Case File No.56 (also known as The Case of Stitch on the Creepypasta Wiki) is a Reddit series/Alternate Reality Game on the r/nosleep subreddit, written by Redditor Fear_of.
Ryan Johnson and Anna Reynolds are the two best detectives in Seattle. If there’s a case nobody else in the department can solve, it gets handed down to them. But they may have met their match: a case that even they are incapable of solving. Three brutal murders had hit Seattle, all of them perpetrated by a mysterious, hideous entity that Ryan nicknames Stitch. As the pressure increases for them to solve the case, the two — along with their intern, John Freeman — grow desperate to catch the monster, Stitch slowly infiltrates their lives.
It can be found here.
note
Absolutely no relation to Lilo & Stitch.
Tropes associated with this work include:
- Aborted Arc: Ryan was supposed to go spend some time at his father’s house after a nightmare he had in which he was tormented by Stitch, who imitated said father. This is only ever mentioned briefly, and never appears to have happened by the end of the series.
- Abusive Parents: Ryan mentions that his parents used to beat him to discourage him from crying.
- Alliterative Name: RepetitiveRoutine.
- Apocalyptic Log: The victims' journals and DVDs act as this. The series itself becomes one for Ryan by the end.
- Ax-Crazy: Stitch, Stitch, Stitch! He’s not so much insane as he is just violent, bloodthirsty, and brutish, though.
- Back from the Dead: RepetitiveRoutine … kind of. After his death, he is able to appear on Ryan’s computer screen to give him a pep talk on defeating Stitch.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Well, at least, Ryan certainly didn't. John certainly didn't. And with the stories still up on the Internet, it's possible that many future readers will be afraid of Stitch, providing him with what he needs to track them down.
- Bittersweet Ending: The optimistic interpretation of the ending, although it's still far heavier on the "bitter" side than the "sweet". With Ryan dead, Stitch's primary means of tracking down new victims is gone. But everyone else is still dead, and with the stories still up, there's a good chance he'll continue to find victims as long as people still fear him.
- Body Horror: Stitch is described as having his spine sticking out of his back, his eyes stitched over with skin, and his limbs sewn back onto his body.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Stitch’s specialty. He can’t leave a body behind without any form of mutilation or dismemberment, and often has a tendency to do so while the victim is still alive.
- Downer Ending: And how! Anna is dead, Ryan gets the case taken from him by the FBI, and to top things off, Stitch reveals to Ryan why he’s let him live for so long: because he needs him to fuel people’s fears of Stitch by posting about his crimes on the Internet, leading him directly to them. Wracked with guilt, Ryan calls John over to his house and shoots him out of shame for ruining his life, then explains his intent to kill himself, being unable to live with all the blood on his hands. Although this may be a slightly downplayed example, as RepetitiveRoutine theorizes that this might cause a decline in Stitch’s food supply.
- Driven to Suicide: Ryan, for the lives he ruined.
- Embarrassing Nickname: In the church, Stitch expresses distaste for the name Ryan gave to him.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": RepetitiveRoutine is only ever referred to by his username, even by the FBI.
- Evil Is Petty: Stitch invades Ryan’s dreams, in which he turns the sky gray and kills all the animals in the dream, kills his mother and imitates her in front of Ryan, all because he wants to “ruin [his] best memories.”
- Evil Makes You Ugly: Well, that and being drawn and quartered and devoured by dogs and forced to piece yourself back together. And possibly self-mutilation.
- Eyeless Face: How Stitch gets his name: skin — possibly his own eyelids — is sewn over his eyes. This does not mean that he’s blind, though.
- For the Evulz: Yes, Stitch needs to feed. But he clearly takes pleasure in striking fear in his victims and tearing them to pieces.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You:
Stitch can taste your fear of him. - Gods Need Prayer Badly: Much like Freddy Krueger, Stitch thrives off of people’s fear of him. When Ryan kills himself, RepetitiveRoutine says that Stitch is starting to worry about his own starvation.
- Gorn: A disproportionate amount of detail is put into Stitch’s murders, and their aftermath.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Anna's father is torn in half and has his upper body mounted on the wall in place of his bear mount.
