creepyclothdoll

[creepyclothdoll]

We don’t take kindly to outsiders 

around here, pardner,” said the grizzled and sunburnt face. 

“... Darryl Choi?” I said. But it couldn’t be. 

“Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” the man tipped that face up at me and I saw his familiar dark eyes clearly under his dusty cowboy hat. 

“You’re dead,” I blurted. The cowboy stood and drained his sarsaparilla. 

“This outsider botherin’ ya, Smokes?” the bartender said, polishing a glass behind the gas station counter, which had been apparently repurposed as a saloon bar. There were still vape cartridges and 5-hour-energy drinks on the shelf behind him, gathering dust next to bottles of unlabeled brown liquor and oil lamps. 

“I’m not an outsider,” I argued. “This is my hometown. I took your niece London to prom, Mr. Jarocki.” The bartender narrowed his eyes at me. 

“Name’s Ben Wiley Sr to you,” he said, frowning under his huge white handlebar mustache. “Now, your money’s as good as anyone else’s, kid, but after you quench yer thirst, you better take that steel horse you rode in on and ride along yonder, if you know what’s good for yeh.”

“Yonder?!” I said. “What the hell is going on? This is Massachusetts. Is this a bit?”

The five other cowboys in the gas station, who were all sitting around makeshift tables that had been hammered together from pieces of the Holiday station shelving, stopped their card game and glared at me. One of them reached for his sidearm. 

Darryl clapped his hand around my shoulder.

“Settle down, boys,” he said. “This here fella’s kin, he just don’t know it yet. Sit down, pardner, and I’ll tell my tale.”

“I just came in to pay for gas. The thingy wasn’t working outside,” I said. “I’m actually late to my mom’s memorial service right now.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, son.”

“It’s my mom’s–”

“Sit down.” 

I sat down. The plastic chair squeaked. Mr Jarocki brought me a stein of sasparilla. 

“Folks ‘round here, y’see… we ain’t afraid o’ death no more,” Darryl said. He lit his pipe. Red embers lit his dark eyes. “I met death. He’s a ten-cent man.” Darryl stared through the Holiday station windows past the gas pump and toward the horizon of Peabridge, Massachusetts. 

In 2016, Darryl Choi had been crushed to death by a semi on his way home from UMass Amherst. He was the first friend I ever lost. His death had hit me hard. We weren’t as close as I was with some of my other friends, but we’d cut class a couple of times to vape by the creek and trade Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I didn’t think he could grow facial hair, but he had a lot of it now. 

“Y’ever heard of Pet Semetary?” Darryl asked.

“Yeah, I saw the movie,” I said. “And the remake.” 

“Well, turns out, we got one of those.”

I stared incredulously. If I hadn’t been at Darryl Choi’s funeral, I wouldn’t have believed him. 

“Okay,” I said. 

“Basically, it works just like in ol’ Steve King’s account. You die, they put you in there, you come back wrong. First time they tried it with a person, it was Christina Elspeth, the old schoolmarm.”

“Oh no, Mrs Elspeth died?”

“It don’t matter now,” Darryl grunted. “Listen. They put the schoolmarm in the cemetery and the next day she was crawling back all fulla murderous rage n’ such, same as the dogs n’ cats n’ fish, but worse. Spoutin’ all kinds of vileness. So her husband shot her in the head.”

“Mr Elspeth?!?” 

“Not before she cut him real good across the belly, though. The ol’ fella bled out right quick in his flower garden. So they buried both of ‘em in the Semetary-whatsit again, on account of the headstone already bein’ paid for.”

Mr Elspeth was my youth pastor. He always snuck us leftover communion bread and we’d eat it with marshmallow fluff. I didn’t even know he had a gun.

“So another day passed, and, well, the two of ‘em sprung back outta that dirt mound. Mr Elspeth had come back ‘wrong,’ just like his missus before him– all evil and such. But Mrs Elspeth came back even wronger. Turns out, there’s a step down below ‘evil.’ I’m talkin’ downright… well, sorta like those red fellers we used to play at killin’ as youngsters in that movin’ picture game.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Darryl,” I said. “Can you drop the cowboy accent?”

Darryl glared at me.

“Folks call me Smokes these days,” he said. “Smokes Barlow. Wilbur Lee Barlow if you’re a lawman.”

“I’m not gonna call you Wilbur Lee Barlow,” I said.

“Naw, you’ll call me Smokes, like everyone else,” he replied smoothly. 

“Resident Evil?” I said.

“... Huh?”

“The red zombies from Resident Evil, is that what you were talking about earlier?”

Smokes shrugged.

“Anyhow, the two of ‘em went on a killin’ spree round here. And I guess word got out about the cursed boneyard– everyone and their mother, I mean the ones who survived, hoped maybe their kin would be the exception to the rule. So more n’ more bodies went in the mound, and each of ‘em came out as evil as the last. ‘Cept for Mrs Elspeth, who came back worse for wear.”

“They put her back? Again?”

“Well, see, the headstone had been paid for. So Mrs Elspeth comes back and she’s still spittin’ hell’s worst curses and hankerin’ for a stabbin’, but now she’s also sort of a mad scientist sort. So she breaks into the hospital n’ starts grafting people’s limbs together–”

“Hang on. What the hell do you mean she’s a mad scientist sort?” I said. “She was a music teacher?”

“Well, see, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. She’s running around, hair all crazy, in a stolen lab coat, rantin’ and ravin’ about man playing god and splicing DNA and such, creating humanity’s next evolution and such. So eventually the hospital staff knock her out and toss her back in the hole. Next time she came back, she was a 19th century venture capitalist named Montgomery Prescott III who aimed to turn Peabridge into a factory town.”

“Sorry, when did this all happen?”

“‘Course, by this time, her husband was on his third resurrection too, so Prescott was a force to be reckoned with with the power of science behind him. The two of ‘em did a bang-up job whippin’ this place into shape, corralling all the zombies n’ throwing em in the hole, y’know, for science, and to see if they could monetize it. Prescott Mining & Scientific Enterprise un-buried all the dead from the regular ol’ graveyard and tossed ‘em in the hole, myself included. Then, when they came back, they put all those evil folks to work in the mines, or in the lab.”

“Now those mines were dangerous, of course, with all the coal dust and gas leaks… Prescott didn’t give a damn about safety. Lotta folks died. But they’d just bring ‘em back. A couple weeks in, though, and there were about twenty Montgomery Prescott III’s and about a hundred mad scientists running around, and it turns out, Monty Prescott works for no man. Each of ‘em enlisted a squad of mad scientists and started their own enterprise. Wasn’t too long before they started assassinating the competition. At this point, we’d all just gotten used to throwin’ people in the hole.

“Turns out, after Prescott, you come back as kind of a Dracula. Now I won’t go into all that business– you know ‘Salem’s Lot?”

“No? Is that a gang?”

“What about that there Catholic picture show up there on the Netflix, the one on the island, put together by that Irish feller? Michael somethin. O’Flanagan.”

“Mike Flanagan? Midnight Mass?”

Smokes smiled.

“There ya go. It was all pretty much like that.”

I looked around at the gas station. Other than the restructuring that had transformed it from a regular Holiday gas station into a cowboy saloon, it looked like this place had been through waves of disasters. There were bullet holes all over the ceiling, a massive rusty brown stain that someone had tried to scrub out with lye on the linoleum, burn marks on the walls with strange curling imprints of what looked like vines and needles… 

“I’m guessing that ‘everyone is vampires’ didn’t last long,” I said.

“It just ain’t sustainable,” Smokes shook his head. “Vampires always think it’s a smart idea to make everyone vampires, but, see, it just don’t work out. What do they eat? Turns out, they don’t. They starve. Then it’s back in the hole.” “So things carried on like that for awhile. At a certain point, we were just chuckin’ people in there to see if there was an end point, y’know, how far this thing goes. Turns out, it goes Evil, Mindless Zombie, Mad Scientist, Montgomery Prescott III, Master Vampire, Ghoul, Skeleton Warrior, Skeleton Jazz Musician, Man-eating Plant, Plant-eating Man– or a Vegan, I guess you’d call him, and a real sonofabitch– Haunted Ventriloquist, Haunted Dummy, Haunted Mummy, Christian Family Vlogger, ‘Edna,’ Evil Cowboy, Zombie Cowboy, Plant Cowboy, ‘Edna’ again, then just regular ol’ pure Cowboy.”

“What comes after Cowboy?” I asked.

Smokes shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just Cowboy all the way down after that.”

The cowboys playing poker glanced up at me through clouds of tobacco smoke. I recognized some of these people from around town. Or, rather, I recognized who they used to be.

“So… my mom’s memorial… she’s not really dead, is she?” I said, a wave of hope and relief overwhelming me. “I thought I’d have to say goodbye to her today. But she’ll be back, won’t she?”

Smokes only smiled sadly.

“You won’t find fuel for your steel carriage, pardner,” said Smokes. “I’ll give you a ride to the cemetary.”

I followed Smokes out to the parking lot, where several horses were hitched. 

“Where did you guys get all these horses?” I asked.

“Oh, where there’s cowpokes, there’s horses,” he replied. “That’s a rule of nature.” Smokes fed the horse an apple and stroked her mane before bidding me to climb on behind him. I held onto his waist, which was pretty weird for me because we were never close like that, and we galloped off up the highway toward the middle of town. 

We passed the elementary school, which had been covered in radiation warning signs and barbed wire. Then we passed the old Coney Island restaurant, which had been converted to a one-room schoolhouse. Main Street’s restaurants, law firms, and tattoo parlor had been replaced by a Dry Goods store, an ox stable, a wagoner, an apothecary– the barber was the same, but it looked like he also pulled teeth now.

The park that I played in as a kid had been bulldozed to hell, and in its place was a brown dirt yard with scattered mounds and holes all clustered near the center. A new sign hung over the entrance on a wooden board: Lazarus Mound Cemetary.

“I guess we coulda been more creative,” Smokes said. “But it’s too late for couldas, I reckon.”

A group of cowboys, clad in black, stood over a dirt pile. They held their hats to their chest as the eulogy was read. Smokes followed me to my mother’s fresh grave. I dropped my bouquet of flowers on top of it. 

“Family only,” said one of the cowboys, glaring at me.

“Uncle Matt, it’s me,” I said. He twirled his goatee and grimaced, revealing a new gold tooth. 

“It’s Billy ‘Cobra’ Nash these days,” he said. “Didn’t recognize ya, son. I s’pose you want to say a few words,” he gestured to the mound.

“Well, I would,” I said, “But I’m pretty sure she’ll pop out halfway through.”

“That’s no way to talk about your poor dead mother,” said Great-Grandma Tess, who I hadn’t seen since 2004, when she died from stroke. Except she wasn’t Great-Grandma Tess. She was a short old man with a long rabbity mustache and two guns on either side. 

“Let the kid grieve, Slim,” said Cobra.

The sun set on us. The resurrected cowboy versions of my family members became hungry and bored, and set up a small campfire where they heated up coffee and beans, and spun some yarns. I asked questions about the cowboy economy and how it could sustain itself in this Massachusetts town that didn’t have that many cows, and they responded by cussing me out and telling me to get lost, city boy. I said I couldn’t be a city boy because I was from here, and they took away my beans.

Finally, after about an hour, there was rustling from the mound. 

“Here she comes,” said Cobra.

The dirt shuffled and ran down the side of the mound, a miniature landslide. Finally, a gloved hand emerged. Then an arm. A dirty, dusty head, crowned in a cowboy hat, burst from the pile, coughing. 

“Well, butter my biscuits, if it ain’t The Cheat, just in time for dinner,” said Slim, hands on his hips. 

My mom, who was now a dirt-covered cowboy named The Cheat, clicked his boots together to dislodge some stones from his spurs. 

“Howdy. Miss me, fellas?” The Cheat rasped, spitting pebbles into the fire. 

“Mom?” I said. The Cheat looked me over. 

“They call me Vernon ‘The Cheat’ Maddox now,” my mom said.

“Why Maddox?” I asked. “Mom, what was wrong with Nguyen?”

“Ain’t a cowboy name,” said Mom. 

“A cowboy can’t be Vietnamese?”

“Listen, kid,” said The Cheat, clapping me on the arm. “I’ve had a long day, and to be frank, I can’t abide a city slicker like you before I get my brew. Gotta fill up on beans n’ coffee or I’ll be skinner than a jazz skeleton in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

I watched my mom walk away toward the fire, greeting the other cowboys like old friends.

“It’s like she didn’t even recognize me,” I said, broken.

Smokes patted me on the shoulder. 

“That ain’t your mother no more, pardner,” he said. “Same as I ain’t Darryl Choi.” “What’s the point of raising people from the dead if they’re not themselves?” I said. 

“I reckon you’ve missed the essential theme of the Pet Semetary premise,” Smokes said. “The point is, it’s a curse, not a blessing. To the living, at least. Mister Stephen King said sometimes dead is better. And here in Peabridge, we reckon he was right.”

I heard a metal click. I turned around to see Smokes’ shotgun pointed square at my forehead.

“Whoa,” I said. The cowboys at the fire turned to watch with dim interest, including my own mother. “Darryl, hey, put that away.”

“Dead is better. But you know what’s best? Cowboy,” he said. “Cowboy is the best there is.”

“Best there is,” said the cowpokes around the fire in eerie unison. 

