20 Jul On the Outside

Posted at 22:06h in Strange and Unexplained by CreepypastaStories.com 0 Comments

📅 Published on July 20, 2025

“On the Outside”

Written by Chisto Healy
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

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🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 16 minutes

Rating: 10.00/10. From 2 votes.

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Benjamin watched the man in the other aisle. He’d been watching him for a long time. He thought he got rid of Benjamin, but he didn’t. There was no way in hell that Benjamin would give up that easily. This man stole his life, took every last bit of it, and then cast him out like he was nothing. He threw Benjamin away like last week’s leftovers that sat in the fridge while everyone reached around them for something else, something newer, fresher, better. To Hell with him.

Now he was in the next aisle, reading the ingredients on the packages of cookies. Benjamin scoffed at this. No matter what the ingredients say, they’re still cookies. There’s no good for you cookies, you jerk.

Benjamin ducked back around the endcap when the man turned around and looked. He may not have known that Benjamin was still around town, but he definitely knew he was being watched and followed by someone. He was growing increasingly nervous and more paranoid with each passing day. Benjamin had been watching it happen from his hiding places. It made him smile. The bastard deserved to feel afraid. Benjamin was always afraid, afraid his son would forget him, afraid his wife had actually moved on, afraid he’d never have a real home again, afraid someone would hurt him when he was sleeping out there on the street, afraid he would get a disease from eating the half-rotted garbage food he was forced to live on. He was constantly afraid, and it was all due to the man who just decided Peacan sandies were the way to go.

I hope you have a nut allergy, Benjamin thought in anger, but he already knew the man didn’t. He knew everything about him, studied him, learned him better than any book he’d ever read, and he’d read plenty.

Benjamin walked to the wine aisle and rolled a tall bottle in front of his face like he was looking at them, but in truth, he was looking around them at the man in line on his way to the cash register. He wished the man would go away for a few days so he could get inside the house, see his son, and taste even for a moment what it was like to have his life back. Thinking of that made a rush of anger wash over him. He wanted to run up and pummel the man for what he’d done, but he couldn’t. If he did, he would end up in jail, and it would be that much harder to get his life back. Damn you.

He watched the man wave at the cashier and head for the front doors, pushing his buggy, and Benjamin hurriedly set the bottle of wine down. He walked briskly into the line of people heading for the way out. “Hey, are you…?” a woman started to ask him.

Benjamin held up a finger to silence her and walked by, squeezing behind two other people.

“You saw that, right?” a man said, pointing in his direction. Benjamin’s lip curled. They must all have thought him the bad guy, the one at fault somehow. Who knows what the man told them, or what he said to convince them? It made Benjamin want to punch them all in the face. How could anyone do this? How could his wife have let it happen?

Well, he wasn’t going to stand for it. He just needed to bide his time, to wait for his moment. When it was before him, he would seize it and take his life back by force if need be. The crowd was so congested at the doors that Benjamin couldn’t get out. He felt everyone staring at him as he tried to squeeze through, but to no avail. He squinted at the window as he fought to make it through the sliding glass doors, but he couldn’t see the man.

He growled under his breath. Had the man organized this somehow? Paid these people? Maybe not with money, but with juicy stories and made-up lies that made them feel compelled to help him. They’re all in on it. All of them. They can rot.

With a grunt, he forced his way by and tore through the sliding doors before they’d fully slid open. One of them banged off the track and slammed into the wall. People were cursing him. Of course they were. They had no idea what his life was like, all that had been taken from him. They had no idea.

“How rude,” a woman said. “I wish you were more like him.”

Benjamin whirled around and glared at her with absolute hatred. “What did you just say?”

The woman recoiled like he’d struck her, and Benjamin just grunted and shook his head. He turned back and hurried out into the parking lot. He’d taken too long. The man was gone. He’d driven away back to Benjamin’s life, the life he stole. Benjamin roared his anger then. He picked up a nearby shopping cart and threw it onto its side on the concrete. People were staring at him. Some of them had their phones out. That wasn’t good. If it went viral, it would get to the man sooner or later, and if he saw that Benjamin wasn’t really gone, there was no telling what he would do. Benjamin ran off as fast as he could, and he hated it, having to run to hide like this. All because someone else decided his life would be better suited to them than their own.

