Hello, friends! I have just finished the first half of the fall semester, in which I took a class titled Horror: Short Stories and Film. Naturally, the main concept behind this class was, indeed, horror short stories and films (the former of which being way easier to consume on my own than the latter; it’s a good thing I am not above snuggling with stuffed animals.)

Anyway. The final project for this class was for us to actually write a short story or screenplay, or create our own short film. Obviously, I decided to go the short story route, and the result was my very first horror story! While I’ve written some eerie things before, I’ve never actually written something that I could confidently classify as horror. Now that I have crossed over into the dark side, however, I can confidently say that I really love playing around with this genre.

Clarification: I love playing around with the psychological side of the genre, not the demonic side.

This was partly why I enjoyed learning about the short stories way more than I did the films. Horror short stories and novels tend to focus more on the psychologically rattling side of horror, while movies tend to be all “hErE’s a DeMoN aNd HeRe’S tHe PrIeSt!”. Which quite frankly freaks me out (The demons. Not the priests.) and also sounds like the start of a bad joke…

So I got to write my very first horror story, and I ended up loving it. Even better, my professor loved it. In his words, I did an “outstanding job”. Which, brb, gonna let that inflate my head for the REST OF MY LIFE. *cough* So naturally I asked him if I could post it on the grand old internet, and joy of all joys, he said yes!!!!

Which means……

…

I GET TO SHARE SOMETHING I’VE WRITTEN! Mwahahahahahahahahaha! (finally)

So without further ado, please enjoy my Horror Short Story, Gimme.

content warning: this is a horror story, so it’s meant to be creepy. don’t say I didn’t warn you. (unless you are Phoebe, and then I absolutely did not warn you.)

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GIMME – a horror short story by Mackenzie Keene

I’ve been here for five days. This is what I am told, at least, though whether it is true is debatable. There’s no window in this room, not even a clock by which to count the passing of time. It’s just me and the bed. Me and the bed. Me and the bed and the one who visits at night.

I’ve stopped telling the nurses about it. The day after the first visit, I made the mistake of asking about the creature in the corner. Two pinched eyebrows and a hastily scribbled note later, and the pills in my tray nearly doubled. Now when it comes at night, I am too drugged up to feel scared.

This is good, I tell myself, frozen in bed as I stare at the creature’s half-melted skull and ogling eyes. One shouldn’t be scared of their friends, after all.

It has visited three times so far. Each time its smile grows wider–or perhaps it is mine–and I know it is not here to hurt me. It is here to smile and stare and do that little thing with its hands. The one that children do when they want something. A curling of the fingers. A silent request.

Gimme.

This is what I imagine the creature is saying to me.

Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.

If only I knew what it wanted.

I am going to ask it tonight.

It appears in the corner in the dark. Its arms are long and bent at the elbows. Its fingers are long, too, the kind of fingers that could stretch around your throat and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and–

I don’t like the way it stares.

Two slimy eyesockets and a face made of hot wax. It is red and shiny and smiling–always smiling. And the way it stares at me tells me it’s been staring for a while. I had simply fallen asleep before it arrived.

I think it enjoys watching me sleep.

The creature’s legs are long and thin and crooked. I’ve never seen it walk. It only stands there. Staring. Grinning. Palms facing the sky. I think to see it walk would be more horrifying than the staring. Spider-like. Insectile. I much prefer the staring.

Can it be called staring if it has no eyes?

My throat is dry when I search for my voice. My tongue is like a thick paste in my mouth. What if the creature does not talk? What if it does? I do not know what kind of voice a creature with a crack in its face for a mouth would have.

I don’t know if I want to know.

“What do you want?”

The creature says nothing. This is a mercy, I think.

Its smile is big. But then the creature does something it’s never done before.

It takes a step.

Then another.

It takes it two strides to halve the distance between us. Must be nice, I think, having such long legs.

Inhumanly long, though perhaps it had never been human. It does not walk like a spider. It’s more like a grasshopper. Squat and step. Squat and step. Its shadow grows larger on the wall, stretching out in awkward angles. I’m shocked to find it has a shadow. Shadows make things tangible, make them real. Had there been a part of me hoping this creature had been a figment of my already cracking mind? Perhaps. I cannot say for certain, but I know now that it is real and it’s still smiling.

It stops between me and the wall, and for a moment I think it will speak. It does not. But its fingers go forward and back, scrunch in and out, curl towards itself in that sign I can only interpret with one meaning.

Gimme.

This is what it’s asking. Demanding.

Gimme.