“Wait, wait, wait–” there was a bang. My vision filled with red, and then there was nothing. I saw and felt and heard nothing as Smokes watched my limp body fall backwards into the hole. He kicked dirt over me casually. He holstered his weapon. He sat down around the fire, next to the others.

“How many bullets ya got, Smokes?” asked The Cheat through a mouthful of beans.

“Not enough to get him all the way through,” Smokes replied, lighting his pipe. “But enough to get him past Dracula, for sure.”

“That’s the one you gotta watch out for,” The Cheat said. “I’ll stand vigil with ya, pardner.”

“You go home, Maddox, wash that dust off, tend to your herd. Be on the lookout for Edna– word is she’s still at large in places,” Smokes said. 

“She’ll come around,” said Slim. “They always do.”

The campfire’s embers rose up to the cloudy, dark sky. Smokes leaned back and tipped his hat low over his eyes.

“This town’s got room for plenty more cowboys,” he said. Around the fire, a dozen pairs of black, gleaming eyes turned toward the Lazarus Mound, waiting.

[creepyclothdoll]

my little chihuahua-pittie when mom comes home

girl whose feelings are entirely too big for her body

[creepyclothdoll]

just wanna say loudly, clearly and with my whole chest

FUCK NEIL GAIMAN

[creepyclothdoll]

From: HR Subject: Concerning your death

Valued employee,

I hope you are doing well during what I understand is a difficult time. We were very sorry to hear about your passing. 

Please understand that the circumstances around your death have caused several issues for the company, and unfortunately a formal disciplinary hearing has been called. Your attendance is mandatory. 

As you are well aware, our company offers a health insurance package. There is no reason that you should be in such poor health that you would die. You’ll notice that no other members of our team have complained about a “heart attack.” You should be taking full advantage of your company health insurance, and your inability to maintain your health is not Scion Firm & Marketing Agency’s responsibility. 

Secondly, you were found deceased at your work station before opening on Friday morning. 

The coroner reported your death sometime after midnight on Thursday evening, meaning you were in the building long after closing hours, working unauthorized overtime. Records show you clocked out at the end of your agreed-upon overtime (7:00), but your work log shows you continued to work on the project until your demise. After-hours work is prohibited for safety reasons. The discovery of your corpse and the undue scrutiny it has brought to Scion Firm & Marketing Agency creates a negative (and inaccurate) image of our policies and work culture.

The employees who found your body have been offered therapy services, which drain our resources. Two more employees are taking bereavement leave due to your negligence. 

Understand that in normal circumstances, this is grounds for termination. However, the importance of this rebrand project is paramount to our company’s good standing with our (most important) client. Due to your role as the project lead, your employment will continue. 

Your request for leave has been denied. According to our written policy, your own death does not constitute grounds for bereavement leave. 

We expect you to show the rest of your team that you are in high spirits and good morale tomorrow. There are unproductive rumors circulating about your death being due to high stress and extreme pressure from the company, which is, as you know, completely false. Any indication otherwise is a blatant lie. 

Finally, various complaints have been made about you over the past several days. Employees have reported an unpleasant and distracting odor coming from your work station. Your vacant, bulging, milky stare has been described by multiple individuals as “creepy.” The fluid stains on the carpet are a health hazard and a detriment to our company’s chic modern aesthetic. 

While you finish your business under our employ, be advised that rotting, leaking, or decomposing in any manner is prohibited. If you are unable to meet these standards, the (considerable) cost of taxidermy services will be charged to your account. 

Thank you for understanding. There is no way out for you, valued employee. If you have any questions, please contact our HR department.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

[creepyclothdoll]

The Tick

A vampire is a predator, I tell you. I am defying my nature to be with you. 

I am dangerous. But you tame me. You are the exception, I promise in the forest, under the tree where we first met. 

With my centuries of experience and a whole world of options for companionship, I choose you. 

For you, I will be gentle. I brush the hair from your shoulder. Even though it goes against all that I am.

I see a tick crawling through your dark hair. You watch me pull it out and crush it in my fingers with a smile. I will always protect you. 

From that day on, you are truly mine.

I love you unconditionally. Intensely. With the deep, all-consuming love you desire. 

I am an outsider. You are the only one who can understand me. 

My bite is like a kiss, but deeper. More primal. More sensual. The physical merges with the emotional, boundaries dissolve. It is an act of trust. You trust me. 

I may lose control of my predatory nature, I say. You should not trust me, I say. 

I show you my most vulnerable self– my heart has shuddered in the cold for centuries. You open the door and invite me in. With this sharing of blood, I relax in the knowledge that this is true, this is real, this is forever.

We duck away into an alcove one night as I spy the vampire-hunter scanning the party, the outline of an ash stake under his jacket. You fear for me then.

My kind is so maligned. Rightfully, I admit. What society would allow a rabid predator in its midst willingly? Something so dangerous, unchecked, bound to rampaging bloodlust? 

But you’re different, you remind me.

Yes. But they don’t understand that. Only you have ever accepted me without fear. 

Your presence feeds me. Being in every part of your life feeds me. Knowing where you are, knowing I am on your mind, knowing you are mine– that feeds me. 

I will leave you enough time to recover from my bite, my taking, barely. Then, I will come back and take more. 

You want me to let you rest for longer? I am doing you a favor, then. I don’t say this, but you feel it in my smile. I needed this, but I’ll give it up for you and your comfort. What a good vampire I am, understanding like this. I sacrifice my needs for you. It hurts me to wait. But I wait. Patiently, with a long-suffering smile. 

You hold my life in the palm of your hand. You have all the control here. To reject me now would kill me. I will give you whatever you need. Just tell me what you want. I will do it. 

It’s really your fault that you feel like this, because if you just told me what you want, I will give it to you. All I ask in return for this perfection is nearness. Eternally. 

You feel cold. 

You feel tired. You feel sick. I bring you the things you like most– I remember your favorite sweet things, your favorite books, your favorite blanket. 

I haven’t shared in your blood in weeks. I don’t need to, anymore. You invited me in, and that’s all I needed– I can live off of you. 

You are in my veins. I live through your life.

I only take a little– a conservative portion of the oxygen in your breath, a few beats of your heart each day, just some of the strength of your limbs, a touch of the heat from your body, a gentle scraping of your spirit and your mind. To me, this is everything. You don’t need these things, and you don’t notice them leaving you. And if you were to notice, wouldn’t you offer them freely? Would you be so cruel, so callous, to say no?

I feel like a bucket with a hole in the bottom, you say. Weak, pitiful, sad. 

I will take care of you, I promise. I will always protect you. And these things are true. 

I will leave you empty.

You want to leave for awhile? Of course, my dear. Why would I protest that? You’re not a prisoner. I trust you’ll come back to me, I say, showing my vulnerability, my earnest love.

But you’re gone so often, lately. And you leave me lonely. 

So I follow you one day. I see you have other friends. That’s alright, of course. You can have whatever you like, so long as I am your priority. Go out and raise your energy, so long as you bring it back to me. Make yourself healthy and hale. What’s good for you is good for us. 

But who are these friends? A flash of recognition. A seething hate.

No.

Don’t talk to those people. Anyone but them. 

Why would you let them fill your head with lies? I scream when you return to me. At least you returned to me. You look up at me with hollow, dark eyes, your face pale as the grave, your lips thin and blue. 

There is so much left of you, though. 

I think I need to go, you say. 

I grab my chest. You are killing me. You would kill me.

I need to do what’s best for me, you say. 

You promised me a share of your life. You’d rip that from me now? I cry. I sacrificed my nature for you, I say. It went against all that I am. You are the reason I am gentle. You tamed me.

I grab you as you step through the threshold backwards. Your chill skin leaches a great share of the last of your remaining heat into mine. You grow paler. I want what I can take, then. 

Every pulse of your heart. The whole of your spirit. The thin trickle of blood that still runs through your cold blue veins. The last thought in your addled, exhausted little head. 

There is a lightning-sharp stab of pain through my body. Fire blazes around my chest. Acid, poison, venom– the stake. From you? I look up pitifully. No. From the man in the jacket, standing behind me, who I see as I slump to the dirty carpet on the hallway floor. 

So helpless. Frozen in an instant. My fingers twitch.

You scream for me– you cry for me. The man pulls you away– bastard. There is a woman with him too now, and another man, and they uncork bottles, and I smell the stink of garlic, feel the repulsion of holy water. 

Wait, you cry. He can’t help it. He’s a predator by nature– he’s trying so hard to be good, you cry. Please, just reach out to me. My fingers twitch. And I reach up. 

To you.

I need you. I need you. I NEED you. I NEED YOU. 

They always say that, says the woman.

I NEED YOU. I NEED YOU. I NEED YOU. I NEED YOU. 

But… he’s fighting his nature for me, you persist. 

He’s never fought his nature. He’s been following it this whole time, the bastard says to you as he pulls you further from me. His colleagues pour their bottles over me and my body, my body starts to dissolve. 

The disgust in his eye– his stare is the same I gave that tick.

Vampires aren’t predators, he says.

They’re parasites.

And then you– you look at me the same.

[creepyclothdoll]

The King of Crash Nation

Skeep: Hey cringebros and cringebabes– no intro today, you read the title, you saw the thumbnail, no this isn’t clickbait. We have a very special guest today who you might recognize. Now, you might think I’m sitting across from Cass “Cash” “Crash” Bellamy, also known as “The Keyblade Master of Financial Freedom,” also known as “Keyblade Karen,” but you might be wrong.  

Crash: You would be wrong. 

Skeep: I’ve been talking to my guest for awhile already, and I have to say, I’m flummoxed. I’m not gonna say I believe everything you’re saying, but I think it’s worth listening to.

Crash: Listen, if I wasn’t experiencing this myself, I would think I was insane. I’m… honestly still not sure. Logically, I understand that some sort of psychotic break is the most likely explanation for what I’m– 

Skeep: Before we get to the good stuff, I just wanna thank our sponsor for today, GRIX. GRIX is a beverage subscription service you can trust. Not only do GRIX beverages have anywhere between two to five times the caffeine of standard energy drinks, but every drink is packed with 200 different minerals. Take the standard number of minerals in food and multiply that by a hundred, that’s how many diverse minerals are in these drinks. Some of these minerals you’ll only find in GRIX. Make sure you use a VPN when you sign up for GRIX. GRIX comes in discreet packaging to throw off any prying government eyes at the post office, so don’t be shy! GRIX: It’s Too Alpha For The FDA! (Skeep takes a long drink from a black jug with a fluorescent label)

Crash: (Long sigh)

Skeep: So, why don’t you introduce yourself?

Crash: Sure. Of course. Hello, everyone, you recognize me as Cassidy Bellamy. But my name is Elizabeth Ann Coen. I’m from a small town in Illinois, and I’ve been a teacher for the last twenty years. High school, middle, and elementary, but mostly middle school. Three weeks ago, I went to sleep in my own bed, next to my husband, and when I woke up I was Cassidy Bellamy. 

Skeep: That must have been a shock. That’s my personal nightmare, no offense.

Crash: No offense taken, Darren. No personal offense, I mean. 

Skeep: You know how crazy that sounds. That’s the craziest part, guys, I’m not kidding, he knows– she– they– 

Crash: She.

Skeep: Liz, can I call you Liz?

Crash: (Another sigh) I suppose you can. 

Skeep: Liz knows how crazy this sounds, that’s what I’m trying to say. And that’s crazy, because Crash would never. I mean, the Crash that we all know and love– or hate– 

Crash: I’m well aware of Cass Bellamy’s long history of delusional behavior and compulsive lying. I wish I wasn’t. 

Skeep: Assuming this is true– and, cringebros and cringebabes, this is just hypothetical– assuming this is all hypothetically true, had you heard of Crash before you… became him?

Crash: I actually had. Like I said, I’m a teacher. You’d be shocked at some of the things kids are watching online. I always think I’ve heard it all, and then someone drops something like “CashMunnyCoin” on me, “oh, did you hear the Keyblade Karen Meltdown guy is launching a cryptocurrency?” “oh, did you hear the Sora MLM fanfiction guy is going to jail for identity theft?” I’d heard the major beats of the story, but I didn’t realize it was all the same guy until I woke up in Cass Bellamy’s body. 

Skeep: Just hearing those words come out of your mouth is like… I’m having an out-of-body experience right now.

Crash: Tell me about it.

Skeep: (Surprised laughter)

Crash: I think that if I had woken up as literally anyone else, maybe people would have believed me. Or, at least, maybe someone would have believed me. 

Skeep: Crash– Liz– I want to believe you. I really do. Listen, I knew Crash as he was better than, I think, almost anyone except Jimspore and Sorasins, who obviously don’t count because they’re assholes. I’ve been following this guy– you– for twelve years. Crash does not talk the way you’re talking to me right now. And I’ve never seen Crash dressed that nicely, unless you count cosplay, and even then, his cosplay is shit. 

Crash: (Nodding patiently) One of the first things I did, once I was in a mental state to do things, was to go to the thrift store and buy some nicer clothes. You know, not the sort of thing I would wear– but just a few nice, coordinated outfits. At first, I went for the sorts of things I wished my son would wear. Then I realized I was tending to go for androgynizing clothes, and I figured that was probably where I was most comfortable, given the situation. So it’s been a lot of these turtlenecks, a lot of these cardigans. In this body, I can pull off green very nicely, which was never the case in my real body. It made me look sickly. 

Skeep: And you look good! I never thought I’d say this, guys, but Crash looks good. It just goes to show what a little effort can do for a guy. Like it can’t replace being toned, but it helps a lot. And, might I say, you actually look a little more toned than usual, too.

