Preferable Strangers (a creepypasta)
Milton White Eagle hunched over his bike handlebars, pedaling hard against the Oklahoma City breeze. His sweatshirt sleeve rode up, revealing the polar bear trudging across his wrist. Same bear on his sweatpants. Arctic scenes felt wrong here, surrounded by concrete and heat.
He was a Lakota-Sioux boy, born and raised in this city by his parents, both of whom served in the United States Marines. His mother was a dentist and his father was a repairman. Both were active duty and those he either leave him home alone or get babysitters for him. When he was by himself and not being babysat, his mom and dad would always warn him about stranger danger, telling him never to open the door for someone he didn’t know. He also told him that if he was pursued by strangers in public, to run as fast as he could, and if the stranger actually made contact with him to scream as loud as he could to get someone’s attention.
A pink Jeep Wrangler slid alongside him at a red light, its black roof retracted. Four faces turned his way. The driver had hair like bleached corn silk and eyes the color of dark honey.
“Hey," she called out, her voice bright.
"That polar bear's lost, kid." Milton flushed when she grinned.
"Name's Olive Cornfield. You're kinda cute."
Heat flooded Milton's cheeks as the Jeep's occupants laughed—a bright, careless sound that bounced off the concrete buildings.
Níngjìng Húli leaned forward, her rare purple eyes crinkling at the corners. "You're blushing!" she teased in accented English, while Alqut Arz twirled one of her waist-length braids, hazel eyes gleaming with amusement. Pan Kome just grinned, tapping her khaki pants where cartoon mechanics lounged in a snowy hot tub.
“How old are you honey?“ Pan asked.
“T-Thirteen,” Milton stammered nervously.
"Thirteen?" Alqut raised an eyebrow, her bleached hair catching the sunlight.
"We're all sixteen. Three years older.”
Then olive spoke again.
“Wanna play? Nothing weird—we know consent laws." Her smile widened.
"Promise it'll be *very* enjoyable ."
Milton hesitated. Olive's smile was infectious, but something prickled at the back of his neck—a faint unease beneath the flattery. He forced a shaky grin. "Maybe later, ladies," he managed, gripping his handlebars tighter. Olive shrugged, her corn-silk hair catching the wind. "Your loss." In one fluid motion, she leaned out, snatched a chunky magic marker from the Jeep's overhead compartment, and scrawled her number across his forearm. Before he could react, the other girls followed suit—Alqut, Níngjìng, Pan—each adding their digits in looping script until his skin was a patchwork of ink. Olive ruffled his dark hair, her fingers lingering for a second too long. Then, with a chorus of laughter, the Jeep peeled away, leaving Milton alone on the curb, the phantom touch of her hand still tingling on his scalp.
He watched the Jeep vanish around a corner before pedaling again, the breeze cooling his flushed skin. But within minutes, the lightness evaporated. A prickle crept up his spine—the unmistakable sense of being watched. Milton glanced back. A dented gray van idled half a block behind, its windows tinted like smoked glass. He sped up, weaving through side streets, past laundromats and boarded-up storefronts. Every time he checked, the van was there, mirroring his turns with unnerving patience. When he stopped at a crosswalk, it halted too, engine rumbling low. Sweat beaded on his temples. They weren’t hiding anymore. They were waiting—waiting for the city to thin out, for concrete to give way to empty highway where screams wouldn’t echo.
Panic clawed at his throat. He couldn’t lose them. Wheeling around, he pedaled furiously back toward downtown, stopping finally beneath the neon sign of the Ivory Tower Hotel—four stories of white stucco with blacked-out windows. Hands trembling, he fumbled for Olive’s number scrawled on his arm and dialed his burner phone.
"Changed my mind," he choked out, trying to sound casual.
"Wanna play?" Olive’s voice was bright, but sharp.
"We’re coming."
He kept his eyes locked on the gray van parked across the street. It hadn’t moved. Didn’t they realize he might’ve called the cops?
The Jeep roared up minutes later, tires squealing against the curb. Olive leaned out before it fully stopped, her corn-silk hair whipping in the wind. Her smile vanished instantly as she took in Milton’s pale face, the sweat beading on his forehead, the way his knuckles whitened around his bike handles. "What's wrong?" she demanded, voice sharp.
Milton jerked his chin toward the gray van parked across the street. "They've been following me since you left." Pan Kome twisted in her seat, her hazel eyes narrowing. "That dented piece of junk?" Alqut Arz hissed softly in her native tongue, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. Níngjìng Húli didn't speak; her rare purple eyes scanned the van’s tinted windows, cold and assessing.