He hated living like a dog with their tail tucked between their legs, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t risk being discovered. He couldn’t fight everyone. There was no choice but to run, to hide, to act like the criminal they were all treating him like he was. The more he thought about it, the angrier he felt. He wanted to kill the man, to rip his throat out with his bare hands, to hold it up victoriously, and crush it in his palm.

Maybe he would before all was said and done.

When he got far enough away from the store, Benjamin slowed down. It was a long way to the man’s house, the house that once belonged to him, that should still belong to him. He didn’t have a car because it belonged to the man now, just like his wife and kid did. Benjamin’s face twitched. He punched a tree as he walked by, bloodying his knuckles. He didn’t even care about the people nearby who looked alarmed or even frightened by him. They would be angry, too, if they were in his shoes. No one would begrudge him his anger if they knew.

A passing car slowed, and someone leaned out the window. “Hey! You coming on Thursday?”

Benjamin turned to look at them, the anger still burning in his eyes. “Oh… uh, sorry. Never mind. I thought you were someone else,” they said, climbing back into the window and driving away.

Benjamin bent down and picked up a rock, hurling it at their car as they drove away. It busted the back right tail light, and he couldn’t help but smile. Serves him right for confusing Benjamin with that piece of crap that stole his life. He knew that had to be who they thought he was. He was not him, though. He was Benjamin F. Waters, a man who once had it all and now had nothing but his anger to keep him going.

He picked up his speed then, marching toward the man’s house. He walked for miles, stewing and grumbling, planning in his head how he would push his way in the front door when he got there and demand his life be returned to him.

Then he ran out of steam. His anger faded, replaced by exhaustion. He’d gone through so many days just like this, passing between the two from one to the other and back again. When the adrenaline faded, there was nothing much left… only the depression, the longing, the mourning for the life he once knew. Benjamin wept as he walked now, which only earned him more stares. He snarled at them like a wild animal, the anger returning briefly. What right did they have to judge him for feeling this? None. None at all. He wanted to smash their faces in, but he knew he couldn’t. It didn’t stop him from imagining it, though. He smirked at the violence in his mind as he continued his walk.

A car sped by and splashed a puddle onto him. It came up like a tidal wave and washed over him, dousing him in filthy muck. He stood there with his hands clenched into fists, just shaking and fuming. “Okay, I’ll just have to change into my other clothes when I get home to the house I don’t have anymore. No big deal,” he said sarcastically, laughing wildly at the statement. A homeless woman pushing a shopping cart full of aluminum cans stopped and watched him warily. “What?” he screamed, making her jump.

She shook her head and hurried down the road. Benjamin was taking heaving breaths. He needed to calm down before he gave himself a heart attack and let the man win. He couldn’t let his defeat be that easy. The man already thought it was. He had taken Benjamin in a car—or rather, paid other people to—and they dropped him off in the middle of fricking nowhere. They said, “Don’t come back,” before driving away.

He took a deep breath to calm his nerves as he thought about it. “They had to know that’s exactly what he would do. How could he just accept that his wife and his son and his home and his car and his job were no longer his anymore? He couldn’t. Who could? Who could just say, “Okay,” and walk away from everything they’d ever known, everything they’d ever built and loved? Not him. Not Benjamin.

He hitchhiked, walked, and stole to get back. He would stop at nothing. The man had to know. He had to know that Benjamin would never stop coming. He could take Benjamin’s family and move away to somewhere else, and Benjamin would still come. He would find them. He would follow them. There would be no end to this until he met his end or the man relented and relinquished his life.

He turned onto the block he once lived on and looked at the neighbors’ houses. He remembered the cookouts and swims in their pools with the kids. Now they treated him like a stranger. How dare they?

He kept to the shadows and moved with the trees as he worked to approach the house. If they saw him, any one of them would recognize his face. He could not let that happen. He could see the blue light of his son’s nightlight shining in the upstairs window, and his heart ached. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t draw the attention.