Crash: I’ve been going on lots of walks. Cass doesn’t have a job. So I walk most of the day, now. There are some nice places to walk around Las Vegas, which I never expected. 

Skeep: Yeah, the hiking out there’s pretty amazing, I hear. Hey– just for contrast, guys, let’s watch a clip of Crash on our podcast with SlimeTimeJohn last year.

(The screen cuts to a past recording in a different, smaller studio. Cass Bellamy, dressed in full Sora cosplay, is ranting to two black-clad hosts in matching beanies holding jugs of GRIX).

Crash: Why should I pay taxes when I’m reinvesting in my hustle? The government is the real pyramid scheme! 

Skeep: Crash, Crash, Crash, you don’t pay taxes?! Crash, that’s a federal crime, you dumb piece of shit. 

SlimeTimeJohn: You’re live on camera. Folks, Crash Bellamy just admitted to tax fraud. Someone get the IRS in chat.

Crash: I never said that.

SlimeTimeJohn: You fucking said it just now!

Crash: I pay my taxes! I pay my taxes! I pay my taxes! 

Skeep: Stop yelling! Stop yelling! Stop yelling! You fucking asshole. Jesus fucking christ. 

Crash: There are pawns of darkness everywhere. There are pawns of darkness everywhere, and you know it because you are one. You know, you could become a good person if you actually read my books.

SlimeTimeJohn: Oh, I’ve read your plagiarized books. They’re garbage. Blocks of text copy-pasted from Kingdom Hearts fan wikis and generic motivational quotes. 

Skeep: What’s in your books that could possibly make anyone a better person? Crash, I think just by talking to you, I become a worse person every day. I used to have hobbies, man, but now it’s just… finding out what new bullshit Crash is up to and reacting to it.

Crash: You’re just jealous of my entrepreneurial spirit! The spirit of Sora! The spirit of Financial Freedom!

Skeep: (Laughing) That’s the clip that went viral. I think you– he– also said something about how Jeff Bezos wasn’t spiritually evolved enough to understand Kingdom Hearts?

Crash: I’ll be honest– I don’t understand Kingdom Hearts. 

Skeep: OHHH!!! Mike, clip that. That’s gonna go viral. That’s gonna be everywhere tomorrow.

Crash: I was a little too old for it when it came out, and my kids never really got into it. I’ve done some… research, in the last few weeks. The plot seems very difficult to follow, though.

Skeep: Well, now we know you’re not the real Crash. 

Crash: I wish you meant that. 

Skeep: Honestly, hand to god, I do, too. Now, Liz, can you tell us a little more about your life in Illinois?

Crash: Yes. I’m married, and I have two children. My hometown is sort of a tourist town, but only really for history buffs. I could go into more detail about where I’m from, but I don’t want to dox my family, if… if they still exist. We have a good school district. Nice old brownstone buildings. Lots that survived the Civil War. It’s a good place to live if you love history, like me. And it’s beautiful, too. Not like Vegas. Right on a river, lots of green space. I went to college a few towns over and got my Bachelor’s in Education. I always knew I wanted to teach history. My mom was a museum curator at the… well, one of the big important historical houses in our town. I’m considered very good at my job– I have to be, because if you want to teach history, you want to teach history there. It’s about as competitive as any middle school teacher position could be. 

Skeep: Hold on. You said your family might not still exist? What do you mean by that?

Crash: I looked myself up. My social media pages are gone. I can’t log in to any of my old accounts. I’m not listed as faculty at the school I was teaching at just three weeks ago. There are women with the same name as me, but none of them have much else in common. For all intents and purposes, I never existed. Elizabeth Ann Coen never existed.

Skeep: But have you tried to look up your husband? Your kids? Your parents?

Crash: I can’t bring myself to do that. 

Skeep: Because you’re scared they won’t be there?

Crash: Yes. And because I’m equally scared that they will. Because then, I’d have to contend with the idea of attempting to contact them. And I don’t want to subject them to that. I can’t imagine how scary it would be for my family to have someone like Cass Bellamy– with his record as a very unstable scam artist– approach them with all of this personal information claiming to be their wife, mother, or daughter. And it might be even worse if I find out they exist, but I choose not to contact them. That’s too terrible to even think on. And then… if they are simply gone… if they just never existed… that’s more awful than if they were dead. 

Skeep: We just got a gift from Spunk Z., thank you Spunk Z! Mods, control the chat– nobody’s taking their shirt off in the studio today. Unless? Liz?

Crash: That’s part of the reason I chose your show. I know that, if they really are out there, they’ll never see this. 

Skeep: I take offense to that. But I get it, you raised your kids right. Assuming they’re real. 

Crash: You joke, but yes. 

Skeep: No answer to taking your top off? 

Crash: I’m not going to do that. 

Skeep: If you’re telling the truth, they’re not really your nipples. 

Crash: That’s why I’m not going to do it. I want to give this other person’s body privacy and respect. As much as I can, anyway. 

Skeep: That’s more than the real Crash would ever say. If you really want to respect Crash, you should have come here in a knock-off Sora hoodie with a full-size bag of Takis. 

Crash: There’s give and take. 

Skeep: What’s Crash’s diet like? Or I guess, what’s your diet like as Crash? Rumor has it, he only eats hot chips and his shits are bright red. Is that true?

Crash: I eat what I can afford. Right now, that’s mostly Ramen. It got me through college, so I’m not unfamiliar with this diet. I’m smarter about using food pantry programs now, after two decades of living on a public school teacher’s salary. 

Skeep: Right. Because Crash is totally bankrupt and facing a bunch of lawsuits for fraud and shit.

Crash: Which I’m charmingly reminded of every time I leave his apartment. 

Skeep: That must have been an adjustment, getting used to Crash’s adoring fans. 

Crash: I’d call them stalkers. 

Skeep: Some of Crash Nation can go overboard. Better not be any of you cringebros or cringebabes misbehaving! Did you know who you were right away? What was it like, waking up in another person’s body?

Crash: At first, I thought maybe I’d broken a bone or pulled muscles or something. There was no pain, but everything about me felt wrong. My legs, too long. My neck, too short. All the weight was in the wrong places, and there was skin in new places, and no skin in other places– I felt like I was wearing a strange suit, glued to my bones. The reflection in the mirror was a total stranger. I don’t think I need to explain that it was a nightmare. But discovering the identity of this man– this human suit I was now trapped in– was worse.

Skeep: I bet. 

Crash: People are constantly trying to approach me. They’ll sit outside of the apartment, they’ll honk their horns to keep me awake, they’ll film me and call me. When I first tried to reach out for help on social media, people messaged me with all kinds of threats and just weird, mean stuff, but the worst ones were the ones who acted like they really wanted to help me, like they believed me. They were the cruelest. I picked up very quickly on the fact that I was living the life of a very, very unpopular person, and a very, very popular target.

Skeep: You mentioned you couldn’t get into your social media as Liz. But you can get into Crash’s Twitter and stuff. That’s very interesting.

Crash: His phone was already logged in to them. It unlocks with facial recognition. 

Skeep: At least that’s convenient. 

Crash: At the very very least, it got me in contact with you. I’m sure you wouldn’t have taken an interview with someone from a strange new account, coming at you with this premise.

Skeep: Well, you never know. I’m flattered you chose my show, though. I’m sure, if you keep this story up, you’ll get real popular with the freak circuit, astral projection and past lives and switching bodies and shit. Glad I got to be first in line to hear it.

Crash: You were one of the only people on earth who would take an interview with Cass Bellamy. And of my limited options, you were the shock jock who had been the most fair to him in the past. 

Skeep: “Shock Jock?” I don’t know if I like that. 

Crash: Sorry. It’s what we called this sort of thing in my day. 

Skeep: How old are you, Liz?

Crash: Forty-eight. 

Skeep: A tight forty-eight? Or have those years and two kids taken their toll? 

Crash: Let’s move on, Darren.

Skeep: No shame, Liz, we love MILFS on this channel.

Crash: Sure. I’m a MILF.

Skeep: Mike, clip that. And, Liz, how long is this tenancy going to last, do you think? Is this a temporary thing, or is Crash just gone and Liz here to stay forever?

Crash: I don’t know. I pray, constantly, that I’ll wake up at home again. I’ll be back with my family. Even if… well, I’ve imagined that maybe if I’m here, in Cass’s body, maybe Cass is in mine, somewhere else. In some other world. The world where Elizabeth Coen exists. You know what terrifies me most about that?

Skeep: The idea that Crash Bellamy is turning your whole life upside-down and probably getting you sent to prison or a mental institution and scaring the shit out of your kids?

Crash: Well, yes, but also, no… it’s that in my reality, I know I had heard of the Keyblade Karen. I’d heard of Cass Bellamy. I’d heard of CashMunnyCoin. I think one of my students even dressed up as him, dressing up as that character he likes, Sora, for Halloween. Bellamy existed in my reality, but I don’t exist here. So what does that mean? 

Skeep: You want to know what I think?

Crash: I can guess.

Skeep: Okay, go ahead. Guess.

Crash: I’ve thought it, too. Cass Belamy was– or is– a profoundly unstable person with delusions of grandeur who is facing multiple legal charges and several lawsuits at the moment. He’s bankrupt, all of his financial ventures have publicly and spectacularly failed, he owes possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to MLM companies, he’s infamous, he’s endlessly mocked and harassed both online and in real life. His life is hell. Maybe he finally just snapped. Maybe I’m just something he made up. Another personality that he invented to take over his life and handle his problems so he didn’t have to be Cass Belamy anymore. The human mind is mysterious and terrifying. Who knows how much it can fabricate? An entire lifetime of memories, even? Knowledge of subjects, skills, possibly learned on some subconscious level, heard about in passing, memorized and kept in some deep mental record of everything we see and hear throughout a day… Maybe there really is no Elizabeth. Maybe Elizabeth’s life is just a nice dream. But if it is a dream– if I am a dream– what happens if Cass Belamy starts to wake up? Where do I go? I’m terrified that he’ll come back to himself, and I’ll be just… nonexistant, worse than if I’d died… but even more terrified that, perhaps, he’ll just slowly slip back through the cracks in me, and I’ll just… be him. I’ll just be Cass Belamy. His mind, his life, his torment, my consciousness, forever. 

Skeep: That’s not even close to what I was gonna say. I was gonna say I suspect you’ve just been pulling a fast one on us all these years, Crash. 

Crash: …What?

Skeep: I think that the real scam is Crash Bellamy. You’ve been coming on this show for years, acting all fucked-up, doing crazy stuff, making cringe tiktoks and putting out those godawful e-books, all for attention. You’ve been playing into the lolcow bit for over a decade and now you’re finally over it, once it stopped being profitable. 

Crash: Why would anyone do that? No one would do that. 

Skeep: Crash Bellamy would, if he had the brains to plan that far ahead. Maybe you didn’t make money off of it, but you got attention. And in this world, what’s the difference? Hey– thank you, Guzzler69! Appreciate the donation. Proves my point. 

Crash: Darren. This man is so financially ruined, there’s no coming back from it. You’re suggesting that Cass– that I faked being… what, an anime game fanboy who fell for a bunch of get-rich-quick schemes and then started trying to run his own? You can look up the facts of the lawsuits against him. No one in their right mind would make the financial choices this man did. 

Skeep: I’m not saying you’re in your right mind. I’m saying you’ve been smarter than you look since day one. You’re just tired of the grift. 

Crash: I– (sighs) Alright. I understand why you’d think that. And I understood when I came on this show that there was no chance I’d ever convince you of the veracity of my experience. It’s a crazy story. I’m the definition of an unreliable source. 

Skeep: But you came on the show anyway, because, Crash, the one thing that’s true about you deep down to your core is that you love attention. If you really were someone else– anyone else– anyone sane, at least– you’d stay far away from the spotlight for the rest of your life. If I woke up as Crash Bellamy, I would just drop off the face of the earth. Or worse– I can’t say what I’d do, because it’s not advertiser-friendly, but let’s just say no one would ever see Crash Bellamy ever again. 

Crash: You know, I watched your show before I came on?

Skeep: I’d sure hope you did, especially since you’ve been on it.

Crash: This thing you have here, Darren– it’s a disturbing little ecosystem. It’s exactly the same bullying that middle school children participate in. Exactly. 

Skeep: I disagree, but Crash, you’re on the internet. What do you expect?

Crash: Cass Bellamy’s original sin was never fraud or identity theft– it was always the sin of being ‘cringeworthy.’ It was that he was weird. You boys were punishing him for that long before any of this crypto business started. The bad things that Cass has legitimately done were always just excuses– they made what you were doing feel socially acceptable. 

Skeep: No, no, no. See, now I know you’re Crash. Nobody sane thinks that your crypto scam or any of your other scams are excusable just because you’re mentally ill or whatever you claim.

Crash: I’m not excusing Bellamy’s long history of attempting to run scams or stealing credit card information and so on and so on. But I watched your show, Darren. The earliest episodes. And I watched Jimspore and Sorasins and SlimeTimeJim. I’ve seen the way you and people like you chased this man around when he was just some naive eighteen-year-old kid who over-identified with a video game, and whose primary characteristic was his naivety– willing to believe that anyone offering to make him rich quick was being genuine. I’ve met plenty of children just like Cass Bellamy. Children who should have been getting extra help. Children failed by the system, and failed by their parents. And I’ve met plenty of children just like you, too, Darren. And unfortunately, the Darrens of the world outnumber the Cass Bellamys. 

