creepyclothdoll

[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

[creepyclothdoll]

There's this thrift store at the old strip mall up the highway.

You go to the earrings first. You love earrings, but you’re always losing them.

This place has most of them in a wicker basket up by the register, but there’s more on a rack nearby and some of the fancier stuff is behind the glass under the table. But who goes for the “fancy” stuff at a thrift store? Thrift is the point. These earrings, the ones in the wicker basket, are stuck through blank, white cardboard squares with neon price stickers. 

All of them are under $10, lots under $5. You rifle through them, registering at first only that the colors and styles are very pleasing to you. Your favorite colors. The right size. Then the familiarity sets in. You are struck by a weird, uncanny feeling, which you don’t immediately place. Your body reacts to the surprise before your brain even has a chance to register what it is.

These are your earrings. Not all of them, but lots of them. Here’s a pair you bought from a different thrift store during your first year of college, gaudy wooden hippie-ish disks with flowers painted on– old and tacky, but you felt like you were cool enough to make them work– which you lost when you moved out of your dorm. Here’s a pair you lost in your last apartment, which you didn’t even realize you hadn’t seen around for the last two years– two fairly pricey and elegant-looking sapphires that your parents got for your 30th birthday, when you got promoted to Marketing Specialist. Here’s a pair you forgot you ever owned until now– some dangly red stacked beads that you wore for one Florida vacation in 2011 and then never again. Because you probably left them on the plane. 

“These are all mine,” you say out loud. You can see your reflection in the slim mirror built into the rotating sunglasses display. The earrings you are wearing today are a completely different style– the sort that a Marketing Specialist wears on the weekends, still arty but much more subtle than the sort you wore back then. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t wear these dangly red things now. You just… don’t, really.  

“Oh, that’s interesting,” says the employee. She is short and dark-haired and named Beth. She is reading a paperback at the check-out and ignoring you. 

You look at the price tag for the sapphires. $15.99. That’s a steal. 

But they’re mine, you think. I shouldn’t have to pay fucking money for these. They’re mine.

Your eyes drift down under the mirror to the sunglasses rack. The first pair there is child-sized, with a blue frame that has a faded Little Mermaid logo on it. You recognize the sunglasses from a photograph of yourself when you were a child at Valley Fair that was pasted to your mom’s fridge for the longest time. They’re $2.99. 

In the “fancy things” area under the glass, you see an old, heavy camera. Could that be the one your grandma made you bring to high school for show-and-tell, the priceless antique World War II era camera, which went missing after you left it overnight? You got in so much trouble for losing that thing, even though you never wanted to bring it to begin with. It’s only $500. You have to buy it. There’s also a tote bag with your old work logo plastered on it which, you know, is packed full of cannabis. You decided to stock up during a trip to Canada because you didn’t know anyone who sold it while you were living in North Dakota, making ends meet while you tried (and failed) to get scholarships to animation schools. You never got to use any of it, though, because that bag got shoved under a seat in your car when you were crossing the border and you just sort of didn’t retrieve it for long enough that, eventually, you forgot you had it, and by the time you remembered, you couldn’t find it again. 

How did it get here?

There’s a deck of gen 1 Pokemon cards that you took to the park one day in 2000 and left on a slide. You’re sure you had some back then that would be really, really valuable now. 

“These are all mine,” you say. “Can I have them back? They were mine originally, I mean. I didn’t give them up on purpose and I don’t know how they got here.”

“You can’t just take things,” Beth says. “But yeah, if you want to buy them, you can have them.”

“But they’re mine. That’s my grandpa’s World War II camera. I lost it in ninth grade and I feel terrible about that.”

“It’s $500,” Beth says, pointing to the sign. You sigh and pull out my credit card. But then you see the rack of jackets. Among them, you see a terribly familiar jean jacket. 

“That’s my mom’s!” you shout excitedly. You run over to it and pull it off the rack. It’s a 1980’s Levi’s jean jacket that she saved up all her money to buy. She wore it everywhere, and kept it for decades until she could pass it on to her daughter. You had it for two months. You loved that jacket. It symbolized your mom’s trust in you. And it made you feel cool. You were in middle school, and being cool was very important, and you got a lot of compliments on it. Then one day, you went with your little brother to the park, and it was hot out, so you took it off and left it on a bench. When you went home, you weren’t wearing it anymore. But you didn’t realize it was gone until your mom asked why you hadn’t worn it in awhile. The fact that you were so careless as to lose something so important to her broke her heart. You used to search the closets in your house compulsively, hoping it might just turn up one day, and your mom would forgive you. But it never turned up. You checked that park bench, too, every time you went to that park for the rest of your life. The jacket never returned, of course. 