Olive Cornfield’s bright demeanor vanished like a blown fuse. "Get in," she ordered, shoving the Jeep's passenger door open. Milton barely had time to toss his bike in the back before scrambling inside. The Jeep peeled away with a screech, but the van slid smoothly into traffic behind them. Alqut drove fast, weaving through downtown streets, past brick warehouses and faded murals. The van matched every turn, never gaining, never falling back—a silent, predatory shadow.
They spotted a police cruiser parked outside a coffee shop. Olive didn't hesitate. She slammed the Jeep into a U-turn, fishtailing to a stop directly beside the startled officer. "That van!" Olive shouted, pointing. "Following us—following him!" The officer stood, hand drifting toward his belt. Across the street, the gray van paused for a heartbeat. Then, with a sudden roar, it accelerated past them and vanished around a corner. They reported everything: the license plate, the stalking, Milton's raw fear. The officer took notes, his expression grimly attentive.
Two days later, police found the van abandoned in a ditch a mile outside city limits. Empty. Forensics found nothing—no prints, no traces. The plates traced back to Martin Martinson and Hera Cybill, both 50 years old, the car purchased a week prior in Kansas. Their faces stared back from the FBI's Most Wanted list within hours. Milton's parents became shadows—tense, watchful. They wouldn't let him leave the house alone nor bike alone. Instead, they hired Olive and her friends as babysitters. "You can only babysit him in *our* house. Follow him in your car when he goes biking. You can take him places, but they have to be public and full of people," his mother insisted, voice tight. The girls agreed, bright smiles masking whatever thoughts churned beneath.
For six months, Milton's world narrowed to a full house, supervised bike rides, and crowded poolsides and the banks of the Oklahoma river.
Olive, Alqut, Níngjìng, and Pan turned every outing into a performance, stretching languidly on towels in shimmering bikinis that drew stares from strangers lounging nearby. Milton thought that he would get used to seeing their sexy outfits-and they had several different bikinis-after one or two trips to the pool or river, but no, his jaw dropped every time they viewed their sexy outfits and curvy bodies. Other patrons at the pool or river bank would react the same way. The four friends, of course, found this extremely amusing and laughed out loud whenever he or they did this.
In Milton's house, they'd bend low to retrieve dropped pencils, lingering with their backs arched toward him, or brush against his shoulder as they passed through narrow hallways.
Olive's breath would ghost across his ear, warm and teasing, while Alqut traced idle patterns on his neck with a fingertip. Milton would bolt to his room when his pants or shorts tented visibly, their laughter chasing him down the hallway. "Someone's excited!" One of them would shout after him.
Once the six month period had passed, news broke: Martin Martinson and Hera Cybill had been apprehended in Hawaii. They’d been casing a quiet Honolulu neighborhood when a sharp-eyed woman spotted them lingering suspiciously near her window. Without hesitation, she’d slammed her dark red Ford F-150 into their van, sending it careening off the road. Before they could recover, she’d trained her pistol on them, holding them at gunpoint until police arrived. The kidnapping charges stuck. Milton’s parents, relieved but still cautious, finally allowed him to bike alone again through Oklahoma City’s streets. He kept in touch with Olive, Alqut, Níngjìng, and Pan over the years, the babysitting long ended but the connection deepening. When he turned eighteen, an invitation arrived: the girls, now twenty-one and sharing a PhD dorm, wanted him over for "mature games."*
He stepped into their dorm room, instantly enveloped by its chaotic vibrancy. The carpet was a swirling rainbow explosion, and the walls pulsed with psychedelic tie-dye patterns.
"Told my parents I was meeting you," Milton announced casually, deliberately omitting the nature of the games. The girls exchanged knowing smiles; their own parents knew they were safely in the dorm. Olive, draped lazily on a beanbag chair, gestured toward neatly folded bedsheets.
"Feel like being our captive tonight?" she purred. Milton nodded, a flicker of unease crossing his face. "Okay," he agreed, forcing a grin. "Just... glad it's you four. Could've ended up with ropes. Chains." His voice tightened, imagining faceless captors inflicting far harsher restraints, shattering consent, pushing him beyond endurance—both physical and mental. Pan reached out, squeezing his hand gently.
"Natural to be scared," she murmured.
"But you're safe here. We'd never hurt you." Milton met her hazel eyes.
