The Gold Coin Chronicles: The Skin-Stealer’s Bargain

📚 The Gold Coin Chronicles Library  

Welcome back to the shelves where cursed stories gather dust, whispers, and fingerprints from hands that should’ve never touched them. We are not just cataloging horrors; we are documenting the first transaction—the moment a life is signed over. Every tale in this library begins the same way—someone finds a gold coin where no gold coin should ever be.  

Tonight’s entry is different. Tonight, the coin finds you.  

Let’s open the next chapter.  

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🪙 The Gold Coin Chronicles: The Skin‑Stealer’s Bargain  

Intro  

It was supposed to be just another late‑night commute—one of those quiet, tired trips where the city feels half‑asleep and the tunnels feel like they’re holding their breath. But the Gold Coin never shows up on ordinary nights, and it definitely never shows up for ordinary people. It chooses the moment you are most vulnerable, most alone.  

Tonight’s story takes us beneath the city, where old tracks rust and abandoned platforms echo with footsteps that don’t belong to anyone at all. They are just waiting for a new sound to join them.  

This is:  

“The Skin‑Stealer’s Bargain.”  

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The Story  

The red line had closed for the night. Evan knew this. He had seen the locked service gates a hundred times. But when the bus broke down five blocks away and the storm rolled in—a sudden, freezing deluge—the only dry route home was through the subway. The quickest route was often the worst bargain.  

Down the cracked steps.  

Through the iron gate someone forgot to lock (or deliberately unlocked).  

And into the dark.  

His phone flashlight cut a narrow path across yellowed tiles and old posters peeling like flayed skin. The air smelled of iron, mildew, and something sharply metallic, like old blood. He swore he heard breathing behind the walls—not the wheezing of water pipes, but a steady, deliberate inhalation, like a deep sleeper. He didn’t chalk it up to paranoia; he knew he was alone, yet utterly watched.  

Halfway down the tunnel, something glinted between the rails.  

A small gold coin.  

Not grimy. Not dented.  

Perfect. Untouched. Gleaming with a wet, unnatural sheen, as if it had been minted in this very spot.  

He crouched down. His rational mind screamed leave it. His body, cold and tired, reached for the promise of value. He picked it up.  

Warm.  

Too warm. Burning with a low, internal fever.  

On one side: a faceless head, muscle stretched tight like raw meat pulled over bone.  

On the other: a hand, extended and open, reaching outward, as if offering—or begging for relief.  

The moment the coin touched his palm, the wind died, freezing in the tunnel.  

The hum of electricity stopped—a high, whining note cut abruptly short.  

Every sound strangled itself to silence. The vast, oppressive darkness suddenly felt like velvet pressed over his mouth.  

Except for a voice, thin and dry as aged parchment, directly behind him:  

“A trade. Warmth… for your warmth.”  

Evan spun around, adrenaline spiking into his veins like ice.  

A tall shape stood at the edge of the platform—a creature draped in a coat made of stitched skin, sewn in mismatched, gruesome patches like a quilt made by a lunatic who ran out of fabric and started using flesh. Its head was bald and elongated. Its eyes were sunken pits that seemed to absorb the meager light. Its fingers were long and had an extra joint, the knuckles bending in ways bones shouldn’t. Each step it took sounded like wet leather tearing slowly.  

It extended a hand of stolen, mismatched flesh.  

“Warmth,” it rasped.  

“For warmth.”  

Evan fumbled wildly, terrified. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. The creature tilted its head, a silent, chilling gesture of patience.  

“Not yours,” it hissed. “Not yet. Give me what is warm.”  

He dropped his jacket anyway. It fell onto the concrete with a soft, pathetic thud. The creature sniffed at it, a disturbing, long sound that ended in a clicking noise, then pushed it aside with two fingers.  

“Cold,” it said, dismissing the offering. “Bring me something truly warm. Something that carries life.”  

The coin burned into Evan’s hand like a brand, the heat agonizing. He tried offering his gloves. A scarf. Even his phone, still hot from use. Each time, the creature shook its head, its patchwork stitches trembling like lips suppressing a smile. The silence of the tunnels felt like judgment.  

“Bring warmth.”  

Finally, tears of pure panic blurring his vision, Evan ripped open his backpack and pulled out the only thing that retained a deep, comforting heat—a sealed container holding the leftovers from his mother’s homemade chicken and vegetable soup, still warm from dinner an hour ago. A small, pathetic link to life and normalcy.  

He held it out with shaking hands, the plastic lid glistening.  

The creature leaned forward.  

It didn’t sniff; it seemed to inhale the very essence of the meal.  

Its stitched lips tightened, sealing themselves as if closing a bargain.  

It smiled—a terrifying widening of the dry, stretched skin around its mouth.  

And accepted.  

With a crackling hiss of satisfaction, it took the container. The moment its fingers touched the plastic, the soup inside cooled instantly, solidifying like stone. The creature stepped backward, dissolving into the deeper shadows until only the ragged, wet sound of its breathing remained—and then even that disappeared.  

The coin cooled instantly in Evan’s palm, leaving behind a crisp, red imprint shaped like the faceless head.  

Evan turned and found the tunnels restored, the exit lights humming, the electricity vibrating the rails. He climbed the stairs two at a time, the chilling rain above a sudden, welcome shock on his skin, and didn’t stop running until he burst onto the street.  

Hours later, safe in his apartment, hiding under three blankets, he emptied his pockets—  

and the gold coin was still there.  

He hadn’t taken it.  

He hadn’t kept it.  

But it had followed him home anyway.  

It pulsed again.  

Patient. Hungry.  

Because the Skin‑Stealer always collects its debts, and it has already claimed a piece of the warmth Evan used to shield himself.  

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Outro  

Some bargains aren’t meant to be made.  

Some coins aren’t meant to be touched.  

And some tunnels should stay abandoned—because the things that wait there are patient.  

Next time you hear breathing behind the subway walls… don’t turn around. It might be asking you for something warm.  

And if the coin ever cracks—and it will—pray it doesn’t show you yourself.  

Stick around. Subscribe. Share.

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And if you dare… drop a comment and tell me your favorite scary movie, urban legend, or horror memory.  

If the coin found you tonight… what warmth would it take?  

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