It’s my goal to publish a 16 story scary book I wanted to know how hard is it to get my book published and how hard is it to release it on Amazon I’m new to Reddit and writing but I been getting a lot of positive feedback on my rough drafts I have 8 stories so far and I’m taking my time please reply!!
MY GIRLFRIEND IS A SKINWALKER
**//Note From The Writer//Please Read“Road Kill is Knocking at my door” FIRST**
I woke up expecting pain.
Instead, I woke up with her head resting on my chest.
Morning sunlight poured through the bedroom window, washing everything in warm gold. For a moment, I convinced myself I’d dreamed it all.
The black eyes.
The seam beneath her jaw.
Jake’s voice.
She looked up at me and smiled.
Brown eyes.
Perfect teeth.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
My ribs still ached where she’d pinned me to the mattress.
She noticed me touching them.
“I got a little carried away.”
Her laugh sounded completely human.
I didn’t answer.
She leaned over and kissed the cut on my lip where her nail had drawn blood the night before. The sting vanished immediately.
“There,” she smiled. “Better.”
I should have run.
Instead…
I made coffee.
She wandered around my apartment wearing one of my old shirts.
She hummed to herself while looking through my bookshelf.
She laughed at one of my stupid jokes.
She looked…
Normal.
Normal enough that I almost believed none of it had happened.
So… we started dating.
I wish I were lying.
After everything I’d seen at Jake’s farmhouse, after hearing that wet clicking moan, after smelling the same lavender and vanilla perfume from the dying doe in the truck bed… I still dated her.
Loneliness makes idiots out of people.
She moved in the night I met her.
She cooked.
She cleaned.
We laughed a lot.
She kissed me like she had been waiting centuries to kiss someone.
Sometimes I’d catch her watching me sleep.
Hungrily, with those big black eyes.
Then the “gifts” started. At least, that’s what she told me they were.
Every morning there was a dead animal on my porch.
A fox.
A raccoon.
A rabbit.
Not torn apart.
Not eaten.
Just…
Presented.
“I think someone is messing with me,” I told her.
She smiled.
“No, I think they like you.”
A month later she finally met my mother.
I spent the entire drive praying she wouldn’t imitate anyone.
Mom adored her immediately.
“I’ve never seen you this happy,” Mom said.
My girlfriend smiled politely.
Then she repeated the sentence.
Word for word.
Same voice.
Same laugh.
The room went silent.
She blinked.
“Oh…”
She laughed nervously.
Mom laughed too.
I didn’t.
That night, something felt off. I couldn’t fall asleep, so I pretended to be asleep.
Hours passed.
A little after 2 a.m., she carefully slipped out of bed and walks to the living room.
I watched her through the open bedroom door from under the blanket.
She stood perfectly still.
Listening.
Then…
Her spine cracked.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Her shoulders rolled backward until they bent the wrong direction.
Her knees reversed.
I watched as her skin split beneath the jaw.
The seam peeled open farther than I’d ever seen before.
She stepped out of herself.
Her beautiful body hung over the side of the sofa like an empty dress while the real creature crawled out of it.
Long.
Hairless.
Black-eyed.
Its ribs flexed beneath gray skin stretched too tightly across impossible bones.
Its front limbs ended in human hands.
Its back legs ended in hooves.
It turned toward me in the bedroom.
Its nostrils flared.
I was horrified. I thought it knew I was awake.
Instead, it crawled silently to the front door.
Unlocked it.
The door eased open without a sound.
One by one… they came in.
A shuffling of hooves and feet
Not people.
Not deer.
Things.
Some still wore patches of fur hanging from gray flesh. Others had antlers growing from almost-human faces. One walked on four backward-bending legs while a human arm dragged across the hardwood behind it. Another’s mouth split its head nearly in half, vertically, revealing rows of crooked teeth slick with saliva.
Every one of them smelled like wet grass and fresh blood.
Every one of them had those same black eyes.
I watched from the bed as they moved through my house without speaking, examining my pictures, my furniture, my books, as if they were touring my home.
My girlfriend stood among them.
Beautiful again.
Perfect skin.
Perfect smile.
Like she’d slipped back into her human disguise without effort.
She walked back into the bedroom and gently sat on the edge of the bed.
Her fingers brushed through my hair.
“Sweetheart…”
I kept my breathing slow, praying she believed I was asleep.
She kissed my forehead.
Then softly shook my shoulder.
“Babe! Wake up.”
I slowly opened my eyes.
She smiled wider than I’d ever seen.
“I’d like you to meet my family.”
Behind her, every monster crowded into the bedroom.
A dozen black eyes stared at me.
Then, one after another, their heads tilted at different, odd angles.
Bones cracking.
And from every throat, they moaned in what seemed like a chorus of too many dreadful voices, the same familiar sentence.
“You have a beautiful pelt.”
** **
Actually i know now that they are awake while I am asleep! Every morning, I woke up with my arms asleep. Not the usual tingling from sleeping on them wrong. I mean completely asleep. Dead weight hanging from my shoulders. I’d have to shake them for minutes before I can move them again.
My coworkers laughed when I told them about it. “You’re just getting old Dirk!”, one of them said.I laughed out loud too but yelled FUCK YOU Gabe! in my mind. Then strange things started happening.I’d wake up to find my television on, Cabinet doors open, My toothbrush sitting in the kitchen sink. A chair moved from the dining table to the hallway. I lived alone and blamed myself.Maybe I was forgetful or maybe I was sleepwalking. I remember my uncle had sleepwalking problems so maybe it runs in the family? As i was trying to figure out my new self diagnosed condition I noticed long scratches on my forearms.Thin red lines, like a cat attacked just my forearms and hands. But i dont have a cat i live alone
One morning, I woke to find my phone unlocked. There were dozens of pictures in my gallery. All of them blurry, Taken sometime between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Walls, Corners, Ceilings, Close-ups of door handles, The inside of my closet.I deleted them.I told myself there had to be an explanation. The next morning,as usual, my arms were asleep again. But this time, there was black ink writing on the back of my left hand. Three words written in messy capital letters: **DON’T TRUST IT.** I stared at it for nearly an hour. I lived alone. I didn’t remember writing it. I scrubbed it off before going to work.
The following morning, I found another message.This one stretched across my left forearm. The letters were uneven, as if written by someone in a hurry. **I AM TRYING TO HELP YOU.** I nearly threw up.
I ordered a camera and had it same day delivered. That night, I placed it on the dresser and pressed record. I could hardly go to sleep from the anticipation to watch whatever happens on that video.