Instead, he got down low and hurried over to the house, climbing quickly into the hedges out front before anyone noticed him. From there, he could look into the windows. He could see them without anyone seeing him. He knew because he’d already done it on so many previous nights. The man liked to sit in the living room and play piano like he was in a Christmas movie. Benjamin’s face twitched. He wanted to crash through the window and slam the man’s head in the piano over and over. He wanted to strangle him with the piano wire. Instead, he did as he did so many other nights. He listened and watched.

He watched his wife walk up and kiss the man like she actually loved him, but how could that be? Had she learned to? Was it Stockholm syndrome? He squeezed his eyes shut from his place in the bushes and shook his head.

He’d had enough of this. He wasn’t even sure why he did it, what he got from it. He was hurting himself night after night, day after day, watching this man live his life while he was stuck on the outside looking in. He needed to see his son, to let the boy know that he hadn’t forgotten him, that he never would, no matter what. Now that the man was preoccupied with his joyful music and the nauseating affection of Benjamin’s wife, it was the perfect time. They were both distracted.

Leaving the bushes, he stayed low and ran at a crouch around the side of the house. When he got to the back, he looked at the stairs leading up from the garden to the terrace patio. Benjamin looked around nervously. He didn’t hear the music inside anymore, but he didn’t see anyone. Chewing on his lip with indecision, he crept toward the stairs. When he reached them, he started to ascend without allowing himself to give it much thought. Thought would deter him. Now was the time for action.

When he got to the terrace, he skirted the fire pit and passed the chairs, heading for the sliding glass doors. They would be locked. He knew that. They would be fools to leave them open. He had made the man paranoid enough by now. Jerking on the door proved Benjamin right. He went to the wall and reached up into the gutter on the roof. A few steps to the right, and his hand felt what he was looking for. He chuckled to himself when he looked at the key in his hand. They tried to get rid of him, but they didn’t get rid of his key. He would make sure they knew what a mistake that was.

Benjamin looked around to make sure the coast was clear again. He stopped and listened for a moment. He heard nothing. Nodding to himself, he unlocked and opened the sliding door. Then he stepped in as carefully and quietly as he could and closed it back behind him.

He crept through the dark room, closing in on the well-lit hallway. When he reached the threshold, he stopped and listened. He wished he’d heard voices downstairs. He would have preferred arguing, proof that the image he always saw through the window was not real, but instead, he got silence. He gritted his teeth, not knowing what he should do.

He was so close now. His son was just a matter of feet away, and if he didn’t go to see him now, he might not be able to get this close again. It was a chance he had to take. He eased the door open, and the man stepped directly in front of him. He wished he didn’t, but he gasped and fell backward. It was just an instinctual reaction.

The man scowled. “What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped.

“It’s my home,” Benjamin said from his place on the ground. “I want to see my son.”

The man’s face contorted with rage. “This is not your home. You don’t belong here. “

Benjamin’s fear gave way to his own anger. He scrambled backward until there was enough space that he felt confident to stand. He pointed at the man accusingly. “How could you say that? You stole this from me. You stole all of it!”

The man snarled. “I stole nothing. You think you can lay claim to my life because you think you’re me!”

Benjamin shook his head vigorously. “No. That’s not right. You know that’s not right.”

“It is! You were a creation to help me be in two places at once, but it was a failed experiment because you started to believe you were the real me! You started thinking my life was your life, but it isn’t! You’re a fake! An impostor!”

“NO!” Benjamin screamed. “You’re lying. You’re always lying! You can’t do this. I won’t let you get away with it.”

“I know! That’s why we took you far from here and gave you a chance to make your own life, but you didn’t take it. You never know what’s good for you because there’s no ‘you.’ There is only me.”

Benjamin grabbed his head. “Stop it! Stop lying! Where is my son?”

“You mean my son? He’s been taken away and put somewhere safe where you can’t hurt him. I had a panic room put in in case you came back because I knew I couldn’t trust my family’s safety with you out there.”