Skeep: Unfortunately? You know how I know you’re full of shit, Crash? Because you haven’t said Crash this whole time. You use his given name. Everyone calls him Crash. No one calls him Cass. Everyone hates him. I think probably even his own parents hate him. 

Crash: Sometimes, teaching middle school, it’s like watching starving piranhas in a tank. They swim around in formation, hunting endlessly, hunting nothing– until one moves wrong, gets bit, starts to bleed. And once there’s blood in the water… they strip their companion’s bones in seconds. You’re on the eating side now, Darren, and I’d say you’re eating well. But you know your people. Jimspore and Sorasins and SlimeTimeJim. You know all these nice members of the chat, all your donors. You know better than I do that someday, you’ll be the one with their teeth ripping you apart.

Skeep: Wow. What do you think about that, chat? (A notification appears. Several new donations have come in.) 

Crash: ... You know… 

Skeep: What do I know, Crash?

Crash: My favorite bird is the indigo bunting.

Skeep: I did not know that.

Crash: Two springs ago, there was a pair of them in the thicket behind my house.

Skeep: Behind your house, or ‘Liz’s’ house? 

Crash: … I’m not much of a birdwatcher. I’ve got a journal I never use and some binoculars but that’s it. But there was a day when it was sort of cloudy and I could see them really well from the stoop behind my house. I won’t call it a porch, just a concrete slab that we have a lawn chair on. I stayed there for almost four hours, just sitting and watching those little birds build their nest. I’d been putting off grading all afternoon and I was determined to keep putting it off, even if it meant becoming engrossed in the dramas of birds. They came and went. They squabbled with chickadees and squirrels. I realized that one of the birds was missing a foot. A cat got it, maybe. It’s a miracle it survived as long as it did. And still, it kept building that nest. At the start of the day, there was nothing there but a branch. By the end, there was a little thing like a teacup made of sticks and feathers and hair. My daughter brought me a cup of coffee. That’s when I realized my feet were so cold, they’d gone numb. It had been the heat of the coffee that reminded me how cold I felt. And I was overcome with this realization that that’s what love is, sometimes. Because when I stood up, as I warmed myself, those numb parts started to hurt. I guess, Darren, and Darren’s chat– I hope that someday, someone brings you a cup of coffee, and you suddenly feel all the places in you that have gone numb. I hope the hurt is worth the heat. And I hope that I wake up tomorrow at home.

Skeep: Wise words from our resident spiritually enlightened Keyblade Master of Financial Freedom, Crash Bellamy. That’s our episode today, folks– any last words, ‘Liz?’

Crash: Please– if you can help me get home, or if you know someone who can help me get home, help me. Spread this around. Make Skeep famous if that’s what it takes. 

Skeep: Shockingly, a sentiment I agree with. Thanks for tuning in, cringebros and cringebabes, and remember– be nice, wash your ass, and cringe deeply, my friends. 

[creepyclothdoll]

Ant Problem

I really thought it was a dog. I swear. I swear I didn’t know.

How could I? Vi never told me anything. She just expected people to know.

Walking into Grandma Vi’s house was like walking into a halloween haunted maze made out of ant traps. Flypaper hung from the ceiling and walls like streamers. The floor was littered in dusty plastic traps, and empty and half-full boxes of borax and liquid ant killer were stacked along the walls. The smell of the place was strange and cloying. Soap and poison. 

I never liked being there. She made me uncomfortable, even as a kid, when her paranoia wasn’t her defining trait just yet. 

She was a neat freak back then. Her rules were foreign to me, but not as foreign as the genuine outrage she expressed when those rules were broken. I didn’t even know what a coaster was, why was I being snapped at for putting my water cup down? You’re not sleeping in the attic bed, why are you so pissed at me for leaving it un-made? Don’t get mad at me for not drying the entire shower after I’ve used it– I didn’t even know anybody did that.

Grandma Vi would never tell you what weird unusual protocols she expected you to follow, she’d just fly off the handle when you didn’t do it, and that’s how you’d find out that it was disrespectful to wear a hat indoors or not offer to wash the dishes as a guest. She’d turn up her sharp jaw and suck her thin teeth and scowl endlessly.

I could honestly say that I missed that version of her. 

Compared to this Grandma Vi, that one was a delight. 

This Grandma Vi collected dirty paper dishes in her room. She stacked them high. She sprayed them with bleach. She refused to let me wash them– the sink drains were all clogged in the house now, stuffed with paper towels and borax. 

“Ants could get in through there,” she explained. 

When I brought Grandma Vi her groceries, they had to undergo a period of “disinfecting,” in which they were double-bagged in black trash bags and sealed for two days. This, Vi reasoned, would suffocate any insects that might be passengers inside the lettuce or the cornflake boxes. 

No sugar, obviously. Ants loved sugar. 

I tried not to eat in front of Vi. The day I spent as her full-time caretaker, I unwrapped an egg sandwich in front of her and it sent her into a panic attack.

“You’re dropping crumbs all over the floor!” she screamed.

I wasn’t. And even if I was, it’s not like the floor could get any dirtier. Vi would not let me vacuum because I did it wrong. Vi didn’t vacuum either– she couldn’t. Just walking around the house left her fatigued. Her hair had always been long and thick, but it was so hard for her to care for now that she’d had it shaved near to the scalp. She’d struggle to lift anything heavier than a spoon. 

I reminded myself of that daily. Grandma Vi was a sick, dying old woman. She was in pain. She was used to independence and solitude. This was the worst she’d ever felt and the most disempowered she had ever been. 

And, importantly, my dad was paying me to do this. Because someone had to. 

So I tried not to hate her guts. And I ate my meals outside, on the picnic table in what used to be her garden, even in the winter. I refrained from cleaning without her permission. I never, ever, ever used the front door. 

The front door could let in ants.

The ant obsession– I never found out where that came from. My dad just shrugged it off as one more drop in a giant bucket of assorted mental illnesses. 

“She’s been getting worse ever since Grandpa Joe passed,” dad said to me over the phone while I called him, crying in my car one day. Vi’s husband had been gone since before I was born. If there was a tolerable version of her, I never met it. “Grandma Vi relied on him. When your mom was growing up, Vi was actually a very quiet, mellow person. She was never… nice. But she felt safe. She had security. She didn’t feel like she had to go on the attack all the time.”

I hated imagining my mom as a child in this horrible house. 

“Your Grandpa Joe was a nice person,” dad said. “Not like her at all. I believe that missing him is a big part of what made her crazy.”

I didn’t argue with him, but I didn’t think he was right. Because in Grandma Vi’s halloween haunted house of traps and poison, every single photo of Grandpa Joe– a tall, dark, handsome man with a very kind smile– had been turned backwards to face the wall. 

The first month I was there was quiet. Then the scratching started. 

It sounded like a raccoon climbing around on the roof and walls. Every time I thought it was done, it started up again. It was the deep of night, and I couldn’t sleep. I slipped out of the attic bed where Vi still expected me to sleep and climbed the ladder down to the main floor. There was a porch light outside. I hoped it would scare away any animals. 

But as I started unlocking the back door, a sharp, cold hand grabbed my arm. I jumped. Vi was there, her dark eyes wide, her wrinkled face pulled tightly into a mask of pure terror. 

“Don’t open the door,” she hissed.

“I’m just turning the light on,” I said. I unlatched the door.

Vi screamed, and I felt a sudden hot pain across my face. I put my fingers to my cheek and felt blood. Vi had scratched me. I swore, and she re-latched the door. I ran to the bathroom to wash my new cuts out in the clogged sink. 

When I found Vi again, she was in bed. She wasn’t sleeping, though. And she definitely wasn’t sorry. 

“If you attack me again, I’m leaving,” I said to her. 

“You oughtta be grateful,” Vi said. “You don’t even know what you almost did, stupid.”

I refrained from calling her the names I was thinking of calling her in my head. I swallowed those teeth and asked,

“What did I almost do?”

Vi laughed. 

“You were just gonna let in those ants.”

In Vi’s house, I was never to leave the house at night. I was never to open the back door at night. I was never to open the front door at all. I was never, under any circumstances, to let anyone else inside the house. 

The scratching would come every few nights. Once it started, Vi finally started asking me to fix things around the house. She didn’t let me clean, but she did make me go up on the roof and look for holes. Nests. Anywhere ants could be living or trying to get in. And for once, to her credit, I did find some damage. It looked like termites, maybe. I sprayed bug killer and sealed up the chewed spots.

One day, Vi screamed at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night. I ran into her room to find her frantically springing from her bed. She collapsed into a dresser and knocked over the stack of paper plates she kept there, sanitized with bleach. She was staring at the window with pure horror. I didn’t see anything out there. She wouldn’t tell me what she saw. She only wept and shook and cried Joe’s name over and over. The next day she had me cover that window with cardboard and plastic and seal it. And then I had to re-seal it, because she saw a microscopic space that no one else would notice. Big enough for a potential ant to get in.

“You never met your Grandpa Joe,” Vi said to me out of the blue one day. Her room was lightless and stuffy, and she had spent her recent days sitting in bed and doing nothing but listen to audiobooks on an old cd player. “You never saw him.”

“I heard he was nice,” I said. 

“He’s dead,” she said. “He’s never coming back.”

“My dad says he’s with us in spirit,” I said. “He says he can feel him sometimes, loving us.”

“Listen, you moronic little girl. He’s dead. He’s not with us. So if you ever see him around, you better tell me. And you better keep the doors locked.”

I was taken aback.

“Have you seen him?” I asked.

“No. But the ants have. They’ve seen him and they know what he looks like. And I’ve seen the ants.”

Vi would deteriorate a little bit at a time, and then a lot at once. When I started, I wondered if we’d develop some sort of closeness over time. That was a very silly idea. The more Vi needed me, the less she could stand me. She would snip at me and scream at me. The first time she needed my help in the bathroom, I was punished for helping her with a long string of insults and criticism which, at this point, I had learned to tune out. 

I brought her a bowl of corn flakes in a paper plate in bed. She commanded me to spray her stacks of paper plates with bleach while she ate. 

“I don’t think that’s safe,” I said. She shot me a dagger glare.

“You want ants in here?” she said. 

“I just think this is an unventilated room and it’s not safe to spray bleach all over everything.”

Vi responded to this by throwing her bowl of corn flakes at me. Cereal splashed all over the floor. Milk soaked into my sweater and my hair.

“That’s it,” I said. 

I took my wet sweater off. I changed pants. I took the vacuum cleaner out of its dusty closet. 

Vi screamed and screamed at me as I cleaned up the mess. I took all of the paper plates and put them in garbage bags. I took down the flypaper. I threw the empty borax boxes in the dumpster. 

Vi couldn’t do anything but sob while I took over the house. When I got thirsty, I set my cup down on the table without a coaster. 

I was worried the neighbors were going to call the cops with all the yelling and crying going on, but no one did. Once, I looked out the window and saw a dark man in dark clothes standing on the sidewalk across from the house. I couldn’t see his eyes under his cap, but I thought he was looking at me. There was something familiar and disturbing about him which I couldn’t place. And then he was just gone. I looked away for a second and he had disappeared.

The sun went down. I came into Vi’s room with her dinner and her pills.

“You hate me,” she glared. “You really, really hate me. I must deserve it.”

“Vi, I cleaned your house.”

“You’re gonna let in those ants.”

“If ants get in, we’ll just stomp them. Listen, I’m not gonna live here and help you if I can’t live in this house.”

“Then you better let me die.” She scowled at me. I rolled my eyes. 

There was a scratching sound at the front door. Vi jumped and pulled the blanket up like a child afraid of the dark.

I stood up to go see the source of the noise.

“Get back here!” Vi shouted. “I’m just seeing what it is,” I said.

“You stupid bitch! Get back here!” Vi screamed louder as I walked up the hall to the front door. The scratches sounded heavy, huge. Not like a raccoon at all, but something bigger. For a second, I had a sudden, irrational thought– it was that man I saw before. It was that tall man with the cap. And when I opened the door, I thought, I would see him standing there, his uncannily and unplaceably familiar face grinning at me. And his teeth would be black, and his eyes dark and gleaming. I got scared. My fingers stopped on the latch. 

I flipped on the front porch light.

I peeked through the hole.

Of course there was no man. It was a dog.

A big black lab. He had a collar around his neck. He scratched the door again, tail wagging.

I hadn’t seen this dog around the neighborhood before, but to be fair, I hadn’t been able to get out very much in the past few months. It could very well be a neighbor dog. He was big, but he looked skinny. His dark coat shined slick in the porch light. 

I unlocked the front door. The dog looked at me through the screen, its glittering dark eyes docile. 

“Hi,” I said to the dog. The dog wagged its tail slowly. “Are you lost?”

The dog didn’t whine or bark, but only pawed at the door again.

Vi would never, in a million billion years, let me help this dog. But Vi wasn’t in charge anymore. So I opened the door.

I only meant to step outside and check his collar. But the moment the door was open, the big black dog strode into the house. 

Not a labrador, I realized. Maybe some kind of great pyrenees mix. It was big. Huge, even. It crossed the threshold and I swore it seemed to grow.

Not a pyrenees. A dane.

As the dog brushed past me, I reached my hand down to pet his dark coat.