The next morning, I woke with my arms asleep, completely numb.It took almost ten minutes before I could bend my fingers. Then I watched the footage. For hours, nothing happened I slept peacefully. Then, sometime after three in the morning, my arms moved. Only my arms.The rest of my body remained perfectly still. My chest rose and fell. My mouth let out snores i didnt know i made. My eyes stayed shut. But my arms lifted off the bed. They moved slowly at first.Testing their range, Flexing fingers, Rotating wrists. As though checking that everything still worked. Then they got out of bed. They dragged my body behind them.Not gracefully. Like two determined people trying to move a heavy piece of furniture. My head lolled forward and backward. My legs dragged across the floor. I never woke up.I watched in horror as my own hands opened drawers, Picked up objects, Examined photographs, Flipped through books. They moved with purpose.With intelligence.They weren’t random.They were looking for something. Every night after that, I recorded. Every morning, my arms were asleep, and every morning, the footage grew worse. Sometimes they wrote notes. Sometimes they searched the apartment.Sometimes they simply sat at the kitchen table with my sleeping body while my fingers tapped silently against the wood. Once, my right hand slapped my left away from a kitchen knife. The left hand immediately tried again. The right stopped it Again. And again, until finally both hands retreated. I didn’t want to ever go back to sleep after watching that. But I need to sleep so I wrapped my arms in blankets before bed. The next morning, the blankets were folded neatly on the floor.I duct-taped oven mitts over my hands.Next morning The tape had been peeled away.I tied my wrists to the bedframe.morning came and The knots were undone. Always while I slept. Always before I woke.
Days turned into weeks. I stopped trusting myself. I stopped answering calls.Lost my job because I stopped leaving my apartment. What if they decided to leave one night? What if they already had?Then came the messages not written with ink now they are being typed. I woke one morning to find a document open on my laptop. A single sentence filled the page. **YOUR LEFT ARM WANTS TO LEAVE** I stared at it.The next morning: **THE LEFT ARM WANTS TO GET IN THE KITCHEN DRAWER.** I locked every knife in a toolbox. The morning after that: **THE RIGHT ARM IS GETTING TIRED.** I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t stop recording.I had to know. The footage showed what the notes meant. Night after night, my left arm would find dangerous things that I misplaced around the house over the years living there. Scissors I dropped in the couch cushions , a steak knife lost in between the refrigerator and kitchen counter Razor blades in my medicine cabinet. And every single time, my right arm fought it. They wrestled across countertops. Across floors. Fingers twisting against fingers. One hand trying to protect me. The other trying to grab anything that can cause bodily harm. They were enemies attached to the same body.Then one morning, I woke up in an awkward position my arms weren’t limp by my sides like all the other mornings. My Right hand squeezed my left wrist so tightly its knuckles had gone white. Even when I woke, it hadn’t let go. My left finger tips were a dark purple like bulging grapes and a bruise ring formed on my left arm where my own fingers had held it down all night. It made me think of The Simpsons episodes when Homer chokes Bart, the visual in my head made me chuckle then my face instantly went back to dread because finally I understood, they hated each other.
I don’t sleep much anymore. When exhaustion finally takes me, I secure my left arm as best I can.My right arm rests beside me.Faithful.Watchful.Waiting.Every morning, I wake with my arms asleep.I check the footage.I read the notes they’ve left behind.And every day, the messages become shorter.More desperate.Until this morning.I found only four words typed across my computer screen. The keyboard was broken on the floor the keys spread everywhere. The message read: **THE RIGHT ARM LOST.**I looked down at my body.My left hand rested quietly in my lap.Perfectly still.Patient.My right arm lay beside me. Bruised and scratches all over it.And for the first time…I couldn’t wake it up.
Cory woke with a sharp gasp, his heart already racing before he even opened his eyes.
The room smelled of mildew, rust, and something sickeningly sweet that reminded him of rotten fruit. Water dripped steadily from somewhere above, splashing into a dirt covered floor. Greenish brown paint peeled from the walls in long curling strips, exposing cracked concrete beneath. The metal bed he lay on looked like it had been sitting there for decades.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his temples.
“What…?”
Nothing looked familiar.
His first thought was that he’d somehow been moved to another part of the psychiatric hospital.
He couldn’t remember much from the night before. Just taking his pills before climbing into bed.
Maybe there had been some kind of emergency—a fire, maybe?
So they had to transfer him.
“Old wing,” he muttered to himself. “Has to be.”
It was the only explanation that made sense.
Cory climbed out of bed and pulled open the heavy metal door.
The hallway outside the room seemed endless.
Rows of rusted steel doors stretched in both directions, each with a tarnished brass plaque bolted to the center.
Curious, Cory approached the nearest one.
THE STABBER
He frowned.
“That’s… strange.”
The next door read:
THE CHOKER
Then—
THE BEATER
A few more steps.
THE BURNER
THE BREAKER
THE PEELER
THE EATER
Each name was somehow more disturbing than the last.
They didn’t sound like patients.
They sounded like titles.
From deep behind the doors came screams.
Not the crazed screams Cory had grown accustomed to in the psych ward.
No.
These were screams of pain.
They sounded like the exhausted screams of people who had already been screaming for years.
Cory felt every hair on his arms stand.
He picked up his pace.
Near the end of the hallway, one final plaque caught his attention.
THERAPIST
Relief flooded through him.
“Oh, thank God.”
Finally.
Someone who could explain what was happening and where he was.
He shoved the heavy door open.
Darkness.
Complete darkness.
The room was enormous.
No windows.
Nothing except a single chair sitting in the middle of the room.
Someone was sitting in it.
A deep voice rolled through the darkness.
“Why have you come to ME?”
Cory let out a nervous laugh.
“I… I woke up here. Nothing looks familiar.”
He glanced back toward the hallway.
“Every room has these weird names. Nobody’s told me what’s going on.”
The figure remained silent.
So Cory kept talking.
He talked about the drinking and smoking he’d hidden from everyone.
The affairs.
The lies.
The money he’d stolen from family.
The people he’d manipulated.
The fights he’d started.
The things he’d convinced himself weren’t really that bad.
Every secret he’d buried seemed to spill out without resistance.
Cory started to talk about the little people and how he had just realized he hadn’t seen one since waking.
Finally the figure interrupted him.
“…Why are you telling me all of this?”
Cory blinked.
“Because…”
He gave an awkward smile.
“You’re the therapist.”
Silence.
Then…
The figure chuckled.
The chuckle became a laugh.
The laugh became something monstrous.
It echoed through the empty room.
“You believe…”
The laughter continued.
“…that I am a therapist?”
Cory pointed toward the hallway.
“Well… I read all the doors.”
“The others had weird names. I figured those were other patients.”
The laughter became uncontrollable.
Suddenly—
A spark.
The figure struck a torch.
Orange fire spilled across the room.
Cory stumbled backward.
It wasn’t a man.
It looked like a massive gorilla that had been burned alive.
Its skin was black, cracked, and smoking.
Great curved horns erupted from its skull.
Its blood-red eyes glowed from deep inside its scorched face.
“Oh…”
the demon rumbled.
“You have misunderstood everything.”
It rose from the chair.
Each step shook the floor beneath Cory’s feet.
Its arms dragged across the floor.
“This isn’t an old wing of an asylum.”
It came closer.
“This….”
“…is Hell.”
Cory’s knees gave out.
“No…”
“You died peacefully in your sleep.”
The demon smiled.
“And because of the life you lived…”
“…you were sent to a very special district.”
It spread its enormous arms.
“This is where uniquely disturbed souls come.”
“As a reward for the evil that brought you here…”
“…Satan grants every soul one final choice.”
It pointed toward the hallway.
“The Choker.”
“He has spent eternity discovering every possible way to asphyxiate a soul.”