“My family! They’re my family! You stole them! I would never hurt my son. I love him. I raised him!”

“They are not yours and they never were. You are not even real. You are a walking, talking, breathing lie. You can go away, come up with a name that isn’t mine, and make a life for yourself. Maybe you can even fall in love, start a real family and stop trying to kidnap mine.”

“Kidna— what? You’re insane!”

“Says the clone. This has gone too far. I didn’t want to do it because a part of you is me, but I think I’m going to have to make the call.”

Benjamin’s eyes went wide. “You better not. Don’t you dare! It’s sick that that is even a thing!”

The man lunged forward and pointed in his face now. Benjamin realized for the first time that the man held a taser. He backed away and hit the wall, shaking his head. The man bellowed at him. “It’s a thing for exactly this reason! Sometimes the clones start to really believe they’re you. They believe you are the impostor and that you took their life. They decided it’s theirs to reclaim, and if you don’t decommission them, they will never stop. I gave you a chance. I gave you an out!”

Benjamin glared with all the hatred he could muster. He spoke quietly and matter-of-factly. “Why not call it what it is? Murder. You murder them. Coming up with a fancy word like decommission only serves your own conscience. They are killed, dismembered, sometimes melted down to nothing and made into compost. And you justify this?”

“Give me another way, then,” the man said. “Give me a better option, something to prove you will stop coming after my family.”

Benjamin was shaking. The muscle twitches in his face were getting worse. “I will not stop,” he said quietly, menacingly. “I will never stop, because I know they are mine.”

“That’s what I thought,” the man said with a frown. He raised the taser again. Benjamin’s eyes went wide. He knew he would die if he didn’t escape this house. He just wanted to see his son, to tell him how much he loved him. He roared and charged at the man. A look of shock passed over the man’s face, but he reacted accordingly, stepping back, raising the taser and pressing the trigger. The prongs hit Benjamin in the chest. He felt the volts pass through him, and he twitched and shook, collapsing to the ground. He couldn’t control his muscles, and he spasmed around the floor like a fish out of water. He lost control of his bladder. The man was looking down on him now. He had looked down on him for years, and now he was doing it literally, standing over him like the God he believed himself to be.

Benjamin raised a trembling hand to hold him away. “Don’t. Please. I can’t die. I just miss my son. I need to see my boy.”

The man sighed and shook his head. “You knew that was never going to happen, never again. He’s safe, he’s loved, he’s mine. I can’t let you near him. You know that. You think I don’t know that you’ve been following me? That’s you’ve been stalking me? Watching me? You think I would let someone like that near my son? That I would trust him with you after the way you’ve behaved? Your behavior is erratic at best, psychotic at worst. You were a mistake, Benjamin, and now it’s time that I corrected it.”

Benjamin heard the distaste in the man’s voice when he said his name. He saw the disgust in the man’s face when he looked at him. Was it really over? Was this it? “Please,” he said, the anger gone. This was what he was reduced to, begging… begging for his life. Begging for a moment with his son. How did this happen? It all fell apart so quickly. He felt so desperate, consumed by his grief. “Please,” he said again. “Please.”

The man sighed again. “I wish I could, but you’ve left me no choice.” He took a phone from his pocket and put it to his face.

Benjamin shook his head. “Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t.”

The man ignored him. “Yes, it’s me, Ben Waters. It came back. It’s threatening us and trying to take my child. There’s nothing left to do. I believe this is an extreme case, and the copy needs to be decommissioned. Okay. Thank you. See you soon.”

Benjamin’s eyes widened at the words, and he made a desperate attempt to scramble away, not thinking about the fact that the prongs were still attached. The man sent more volts of electricity surging through him, and he collapsed before the door, shaking and jerking on the floor. He tried to talk, and he couldn’t. Drool hung in strands from his mouth. He did the only thing he could do. He reached. He reached for the man, begging him not to steal his life. He’d already taken his wife, his son, his home, his job; did he really need to take his life as well? Was there not anything he was allowed to keep?