My fingers passed through something grainy, crunchy, and moving. Something which slithered in rivers around my fingers, millions of tiny legs–chitinous, feathery, pinching.

Not a dane.

Not a dog.

The creature didn’t move right as it lurched down the hall. The legs bent wrong. The body writhed. It moved quickly, with purpose. 

I was too shocked to move. The dog-thing swelled up into an enormous, amorphous mass, and flooded into Grandma Vi’s bedroom, where she was already screaming.

I ran to her. I did hate her, but I ran to her. Maybe I meant to help her. Maybe I just wanted to see.

Either way, by the time I got there, there was nearly nothing left of Grandma Vi but a thrashing corpse. 

I couldn’t tell when the wild flailing stopped being her death throes and started being purely the erratic undulations and tossings and turnings of millions of tiny black ants, moving her bones. 

They crawled all over the floor. They crawled all over the ceiling. They crawled over my arms and legs. Not biting, just moving over me on their way to and from her.

I turned and fled the house.

The ants didn’t follow me. They were far too engrossed in dismantling their quarry.

I really didn’t know. How could I? Vi never told me.

She expected me to just know. 

[creepyclothdoll]

The Other Sister

She grinned Nina’s big gap-toothed grin and sang along as we drove. Just like the real Nina would do. 

She asked if I’d put on some West Side Story. I didn’t ask where her phone was. 

I knew. The real Nina had it. 

Nina called me that morning from our parents’ house up north. She asked why I was taking so long, I said I had to do all the dishes she left, she laughed. She asked me to bring her sociology textbook. 

When I opened her door, Nina was standing there with her bags packed, ready to go. The Nina on the phone asked if I’d found it. The Nina in the door asked if something was the matter. 

I’d been in our apartment alone for two days. 

This Other Nina brought her bags out to the car. She wore Nina’s clothes. She looked like my sister. But my sister wasn’t here.

She rode passenger. She was in a good mood. Sometimes, she spoke as if responding to things I hadn’t said. Or laughed at a joke I hadn’t made. I tried not to stare. Tried not to look at all.

I considered she was a demon. Something meant to hurt me, or trick me into hurting myself. Dangerous to drive with a demon.

I considered I was hallucinating. That was dangerous, too. 

I considered leaving this Nina at the gas station and speeding on up to my real family. But I didn’t. She came out with a donut and a smartwater and made a strange non-sequitor that I didn’t reply to, though she laughed as if I had.

“Did you pack your sociology textbook?” I asked after awhile.

“Did I? Oh, shit. No, I forgot,” Nina groaned. “It’s alright, I can wing it from memory probably.”

“... Do you remember the last couple days?”

“Pfft. Barely.” She said this like a joke. I had a bad headache.

We pulled up to our parents’ house. My parents’ house. I was sweating, my head was pounding, and I was nauseous. We carried our bags to the door.

My mom, my dad, and Nina rushed out to greet me. 

The Nina behind me lit up with glee.

“Hey Mom! Hey Dad! H-” 

She stopped. The real Nina’s mouth dropped open. The Other Nina’s mouth dropped, too, identically. Both of them froze.

The real Nina started saying “What the f–”

And then the Nina beside me disappeared.

Just gone. Her bags gone with her. 

An ozone smell lingered in the air. My head pounded, and my stomach lurched, and I was sick all over the sidewalk. My parents and my real sister were suddenly sick, too. Everyone slept through the next day.

I’ll never know what she was or where she came from. But I’ll never forget that millisecond before she was gone. The way all her features seemed, in that instant, to stretch out like an image on a broken TV. 

She’d been so terrified.

[creepyclothdoll]

For years I had a recurring dream that Edward Cullen couldn't pass the swim test on his own and he needed me to carry him over the deep end of the pool to show him it was safe. I was not ever super into Twilight.

Recently I had one where I had to flee the cops and I opened a closet and found Edward Cullen in there, hiding, and he said "I'm just feeling really scared right now." My sister asked me "why is he always so pathetic in your dreams?" And I don't know. Something about Edward Cullen has made my subconscious, from a very young age, think "that anxious toddler is my responsibility."

everyone has dreams about being lost at school, late to work, cant find bathroom etc but whats yalls most common Uncommon stress dream. ill always have dreams about having various problems with my fish tank

[creepyclothdoll]

Condemned

Paul loved escape rooms. 

He just loved them. The lovingly-crafted set designs and props, the electric buzz that came from finding hidden items and putting together puzzle pieces, the euphoria of cracking a code, the adrenaline of the ticking clock, and most importantly, the thrill of the escape. 

His friends had long ago stopped accompanying him every week, sometimes more than once a week, to escape rooms in his area. Especially once he started driving hours out of town just to try new escape game centers for a fresh hit of that delicious escape puzzle challenge.

Paul now preferred to go alone anyway. People just bogged him down. He didn’t come to make friends, he came to win. 

Months of hot anticipation finally bore fruit when the “Great American Escape” opened its doors to him, at long last. Great American, according to the billboards and posters strewn around town, was the primary attraction of an entertainment mega-complex which took the place of a long-disused waterpark hotel. It would be huge, he knew. Not just physically. His great fear was that it would blow up on social media– maybe even on his feed– and then the solutions would be spoiled for him. So he had to be first.

Great American Escape was so new the day he strode in there that there were still “CONDEMNED” notices stuffed into the recycling bins and old lists of health & safety violations stuck in the vents. 

“One ticket for Mystery Escape,” Paul, slapped his money on the counter and smiled at the teen boy working behind it. He was a short, lithe, wide-eyed man in his thirties with dark greasy hair and one navy blue university sweater he’d kept in moderate repair for a decade and a half.

“No group?” The boy asked. When Paul confirmed this, the boy said, “You’ll have to wait until a group comes in. You need three people at least.”

“When is the next group coming?” Paul asked.

“We don’t have any groups booked today,” the boy replied.

“... So, you’re not gonna let me in?” 

“... Um… yeah. I can’t. Sorry.”

Paul put down another handful of bills. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

“I’ll buy three tickets,” he said. He made sure to draw the boy’s attention to the extra $20, a little tip for a helpful front deskman. 

The boy, who was thin and bored-looking with a patchy teen mustache and his elbow resting on top of a stack of I Escaped stickers, glanced at the security camera which flickered in the corner, its blinking red eye frosted over with a decade of dust. The boy took the $20 and shrugged. 

“You won’t be able to escape,” the boy said. “It’s impossible by yourself. But if you want to try… I guess you can try.”

The boy led Paul towards a set of slightly rusty elevator doors, past posters and cardboard cut-outs of characters from “Rattlesnake Gulch Treasure Hunt,” “Escape From Venus,” and “King’s Dungeon Jailbreak.” Paul planned to return to these, but he’d start by going straight for the crown jewel– Mystery Escape, which had been advertised exclusively with nothing but an open doorframe leading to darkness. 

The boy went over basic safety guidelines. The door wouldn’t really be locked, red things were real alarms, things that said “staff only” were really for staff only, etc., blah blah blah, boring stuff.  Paul listened impatiently, but carefully, only because knowing what was “real” (and therefore inconsequential) would give him a leg up in the game. 

“The game starts when the elevator door opens,” the boy finally said. “Floor 3. Good luck.”

The elevator bell dinged, and the doors slid open. The light flickered. Paul stepped inside. 

He waved to the boy as the doors shut. He pressed 3. 

The light above flickered. Paul could almost see his reflection in the red-rusted metal doors. 

The elevator began its ascent, and right away, Paul could tell something was strange. There was a creaking noise, like a train braking. The light flickered. The light sputtered out. 

The elevator stopped.

Paul was trapped. It was pitch black inside the tiny car, which made no sound or movement. 

The first thing Paul did in any escape room was to check around for hidden props. Keys, ciphers, and puzzle pieces were often hidden around a room for players to find, which would then give them a clue as to what to do next. Paul checked around the elevator car for hidden tools. He pulled up the mildewy carpet by its frayed edge– nothing under there but more mildew. But wait! On the bottom of the carpet there were numbers and letters: EL1. What could that possibly mean? 

The next thing Paul did in an escape room was to interact with anything interactable he could see. In front of him was a series of numbers, 1-5, a “door open” and “door close” button, and “emergency.” But “emergency” was red, and red things were inconsequential. 

Paul pushed all the buttons but the last. To his surprise, the door began to open slightly– then jammed. 

Paul mused about the possible meanings of “EL1.” E was the fifth letter, and there were five numbers… But L? 

Maybe it was a cipher. Paul thought on this. 

He started trying combinations of buttons. The cipher thing was the key somehow, he knew it. A cipher worked with a code. Where was the code? Maybe it had to do with the symbols, not the numbers…

Suddenly, it all made sense to him. He pressed a set of numbers and then hit the door open button.

To his delight and satisfaction, the elevator doors creaked open. And with them came light.

Paul could see well enough now to see that he faced a concrete wall, which took up the whole lower half of the exit. But above that half, Paul could see a hallway of a hotel, so tantalizingly close. 

Paul had beaten escape rooms that had physical components to them before, so this was cake. He gripped the edge of the concrete ledge in front of him and pulled himself up. He let out a grunt as his head and arms made it over the threshold. He just had to find something to grip so he could drag the rest of himself through the gap, and then it was on to the next puzzle.

The elevator lurched.

There was a sound. A scrape, a crash, a wet squelch, a snap. It all happened at once, and it was the loudest sound he ever heard.

When Paul finally sat up, he was somewhere completely different. It was dark here. Darker than the elevator car. The darkness of this place was crushing, like the depths of the deep ocean. There was a smell of meat all around. Paul quickly dismissed the idea of trying to adjust his eyes– he’d navigate by feel.

Paul reached out into the darkness and felt nothing. He stood. His hands pushed him up from a strangely soft, lumpy floor. He noticed something strange about the sound of his movements, and let out an inquisitive “Hey!” to check the echo. It did not bounce. He was… outside?

No– he must be in the disused waterpark proper. The building was huge. Paul was delighted by this thought. He’d chosen the right room.

Paul felt around for a wall, a light switch, a puzzle. Anything. 

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” said a deep voice.

“Hello?” Paul said after a moment. 

“You lived a selfish life, Paul. You cared for nothing and no one but yourself and your own pleasure. You were an idolater, a heretic. You raised the Escape Game to the heights of a god. Pity that from this place, there is no escape.”

Paul listened carefully to the monologue. Selfish. Idolater. Raised. Heights. These things might be clues. 

“Paul,” said the deep voice, which seemed to come from above, below, and all around him, “You died a foolish death. Pity that you did not suffer. But now, you will suffer for eternity.”

Paul was already climbing up a staircase he’d found. It was the disused waterpark. Raise, he thought. Heights. The key was to go up. 

He found a craggy, warm wall. There was something under his hand– a button? He pushed it in, hard.

Under his hand, a huge glowing red eye flew open. 

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!” 

The eye blinked in pain and fury, welling up with tears. A thousand more eyes flew open along the wall before him, and Paul saw that it was not a wall at all, but some kind of enormous creature. It stirred, its red gaze illuminating the space around them.

“Stupid man. You woke something up.”

But now Paul could see the entire room– or space, or whatever it was. What he’d taken to be the “floor” was a mass of flesh– human hands, it looked like, reaching up stiffly. The hands started to stir as the creature woke from its slumber. What Paul had taken for a staircase was not that. 

Paul was making some real progress. As the hands clamored over each other, rising like tentacles from around the immense eyes, Paul hopped onto the face of the thing and started using the eyes as hand-and-footholds, which was their obvious use. Paul could spare no time on figuring out little things like that the honest way, he was on a clock. As he stepped on the creature’s eyes, it let out another unearthly roar and started to rise. 

There was a hole in the ceiling. Yes– this was meant to be a cave of some sort, and it had an exit. 

“You idiot,” the voice boomed. “You–”

Paul kicked the creature in the eye a few more times to make it rise faster. A tsunami of pale, writhing hands on wiggling stems shot up towards him to slap him away, but by the time they reached him, he was already through the hole. 

Paul scurried through the tunnel as fast as he could. If it was a three-person puzzle, you couldn’t waste any time.

He came to the next room, which was well-lit– a nice reprieve. In this room, a sweltering cave, some props department had gone all-out carving little demon faces that stuck out from the sides. These gargoyle-like stone structures leered at him and grinned in anticipation.

“The flametongue is coming, kindling,” the demon voices hissed. “Ready or not!” Paul heard a splashing, gurgling sound up ahead. He took quick note of some of the quirks of the gargoyle faces– most of them had black scorch marks on them, but some didn’t. That was a clue. The light from the other end of the tunnel grew brighter, as did the gurgling. Paul realized what he was meant to do, climbed up the protesting gargoyles, and found a set on the ceiling which had no scorching on them. Below, a wave of red-hot boiling sulferous-smelling magma flowed down, passing over the other gargoyles, who screeched and sputtered in it. Another puzzle solved. Paul dropped down once the stones cooled, and hurried up the tunnel– no time to spare. Only one more wave of “fire” passed before he solved the gargoyle pattern and pulled the right ones out of the wall in sequence to reveal a hidden exit.

This escape room was huge. He made his way through a room which featured a river of moving knives, which he was able to avoid by memorizing the timing and patterns, and climbed up into a room full of blistering ice and animatronic zombies which lurched toward him, their bodies crackling as they froze just as soon as they’d moved, their lips split by the cold. This puzzle was a simple matter of lining up the giant shards of ice in the room so that the light concentrated and blasted a hole through the glacial wall. 