“The Stabber.”
“He has perfected pain beyond imagination.”
“The Peeler.”
“He removes your skin…”
“…one layer at a time.”
“…Forever.”
Cory’s breathing became ragged.
The demon continued.
“The Burner.”
“The Eater.”
“They all wait behind their doors.”
Then…
Something occurred to Cory.
His panic suddenly faded.
A smile spread across his face.
“So…”
He interrupted.
“You’re the therapist.”
He chuckled as he kicked back in the demon’s chair.
“I actually got lucky.”
“I picked an afterlife of therapy!”
The demon stared at him.
Then it threw back its enormous head and laughed so violently that dust rained from the ceiling.
“THERAPIST?”
Black tears streamed down its burned face.
“Oh…”
“…you poor, poor soul.”
The demon slowly lifted the torch toward the brass plaque beside the doorway.
“The room is old.”
“The letters have faded.”
Cory squinted.
The soot and age had made the word barely readable.
It wasn’t one word. It was two.
It didn’t say—
THERAPIST
It said—
THE RAPIST
The smile disappeared from Cory’s face.
His blood ran cold.
The demon’s grin widened until it seemed to split its face in half.
“I’m glad you made yourself comfortable.”
The torch went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Only two glowing red eyes remained.
A hot breath washed over Cory’s ear.
“Our session…”
“…can now begin.”
End
Jake and I were two beers deep on the drive back from O'Malley's when it happened. The impact sounded like a wet sack of potatoes slamming into a brick wall. The steering wheel jerked in Jake's hands, the truck fishtailed across loose gravel, and for one endless second, I thought we were going to roll. Eventually, we came to a stop.
"Shit," he breathed, his knuckles white as his hands gripped the wheel. "You okay?"
I nodded, even though my heart hammered in my throat."What the hell did you hit?"
Thirty yards in front of us, lying in the glow of the headlights, was a doe. Her chest rose in shallow, painful breaths. Her legs twitched weakly in the dirt.
What caught Jake's attention wasn't the blood. It was her coat. Even after the collision, the reddish-gold fur looked impossibly clean, almost polished, except for the dark stain slowly spreading beneath her ribs.
"Beautiful," Jake whispered, kneeling beside her. He stroked her flank as though admiring an expensive rug. "That's a beautiful pelt. It'd be a waste to leave it."
"Jake... she's still alive."
"Not for long. Look at it. It’ll be dead by the time we get it home. If not, I’ll put it down, and then I’ll get that beautiful pelt."
There was a feverish excitement behind his grin that unsettled me. "Help me load her."
I wish I knew why I agreed. Maybe it was the beer. She was heavier than she looked. Her glossy black eye never blinked as we lifted her into the truck bed.
Oddly, she didn't smell like a wild animal about to die. She smelled like a sweet candle or perfume. Vanilla? Lavender? I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it wasn’t the smell I expected from a dying animal. I thought nothing else of it as I secured it with old rope and a blue tarp.
The twenty-minute drive to Jake's farmhouse passed in silence. Every time I glanced into the rearview mirror, the blue tarp covering the deer remained perfectly still.
Jake's porch light wasn't on when we arrived. The night had gone strangely quiet. Even the crickets had stopped singing.
"I'll be back," Jake laughed. "Nature's calling."
He hurried toward the house.
I walked to the bed of the truck and peeled back the tarp, expecting to see the lifeless deer. Except it wasn’t a deer anymore. Well, half of it was still a deer.
The rear legs, tail, and haunches remained covered in soft fur soaked with black blood. The front half belonged to a naked woman. Pale skin stretched from a horrifying seam where fur blended into flesh without any natural boundary. One arm bent backward. Fingers curled. Her ribs poked unnaturally beneath bruised skin. Her tangled black hair clung to her face.
I stumbled backward. "What the fuck...?"
Her head turned fast in my direction. The human face stared directly into mine. Her black eyes widened. Her lips parted. Instead of words, a deep, wet, clicking moan echoed from somewhere inside the shared throat.
I ran to the house, bursting through Jake's door and shouting his name.
"What is it? What is it?" he replied.
"Outside! Now!" I yelled.
He followed me back. The truck bed was empty. The tarp lay in the driveway, covered in patches of the deer’s fur and blood.
We followed the odd combination of human footprints and deer tracks in the mud. Then we heard something moving through the cornfield. Not running. Galloping. Wrong.
"Get inside," Jake whispered.
The front door was hanging off the doorframe after I'd blasted through it. We pushed all the furniture in front of the door, hoping it would keep that thing out. Jake grabbed the biggest kitchen knife he owned.
"No wonder the pelt was so perfect," he muttered as he gazed through the blinds. "That wasn't a deer."
"What are you talking about?"
"It was a skinwalker. I heard stories about them when I moved to this area. I was told they can mimic anything they kill. And I think it's pissed that I hit it with my truck."
I wanted to call the police. Jake stopped me.
"What are you going to tell them?"
I had no answer.
The rest of the night crawled by. Every few minutes, we heard something circling the house. Hoofbeats. Then footsteps. Then hoofbeats again. Scratches at the wall.
At 1 a.m., three soft knocks sounded at the front door. Jake froze.
"Don't answer."
A woman's trembling voice called from outside. "Please... I've been in an accident."
Neither of us moved.
Then the voice changed. It became an old man. Then a little girl crying for her mother. Then my own mother's voice.
"Sweetheart? Open the door."
My stomach dropped.
Jake whispered, "It learns you by reading your mind."
The knocking stopped for almost an hour. Then, around 2a.m., every light in the house went black.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the darkness.Jake switched on his phone flashlight. The beam swept across the living room. Nothing. Kitchen. Nothing.
Window—
A face exploded against the glass. Half doe. Half woman.The human eye stared only at Jake. Fog bloomed across the window from her breath. She never blinked.
Jake screamed.
Startled, I looked at Jake, then back to the window. It wasn’t there anymore.
She was inside.
The furniture barricade was useless. She pushed her way in with ease. No longer did she smell like sweet incense. Now she smelled like wet leaves and fresh blood. She stood in the doorway, naked and wrong, her back leg bent the wrong way, one hoof clicking on the linoleum while her human foot left muddy footprints.
Jake lunged with the knife. She moved like a deer caught in headlights—too fast, a combination of grace and panic. The knife went into the wall.
She caught Jake by the throat.
There wasn't a struggle. Only one sharp crack. Then Jake collapsed.
She crouched over him.
I ran.
Behind me came sounds I still hear every night. Bones snapping. Fabric tearing. Wet chewing. Then silence.
I closed myself inside Jake's bedroom and shoved a dresser against the door. Minutes crawled past.
Then something began dragging itself down the hallway.
Hoof. Foot. One after the other until it reached my door.
Then a soft knock.
Then Jake's voice. "It's okay, man. She's gone."
I covered my mouth.
Another knock.
"Seriously, man. Open up."
The voice sounded perfect. Perfect, except Jake never called me "man." He always called me by my nickname.
The knob turned. The door creaked open. Again, it pushed its way in with ease.
Jake stood there naked. Every detail was flawless. Same freckles. Same crooked nose. Only his eyes were different.
