Dear Diary,

Help. I’m writing to you from bed, tucked tightly under the covers and armed with just the flashlight on my phone and I guess this pen might work, but I swear outside my door I heard the noise. The teke-teke noise of THE Teke-Teke. I shouldn't read so many chat stories before bed, but here I am, listening for scraping and dragging in the middle of the night. 

Teke-Teke is a Japanese urban legend about a young girl who turned into a vengeful spirit after falling, or in some stories being pushed, down onto railroad tracks where she was then split in two by an oncoming train. Now, she uses her elbow and claw-like hands to scrape her upper body around town making the notorious teke-teke sounds. Lurking around the train station at night, Teke-Teke seeks revenge on anyone who crosses her path by slicing them in half with a scythe. Oh, and no matter what you do or how fast you run, nothing and no one can escape her wrath. If you thought doing it all in heels was bad, this girl does it all with no lower half.

So, with nowhere to run and no actual confidence I could win against a vengeful spirit, I came to you, diary, to at the very least record my final thoughts before she gets me. And to blame Qu, who sent me this chat story in the first place. Does Teke-Teke travel international? 

Anyway, I know deep down that the noise is probably some random generator, or someone's air conditioning, maybe even a small child dragging luggage up and down the hallways, but the image won't get out of my head. Is she knocking on the door with her scythe or a rib? Not sure I want to know, but in the end the thing that I feel most secure about is that above all, the lesson of Teke-Teke is yet another story in train safety. Stay off the tracks, guys. 

Off to watch TV until I’m lulled to sleep by Japanese variety shows. 

Xoxo, 

Maria