Paul’s own body was profoundly frostbitten by this point, but he didn’t notice. He was on a timer. 

By the time Paul finally made it past the “three-headed-dog on a chain” puzzle, that subterranean voice from the first room had caught up with him.

“Paul,” the voice said. “There is no hope. There is no escape. Do you understand? You are dead, Paul–”

“Ssh,” Paul said, gazing at the puzzle before him. 

The door was immense. It seemed to stretch above him and beyond for miles. It was carved from stone older than the bedrock of earth, and above it, in an arch as large as the firmament, there was carved a phrase:

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

This was clearly important, because the deep voice had already voiced it earlier in the game. After checking the area for tools, Paul ran through anagrams. There were a lot of little props around the big door– lots of discarded holy texts, some bones, some strange bits of giant insectoid carapaces which Paul could not immediately identify. The bibles and such had bits burned and torn off of them in places. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. That was a ciper, maybe. He was sweating. He had to be at nearly an hour already. He started arranging the bones.

“What you are doing is futile nonsense,” the deep voice said.

Aha! By turning the phrase above the gate into numbers and then matching those numbers to the non-burned sections of each holy text, organized by the printing date, Paul had discovered an anagram which, when re-ordered, spelled out skeleton key prop, ds flo knemb yyuq. Paul had only bothered to spell out the first three words, however, due to the time crunch. That was all he needed to understand what to do, and he had done it: he had connected all the bones into one big key.

“I don’t think you understand, Paul. This is not a game. You cannot escape your fate. You cannot escape your death. You cannot escape damnation. You cannot escape from Hell.”

Paul slid the giant skeleton key into the lock. It took all of his strength to shove it to the back. Behind him, the host of hell scrambled over each other up the lip of the abyss– the thousand hands and eyes, the fire-spitting gargoyles, the lurching ice zombies, the great black dog, and many others, come to claim him for their own special torment.

Paul turned the key. There was a click. 

Well– more of a thunderous clunk.

The deep, gravelly noise of the stone door opening reverberated all throughout Hell.

“What the–”

“Hell yeah!” Paul shouted. He ducked through the door.

The red eye of the security camera caught it all. The man, crawling through the gap in the elevator. The lurch. The fall. The split.

The hopeless paramedics, the traumatized front desk boy, the shaking venue manager, the anxious lawyers, the dozens of police putting up brand-new yellow “do not cross” signage around the old hotel. 

The red eye of the security camera watched on as people in grim uniforms put the larger piece of what had been paul into a black bodybag and fetched the rest from the third story floor. 

“Used to love this waterpark when I was a little kid,” said one of the paramedics to another. “Now I hope they tear it down.”

“Wasn’t this place a lawsuit magnet back in the day?” said the other. “I remember a kid–”

The paramedics both noticed at the same moment that the body bag was moving. A lot. 

“Is he alive in there?” The first paramedic choked out, even though he understood that the answer had to be no. But then the zipper started sliding down. The bag was opening from the inside.

The headless body of Paul Gibson sat up. It reached out with its stumps of fingers, covered in cool dark blood, and rolled out onto the hotel lobby floor. Both paramedics screamed and leapt away as the decapitated Paul stumbled to its feet and lurched forward. It felt around without its fingers, leaving smears of blood on the front desk, the wall, the table, the “do not cross” tape, until it found the small white cooler on the floor. He pried it open with his mangled hands and lifted his own iced head out. 

Paul put his head on top of the gristle that was his neck. He had it the wrong way around, but his eyes opened and he smiled through bloody teeth. 

“I ss-ss-olved the b-a-ag puzzle,” the formerly dead man sputtered. “Did it a-all mys-self.”

He turned around to face both paramedics, so that his front side faced away. 

“Uh… congratulations,” the second paramedic said.

Paul choked up more blood and grinned wider. He stumbled toward the front desk, toward the paramedics. They backed away from him in horror as he reached out the wrong way and grabbed a commemorative I Escaped! sticker from the top of the pile.

“Th-a-ank you,” Paul said. “I’ll be su-ure to come back soon!”

[creepyclothdoll]

It’s not a question. I just read your “The Devil’s Wheel” story… That was brilliant! I’ll be thinking about that for a while!

It inspired me to put some of my fictional work here… thanks!

YES! Please post your work! You know, it's kind of funny-- when I came up with the idea for that story, I brushed it off-- my internal critic was like "that's so stupid, nobody will read it and they'll make fun of me if I post it." But I went ahead and did it anyway, and I was really surprised that it actually got notes and other people also liked it! I started this blog to try and make myself write, to force myself to put something out and not be perfectionistic about it. I was fully aware that most of my stories aren't gonna be everyone's cup of tea (or like... even be seen lol) but all the positive feedback on The Devil's Wheel has been really encouraging, and knowing that my silly little horror story helped someone else want to post their writing makes my writing feel worth it. I'd love to read your writing!

[creepyclothdoll]

I set Angel Free

All of this is gonna sound pretty mean but let me preface this by saying that this girl, Angel, thought she was God’s gift. And I mean that in the most literal sense. Like she’d literally introduce herself by saying, 

“My name is Angel, because I’m a gift from Heaven.”

She’d say it with this smile that was so fake and sickly-sweet you could taste your teeth rotting just looking at it. All her mannerisms were stolen from disney movies, like how she’d talk in this high-pitched little girl voice that she thought made her seem so cute. Like, yeah, yeah, you’re supposed to be nice to people like that, but it was so hard to tolerate her. 

So we messed with her. It wasn’t because she was in a wheelchair, I wanna make that clear. I don’t have a problem with people in wheelchairs. Just Angel. You’d feel the same way if you knew her. Honestly everyone did. 

She literally didn’t know where babies came from. Like one time my friends were joking about having Nick Jonas’s babies and Angel was like “how would you make the baby his?” And we had to literally explain to her where babies come from and ask where she thought they came from. She said, and I quote,

“When a mommy makes a very special wish, and gives it a special kiss and sends it to God, God cuts a piece of Heaven in the shape of a baby and wraps it in the wish and sends it back to the mommy, to grow up and be loved and kept safe on the earth forever.”

This was, by far, the stupidest thing I ever heard in my entire life. So of course I responded by telling her her mommy was lying to her, most likely because she was a whore. 

This made everyone at lunch laugh really hard because her mom, Ms CJ, was the school’s frumpiest old cat lady, and she literally had those 80’s coke-bottle glasses like that guy from Trailer Park Boys and the idea of her getting sexed up for dollar bills was enough to make you piss yourself laughing. 

Angel started crying and doing that annoying pouting thing. Frankly I doubt she even knew what a whore was, just that it was bad. I think she wanted to storm off, but it’s not like she could go very far. Which I pointed out as well, to uproarious laughter. 

Okay again, I don’t have an issue with people in wheelchairs. It was just really easy to mess with her. But this was the incident that, for some reason, made everyone think of me as the Designated Angel Watchman. Like, any time Angel did anything weird and cringey, everyone would look at me like they were Jim from the Office and I was the camera. And then if I didn’t say something funny about it, they’d get all disappointed. But when I did say something funny, it became the new Angel Thing Of The Week that everyone would be saying in the halls between classes, and I’d feel like a genius. Did it go too far sometimes? Sure. But that’s not my fault. All Angel ever had to do was act like a normal person for once and it all would have stopped. 

Angel was homeschooled her whole life until seventh grade, which is probably why she was so weird. 

I wanna be clear– she wasn’t like, mentally disabled or anything like that. That would make me look pretty bad. She was just weird. She was always singing by herself– pop songs, disney princess songs, sometimes songs in japanese from anime. She was convinced she had the best voice in the class, and flaunted it all the time like she thought we were gonna be impressed. She wore these huge ugly cat sweaters with glitter and frills every single day. 

And any time we watched a movie in class, she’d laugh this awful snickering long laugh at ANY joke and then bawl her goddamn eyes out if there was even a little bit of a sad part. It was so annoying!

She refused to do anything outside her comfort zone– no scary stories, no new foods, no games she’d never played before. She turned her nose up at anything unfamiliar.

So let me be clear: Angel deserved most of what we did to her. 

But she didn’t deserve what I did that last day.

Before I met Angel, I thought Ms CJ was okay. After, though, I realized she was batshit. She only let Angel come to our school for seventh grade because she knew she’d be Angel’s homeroom teacher and that she’d be able to flit in and coddle her throughout the day. Ms CJ was Angel’s constant guardian, which should be humiliating for anyone who has shame, but Angel loved the attention. She’d beg Ms CJ to stay with her longer every time she popped in during class. And that sucked, because I couldn’t say shit about anything cringe Angel did when Ms CJ was around, so I missed a lot of really good opportunities to mess with her. 

Ms CJ always sat with her daughter at lunch, which was honestly bad parenting because there was no way Angel would ever be able to make any friends like that. Ms CJ never let Angel join the rest of us for recess. Or for field trips. Once during a group project in French class, as a joke, I invited Angel to a made-up party in the woods. Angel replied by saying,

“I can’t go if it’s in the woods, silly! My mommy doesn’t let me outside!”

She said this like it was the most normal thing in the world for her, so I asked some clarifying questions. She explained, in her girly sing-song voice, that she’s not ever allowed to be outside for more than a few seconds at a time, and only when her mommy is there to hold her hand. 

“My mommy doesn’t want me to get lost,” she said.

“It’s not like you can run away,” I joked.

“I can run,” Angel replied, pouting. “Look.” She kicked her legs slightly. I heard the clack of chains. 

That was the first time I ever noticed that Angel was shackled around her ankles. 

“I run all the time at home,” Angel bragged. “I run alllll over, over all the rooms. I wish I could run here too, but it’s too dangerous. The windows,” she added, like that would clarify it. I was baffled. So she didn’t even need the wheelchair.

“Um, why are you chained? Are you like, under house arrest or something?” I asked.

“No. My mommy just doesn’t want me to get lost. She’s the only one with the key.”

“Your mommy sounds like a psycho. You should call the cops,” I replied.

The French teacher overheard her crying and she got me sent to the principal’s office again. But I swear this time I wasn’t being smart or anything, I was genuinely freaked out for her. I told my friends, who all agreed with me that it was weird. But I guess I hadn’t been the first one to notice the chains. The others who had assumed it was because Angel was like, prone to fits or something. That made sense for Angel, but it still made me feel weird and didn’t sit right.

My mommy doesn’t want me to get lost.

I started to feel sorry for her. She was still weird and annoying, but she was weird and annoying because her mom was out of her mind and wouldn’t let her be a normal kid. How was she supposed to learn to be normal if she couldn’t even go outside, for god’s sake? 

I still messed with Angel when she did weird stuff like quote anime characters in class and bring stuffed animals to school. But if it was ever just her and me, I was nice to her and asked her stuff about her life. 

Her favorite movie was The Little Mermaid. No, she had never been to summer camp. Her favorite time of the week was church. She disliked onions and wanted to be a vegetarian except that her mom was very insistent about her getting enough protein in her diet. She loved those Warrior cat books and wanted to be a veterinarian someday. She didn’t have a dad. Ms CJ took the shackles off her ankles only once they were inside their house and all the doors and windows were closed and locked. That was also when Ms CJ took the locked metal bar off of her chair so she could get up. The bar went over her waist and prevented her from standing. She wore those big ugly cat sweaters every day so we wouldn’t see it. Her mom didn’t want people to know about her special condition, which, as far as I could tell, was all made-up. Any time I asked about her “condition,” she’d just say some stuff about being a very special heaven baby or whatever.

“Do you ever think about running away?” I asked finally. “Why don’t you just… leave?”

She looked shocked.

“Of course not!” she said. “I love my mommy. Where would I even go?” She shuddered visibly. 

The shudder pissed me off. I blew up at her and called her a whiny scaredy baby until she cried, and I got sent to the principal again. 

 She didn’t even want to be normal. That’s what pissed me off the most. 

It was springtime, and the snow was finally mostly gone. I’d been in Mr Bevends’ science class before, so I knew what to expect that day– first real nice day of spring was always a “class outside” day. We’d go out and look at moss and leaf buds and stuff and he’d talk about natural changes during the season. It was all a big excuse for us to get outside– no one liked it more than Mr Bevends himself. He was so excited to announce we were taking class outside, he didn’t even notice Angel’s face go stark white as he led the rest of the class out the doors.

“I– I can’t–” she stuttered, but I interrupted her.

“It’s the most beautiful day in months,” I said. “It’s a perfect day. You’ll love it.”

“I’m not allowed,” she whispered, embarrassed. 

“You wanna be a baby forever?” I said. “Come on. You’ve never broken a single rule in your life. Live a little.”

After a long moment, Angel nodded. She followed me out the back doors of the school, onto the sidewalk. I walked next to her for awhile. She looked scared, but also fascinated by the dripping icicles from the roof gutter above us, and the ice-blue sky above, and the rows of black trees stretching up into the air. 

“It’s cold,” she said. 

“Yeah, that happens when you’re outside for more than a few seconds.”

“I think… I like the cold.”

We caught up to the rest of the science class, and listened to Mr Bevends talk about leaves and crap. Angel oscilated between this vibrating excitement and a frightened, hunted look, like her mom was gonna show up at any second and punish her for disobeying and doing one normal thing in her life. Angel touched the trees reverently. My friends made fun of her for “fondling the foliage.” I didn’t join in this time. I had bigger things planned.