They were black.
"You're not Jake."
He smiled. In Jake's voice, he replied, "Jake had a beautiful pelt."
He tilted his head until bones cracked. "It would've been a waste to leave it."
Its black eyes studied my body. "I'll be back soon for yours."
The next thing I knew, he got on all fours and galloped out of the house faster than any deer, leaving me horrified and confused.
Police searched Jake's farm. They found his truck, the torn blue tarp, and enough blood to suggest someone had died. They never found Jake. They never found the deer. They told everyone he had probably wandered into the woods after a drunken accident.
But I knew the truth. The image of Jake on all fours, naked and galloping like a deer into the darkness, is burned into my mind.
Eventually, the knocks came.
Every other night, always after midnight, someone knocked three times on my front door. Exactly three. Same slow rhythm.
Sometimes it was Jake asking me to let him in. Sometimes it was my late father. Once, it was my own voice begging for help.
I've never opened the door for anyone after midnight.
But eventually, it stopped. I told myself it had moved on. Found someone else. I told myself I was safe. I told myself a lot of things, like I could go back to my normal routines.
Tonight, I went back to O'Malley's.
I told myself, just one drink. Just to feel normal again.
Then I saw her.
She was sitting at the end of the bar when I walked in, longlegs crossed beneath her dress. Her hair was so black it swallowed the light. Her skin was smooth and perfect, likes she had never had a bruise .
She looked up as I ordered my beer, and her eyes—her eyes were big, stunning, warm, and hungry.
She smiled. She had the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen.
"You look like you've been through something," she said, her voice like honey.
I laughed awkwardly. "You have no idea."
"Try me."
The words poured out of me like water from a broken dam—the deer, the truck, Jake, the thing that wore his face.
She listened with those big eyes fixed on mine, never judging, never interrupting.
When I finished, she reached across the bar and took my hand. Her skin was warm. Really warm.
"That sounds terrifying," she whispered. "You shouldn't be alone tonight."
I was lonely. And she was beautiful. And I wanted, more than anything, some late-night company.
"Take me home," she breathed against my ear.
We didn't speak in the Uber. Her hand rested on my thigh, fingers tracing patterns that gave my skin goose bumps.
I fumbled with my keys at the door, and she pressed against my back, her lips finding the nape of my neck, her breath hot and wet.
Her perfume hit me as she came close: lavender and vanilla, something sweet and familiar.
"Inside," she whispered. "Now."
We stumbled through the doorway, still tangled together, her mouth hungry on mine, her hands pulling at my shirt.
"Bedroom," she gasped.
I half-carried her down the hall, our bodies pressed together, my hands roaming over curves that felt almost too perfect. She pushed me backward through my bedroom door, and I fell onto the mattress, breathless and aching and wanting.
She stood over me, silhouetted against the hallway light, beautiful, willing, mine.
Then she reached behind her and pulled the bedroom door closed.
Click.
The sound of the lock sliding home made something cold twist in my stomach.
She turned back to me, and the light caught her eyes. They weren't brown anymore. They were black.
She crawled onto the bed, straddling me, her skin impossibly soft, impossibly warm. Her hair fell around us like a curtain, and I smelled it again—that perfume, lavender and vanilla, the exact same scent from the deer in the truck bed.
"You're shaking," she whispered, her lips brushing my jaw.
"I—" My voice broke.
She placed a finger against my lips. Her nail was sharp. Too sharp. It cut my skin, and I tasted blood.
"Shhh," she breathed. "Don't ruin this."
She leaned down, her mouth against my ear, her body pressing me hard into the mattress. Her weight was wrong—too heavy, too dense, like she was made of something more than bone and flesh.
I felt her ribs expand against my chest, felt the wrong angle of her hips, felt the way her back bent in a curve that no spine should allow.
"I've been waiting for this," she whispered, and her voice wasn't a purr anymore. It was a clicking, wet moan that echoed from somewhere deep inside her shared throat.
She pulled back, and her face was still beautiful. Perfect. Flawless.
But the seam was showing.
Just beneath her jaw, where that perfect skin met something else. The edge of her pelt peeled back, just slightly, just enough to remind me what she really was.
"You invited me in," she said, and her smile stretched wide, showing teeth that were too sharp, too many. "You pulled me through the door. You brought me to your bed."
She pushed down on my chest, her strength impossible, her fingers digging into my ribs hard enough to make me cry out.
"Jake had a beautiful pelt," she whispered, and her voice was Jake's voice now, layered beneath her own and everyone she had ever been. "It would've been a waste to leave it."
Her head tilted, and I heard the bones crack.
She leaned close, her breath now hot and rotten.
"Finally," she moaned in Jake’s voice, her black eyes not moving from mine, her face splitting along that seam and peeling back to show the monster beneath. "Finally, I can get that beautiful pelt of yours."
End
Before you stop reading, understand something. This isn't because her music is bad. It's not. MA:NYEO (마녀) is talented. Her songs are incredible. Her performances are incredible. If this were only about the music, I'd be telling everyone to support her. But I'm begging you not to. Not because of the songs. Because of the concert videos.
It started during lunch break at work. I was scrolling through my phone when a clip from MA:NYEO (마녀)'s latest concert appeared on my feed. The stadium was packed. Thousands of fans waving glow sticks and singing along. The camera swept across the audience. Then I saw him. Me. Standing in the crowd. Not singing. Not dancing. Not looking at the stage. Just staring directly into the camera. I nearly dropped my phone.
I replayed the clip. There was no mistake. It was me. Same face. Same clothes. Same everything. The problem was I'd never been to South Korea. I'd never attended a MA:NYEO (마녀) concert in my life.
I showed the clip to my coworker Robbie. At first he thought it was funny. "Tell me this doesn't look like me." Robbie laughed. Then he stopped laughing. "That's definitely you." "Right?" "Yeah... that's creepy." I expected him to make fun of me. Instead, he kept staring at the screen. His expression changed. "Wait." He grabbed my phone. "Go back." I rewound the clip. Robbie pointed at someone farther back in the crowd. A man standing perfectly still among hundreds of cheering fans. Not singing. Not dancing. Just staring into the camera. Robbie went pale.
"Dude."
"What?"
"That's me."
We stood there silently. Neither of us knew what to say. We convinced ourselves it was some weird coincidence. People have lookalikes.
Then Gloria came dancing into the break room, sing-talking, "Did I hear someone playing the new MA:NYEO (마녀) song?" Clearly she's a fan. Robbie joked back, "Dirk's not looking at MA:NYEO (마녀), he's checking out our doppelgängers in the crowd." She laughed at us. Called us idiots. Looked down at the phone. Ten seconds later, she wasn't laughing anymore. She pointed into the crowd. A woman standing among screaming fans. Motionless. Looking directly into the camera.
"That's me."
The room got quiet. Everyone in the break room wanted to see. There were six of us sitting in there before Gloria came in. Everyone huddled around me and my phone. One by one they found themselves. Not cheering. Not smiling. Not enjoying the concert. Just standing somewhere in the audience. Watching. Todd found himself near the front row. Chad saw himself in the upper deck. Leslie spotted herself standing beside a staircase. Every single one of them was staring directly into the camera.