- Hellhound: Stitch claims to have some, but they’re never seen.
- Holy Burns Evil: Or at least leaves a cross burned into its flesh.
- Humanoid Abomination: It’s never made clear what Stitch is. He’s been theorized to be either SCP-542, a draugr, or a corpse reanimated through sorcery. But whatever he is, he clearly has some Reality Warper abilities that could be attributed to a minor Eldritch Abomination, such as being able to reach through computer screens and altering peoples' dreams to his own liking.
- Idiot Ball: Firmly grasped by Ryan when he tries to use RepetitiveRoutine as bait to catch Stitch. He tries to make him fear Stitch, and once Stitch is in his house, he backpedals, telling him not to be scared. Yeah, like it’s really that easy to not be scared when you’re being chased by an undead abomination. To make matters worse, he wasn’t even close to RepetitiveRoutine, so it would make no sense for him to try and catch Stitch that way.
- Improbable Weapon User: Stitch impales a victim with his own rib.
- Informed Judaism: John refuses to set foot in the church when Ryan wants to go in because he's Jewish. This is never elaborated on any further.
- Kick the Dog: Stitch manages to do this twice in the same place! First, he slaughters Anna’s parent’s horses, leaving two alive and feeding one of the dead ones to one of the living ones, then he kills Anna in a manner all too similar to how he was killed, and leaves her severed head on Ryan’s car for him to find. Understandably, the latter causes Ryan much distress.
- Kill the Cutie: An unhinged Ryan is horrified by the revelation that he has been partly responsible for Stitch’s crimes, and believes that he has to kill John out of guilt for bringing him into the case.
- Manipulative Bastard: Turns out the reason why Stitch hasn’t killed Ryan? Is because he needs him to help fuel everyone’s fear to provide him with more victims.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The names Stitch says he's called across the world all translate to "executioner".
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: There are a couple times where Ryan fucked up big time. The first incident is when he tried to bait Stitch by instilling fear in RepetitiveRoutine, which lead Stitch right to his door, and — needless to say — resulted in the brutal death of the Redditor. The second time is what ultimately drives him to the Despair Event Horizon. By posting those stories about Stitch in the first place, he has given him a huge food supply.
- Nightmare Retardant: Done In-Universe in the comments section of "Case File No.56 is closed". The readers, realizing that Stitch is tracking them through their fear, resolve to start making fun of Stitch, so that he'll be as unscary as possible and will eventually starve.
- Police Are Useless: Largely justified because it's not easy for mere detectives to catch a creature like Stitch. Even the FBI is unlikely to find him.
- Really 700 Years Old: While it’s unknown just how old Stitch is, he has been around since at least the past millennium.
- Sanity Slippage: Ryan undergoes this slowly as it becomes more and more clear that the case is unsolvable.
- Scenery Gorn: Aside from the graphic descriptions of violence throughout the series, the scenery when Ryan and John make it to the Reynolds’ place isn’t pretty: with everyone in the house dead, there has been nobody to keep the dishes clean, leaving the flies to eat the food and leaving a pungent odor behind. Then there’s also the miserable state of the surviving horses in the barn, and half the body of Anna’s father mounted on the wall where his bear mount used to be.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Once her fear starts getting really bad, Anna goes to live with her parents.
- Serial Killer: Stitch is behind three recent grisly murders in Seattle, although he's killed many, many more over a long period of time. His M.O. has always remained consistent, though.
- Troll: In addition to being a sadistic butcher who kills For the Evulz, Stitch also enjoys ruining memories by invading people’s dreams. It helps that he drives a person to suicide over the Internet by insulting him.
- Uncanny Valley: In-Universe. Ryan remarks that there is something really off about the nun he encounters in the church. How she "bounces" instead of walks and how her mouth moments are very puppet-like. Turns out that Stitch had killed her and used her body like a hand puppet.
- Villainous Breakdown: According to RepetitiveRoutine, Stitch undergoes one after Ryan’s suicide, because now he doesn’t have him to fuel anyone’s fear anymore.