When we broke off into groups of two, I went with Angel. My friends knew I was up to something great then, so they followed us, chuckling eagerly. I grinned back at them when Angel wasn’t looking.

We were supposed to identify different types of trees in the woods behind the school. I helped push Angel’s chair up the hill– it was insanely heavy. The wheels snagged on the muddy grass, but it didn’t matter. It’s not like she actually needed the thing.

“What are you doing?” Angel asked with rising terror as I leaned over her and produced the key. 

Everyone knew Mr Bevends always had class outside the first nice day of spring. It was really easy to slip the key from Ms CJ’s lanyard when she always left it out on her desk during homeroom. It was the one with little white wings on the chain. 

“I’m setting you free,” I said. I unlocked the shackles around her feet first, then the bar around her waist. She screamed at me to stop the entire time, but I knew I was doing the right thing. Someone had to teach her to be independent. Someone had to throw her out of her comfort zone. 

And that’s what I did. I set Angel free.

Angel rose from the chair. 

And rose. And rose.

Her shoes went over her head. She kicked her legs wildly as they drifted rapidly upwards. Angel shrieked and tried to grab onto the top of the chair– the handles, even trying to clutch a handful of my hair– desperate to stay anchored to the ground. But it was too late. She was already six feet in the air. 

Then twelve. 

Then thirty.

I couldn’t do anything other than watch on in shock as Angel shot up into the sky like a helium balloon. She twisted and clawed at the open air. 

It happened in seconds. One second, we were watching Angel make frantic grabbing motions at the ground, howling with terror, and the next second all we could see of her was the glint of the sunlight on her glittery pink cat sweater as she disappeared up into the vast emptiness above.

When Mr Bevends came to see what was the matter, all any of us could do was to point up. But by then, she was just a pinprick against the deep, endless blue sky. 

Then there was nothing.

[creepyclothdoll]

Turkey Day

I didn’t scream when Deb brought out the platter. The dish was large, white, and decorated with little porcelain angels– the ‘good china’ for special occasions. I had thought there was something grotesque about those little porcelain angels before Deb set her masterpiece upon it. 

It was the conflict-avoidance in me that stopped the scream. But it didn’t stop my jaw from dropping. 

“Mom, you said you weren’t going to do this this time,” Derrick said through his hands. 

“Well, no, I told you on the phone, we had a surprise visitor yesterday,” said Deb.

“Bet you never saw a thanksgiving turkey like that in Minneapolis,” Trent grunted at me, before smugly, theatrically stabbing into a roast arm with his fork. He seemed pleased that I didn’t have a response. My mouth just wouldn’t form words. I couldn’t move, or speak. 

“I didn’t–” Derrick finally took his fingers off of his nose. “You said, last month, that you were going to do a turkey this year.”

Trent stuffed an enormous forkful of stringy grey meat into his mouth and chewed, staring at me all the while without blinking.

“No, sweetie, you’re remembering wrong,” Deb, who would not look at me at all, argued in her gentle sing-song voice. She was short and thin with a fading blonde bob and grey roots. She wore a beige sweater over a beige dress. “I said your dad wasn’t up for it, with his hip, and with my sciatica and your brothers gone, I just didn’t think we could manage it this year. But then yesterday, around four, just about when I was unwrapping the frozen turkey, the doorbell rang! Trent, please.” Deb slapped Trent’s hand as it reached for another big forkful of meat. “Wait till I carve some for everyone first, for Christ’s sake. Poor Lexi is sitting there thinking ‘oh, these redneck McCabes, bunch of barbarians raised in a barn.’”

“It’s fine,” I said automatically. This was the first movement of my muscles since Deb brought out the platter. “I don’t think that.” 

“You don’t have to be so nice,” Deb replied. “I can take it.”

Derrick was staring at me now, too. His hand passed under the table to squeeze mine.

“Why couldn’t you just carve it in the kitchen?” Trent huffed.

“That’s not how Thanksgiving dinner works, dear,” Deb replied. Her thin fingers worked to saw thinner slices of cooked flesh off of the bones. The meat seemed to be somewhat tough, because she was going very slow at it. “Anyway, I ask this fellow where he was coming from, and he said Rindley. Lexi, that’s a whole county over. He’s a door-to-door JW, I forgot to say. He’s got this stack of flyers, you should see them, they’re funny. Anyway. I say, ‘don’t you JW’s always travel in pairs?’ and he says, ‘no m’a’am, that’s not a requirement, that’s only for safety.’ And I say, ‘well aren’t you worried about crazy hicks out here in the boonies taking shots at you?’ And he says, ‘I never had a problem out here before.’ And I say–”

“Godammit Deb!” Trent blurted. He let out a long, excruciated grunt as he stood up laboriously, taking great care to make sure we all knew how much it hurt him. He pushed his walker around the table and grabbed the carving knife from his wife. “I’ll show you how to carve a roast. Christ almighty, I swear to god.” He sawed the meat with violent speed, splashing grease on his old navy checkered flannel. 

“And I say–”

“Mom, maybe save it for another time?” Derrick said. He made a big show of secretly nodding towards me so his mother knew why. 

“It’s a funny story,” Deb frowned

“I want to hear it,” I said. Deb only sighed and sucked her teeth. Then she sat down.

“Well, it’s not that funny. It’s dumb, actually.”

“I still want to hear it,” I said. My phone buzzed in my dress pocket, and I pulled it out instinctively. 

I’m so sorry this is awful, the message read. It was from Derrick. He squeezed my hand again. I took mine away. 

“She’s calling the cops,” Trent said. “Told ya.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I just got a text.”

“Surprised you can get texts out here,” Deb said. “Most people can’t. Too far out in the sticks.”

“I can get them through wifi,” I said. I’d gotten the password off of their fridge when I arrived. It was under a magnet that said Never Mess With A PISCES WOMAN Who Was BORN IN MARCH And Is Allergic to STUPIDITY, They’ll Never Find Your Body! “I also think I still have bars, though, too.” 

I was getting sick of Deb acting like this suburban mcmansion was so far from civilization it might as well be the middle of Alaska. We were thirty-five minutes from Grand Rapids, tops. 

“Gals try to call the cops sometimes,” Trent continued, breathing heavy now as he struggled with the roast. He wasn’t doing much better than his wife at it. Sweat dripped from his wispy brown crew cut into his piggy eyes, but he refused to slow or stop. “They don’t last very long. By the time the cops get to our door, we’ve already got a whole new Thanksgiving meal to serve up to them.”

“Okay,” I said. He raised his eyebrows, as if to accentuate that there was an implication there that I should pick up on.

“Dad.” Derrick said. “She’s not calling the cops.”

The thing I didn’t like about Derrick’s dad most was the way he said everything like he’d rehearsed it in his head a lot beforehand. Sometimes, Derrick could sound just like that. He’d say something and raise his eyebrows with a smile like he was expecting a big reaction. He wouldn’t move past it until I gave some acknowledgment that yes, I did “get” the implication. I never realized how much that annoyed me until now. What do you want, a round of applause?

“God dammit!” Trent threw down the knife. “God damn roast is tough, Deb. What about ‘low and slow’ don’t you understand?”

“Well, there was a lot of meat, dear. If you just fixed the grill this summer–”

“Oh, don’t go bringing that up.”

“Men.” Deb tutted. “Nothing is ever their fault. You know what I’m talking about, Lexi. Us women take the blame for all their stupid mistakes. But that’s life. Cleaning up our men’s messes without complaint.” Deb smiled conspiratorily at me, and I smiled back, even though I didn’t relate to or agree with the sentiment. The front door was just down the hall behind Deb, just a few square meters of grey carpet and beige walls smattered with tacky and vaguely threatening Hobby Lobby signage (Grandma’s Shit List: Don’t Say Shit, Don’t Do Shit, Don’t Expect Shit! and House Rules: ACT RIGHT or get a trip to the woodshed!).  I kept glancing at it, measuring the distance in my mind, wondering if I could run fast enough to get to my car before one of Derrick’s parents caught up to me. Or drew a weapon. 

Another buzz in my pocket.

I love you, Derrick had texted me. I could see him out the corner of my eye trying to make eye contact with me and shoot me his own conspiratorial smile, but I did not look at him. Trent slapped a pile of rubbery grey meat on a plate and passed it to me. 

“Breast or thigh?” He joked without smiling. I took the plate. The meat was wet, as if it had been boiled, and the thin ring of white fat and skin around the edge jiggled as it separated from the muscle. I thought I could still see blonde arm hair on the skin. 

Derrick took his plate of grey meat from his dad. As Deb took hers, Derrick leaned over to me and whispered in my ear,

“Don’t forget to say thank you.”

“Thanks, Deb,” I said. 

“And my dad?”

Deb passed a basket of white grocery store rolls around. There was a low white ramekin of canned cranberry sauce on the table, and a big blue bowl of salad with russian dressing. There was an extremely mushy and condensed soup-forward green bean casserole. In an effort to make a good impression, I had brought candied sweet potatoes. 

I took a generous helping of the salad, which was somehow also very wet. The russian dressing water from the lettuce pooled with the unthinkable and loathsome juices of the grey flesh at the bottom of the plate. I also took a generous helping of the sweet potatoes. No one else did, though. 

“Let’s wait until we say grace,” Deb said through her smiling teeth, watching me take a deep swig of my wine. “Thirsty, aren’t we?” She chirped. She poured me some more wine, filling it almost to the brim this time. I think she meant this as an insult, but I was going to do that myself anyway, so the joke was on her. “Would you like to lead the prayer, Lexi?”

“Uh… I don’t really know what to say,” I said. 

“Just say what’s in your heart.”

“Um.” I cleared my throat. I looked to Derrick. He nodded encouragingly at me, a sign he wasn’t going to step in and rescue me. “Thank you, God, for bringing us all together, here.” Deb and Trent both bowed their heads and touched their palms. Derrick followed suit. “I’m so glad I got to meet Derrick’s lovely parents. Thank you for this amazing… meal.” I felt the wine come back up into my mouth a little bit and had to gag it back down. “We’re all grateful to be here, rather than anywhere else. Uh. Amen.”

Derrick wasn’t religious, as far as I knew. But he gave a reverent nod before he opened his eyes and picked up his knife and fork. 

“That was a beautiful prayer,” Deb said. She sniffled. “You picked a good one, sweetie. Don’t let her go.”

“No thank-you for carving your dinner. I see how it is,” Trent mumbled. 

I watched Derrick take a small mouthful of meat. It was sinewy, and had come from the hand. He chewed and chewed. I’d never been less attracted to him. 

My family ate Thanksgiving dinner in the early afternoon. Sometimes my grandparents were there, sometimes my dad’s brother and his kids, sometimes family friends would come. My candied sweet potatoes always killed. Not a spoonful left by the end. But the thing was that we all liked each other. My mom would get a little tipsy and tell crazy college party stories, my dad would burn the pecan pie and laugh so hard he cried, and then we’d laugh so hard we cried, and then we’d watch movies and laugh some more. 

“So, what is it you do for a living?” Deb asked, chewing on her roast. Her teeth scraped the fork as she pulled it off.

“I’m a personal assistant at a pet magazine.”

“Oh, that’s adorable,” Deb laughed. I smiled a little bit. 

“It’s harder than it sounds. You know The Devil Wears Prada?” I asked.

“...No,” Deb said.

“You like Prada?” Trent asked through an open mouth of food.

“No, but, basically, I do what Anne Hathaway does, except for with dog clothes. But if you haven’t seen it, nevermind.”

“We don’t like the Devil in this house,” Trent said.

“It’s not a literal Devil. It’s Meryl streep–”

“Let’s not keep talking about this. It’s Thanksgiving,” Deb snapped.

Buzz.

My mom loves you, you’re doing great.

“You know,” I said, swallowing a bite of sweet potatoes, which I made very sure hadn’t touched the grey meat or any of its accumulated juices, “these candied sweet potatoes are made with real maple syrup and brown butter. I toasted the pecans myself and sugared them with homemade maple caramel.”

After a long silence, Trent wiped his mouth and replied,

“I don’t like real maple.”

“It’s too strong,” Derrick agreed.

“We already have a dessert,” Deb said.

“Regular mashed potatoes are better.” Trent said. “And they’re traditional.”

“To each their own,” I said politely. I poured myself another glass of wine. Honestly, I hoped they did kill me. Anything to end this dinner sooner. 

There was a loud, faraway noise from below us. A pounding, a rattling, and then a long, low wail. Derrick put his head back in his hands.

“Mom.”

“That’ll be our JW.”

“He’s alive.”

“You know how hard it is to break down a whole carcass, son?” Trent spat. “Nobody’s got the time for that. Not when you find out you gotta make a thanksgiving dinner for two extra people last-minute the day before. Now get your elbows off the damn table.” Then, in a moment of brilliance, he added, “Only one set of elbows on this table tonight, and they’re well-done.” He grinned and looked at me for a reaction again. “What, you got nothing to say?” 

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said. 

“Say what’s on your mind,” Trent responded.

“Okay. Well… candied sweet potatoes aren’t a dessert,” I said. “They’re a side. But I don’t want to start an argument.”

“You’ve wanted to start an argument since you got here,” Trent said. “Don’t think we can’t see you think you’re better than us. College-educated girl, women’s studies, you probably got all kinds of opinions.”

“I think you want to start an argument,” I said. 

Derrick groaned beside me. 

“See? Knew you think you’re smart.”

The man in the basement let out another agonized wail. 