The break room got quieter and quieter. Then our coworker Lisa ran into the room. She heard the MA:NYEO (마녀) music from the hallway. "Did you all just watch the new MA:NYEO (마녀) concert video?" A few of us nodded. She looked excited. Too excited. "You have to go to the next concert!" Robbie laughed. "Go to a MA:NYEO (마녀) concert in South Korea? I'm not going to South Korea to see no K-po..." He collapsed before he could finish. One second he was standing. The next he was dead on the floor.
The room erupted into panic. People screamed. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. Robbie was gone.
Then Lisa said the exact same thing. "You have to go to the next concert." Only this time I understood. I misread her excitement. She wasn't telling us as a fan to go to South Korea to see MA:NYEO (마녀); she was warning us. "You all have to go to the next concert." Once everyone calmed down enough to listen, Lisa explained. Years ago, living in South Korea, she had watched one of the concert videos herself. She found herself standing in the crowd. Just like we had. She explained the same thing happened to her and her friends. One by one, they all saw themselves in the crowd, standing, looking directly into the camera. According to her, anyone who sees themselves in the audience must go to the next concert, and if they don't attend, they die.
I immediately started thinking about money. South Korea wasn't exactly around the corner. I barely had enough money for groceries. "I don't ha—" Lisa interrupted me like she knew what I was going to say. "The curse won't kill you if you're trying." The room got very quiet. "It only kills people who decide in their heart and soul they aren't going to go." For a moment everyone seemed relieved. Then Todd spoke up from across the room. A big guy from the warehouse. "I can't leave the country." Everyone looked at him. "My probation officer won't allow me to leave the state, let alone go to..." Todd dropped dead before he could say Korea. Just like Robbie. Gone.
The room exploded into screams again. Because we understood. The curse wasn't asking. It wasn't negotiating. It didn't care whether attending was possible. Only whether you intended to try.
A week later, most of us attended two funerals. Robbie. Todd. Two healthy men who had walked into work and never walked back out. All because of K-pop singer MA:NYEO (마녀)'s damned cursed concert video. Seeing their families standing beside those caskets changed everything. Nobody laughed anymore. Nobody called it a joke. Nobody questioned Lisa.
The people who had watched the concert film became obsessed. We picked up extra shifts. Sold belongings. Applied for loans. Borrowed money from family. Gloria emptied her retirement account. I sold my truck. Most of us had never left the state and were suddenly scrambling to get passports. Every conversation at work became about flights, hotels, MA:NYEO (마녀)'s ridiculous ticket prices, and travel documents. Three weeks. That was all we had. Three weeks to reach a concert on the other side of the world.
And now those three weeks are over. I'm posting this from a plane headed to South Korea. Around me are several of my coworkers. Nobody is talking. Nobody is excited. Nobody is wearing MA:NYEO (마녀) merchandise. We aren't fans traveling to a concert. We're terrified people hoping we're doing enough to survive. Lisa encouraged us that there will be a perfectly normal concert waiting for us, and nothing will happen. I hope that's true. I really do.
But something didn't feel right. I pulled up the video one more time. I scrolled through the crowd, searching for my own face. There I was. Same spot as before. But something was different. I leaned closer to the screen.
I was smiling.
Not a fan's smile. Not excitement. A slow, knowing grin that stretched too wide. My reflection in the phone screen looked back at me with the same terrified expression I felt on my own face. The me in the video tilted his head slightly, like he could see me watching him.
My phone buzzed. An email notification. The sender: MA:NYEO Official.
I opened it with shaking hands. One backstage ticket. Meet and greet access. And a personal message attached, written in Korean and English:
"Can't wait to meet you."
END
I saw one today on lunch break behind the warehouse. Cory was scrolling through his phone, passing me a joint while complaining about overtime. “I swear,” he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke, “if they ask me to stay late one more time, I’m quitting.” “You say that every day.” “One day I’m gonna mean it.”
I took a hit and handed the joint back. The afternoon was quiet. Forklifts beeped in the distance. Thick smoke from the joint blew in the breeze. Then movement caught my eye. At the edge of the parking lot stood an old tree. A little person strutted out from a knot in its bark. It couldn’t have been more than six inches tall.
It wore little leaf clothes and a tiny wood helmet on its head and In one hand, it held what look like a rope. I froze. A bird landed on the same branch. The little person grabbed the bird’s feathers, swung one leg over its back, and mounted it like a horse. The pigeon shuffled impatiently. The tiny rider used the rope as reins, it pulled back and the bird launched into the air.
I looked away. I kept my face blank. I pretended I hadn’t seen a thing. Because by then, this wasn’t new to me. I’d been seeing them for months.
The first time I saw one, it was standing on the grocery store shelf between two cans of soup. It wasn’t hiding. It wasn’t watching me. It was just standing there. I blinked. It was still there. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. A woman pushed her cart past it without reacting. A little boy reached for a can directly beside the thing’s head. No one screamed. No one pointed. No one saw it.
I told my brother that night.“I think I saw a tiny person today.”He laughed.“What? Like a LITTLE person?” “No. I mean a really tiny person. Small. Like a elf but I don’t think it was a elf…..it didn’t seem magical….it was just standing there like a dude.” His smile faded when he realized I wasn’t joking. “You should probably stop smoking so much.” I never brought it up again. Because I saw the look in his eyes. Concern. Concerned that I might be unstable.
At first, I only saw them once every few weeks. A tiny figures standing under a park bench. One resting on top of a gas pump. Another sitting on a traffic light, swinging its legs as cars passed beneath it.Then the sightings became daily. Soon they were everywhere. Perched on the office cubicle walls at work. Walking from behind the vending machines. Clinging to the backs of peoples coats like children hitching rides. Whispering to one another. I could never understand what they were saying. I stopped trying to figure them out. I stopped reacting. I learned to keep my face blank when I see them. Because what do you tell people? Tiny people are crawling all over the city?
Doctors.
Questions
Crazy.
So I stayed quiet. I survived………..
“…What the hell is that?” Cory said. My stomach dropped. Slowly, I looked over. Cory was staring upward. The pigeon swooped over the parking lot with the tiny rider clinging to its back. Cory stood up so fast the joint fell from his hand. “Do you see that?” I didn’t answer. “Tell me you see that!” The pigeon circled overhead. The little rider leaned low over the bird’s neck. Cory pointed. “Oh my God.” The pigeon landed near the warehouse fence. The tiny rider dismounted and disappeared beneath a bush. Cory sprinted after it. “HEY!” Everbody outside on lunch break turned. “DOES ANYBODY SEE THAT?!” He pointed frantically toward the fence. “There was a little man riding a pigeon!” Workers stopped loading trucks. A supervisor stepped outside. Cory searched the bushes wildly. Then his expression changed. His face drained of color. He pointed toward the loading dock. “THERE!” three of them walking on the hood of a semi-truck. Cory backed away. Near the dumpster, one pulling a spool of wire. On the curb near the bushes, another arranging berries into neat piles. Cory spun around. “LOOK…” he yelled. His voice cracked. “LOOK! LOOK!” He grabbed his head. “How many are there?!” People stared. He pointed everywhere. “That one has berries!” “There are some over there!” “That one is flying a bird!” “HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THEM?!” Coworkers exchanged nervous looks. Our Supervisor gets on his phone and calls for security,as Cory ran across the parking lot chasing after another pigeon as a tiny rider steered it overhead. “DOES ANYBODY ELSE SEE THIS?!”