"I trust you," he said firmly, burying the tiny, persistent doubt that whispered *not completely*. It was why he’d meticulously shared his location with his parents—a precaution born from true crime podcasts and whispered stories of betrayal, even within families. He wouldn't gamble his safety, not after Oklahoma City. Not ever.
Pan guided him to sit on the edge of her hello kitty-designed bed. Olive and Alqut unfolded the soft cotton sheets, their movements deliberate and practiced. They wrapped the fabric snugly around Milton's wrists and ankles, securing knots loose enough to shift but firm enough to hold. Níngjìng watched from her beanbag throne, purple eyes tracking every hitch in Milton's breathing as the sheets tightened across his chest. "Comfortable?" Olive murmured, her corn-silk hair brushing his cheek as she leaned close to check the bindings. He nodded, pulse thrumming against the fabric where her fingers grazed his skin.
“Good… Because we’re gonna rock your world!”
The dorm room was soon full of Milton‘s pain-and-pleasure-filled moans as the for now, grown women subjected him to various sensations or various parts of his body. Sometimes they just use their hands or feet, other times they used lotions, oils, and creams. The hour long session ended with him losing his virginity to Olive, Ninjing, Alqut, and Pan. This was when he screamed the loudest.
Over the following months, Milton returned to their dorm almost weekly, each visit deepening the bond forged years earlier on Oklahoma City streets. The games evolved—sometimes playful and teasing, other times intense and intimate—but always anchored in mutual trust and explicit consent. He learned the curve of Olive’s hip beneath his palm, the hitch in Alqut’s breath when he traced her spine, the way Níngjìng’s rare eyes darkened with focus, and Pan’s soft laughter that dissolved tension. Yet, even in these moments of abandon, a shadow lingered. Milton would pause mid-kiss, fingers tightening against skin, his gaze drifting toward a darkened window. The memory wasn’t a ghost; it was a cold, solid weight—the rumble of that gray van, the suffocating dread of being hunted.
His parents’ warnings about strangers echoed uselessly in his mind. They hadn’t taught him how to distinguish predator from protector, hadn’t warned him that danger could wear a friendly face or that salvation could arrive in a pink Jeep driven by laughing girls. The van had taught him that. It taught him vigilance, yes, but also this: strangers could be monsters lurking behind tinted glass, *or* they could be the unexpected lifeline—the fierce-eyed young women who turned a babysitting gig into a shield, and later, into something far more complex and tender. Some strangers, just like some parents, he realized, were preferabel to others.
He was a Lakota-Sioux boy, born and raised in this city by his parents, both of whom served in the United States Marines. His mother was a dentist and his father was a repairman. Both were active duty and those he either leave him home alone or get babysitters for him. When he was by himself and not being babysat, his mom and dad would always warn him about stranger danger, telling him never to open the door for someone he didn’t know. He also told him that if he was pursued by strangers in public, to run as fast as he could, and if the stranger actually made contact with him to scream as loud as he could to get someone’s attention.
A pink Jeep Wrangler slid alongside him at a red light, its black roof retracted. Four faces turned his way. The driver had hair like bleached corn silk and eyes the color of dark honey.
“Hey," she called out, her voice bright.
"That polar bear's lost, kid." Milton flushed when she grinned.
"Name's Olive Cornfield. You're kinda cute."
Heat flooded Milton's cheeks as the Jeep's occupants laughed—a bright, careless sound that bounced off the concrete buildings.
Níngjìng Húli leaned forward, her rare purple eyes crinkling at the corners. "You're blushing!" she teased in accented English, while Alqut Arz twirled one of her waist-length braids, hazel eyes gleaming with amusement. Pan Kome just grinned, tapping her khaki pants where cartoon mechanics lounged in a snowy hot tub.
“How old are you honey?“ Pan asked.
“T-Thirteen,” Milton stammered nervously.
"Thirteen?" Alqut raised an eyebrow, her bleached hair catching the sunlight.
"We're all sixteen. Three years older.”
Then olive spoke again.
“Wanna play? Nothing weird—we know consent laws." Her smile widened.
"Promise it'll be *very* enjoyable ."
Milton hesitated. Olive's smile was infectious, but something prickled at the back of his neck—a faint unease beneath the flattery. He forced a shaky grin. "Maybe later, ladies," he managed, gripping his handlebars tighter. Olive shrugged, her corn-silk hair catching the wind. "Your loss." In one fluid motion, she leaned out, snatched a chunky magic marker from the Jeep's overhead compartment, and scrawled her number across his forearm. Before he could react, the other girls followed suit—Alqut, Níngjìng, Pan—each adding their digits in looping script until his skin was a patchwork of ink. Olive ruffled his dark hair, her fingers lingering for a second too long. Then, with a chorus of laughter, the Jeep peeled away, leaving Milton alone on the curb, the phantom touch of her hand still tingling on his scalp.