“It was journalism, not women’s studies,” I said. 

“Like it matters. This day and age, you tell me what the difference is. It’s all women’s studies, gender studies these days.” Trent huffed. He chewed as he talked, and I could hear the fat squeak between his teeth as the prisoner downstairs built up the energy for another scream. 

“When I was a girl, I took a women’s studies course in college,” Deb piped up, attempting to smooth down the hostile tone of the conversation by pretending she couldn’t sense it. “Back then, there were still ladies who would go out and burn their bras in a big fire. I understood feminism when it was about equal rights, but I look around today and– well, hasn’t it gotten out of hand? You know how it is, Lexi– you’re a pretty girl, you don’t shave your head or pierce your eyebrows or anything like that. Do you?”

The Jehovah’s Witness wailed in the basement and rattled his chains. 

“Would you shut him up?” Trent snapped at Derrick. 

“Me?!” Derrick said. “Dad.” He gestured at me. Like that would sway anyone here. Trent’s big lumpy face was stony as a gargoyle’s as he gestured at his walker. He wouldn’t be able to go down stairs with his bad hip.

“I’ll do it,” Deb said. “It’s my mess, I’ll clean it up.” She stood up and pushed in her squeaky beige chair.

“No, mom,” Derrick said. “I’ll do it.” He looked at me, then looked away quickly, towards the grey carpet. “I’ll, uh–” Derrick grabbed the carving knife from the roast and wiped it on his napkin. Then he headed towards the pantry door.

“That’s my boy,” Trent shouted, without any real pride. “Sure hope you’re loyal to him, Lexi,” Trent said to me once he was arguably out of earshot. “Most women these days–”

“I’ll go with him,” I said as I stood, almost knocking a fork off the table. I hurried after my boyfriend through the dingey, grey-tiled kitchen (past a hanging wood sign which read In This House We Believe: No Cryin’, No Whinin’, No Back-Talkin’!) and catching him before the secret door behind the rack of very expired dry goods swung shut. 

“Lexi–” Derrick said, four steps down the creaky wooden staircase. The man’s screams were louder and more frantic now. “I’m so sorry about all this.”

“Is this normal for your family?” 

“No– I mean, the ritual cannibalism is just a Thanksgiving thing, I promise. And my mom said she wasn’t going to do it this year. I thought it would be fine.” Derrick smiled wanly. I didn’t like the way that smile looked on his face. Honestly, I didn’t like his face very much anymore. I could see his dad’s meaty forehead and his mom’s thin nose. I could see Deb’s wide cheekbones and Trent’s lipless mouth. 

“You don’t have to do what they say,” I said.

“It’s– not that big of a deal,” Derrick replied. “It’s just family stuff. You know?”

I didn’t. 

“Derrick,” I said. “I don’t like your family.”

Derrick looked hurt.

“I know this is a lot,” he said. “And my dad is being an asshole. But… you don’t choose your family.”

“I mean… why not?” I said, following him as he carried the knife down the stairs. 

“What’s the alternative?” Derrick said. “I turn my back on my mom and dad? No. Never. I believe in loyalty, Lexi. Even when people aren’t perfect. Even when I don’t agree with them. I don’t agree with you all the time, but we’re still together.”

“Well, don’t expect me to come to any future McCabe Thanksgivings,” I said.

“I understand why you’d feel that way after today, but… you might change your mind when they’re your family, too.” Derrick stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up at me with his big, dopey eyes.

“Derrick–” 

“Lexi, this isn’t how I wanted to do this. But you’ve seen the worst of my family secrets, and you’re still by my side. So will you stay by my side?”

Derrick was doing that thing again, that Trent thing, where he said a line and waited for my reaction. 

“Let’s just get out of here,” I said.

“Will you stay by my side?” He repeated like maybe he thought I hadn’t heard. “For the rest of our lives?”

“I just want to go.”

“I’m asking you to marry me.”

“I have ears, Derrick,” I snapped. It was the first time I’d ever snapped at him. I never snapped at anyone. Especially not him. 

His expression didn’t move an inch. He was smiling, for some reason, like this was the happiest day of his life.

“Then say yes,” he said.

“No, I don’t want to marry you,” I said. 

“Because this is where I come from?” He swallowed, shaking.

“No. Because this is who you’re choosing to be.” I replied. 

Derrick hung his head. The knife drooped to his knee.

“Things aren’t that black and white, Lexi.”

I clapped my hands over my ears as another shriek boomed through the basement, close now.

Derrick sighed.

“Fuck,” he said. He hurried into the basement proper, and I followed him. Again, I didn’t scream. 

What was left of the man was chained by the ankles to the wall. He crawled like a caterpillar, the stumps where his arms used to start on his torso haphazardly bandaged with paper towels and medical tape. His face was a pulp, his body bruised. He was naked. An overturned bucket leaked into the drain in the floor. He looked up at Derrick and I with wide, white eyes.

“Help me!” He screamed. “Get me out of here! Oh, Lord, please get me out of here!”

“Sorry, man,” Derrick said, stooping over the prisoner. His knee fell onto the man’s back, pinning him in place. He raised the knife. “Thanksgiving with the family. You know how it is.”

“Derrick,” I said. He looked up at me a second too late to see the bread knife flash under his chin. By the time he did, it was lodged all the way through his neck. His face was stunned, betrayed. I felt bad.

I pulled the knife out, followed by a torrent of blood. Down it went, towards the floor drain. 

Derrick dropped down to both knees. He clutched his neck. He didn’t scream. 

“Don’t make a sound,” I said to the armless, naked prisoner, who had been screaming a lot until then. He’d rolled away to the side as soon as Derrick’s weight was off of him. “If you stay quiet, we’ll be out of here in time to finish Thanksgiving with our own families.”

The man spat bloody drool.

“J-jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” he managed. 

“Yeah…” I said. “I think you’re onto something with that.”

Derrick twitched and gurgled. Then, finally, he stopped. 

I imagined my own family at home, topping off the evening with hot toddies and bad cable tv Christmas movies. 

“Lexi, Derrick,” Deb called from upstairs. “We’re cutting into the pie! Hurry up or your dad’ll eat it all before you get any. As soon as I find my knife!”

“I’ll help you!” I shouted up the stairs. 

My phone buzzed.

Miss you this year lex!! Happy Turkey Day!! Love, mom

I wiped blood from my thumb and texted her back.

Love you too.

I started up the stairs.

[creepyclothdoll]

(Not a scary story)

Severely jetlagged, I slept oved 14 hours and had a vivid dream that the BEST character in NBC's Hannibal was the Muppet detective character. She was the most relatable one, and had the most good sense by far. She was the only muppet. The fact that she was a muppet was never addressed. She survived to the end.

I strongly felt like the fandom, in its love for Will and Hannibal, was fucking sleeping on the muppet character and she was egregiously underappreciated.

I spent the first day of my vacation recreating this.

[creepyclothdoll]

The Devil's Wheel

The Devil’s Wheel

“If you say yes,” said the Devil, “a single man, somewhere in the world, will be killed on the spot. But three million dollars is nothing to sneeze at, missus.”

“What’s the catch?” You squint at him suspiciously over the red-and-black striped carnival booth. You’re smarter than he thinks you are– a devil deal always has a catch, and you’re determined to catch him before he catches you. 

“Well, the catch is that you’ll know you did it. And I’ll know, too. And the big man upstairs’ll know, I ‘spose. But what’s the chariot of salvation without a little sin to grease the wheels? You can repent from your mansion balcony, looking out at your waterfront views, sipping a bellini in your eighties. But hey, it’s up to you– take my deal or leave it.”

The Devil lights a cigar without a match, taking an inhale, and blowing out a cloud of deep, sweet-smelling tobacco laced faintly with something that reminds you of rotten eggs. If he does have horns, they’re hidden under his lemon yellow carnival barker hat. He wears a clean pinstripe suit and a red bowtie. No cloven hooves, no big pointy fork, but you know he’s the Devil without having to be told. Though he did introduce himself.

He’s been perfectly polite. 

You know you need the money. He knows it too, or he wouldn’t have brought you here, to this strange dark room, whisking you away from your new house in the suburbs as fast as a wish. Now you’re in some sort of warehouse, where all the windows seem to be blacked out– or, maybe, they simply look out into pitch darkness, though it is the middle of the day. A single white spotlight shines down on the two of you. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” you say. “I bet the man is someone I know, right? My husband?”

“Could be,” the Devil says with a pointed grin. “That’s for the wheel to decide.”

He steps back and raises his black-gloved hand as the tarp flies off of the large veiled object behind him. The light of the carnival wheel nearly blinds you. Blinking lights line the sides. Jingling music blares over speakers you can’t see. The flickering sign above it reads:

THE DEVIL’S WHEEL

“Step right up and claim your fortune,” the Devil barks. “Spin the wheel and pay the price! Or leave now, and a man keeps his life.”

You examine the wheel. 

The gambling addict

The doting boyfriend

The escaped convict

The dog dad

The secretive sadist

“These are all the possible men I can kill?” You ask, thumbing the side of the wheel. It rolls smoothly in your hand. Then you quickly stop, realizing that this might constitute a spin under the Devil’s rules. He flashes a smile at you, watching you halt its motion. 

“Addicts, convicts, murderers– plenty of terrible options for you to land on, missus!”

“Serial wife murderer?”

“Now who would miss a fellow like that? I can guarantee that the whole world would be better off without him in it, and that’s a fact.”

The hard worker

The compulsive liar

The animal torturer

The widower

The desperate businessman

The failed musician

The beloved son

“My husband is on here too,” you say. 

“Your husband Dave, yes. The wheel has to be fair, otherwise there’s simply no stakes.”

“I know what’s gonna happen,” you say, crossing your arms. “This wheel is rigged. I’m gonna spin it around, and it’ll go through all the killers and stuff, and then it’s gonna land on my husband no matter what.”

“Why, I would never disgrace the wheel that way,” the Devil says, wounded. “I swear on my own mother’s grave– may she never escape it. In fact, take one free spin, just to test it out! This one’s on me, no death, no dollars.”

You cautiously reach up to the top of the wheel and feel its heaviness in your hand. The weight of hundreds of lives. But also, millions of dollars. You pull the wheel down and let it go.

Clackity-clackity-clackity-clackity

Round and round it goes. 

The college graduate

The hockey fan

The Eagle Scout

The cold older brother

The charming younger brother

The two-faced middle child

The perfectionist

The slob 

Your husband Dave

Clackity-clackity-clackity.

Finally, the wheel lands on a name. A title, really.

The photographer

“Hmm, tough, missus, but that’s the way of the wheel. But hey, look! Your husband is allllll the way over here,” he points with his cane to the very bottom of the wheel, all the way on the other side from where the arrow landed. “As you can see, it’s not rigged. The wheel truly is random.”

“So… there really isn’t another catch?” You ask. 

“Isn’t it enough for you to end a man’s life? You need a steeper price? If you’re really such a glutton for punishment, I’ll gladly re-negotiate the terms.”

“No, no… wait.” You examine the wheel, glancing between it and the Devil.

You really could use that three million dollars. Newly married, new house, you and your husband’s combined debt– those student loans really follow you around. He’s quite a bit older than you, and even he hasn’t paid them off yet, to the point where the whole time you were dating you watched him stress out about money. You had to have a small, budget wedding, and a small, budget honeymoon. Three million dollars could be big for the two of you. You could re-do your honeymoon and go somewhere nice, like Hawaii, instead of just taking two weeks in Atlantic City. You deserve it. 

Even so, do you really want to kill an innocent photographer? Or an innocent seasonal allergy sufferer? Or an innocent blogger? Just because you don’t know or love these people doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t. 

The cancer survivor

The bereaved

The applicant

Some of these were so vague. They could be anyone, honestly. Your neighbors, your father, your friends…

The newlywed

The ex-gifted kid

The uncle

The Badgers fan

“My husband is a Badgers fan,” you say.

“How lovely,” the Devil says. 

Then it hits you.

Of course.

The weightlifter.

The careful driver.

The manager.

The claustrophobe.

Your husband Dave lifts weights at the gym twice a month. You wouldn’t call him a pro, but he does it. He also drives like he’s got a bowl of hot soup in his lap all the time, because he’s afraid of being pulled over. He just got promoted to management at his company, and he takes the stairs to his seventh-story office because he hates how small and cramped the elevator is.

“I get your game,” you announce. “You thought you could get me, but I figured you out, jackass!” “Oh really? What is my game, pray tell?” The Devil responds, leaning against his cane.

“All these different titles– they’re all just different ways to describe the same guy. My husband isn’t one notch on the wheel, he’s every notch. No matter what I land on, Dave dies. I’m wise to your tricks!” 

The Devil cackles. 

“You’re a clever one, that’s for sure. I thought you’d never figure it out.”

“Thanks but no thanks, man,” you say with a triumphant smirk. “I’m no rube. No deal. Take me back home.”

“As you wish, missus,” the Devil says. He snaps his fingers, and you’re gone, back to your brand-new house with your new husband. “Don’t say I never tried to help anyone.”

[creepyclothdoll]

Listening to a non-fiction book about maritime disaster and the way this author is describing the ship sinking is so sexual

[creepyclothdoll]

taking away a clowngirl's makeup telling her she doesn't have to be a clown she can just be a normal silly billy and correcting her any time she tries to juggle until she gets sadder and sadder and eventually stops talking altogether and just communicating via gestures and realizing with horror you've created a mimegirl