I stood there.
Silent.
Because I’d already learned the lesson Cory was learning in real time. The little people wont ruin your life. Talking about them will.
Cory was admitted to a psychiatric institution. Acute psychosis. Hallucinations. Observation required. I visited him once. He looked exhausted. “I know you can see them,” he whispered his hands trembled. “One teaches raccoons how to untie knots.”He looked toward the corner of the room. “Another feeds sunflower seeds to a crow.” I followed his gaze. A tiny figure stood near the radiator. It carefully fitted a harness onto a mouse while the animal sat perfectly still. Cory gripped my wrist. “You see them, right?” I looked at him. At the fear in his eyes. At the little person adjusting the mouse straps with patient hands. Then I nodded.
“I see them.”
Years have passed since then. I still go to work. I still pay my bills. I still answer, “I’m fine,” whenever people ask how I’m doing. And every once in a while, I see one. A tiny person teaching a squirrel to crack nuts with a pebble. One grooming the feathers of a pigeon in a tree. I never say anything. I don’t know what they are. I don’t know why Cory and I could see them. I don’t know if he ever got out of that institution. But I know this if you ever catch a glimpse of a little person do yourself a favor.
Look away.
Keep walking.
And don’t ask,
“Does anybody else see that?”
End
When my grandmother died, oddly, nobody cried but me. Not my mother.Not my father.Not my aunts or uncles. It was a small funeral just my family was there socializing instead of mourning like me. I tried to smile as i looked around at old photographs of Grandma standing in her garden, flour on her apron and a wooden spoon in her hand. Seeing that picture made me think of the family get togethers where she would always cook a “Big Special Feast” she called it. Even when I was sick Grandma would be at our house cooking a special chicken noodle soup for me. Remembering those moments and seeing her in a casket broke me down again. I sat in the front pew, tears running down my face, wondering if grief had broken something inside me—or if it had skipped everyone else entirely.
I loved my grandmother.But she had always scared me a little. She smiled too wide. Knew when people were lying before they spoke. And she smelled funny, but I still loved her and I know she loved me she never was mad at me or scolded at me every time I looked at her she was glaring at me with that wide smile. I used to watch her cook sometimes and She never measured ingredients while cooking. She’d toss things into the pot with absolute certainty and say, *“*The old ways don’t need measuring cups.”
After the funeral, my parents asked me to help clean out her house. I found her recipe book in the kitchen drawer beneath the oven mitts.The cover was cracked leather, stained dark around the edges. Embossed in fading gold letters were the words:
EDNA’S COOK BOOK
Despite everything, I smiled.I flipped a couple pages.
Chicken Soup
● One whole chicken
● Carrots
● Celery
● Onion
● Fresh thyme
● Three drops of infant tears collected before sunrise
I frowned. I turned the page.
Birthday Cake
● Flour
● Sugar
● Eggs
● Vanilla extract
● Hair from the celebrant’s first haircut
I laughed nervously. Then I kept reading.
Pot Roast
● Chuck Roast
● Potatoes
● Beef stock
● Rosemary
● Garlic
● One baby tooth from each member of the household
My laughter faded.The further I read, the worse it became.
Dried blackbird hearts.
Fingernails.
Ashes from a funeral pyre.
Blood willingly given.
Some recipes had notes written in Grandma’s looping handwriting.
*“*For difficult children.”
“For neighbors who pry.”
“Use only if the fever peaks after midnight.”
I slammed the book shut. That night, I drove straight to my parents’ house. I dropped the cook book onto the kitchen table. “Have you looked at this?” I asked. My mother adjusted her glasses. My father looked down at the cracked leather cover. Neither of them looked surprised. My dad picked up the book flipped through the first page, second page, third page, then back up at me. Finally, my dad said, “Oh.” “Oh?” I snapped. “Grandma kept recipes with blood and teeth in them, and your response is oh?” Mom glanced at Dad. Then back at me. “We always thought you knew,” she said softly.“Knew what that Grandma was a cannibal!?” Awkward silence then my mom and dad erupted in laughter, wiping tears from her face my mom replied no silly, we thought you knew that your grandmother was a witch.” This time I laughed. They didn’t. “You can’t be serious.” Dad rubbed the back of his neck.“She stopped practicing publicly before you were born,” he said. “People were less understanding back then.” Then he looked at me scratching his head “You don’t remember her taking you on that broom ride when you were about nine years old she took you out in the middle of the night on her broom we couldn’t even be mad at her, she said you were old enough to know the family secret, you were so young you must have forgot.” Mom nodded. “Most of those recipes were protection charms.” I stared at them.
“The baby teeth?”
“Protection.”
“The blood?”
“Healing.”
“The blackbird hearts?”
Mom hesitated.
“We didn’t ask about those.”
Silence settled over the room.Then my father reached for the book. He slowly turned page after page, his expression unreadable. The room was quiet except for the soft incoherent voice of my dad reading. Then he stopped.Hell. “What is it?” my mother whispered.
Dad didn’t answer at first. Then he read aloud from the page.
RESURRECTION FUNERAL FEAST
● Lamb
● Fresh rosemary
● Sea salt
● Ashes from the deceased
● One family gathered willingly at the table
● a single tear collected from each family member
● The heart of the first Grandchild
I waited for Dad to laugh. To call it a sick joke. Instead, he carefully closed the recipe book and rested his trembling hand on the cover. When he finally looked up at me, there were tears in his eyes for the first time since the funeral. “You were the only one who cried,” he said quietly. I frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?” His voice cracked. “Because everyone else already knew she’d come back we didn’t know how or when but she told us she will be back.” My mother reached for his arm.“ Please,” she whispered. But Dad pulled away, his gaze never leaving me. “I’ve waited a long time for this recipe,” he said. “Your grandmother died before teaching it to me.” That’s when I realized. The tears on his face weren’t from grief. They were from relief. Relief that he will see his mother again.
