sharp ears and wide, staring eyes. It stood beside a weeping child, holding aloft a brightly coloured egg. Around them, the trees were drawn like jagged teeth. Below it, in childish scrawl, was written: “The Easter Man sees.” A chill, colder than the attic air, snaked down my spine. The Easter Man. Not the Easter Bunny. The term itself felt loaded, sinister. Was this just a child’s nightmare, or a record of something real? That evening, the skittering in the walls grew louder, frantic. It sounded like something larger now, scrabbling, desperate. And then came the whispering. Faint, grating, just at the edge of hearing. It seemed to emanate from the walls themselves, from the very air around me. I couldn’t make out words, just the suggestion of a voice, insidious and cold. Panic clawed at my throat. I had to get out. I grabbed my keys, flung open the front door, and stopped dead. The porch was covered in eggs. Dozens of them, in every sickly pastel shade imaginable, arranged in a spiral pattern leading from the woods to my doorstep. And in the centre, directly in front of the door, sat the wicker basket. The lid was open. The eye was gone. My breath hitched. Where was it? I scanned the porch, the surrounding yard, the deepening shadows under the trees. Nothing. Just the silent, accusing army of eggs. The whispering seemed louder out here, swirling around me like unseen insects. The sweet, rotting floral smell was overpowering. I backed slowly into the cabin, slamming and bolting the door. My mind raced. The eye was gone. Had it taken it back? The Easter Man? Was the creature from the drawing real? Was it inside the walls? Or was it outside, leaving its grotesque offerings? I spent the rest of Friday huddled in the living room, clutching a heavy fireplace poker, lights blazing despite the hour. Every shadow seemed to writhe, every noise sent jolts of adrenaline through me. I tried calling Dr. Aris, but the phone line was dead. Of course it was. The creeping sense of inevitability tightened its grip. I was trapped, isolated with this… this thing. Saturday passed in a blur of terror and exhaustion. No new eggs appeared, but the silence felt heavier, more watchful. The skittering in the walls ceased, replaced by an occasional soft tap-tap-tapping on the windowpanes, like fingernails or claws. I didn’t dare look. I boarded up the small bathroom window with loose planks I found in the shed, my hammer blows echoing unnervingly in the stillness. I found myself thinking about Elspeth’s drawing again. The tall rabbit, the weeping child, the ominous phrase: “The Easter Man sees.” Was the child Elspeth herself? Had she been tormented by this entity? Maybe her eccentricity wasn’t inherent; maybe it was inflicted, a result of living under the gaze of the Easter Man. Maybe the cabin itself held the memory of that fear, and now it had latched onto me. Desperation gnawed at me. I needed proof, something concrete to anchor my sanity or confirm my terror. I went back to the attic, tearing through boxes with renewed urgency. Behind a stack of moth-eaten blankets, I found it – a small, leather-bound diary. Elspeth’s. Her handwriting started neat, documenting mundane details of solitary life. But as the entries progressed, coinciding with springtime year after year, the writing became frantic, jagged. She wrote of “gifts” left on the porch, of pastel colours that felt “wrong,” of a tall shadow with long ears seen at the edge of the woods. She described a scratching at the door, whispers in the walls, and the feeling of being perpetually watched. “It comes with the spring,” one entry read, dated decades ago near Easter. “It mimics the season, the rebirth, but it’s old. Older than the woods. It wants… connection. It collects things. Shiny things. Living things. It left an egg today. Perfectly blue. Heavy. I think there’s something inside.” Another entry, years later: “The Easter Man is closer this year. I saw its face in the window reflection. All teeth and vacant eyes. It wants in. It whispers my name. Sometimes… sometimes I think I invited it, long ago. A childhood game gone wrong.” The last entry was short, almost illegible, dated Easter Sunday, 1978. “It’s in the house. Found the loose board. Such long fingers. Such pretty colours. Happy Eas–” The ink trailed off into a jagged smear. My blood ran cold. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t my grief, my breakdown. Elspeth had faced this. And she hadn’t survived. It got in. It found a way. The loose board… I frantically scanned the attic floor, the walls.Where? Then I heard it. A faint scraping sound, coming not from the walls this time, but from the main floor below. Slow, deliberate scrapes. Followed by a soft thump. Like something being set down gently. Clutching the diary, I crept down the attic stairs, the poker held high. The house was silent again, but the air felt electric, charged with imminent violation. I moved towards the living room, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Thump-thump-thump. I peered around the doorframe. In the centre of the room, bathed in the pale moonlight filtering through the grimy window, sat a single, enormous Easter egg. Easily three feet tall, it dwarfed the ones left outside. Its shell was a swirling mist of sickly pastels – pink, blue, yellow, green – blended like a child’s finger-painting. It seemed to pulse faintly, radiating that same cloying, rotten-flower scent. As I watched, paralysed by a mixture of terror and morbid curiosity, a thin crack appeared near the top. It zippered downwards with a soft crunch, splitting the grotesque beauty of the shell. Another crack appeared, then another, branching out like veins. The egg wobbled slightly. The scraping sound started again, louder now, coming from inside the giant egg. Something was hatching. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The scraping intensified, accompanied by wet, taring sounds. The cracks widened, revealing glimpses of something dark and slick within. The pastel shell began to buckle inwards in places, pushed from within. That cloying sweetness intensified, becoming nauseating, thick enough to taste. My mind screamed at me to run, to smash the thing, to do anything. But I was rooted to the spot, a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming nightmare. Elspeth’s final words echoed in my head: “It’s in the house.” It hadn’t needed to break down the door or climb through a window. It had been delivered. A Trojan egg. The top of the shell finally gave way, pieces falling inwards with soft thuds. Slowly, agonizingly, something began to emerge. Not a chick, not a bunny, nothing familiar. First, a long, pale limb, impossibly thin, jointed at unnatural angles, ending in fingers that were far too long, tipped with sharp, yellowed claws. It flexed, scraping against the remaining shell. Then another appeared, equally grotesque. A head lifted from the jagged opening. It was vaguely rabbit-like in shape, but hideously elongated, skull-like, covered in patchy, colourless fur that barely concealed the glistening bone beneath. Its ears were long and pointed, twitching independently, ragged and torn at the edges. Worst of all were the eyes – or lack thereof. Empty sockets, dark and weeping a thick, black pus, somehow conveyed a terrifying awareness, a focused malevolence. Its jaws stretched into a wide, contorted grin, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth stained with something dark. The Easter Man. It pulled itself further out of the shattered shell, its body unfolding like a stop-motion horror. Tall, emaciated, clad in what looked like tattered remnants of pastel fabric fused with desiccated skin and patches of mouldy fur. It moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, its limbs bending wrong, bones cracking audibly. It paused, its eyeless face slowly swivelling, scanning the room, fixing unerringly on me. The whispering started again, but this time it wasn’t formless. It solidified into a voice, dry and rasping, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Found… you…” It took a step towards me, then another, its long claws clicking softly on the wooden floorboards. The fireplace poker felt laughably inadequate. This wasn’t something you could fight with brute force. It was ancient, wrong, a perversion of nature and celebration. It had waited, patiently, nesting in the silence, feeding on the fear that saturated this place. My grief, my isolation – they hadn’t just been symptoms; they had been bait. It raised one long, skeletal hand, beckoning. In its palm, nestled like a grotesque jewel, was the milky-white eye from the basket. It pulsed faintly. “A… gift…” Run. The thought finally broke through the paralysis. I turned, stumbling backwards, heading for the kitchen, for the back door, anywhere. But my legs felt like lead. The creature moved with deceptive speed, its jerky movements covering the distance between us in horrifying seconds. I reached the kitchen doorway, fumbled for the knob on the back door – it was boarded up from the outside, I remembered with a fresh wave of despair. I was Trapped. I spun around; poker raised defensively. The Easter Man filled the doorway, impossibly tall, its silhouette framed against the dim light of the living room. It tilted its head, the grin stretching wider, black ichor dripping onto the floor. “Time… for the… hunt…” it hissed. It lunged. I screamed, swinging the poker wildly. It connected with something hard, eliciting a dry cracking sound, but the creature barely flinched. Its long fingers, cold as grave dirt, clamped around my wrist. Unimaginable strength pulled me forward, off balance. I stared into those empty, weeping sockets, seeing not darkness, but a swirling vortex of sickeningly sweet pastel colours, threatening to swallow me whole. The last thing I saw before the colours consumed my vision was its other hand, reaching for my face, holding aloft the single, milky-white eye. The last thing I heard was the whisper, right beside my ear, promising rebirth. A terrible, pastel-coloured rebirth. They found me wandering on the highway miles from the cabin, barefoot, clothes torn, babbling about eggs and colours that screamed. I don’t remember leaving the cabin, nor the confrontation’s true end. There are gaps, filled with swirling pastels, the chilling weight of something smooth and cool pressed into my palm, and the phantom taste of sickly sweetness. I spent weeks in a quiet room with soft walls, trying to convince Dr. Aris, and myself, that the Easter Man was just a manifestation, a product of grief and isolation. He nodded sympathetically, adjusted my medication, and spoke of stress-induced psychosis. It’s perpetually spring now, inside my head. Now, I live in a small, grey apartment in a city whose name I barely know. Grey walls, grey furniture, grey clothes. I chose it specifically for its lack of colour. Yet, colour finds me. The pale yellow of morning sunlight feels aggressive, the gentle pink of a neighbour’s flower box seems to pulse with hidden veins, and the clear blue sky… some days, the blue is the worst. It’s too close to the robin’s egg shade, the one offered in that final, fractured moment. Sometimes, I catch myself staring at it, a strange longing mixing with the familiar dread. I avoid mirrors. Reflections are untrustworthy; sometimes, for a split second, the proportions seem wrong, the ears too long, the eyes too dark. I haven’t bought eggs since I left the hospital, but occasionally, I find one. Tucked inside a shoe, sitting on the windowsill, nestled in the pocket of a coat I haven’t worn in weeks. Small, perfectly formed, painted in a muted pastel shade. I dispose of them immediately, scrubbing my hands raw afterwards, but the gesture feels futile. They are reminders. Promises. Spring arrived officially last week. The shops are filled with cheerful decorations, bright baskets, and foil-wrapped chocolates. The colours seem garish, offensive. But yesterday, walking past a bakery, I saw a display of delicately painted marzipan eggs. One, a perfect, pale, veinous blue, seemed to call to me. I found myself stopping, staring, a slow smile spreading across my face before I caught myself. The feeling was horrifying: it wasn’t fear, not entirely. It was… recognition. But I know, with a certainty that chills me deeper than any winter wind, that the hunt isn’t over. Perhaps it never ends. Perhaps the rebirth is just… slow. And perhaps, deep down, a part of me is waiting, ready to finally accept the gift. Ready for the colours. Credit: Deep Sleep Dread YouTube Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.