He watched the Jeep vanish around a corner before pedaling again, the breeze cooling his flushed skin. But within minutes, the lightness evaporated. A prickle crept up his spine—the unmistakable sense of being watched. Milton glanced back. A dented gray van idled half a block behind, its windows tinted like smoked glass. He sped up, weaving through side streets, past laundromats and boarded-up storefronts. Every time he checked, the van was there, mirroring his turns with unnerving patience. When he stopped at a crosswalk, it halted too, engine rumbling low. Sweat beaded on his temples. They weren’t hiding anymore. They were waiting—waiting for the city to thin out, for concrete to give way to empty highway where screams wouldn’t echo.
Panic clawed at his throat. He couldn’t lose them. Wheeling around, he pedaled furiously back toward downtown, stopping finally beneath the neon sign of the Ivory Tower Hotel—four stories of white stucco with blacked-out windows. Hands trembling, he fumbled for Olive’s number scrawled on his arm and dialed his burner phone.
"Changed my mind," he choked out, trying to sound casual.
"Wanna play?" Olive’s voice was bright, but sharp.
"We’re coming."
He kept his eyes locked on the gray van parked across the street. It hadn’t moved. Didn’t they realize he might’ve called the cops?
The Jeep roared up minutes later, tires squealing against the curb. Olive leaned out before it fully stopped, her corn-silk hair whipping in the wind. Her smile vanished instantly as she took in Milton’s pale face, the sweat beading on his forehead, the way his knuckles whitened around his bike handles. "What's wrong?" she demanded, voice sharp.
Milton jerked his chin toward the gray van parked across the street. "They've been following me since you left." Pan Kome twisted in her seat, her hazel eyes narrowing. "That dented piece of junk?" Alqut Arz hissed softly in her native tongue, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. Níngjìng Húli didn't speak; her rare purple eyes scanned the van’s tinted windows, cold and assessing.
Olive Cornfield’s bright demeanor vanished like a blown fuse. "Get in," she ordered, shoving the Jeep's passenger door open. Milton barely had time to toss his bike in the back before scrambling inside. The Jeep peeled away with a screech, but the van slid smoothly into traffic behind them. Alqut drove fast, weaving through downtown streets, past brick warehouses and faded murals. The van matched every turn, never gaining, never falling back—a silent, predatory shadow.
They spotted a police cruiser parked outside a coffee shop. Olive didn't hesitate. She slammed the Jeep into a U-turn, fishtailing to a stop directly beside the startled officer. "That van!" Olive shouted, pointing. "Following us—following him!" The officer stood, hand drifting toward his belt. Across the street, the gray van paused for a heartbeat. Then, with a sudden roar, it accelerated past them and vanished around a corner. They reported everything: the license plate, the stalking, Milton's raw fear. The officer took notes, his expression grimly attentive.
Two days later, police found the van abandoned in a ditch a mile outside city limits. Empty. Forensics found nothing—no prints, no traces. The plates traced back to Martin Martinson and Hera Cybill, both 50 years old, the car purchased a week prior in Kansas. Their faces stared back from the FBI's Most Wanted list within hours. Milton's parents became shadows—tense, watchful. They wouldn't let him leave the house alone nor bike alone. Instead, they hired Olive and her friends as babysitters. "You can only babysit him in *our* house. Follow him in your car when he goes biking. You can take him places, but they have to be public and full of people," his mother insisted, voice tight. The girls agreed, bright smiles masking whatever thoughts churned beneath.
For six months, Milton's world narrowed to a full house, supervised bike rides, and crowded poolsides and the banks of the Oklahoma river.
Olive, Alqut, Níngjìng, and Pan turned every outing into a performance, stretching languidly on towels in shimmering bikinis that drew stares from strangers lounging nearby. Milton thought that he would get used to seeing their sexy outfits-and they had several different bikinis-after one or two trips to the pool or river, but no, his jaw dropped every time they viewed their sexy outfits and curvy bodies. Other patrons at the pool or river bank would react the same way. The four friends, of course, found this extremely amusing and laughed out loud whenever he or they did this.
In Milton's house, they'd bend low to retrieve dropped pencils, lingering with their backs arched toward him, or brush against his shoulder as they passed through narrow hallways.