** **End
I got lost because I thought I knew the trail.I wasn’t chasing legends or filming a video. I just needed to clear my head. The trail through Swope Park looked easy enough on the map.By late afternoon, I realized I hadn’t seen another hiker.Then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird.The woods had gone silent.No wind.No insects. No rustling leaves.I checked my phone. No signal. I turned around to retrace my steps, but the trail I’d been following simply… wasn’t there anymore. Panic settled into my chest. Then I heard voices.… I started to move through the bushes silently not knowing if the people were friendly or not. Another voice groaned.“You say that every meeting, Gerald.”“Because every meeting, Margaret, they prove me right.”I followed the sound.The trees opened into a clearing. I nearly fainted. Animals sat in a circle like members of a town council. A fox stood at the center with a notebook. A raccoon adjusted tiny glasses.Three rabbits whispered among themselves. A deer stood near the edge of the group. A black bear sat with its enormous paws folded in its lap. A crow perched overhead like it was presiding over everything. The fox looked up. Its eyes met mine. Silence. Every animal turned toward me.I awkwardly raised a hand.“Uh… sorry. I’m lost.”The raccoon slowly removed its glasses.The rabbits clutched each other.The bear stood.The crow tilted its head.The fox closed its notebook.“You can understand us?” it asked.“…umm yes?.” I replied back. The clearing erupted into nervous chatter.“He heard us!”“What do we do?”“He wasn’t invited!”The crow spread its wings.“Silence!” Every animal obeyed. The crow fixed its black eyes on me. “Human,” it croaked. “You have interrupted the Council of Fur, Feather, and Fang.” I blinked. “The… what?” “The Council,” said the fox. “Representatives of the creatures your kind has hunted, trapped, skinned, farmed, poisoned, and forgotten.” I took a nervous step backward. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.” “Humans rarely mean to,” the deer said softly. The bear looked down at me. “But they still do.”The fox opened the notebook. “By ancient law, the witness must Pledge!.” The rabbits gasped.“The Oath.” “The Oath!” I swallowed. “What oath?” The fox looked directly at me.“You may leave this forest alive.”Relief flooded through me. Then the fox continued.“But only under one condition.” The raccoon adjusted its glasses. “You must swear never again to eat the flesh of animals.” The deer lowered its head. “You must never wear their skins.” The bear’s voice thundered through the clearing. “No leather.”The rabbits added,“No fur.”The crow finished, “No feathers.”The fox closed the notebook. “You will live among your own kind, but you will no longer benefit from the suffering of ours.”I stared at them.“That’s it?” The bear narrowed its eyes. “Do you find that difficult?”I opened my mouth. Then closed it.” I was going to jokingly comment “thats not a problem because I’m Pescatarian!” I mostly eat vegetables and fruits and fish is the only meat that I eat, there were no fish in the council and they did not mention that I couldn’t eat the meat of a fish, a loop hole I kept to myself, but then I thought about my clothing. My leather belt. The wallet in my back pocket. The animals watched me in silence. Not angry. Not threatening. Just waiting. The fox finally asked, “Can you swear it?” I looked around the clearing. The rabbits trembled. The deer had scars across one side of its neck. The crow was missing feathers from one wing. The bear’s chest and face were covered in scars. And the raccoon…The raccoon only had one front paw. It noticed me staring. “Hunting trap,” it said simply. The clearing fell quiet again. I slowly removed my leather wallet. Then my belt. I placed them on the ground. “ALL OF IT!” The bear roared. Confused I looked at the raccoon and said “my belt and wallet are made of leather thats all the animal skin I’m wearing” The bear interrupted roaring again “THE BOOTS ON YOUR FEET IS MADE OF SUEDE! SUEDE IS FROM THE SKIN OF A YAK! THE CLOTHING YOU WEAR FROM THE HAT ON YOUR HEAD TO YOUR UNDER WEAR CONTAINS WOOL FROM SHEEP AND OTHER ANIMALS! I CAN SMELL IT! REMOVE ALL OF IT!” Quickly I stripped down in front of the animal council and placed all my clothes on the forest floor with my wallet and belt. The raccoon nodded “Now the oath” “I swear,” I said.“I swear I’ll never eat animals again.”The crow stared at me.“Speak carefully.”I took a deep breath.“I swear I will never knowingly eat the flesh of another animal or wear anything made from their bodies.” I stood there nervous and nude clutching my keys and cell phone. The fox studied my face.The deer closed its eyes.The rabbits held their breath.Then the crow spoke.“So witnessed.”The entire forest answered. Every tree creaked.Every branch groaned.Thousands of unseen creatures whispered from the darkness.“So witnessed.” The wind returned. Birds began singing somewhere in the distance.The fox stepped aside.“You may leave.”I turned and stumbled naked through the woods. Within minutes, I found the trail.Then the parking lot. My car sat exactly where I’d left it. I bolted to it as fast as I can praying nobody saw me. My phone had signal again.I drove home without looking back. For weeks, I kept my promise. It wasn’t hard because im Pescatarian but I had to buy a whole new wardrobe, and got rid of anything made from animal products. Eventually, I began to wonder if any of it had really happened.Maybe I’d been dehydrated. Maybe I’d hallucinated.
Then, one rainy evening, I stopped at a grocery store.As I walked though the seafood section, I heard a familiar voice. “You been eating meat!” I froze. A crow sat perched on top of the refrigerated display. No one else seemed to notice it. I replied back “FISH! none of the animals said anything about fish.” Its head tilted and let out a caw that sounded like a laugh.“Do you know why we spared you?” I shook my head.The crow’s dark eyes softened.“Because the forest does not hate humans.”It glanced toward the shoppers passing by.“It only wishes to know whether any of them remember that they, too, are animals.” The crow spread its wings.Then flew away into the fluorescent lights overhead.
I never saw the Council again.But sometimes, when I walk through the woods, I hear distant voices carried on the wind. Not threatening. Not angry. Debating. Laughing. Arguing over migration routes and whether raccoons should be allowed near unattended picnic baskets and acorn taxes. And one time on a hike I thought I caught a glimpse of a bear wearing my hat and underwear.
End
[effacé]
I didn’t sleep for three days. After finding my right arm beaten and unresponsive, I promised myself one thing, I would never close my eyes again.I tied my left arm to my waist with a belt. I can still use it I just didn’t trust it at all. I drank coffee until my hands shook. Energy drinks lined the kitchen counter like trophies.I set alarms to go off every fifteen minutes. If I even started to drift, the noise would yank me back. I wasn’t going to lose another night. Because every morning, I had woken up to evidence of a struggle I couldn’t remember.I was done being the unconscious victim. If my arm wanted to move…It would have to do it while I was watching. The first night was easy. The second night wasn’t. By the third, the apartment felt wrong. Not haunted. Just…unfamiliar. I would walk into the kitchen and forget why I was there. I’d find myself standing in the bathroom doorway with no memory of getting up from the couch. Sometimes I’d catch my left hand twitching. Tiny movements. The flex of a finger. A slow curl of the thumb.I tightened the belt around it with my teeth so hard and fast I broke a tooth. “You’re not going to win,” I whispered. The left hand responded by tapping slowly against my hip. Tap. Tap.Tap. By the fourth day, I was hearing things. The hum of the refrigerator sounded like whispering. The air conditioner seemed to breathe. Shadows stretched strangely in the corners of my vision. I knew sleep deprivation could cause hallucinations. I think I read somewhere that you are clinically insane after not sleeping for 72 hours. “You’re tired. That’s all,” I repeated that to myself constantly. But exhaustion does strange things to a person.You stop trusting your thoughts. You stop trusting your memories. Eventually…you stop trusting time. I looked at the clock. 7:12 p.m.I blinked. 9:48 p.m.I couldn’t remember the last two hours. I checked the camera footage. Nothing. I’d simply sat on the couch, staring straight ahead.Not moving.Not sleeping.Just existing. On the fifth night, I sat at the kitchen table with a cold cup of coffee. My left arm strapped tightly against my body. My right arm motionless beside me. I watched the second hand on the wall clock.Tick.Tick.Tick. At 3:14 a.m., my left index finger moved. I froze. Slowly…it pointed toward the knife drawer.“No.” I said as if I was disciplining a child. The finger twitched again.More insistently.“No!.” I yelled. My finger bent backward with a crack that made me scream. Then pointed again. The belt strained. The muscles beneath my skin writhed. As though something inside my arm was trying to crawl free. I tightened the belt until my fingers went numb. The arm stopped moving.I sat there shaking until sunrise. I wiped my eyes with my right hand. Wait I can move my right arm now?! I had done it! I stayed awake! I had won!