But now, here it is, on this rack. 

If you’re going to take anything back from this place, you know it should be this. 

And then you see grandma’s quilt. 

It’s draped and pinched with clothespins on a different rack, with the tablecloths and scrap fabric. 

Your grandma made you this quilt when you graduated college. It has her handwriting on the corner and the year she made it– 2014. She spent months making this in your favorite colors, picking out fabrics she thought you would like. She knew you really well. You loved that quilt. 

Three years ago, you took it to the laundromat. You set it on a table while you did the rest of your laundry first, so you could cold-wash it separately. But then, a crazy guy came in, yelling and acting all erratic, and it was night and you were the only other person in there, and he kept asking to buy your hair, and you rushed out of there with your wet laundry dripping. You forgot about the quilt until the rest of your blankets finished drying on your apartment banister two days later. You called the laundromat and they didn’t have it. Last winter, your grandma passed. 

You grab the jean jacket and beeline for the quilt, adding it to your pile. 

Two of your old pillowcases are on the rack too— you didn’t even realize those had been folded up with the quilt the day you lost it.

In the children’s toy section, you see your favorite stuffed raccoon, Dorothy. You haven’t seen her for years. She used to go on lots of adventures with you and your brother. You don’t remember losing her, but now you realize that yes, she– and all these other stuffed animals– are lost. Somewhere along the line, you saw them for the last time. 

A scarf you wore in tenth grade. A pair of pants that don’t fit you anymore. A snowglobe with a picture of your middle school friends in it. A nice sports bra you got from a hiking gear store when you thought you were going to get fit four years ago. A piggy bank shaped like Spongebob. Dozens of Goosebumps books. A decorative halloween skeleton. A purple sweater that you forgot was your favorite.

You grab all these things and add them to the growing pile in your arms. 

What am I gonna do with this piggy bank? You ask yourself. But then you remind yourself that it’s yours. It doesn’t matter what you do with it! It’s just supposed to be yours!

The worst thing is that you don’t remember the loss of most of these things. You never grieved them. They mostly just slipped away quietly, and you moved on. You stopped buying scarves that looked like that because your favorite color changed and you sort of realized you didn’t really like scarves that much. But that doesn’t mean you don’t want it back. 

That scarf reminds you of the time you wore it to homecoming. A crisp autumn day that was made better by a good hot dog and worse by Rachel and Drew making out on the bleachers in front of you. You were happy that day. Not about homecoming– you lost the game, not that you cared much, but because of the weather, and your friends, and the hot dog, and because you didn’t know to be depressed yet. 

You want it back. 

You want it all back.

You take the scarf. You take the toys. You take everything. You take the christmas ornaments and the ukulele and rope strings of necklaces over your arms and purses over your shoulders. You take printed mugs, good water bottles, old halloween masks, trophies you won in elementary school, your second prom dress (the one with the glitter), happy birthday cards from relatives who died when you were little (they loved the little you! You were so loveable), a jello mould in the shape of a chicken you bought as a joke with your first real girlfriend (wish it ended different), a pair of ladybug-print rain boots you left outside when you were three, VHS family movies from the late 90’s, a phone you dropped in a lake, an old tamagotchi you also dropped in a lake, a book of self-portraits you did as a series in college (you look nothing like her now but you still want it), your old journal filled with comics (remember when you wanted to be a cartoonist?), your old skateboard (remember how you used to play?).

It’s the little trinkets, the things you don’t even think you liked very much, but which maybe you could have made better use of, that you want back the most. You aren’t done with those things. Unfinished, all of them. 

In a stack of blue bins against a wall are a thousand little things you drew or wrote over the course of your childhood– gifts to your parents, homework you never turned in, little stories about your friends, drawings of your grandma. Some of it is still pretty funny (remember when you wanted to be a comedian?). Animation cells that you made and stored away in the basement when you were telling yourself your scholarship hunt was just “on pause” (these ideas are still good, you can still use them!) What the hell are these things doing here? How dare these people?

“Excuse me, ma’m,” Beth says, only now looking up from her paperback– which you now realize is also yours– with a mix of irritation and deep concern. You spin around, covered head-to-toe in your things. 