He raised the phone again and said, “Soon, you and Henry can come out, Linda. It’s almost over. They’ll be here to take him. I know. I’m sorry. We’ll work through it together as a family. I’m just glad you’re safe.”

Benjamin couldn’t listen to this. He couldn’t understand how someone could replace you in your own house. He ripped the prongs from his chest and tried t lunge but his muscles still wouldn’t cooperate and he fell again. He tried again.

When he looked up, there was fear in the man’s face now. That made Benjamin smile. The man backed away and held up a knife. Benjamin didn’t know where it came from. Maybe he retrieved it while Benjamin was incapacitated. It didn’t matter. He was ready to pry it for the man’s hand and slice him to ribbons with it.

“Don’t make me cut you,” the man told him. “It’s over. It’s already over. They’re on their way. Doesn’t it speak to you that my family is hiding in the panic room, waiting for you to be gone before coming out? Does that sound like people who want to see you? People who trust you?”

“SHUT UP!” Benjamin screamed. He charged. The man yelped and swiped at him with the knife. He batted the arm away and punched the man in the face. He had no time to celebrate, though, when the bastard fell because he heard the front door downstairs. He gave a sharp breath, and his eyes went wide. “No.”

He could hear their feet on the steps and knew he was out of time. He would have to see his son another day. Benjamin ran to the sliding glass door he used to enter, and he saw more of them coming up the steps from outside. They were dressed for war, wearing full armor, padding, and helmets. “No, no, no,” he mumbled, tears falling from his eyes.

He wondered for a moment if he would be able to jump without breaking his legs. It was better than death, wasn’t it?

He raced forward as he heard the soldiers filing into the room behind him. Benjamin ripped open the sliding glass door and ran out onto the steps before the soldiers could reach him. He yelled and leaped over the side. When he hit the ground, both legs snapped at the knees with a sickening crunch. He screamed and heard the sound of radios crackling. “We’ve got him,” someone said. “He’s incapacitated.”

Benjamin tried to crawl away, but he was surrounded by tall black combat boots. He felt the hands grab him. “Don’t worry,” a female voice said to him. “The pain will be over soon.”

He looked up in shock. “Linda?” he cried. “Linda, you can stop this. Don’t let them do this. Please. Linda!”

He watched her turn her back on him and walk away. Then he was yanked up from the ground with no sympathy for his injuries. He cried out in agony for his broken legs and his broken life. Then he was thrown in the back of a van where he landed on other broken bodies, some still moving, others long dead. Flies buzzed. “Linda! LINDA!” he screamed as the doors slammed closed, bathing him in darkness. “LINDAAAAAA!”

* * * * * *

Henry watched the truck drive away, and he looked up at his mother. “Was that Daddy?” he asked.

She rubbed his back as she stood next to him, watching the vehicle drive away, too.”No, honey. Your Daddy is inside the house.”

Henry looked up at her, his hand gripping her night gown. “But that’s New Daddy. The man they took away… that was old Daddy, wasn’t it?”

His mother met his gaze. She squatted down before him. “Oh, honey…” she said. “That man stopped being your father the moment he decided to create someone else to do it. He didn’t appreciate or love us the way he should have, and this was all his doing. Okay?”

Henry looked thoughtful. “But you and New Daddy lied and told those people that old Daddy was New Daddy.”

She nodded. “That’s right,” she said, hugging him tightly. “ I did. But New Daddy didn’t lie. He thinks it’s true. He believes that he’s always been your Daddy. That’s what makes this work, and we need it to work because New Daddy actually loves us. He was created to love us and protect us, and he always will. Old Daddy made this bed, and now he has to lie in it. Speaking of which, let’s get you back to bed. It’s late, and you haven’t brushed your teeth yet.”

“Okay, Mommy,” he said, hugging her back. She released him and took his hand, leading him back toward the house. Ben was in the doorway, smiling at them. He opened his arms wide.

“I can’t believe it’s finally over,” he said. “Come here. I love you both.”

They hurried forward and hugged him. He embraced them like they’d always deserved to be. Then they turned and went into the house together… as a family.