Morning light spilled through the windows.For the first time in weeks, I felt relief. I laughed. Actually laughed. I was exhausted,broken,sore but I had beaten it. I stood from the kitchen chair.Or at least…I tried to.My knees buckled.I crashed to the floor.I looked down.Both of my legs lay stretched beneath me.Heavy.Cold.Dead weight.Pins and needles exploded through my feet. “No…”I punched my thighs. Nothing. I dug my fingernails into my calves. I couldn’t feel it.“No. No. No.No!!”Panic rose in my chest.I grabbed the edge of the counter and dragged myself toward the living room. I looked at my legs, then back at my hands.The camera.I needed the camera.I pulled myself across the floor and rewound the footage from the night before.I watched myself sitting at the kitchen table.Fighting my left arm.Staying awake.Refusing sleep.Hour after hour.Then, just before sunrise…I saw something I didn’t remember.I lowered my head onto the table.Only for a second.Maybe less.A blink.A moment.My eyes closed.Both arms still.And beneath the table…my legs moved.One foot tapped against the floor.Then the other.Knees bending. Toes flexing. Patient. Testing. Learning.
END
Actually i know now that they are awake while I am asleep! Every morning, I woke up with my arms asleep. Not the usual tingling from sleeping on them wrong. I mean completely asleep. Dead weight hanging from my shoulders. I’d have to shake them for minutes before I can move them again.
My coworkers laughed when I told them about it. “You’re just getting old Dirk!”, one of them said.I laughed out loud too but yelled FUCK YOU Gabe! in my mind. Then strange things started happening.I’d wake up to find my television on, Cabinet doors open, My toothbrush sitting in the kitchen sink. A chair moved from the dining table to the hallway. I lived alone and blamed myself.Maybe I was forgetful or maybe I was sleepwalking. I remember my uncle had sleepwalking problems so maybe it runs in the family? As i was trying to figure out my new self diagnosed condition I noticed long scratches on my forearms.Thin red lines, like a cat attacked just my forearms and hands. But i dont have a cat i live alone
One morning, I woke to find my phone unlocked. There were dozens of pictures in my gallery. All of them blurry, Taken sometime between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Walls, Corners, Ceilings, Close-ups of door handles, The inside of my closet.I deleted them.I told myself there had to be an explanation. The next morning,as usual, my arms were asleep again. But this time, there was black ink writing on the back of my left hand. Three words written in messy capital letters: DON’T TRUST IT. I stared at it for nearly an hour. I lived alone. I didn’t remember writing it. I scrubbed it off before going to work.
The following morning, I found another message.This one stretched across my left forearm. The letters were uneven, as if written by someone in a hurry. I AM TRYING TO HELP YOU. I nearly threw up.
I ordered a camera and had it same day delivered. That night, I placed it on the dresser and pressed record. I could hardly go to sleep from the anticipation to watch whatever happens on that video.
The next morning, I woke with my arms asleep, completely numb.It took almost ten minutes before I could bend my fingers. Then I watched the footage. For hours, nothing happened I slept peacefully. Then, sometime after three in the morning, my arms moved. Only my arms.The rest of my body remained perfectly still. My chest rose and fell. My mouth let out snores i didnt know i made. My eyes stayed shut. But my arms lifted off the bed. They moved slowly at first.Testing their range, Flexing fingers, Rotating wrists. As though checking that everything still worked. Then they got out of bed. They dragged my body behind them.Not gracefully. Like two determined people trying to move a heavy piece of furniture. My head lolled forward and backward. My legs dragged across the floor. I never woke up.I watched in horror as my own hands opened drawers, Picked up objects, Examined photographs, Flipped through books. They moved with purpose.With intelligence.They weren’t random.They were looking for something. Every night after that, I recorded. Every morning, my arms were asleep, and every morning, the footage grew worse. Sometimes they wrote notes. Sometimes they searched the apartment.Sometimes they simply sat at the kitchen table with my sleeping body while my fingers tapped silently against the wood. Once, my right hand slapped my left away from a kitchen knife. The left hand immediately tried again. The right stopped it Again. And again, until finally both hands retreated. I didn’t want to ever go back to sleep after watching that. But I need to sleep so I wrapped my arms in blankets before bed. The next morning, the blankets were folded neatly on the floor.I duct-taped oven mitts over my hands.Next morning The tape had been peeled away.I tied my wrists to the bedframe.morning came and The knots were undone. Always while I slept. Always before I woke.
Days turned into weeks. I stopped trusting myself. I stopped answering calls.Lost my job because I stopped leaving my apartment. What if they decided to leave one night? What if they already had?Then came the messages not written with ink now they are being typed. I woke one morning to find a document open on my laptop. A single sentence filled the page. YOUR LEFT ARM WANTS TO LEAVE I stared at it.The next morning: THE LEFT ARM WANTS TO GET IN THE KITCHEN DRAWER. I locked every knife in a toolbox. The morning after that: THE RIGHT ARM IS GETTING TIRED. I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t stop recording.I had to know. The footage showed what the notes meant. Night after night, my left arm would find dangerous things that I misplaced around the house over the years living there. Scissors I dropped in the couch cushions , a steak knife lost in between the refrigerator and kitchen counter Razor blades in my medicine cabinet. And every single time, my right arm fought it. They wrestled across countertops. Across floors. Fingers twisting against fingers. One hand trying to protect me. The other trying to grab anything that can cause bodily harm. They were enemies attached to the same body.Then one morning, I woke up in an awkward position my arms weren’t limp by my sides like all the other mornings. My Right hand squeezed my left wrist so tightly its knuckles had gone white. Even when I woke, it hadn’t let go. My left finger tips were a dark purple like bulging grapes and a bruise ring formed on my left arm where my own fingers had held it down all night. It made me think of The Simpsons episodes when Homer chokes Bart, the visual in my head made me chuckle then my face instantly went back to dread because finally I understood, they hated each other.
I don’t sleep much anymore. When exhaustion finally takes me, I secure my left arm as best I can.My right arm rests beside me.Faithful.Watchful.Waiting.Every morning, I wake with my arms asleep.I check the footage.I read the notes they’ve left behind.And every day, the messages become shorter.More desperate.Until this morning.I found only four words typed across my computer screen. The keyboard was broken on the floor the keys spread everywhere. The message read: **THE RIGHT ARM LOST.**I looked down at my body.My left hand rested quietly in my lap.Perfectly still.Patient.My right arm lay beside me. Bruised and scratches all over it.And for the first time…I couldn’t wake it up.
/Thank u for reading my first posted story! ending will be posted tomorrow!/