Olive's breath would ghost across his ear, warm and teasing, while Alqut traced idle patterns on his neck with a fingertip. Milton would bolt to his room when his pants or shorts tented visibly, their laughter chasing him down the hallway. "Someone's excited!" One of them would shout after him.
Once the six month period had passed, news broke: Martin Martinson and Hera Cybill had been apprehended in Hawaii. They’d been casing a quiet Honolulu neighborhood when a sharp-eyed woman spotted them lingering suspiciously near her window. Without hesitation, she’d slammed her dark red Ford F-150 into their van, sending it careening off the road. Before they could recover, she’d trained her pistol on them, holding them at gunpoint until police arrived. The kidnapping charges stuck. Milton’s parents, relieved but still cautious, finally allowed him to bike alone again through Oklahoma City’s streets. He kept in touch with Olive, Alqut, Níngjìng, and Pan over the years, the babysitting long ended but the connection deepening. When he turned eighteen, an invitation arrived: the girls, now twenty-one and sharing a PhD dorm, wanted him over for "mature games."*
He stepped into their dorm room, instantly enveloped by its chaotic vibrancy. The carpet was a swirling rainbow explosion, and the walls pulsed with psychedelic tie-dye patterns.
"Told my parents I was meeting you," Milton announced casually, deliberately omitting the nature of the games. The girls exchanged knowing smiles; their own parents knew they were safely in the dorm. Olive, draped lazily on a beanbag chair, gestured toward neatly folded bedsheets.
"Feel like being our captive tonight?" she purred. Milton nodded, a flicker of unease crossing his face. "Okay," he agreed, forcing a grin. "Just... glad it's you four. Could've ended up with ropes. Chains." His voice tightened, imagining faceless captors inflicting far harsher restraints, shattering consent, pushing him beyond endurance—both physical and mental. Pan reached out, squeezing his hand gently.
"Natural to be scared," she murmured.
"But you're safe here. We'd never hurt you." Milton met her hazel eyes.
"I trust you," he said firmly, burying the tiny, persistent doubt that whispered *not completely*. It was why he’d meticulously shared his location with his parents—a precaution born from true crime podcasts and whispered stories of betrayal, even within families. He wouldn't gamble his safety, not after Oklahoma City. Not ever.
Pan guided him to sit on the edge of her hello kitty-designed bed. Olive and Alqut unfolded the soft cotton sheets, their movements deliberate and practiced. They wrapped the fabric snugly around Milton's wrists and ankles, securing knots loose enough to shift but firm enough to hold. Níngjìng watched from her beanbag throne, purple eyes tracking every hitch in Milton's breathing as the sheets tightened across his chest. "Comfortable?" Olive murmured, her corn-silk hair brushing his cheek as she leaned close to check the bindings. He nodded, pulse thrumming against the fabric where her fingers grazed his skin.
“Good… Because we’re gonna rock your world!”
The dorm room was soon full of Milton‘s pain-and-pleasure-filled moans as the for now, grown women subjected him to various sensations or various parts of his body. Sometimes they just use their hands or feet, other times they used lotions, oils, and creams. The hour long session ended with him losing his virginity to Olive, Ninjing, Alqut, and Pan. This was when he screamed the loudest.
Over the following months, Milton returned to their dorm almost weekly, each visit deepening the bond forged years earlier on Oklahoma City streets. The games evolved—sometimes playful and teasing, other times intense and intimate—but always anchored in mutual trust and explicit consent. He learned the curve of Olive’s hip beneath his palm, the hitch in Alqut’s breath when he traced her spine, the way Níngjìng’s rare eyes darkened with focus, and Pan’s soft laughter that dissolved tension. Yet, even in these moments of abandon, a shadow lingered. Milton would pause mid-kiss, fingers tightening against skin, his gaze drifting toward a darkened window. The memory wasn’t a ghost; it was a cold, solid weight—the rumble of that gray van, the suffocating dread of being hunted.
His parents’ warnings about strangers echoed uselessly in his mind. They hadn’t taught him how to distinguish predator from protector, hadn’t warned him that danger could wear a friendly face or that salvation could arrive in a pink Jeep driven by laughing girls. The van had taught him that. It taught him vigilance, yes, but also this: strangers could be monsters lurking behind tinted glass, *or* they could be the unexpected lifeline—the fierce-eyed young women who turned a babysitting gig into a shield, and later, into something far more complex and tender. Some strangers, just like some parents, he realized, were preferabel to others.
31-35, M