“What?!” You snap. You are wrapped in the quilt, draped in ribbons and purses and medals and sweaters and scarves of all shades from all eras of your life. You look like a giant slug made of closet debris. 

“There’s no way you’re gonna buy all that,” Beth says. 

“Like hell I am!” You shout. “I shouldn’t have to buy any of it! It’s all mine, and I want it back!”

A little orange plastic treasure chest with two of your baby teeth inside– you used to be so little, so innocent. Your Girl Scout sash– you had so many friends. The orange yo-yo you got at a carnival when you were one– the first thing you consciously remember losing, remember how sad you were? A note you wrote to yourself with a funny song lyric on it last thursday (you might record it someday). A Mickey Mouse photo frame of you with your best friend Anna in elementary school (you loved her so much, why don’t you talk to her anymore?). 

“I want it all back,” you say again and again. 

There was a version of you who wore the red bead earrings. There was a version of you who played with the stuffed raccoon with your brother. There was a version of you who appreciated those nice sapphires. There was a version of you who was happy in a scarf at homecoming. There were versions of you with more friends, versions with fewer troubles, versions that were thinner and stronger and healthier and younger, versions that had all sorts of dreams and visions for the future, versions that strived for completely different things than you strive for now.

You can still have them back.

You pull the sunglasses display over, grabbing every pair and stuffing them into your many bags. You grab the hat rack that used to sit in your childhood bedroom and start dragging it toward the door. 

“Ma’am, I’m going to call the police if you don’t stop,” Beth says. You do stop– just long enough to walk back to her and take the paperback murder mystery out of her hands, which still has your library info as the last check-out glued inside the cover. 

“See?” You laugh bitterly, pointing at it. “Me!”

The nest of stuff has swelled around you, trailing behind you like the tail of a huge worm. 

Beth is already calling 911. You move very slowly toward the door, exerting tremendous effort to lug all of your precious memories toward the glass pane between you and the outside. You tell yourself that you can already feel the feelings coming back to you– all those other versions of yourself, just by proximity, are waking up again inside of you. The young woman who believed she was going to be something different, the child who was happy in the rain, the future artist before the future evaporated– all of them are coming back now. 

You don’t fit through the door. Beth is talking fast to the operator. In a small town like this, they’ll be here soon. Breathing heavy, you back up and slam into the open door frame, wedging yourself firmly inside. The little mermaid sunglasses shatter. Something crunches. You grunt and scream, pushing with all your might. Something rips. Something scrapes. 

“She’s trying to take everything,” Beth explains hurriedly. “You will? That’s great. As fast as you can.”

You have one last hail mary– you leap forward, letting yourself– and everything you’re wearing– fall to the ground. The enormous mass of things around you crunch down around you, crushing the air out of your lungs, pinning you to the cement. But you’re out. You did it. You took it all back. It’s yours. Yours again. 

By the time the police arrive, you’re gone– lumbering up the freeway, backward through traffic, a massive snakey worm made of tangled fabric and papers and trinkets. The “you” that walked into the thrift store is only a tiny piece of what you are now– a YOU freed from the burden of forgetting. Cars swerve around you to avoid hitting you or any of the things dangling from your massive, hulking form. 

Where are you going? To be everything you meant to be. To fulfill every possible future. It’s not too late. Not now that you have all of it back. 

You march forward like time.

[creepyclothdoll]

Artist: Lindsey Marie

[creepyclothdoll]

Fish from World of Warcraft

[creepyclothdoll]

show you’re obsessed with + text posts ...a household staple dare I say

[creepyclothdoll]

@cryptotheism My sister & cousin wrote a fanfic when they were 9 about Plumpy having Lord Licorice's baby. I think about it all the time

Did you know?

The Candy land board game is based on real events? It's true. All of that things happened.

Did you know that Lord Licorice is my homie in real life and we hang out?

[creepyclothdoll]

me drowning in a lake while my friend, 11th century french rabbi and prolific scriptural commentator Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a) stands nearby: help im drowing help me rashi

Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a): "drowing" is likely a scribal error for "drowning." "im drow[n]ing" is to say: my lungs have become filled with water, and i am struggling to breathe. "help" once followed by "help me" a second time: the first [help] is directed to the Holy One, blessed be He, and means: "may He help us by swiftly delivering the World to Come;" the second (i.e., "help me") is to invoke direct assistance in this world, spoken as if to a personal friend. the meaning of "rashi" here is unclear.