And suddenly I know what it wants. It has dropped right into my brain. An answer to the question. I feel no fear. The drugs are working–the doctors will be pleased. I feel nothing at all as the creature takes what it came here for. I don’t even flinch as it severs the big toe off my right foot.

It tickles, actually. I think I laugh. Or do I scream? The two are so close in tone that it’s hard to tell the difference.

When the nurse comes in the next morning, there are tears stained on my pillow.

They don’t believe me. Darkness crouches in the corner and I know it will return tonight. But they do not believe me. I told them what happened.

See? See? It took my toe! I told you it was real.

But when they lifted back the sheet and peered inside, they shook their heads and smiled.

You’ve always been missing that toe. Don’t you remember? There’s nothing wrong with you.

Except, of course, for the pills. The pills and the little cups of water and the nervous eyes and the fact that I’m still here in this bed without a big toe.

It will come back tonight. I know it. I await its return with anticipation, the squirming in my stomach dulled by the medication pumped into my system to keep me quiet. To keep me calm. They didn’t like hearing about the insectoid creature with its empty eyes and cracked smile and talons which can cut through flesh.

I can’t blame them. Not really.

The creature returns after I’ve fallen asleep. I wake up to find it in its corner, staring. Its shadow is once again sprawled across the wall, darkening the paint. This time, it does not hesitate.

One step. Two steps. Three. Something catches my eye as it walks, and I realize now something which had evaded me sooner.

What do you want?

There, on its right foot–if a stump of melted flesh can even be called a foot–is something I recognize. A toe. My toe. The toe I never had.

The creature’s hands are doing it again.

Gimme.

It wants more. It craves in the way of a starving person, taking more and more until it gorges itself to the point of destruction. There is nothing I can do to stop it, not with the medication weighing my limbs down like lead. I don’t even know if I’d want to.

Gimme.

It is not a request anymore. The toe was just the beginning. A dip into the pool of taking. This time it wants something more.

I squeeze my eyes shut as the creature comes closer, but there is nothing I can do to stop the talons from ripping into my flesh.

Gimme.

So I do the only thing I can, and I lay still until it is over.

My hand is gone. The left one. It’s an unfortunate day to be left-handed, but I suppose we cannot choose the circumstances which befall us. I try not to think about what this means. No more handwritten birthday cards. No more picking up my daughter and hearing that giggle which always pulled a laugh out of us both. No more ramen noodles with chopsticks.

I suppose I could learn how to do that with my right hand, but it took me far too long to learn it properly the first time.

The doctor is in today. He frowns over my notes and his eyebrows pinch in the center, a little pucker that says “we are worried but we are not worried enough to help you”.

“I hear you’ve been having nightmares,” he says. “About a monster in your room.”

“It took my toe,” I say.

“Of course.”

“Last night it took my hand.”

This makes the doctor tilt his head almost comically, and I wonder what he will say. There is no denying the stump of my hand underneath the sheet, that ghost of feeling that twitches every time I try to move a finger that has been shorn off by bloody claws. I expect him to believe me this time. I expect him to lift the sheet and gasp. I expect him to show concern in those horrible black eyes.

I don’t expect him to smile. He lifts the sheet and the corner of his mouth, and there’s a note of humor in his voice when he says, “Your left hand?”

We both stare down at the lifeless lump on the mattress. My head swims when I see it. There’s a part of me that wants to believe–like the doctors and nurses and notes scratched on paper–that it was all a dream. But it was not, and here is the proof–a stump on sweat soaked sheets.

The doctor’s smile doesn’t falter, and for a moment I see a flash of a cracked grin and eyeless eyes and talons that rip through flesh and bone.

“You never had a hand,” the doctor says. “Don’t you remember?”

I don’t. I don’t remember at all.

It is back in my room. This time I am waiting. I sit up in expectation, my handless arm and toeless foot tingling.

“Perfectly normal,” the doctor said. “Phantom pains.”

He does not understand. None of them understand. They will not understand until I can prove it to them.

So I wait. I wait as the creature grins at me. I wait as it moves forward.

Squat. Step. Squat. Step. Squat. Step. Squat.

Its grin is like melting wax and its eyes are like the doctor’s eyes and its toe is my toe and its hand is my hand.

My own fingers stretch out towards me. Stretch. Scrunch. Stretch. Scrunch.

Gimme.

This time, my voice rings through the room. A cry for help. A scream. Wrenched out of me like it is the last thing I will ever do.

The creature is unfazed. Its grin widens. I think it is laughing. I do not know if I am screaming or crying or wretching so hard it hurts. But the creature wants. The creature needs. And the creature takes without my permission.

Its fingers slip into my mouth. Its fingers and my fingers and our fingers together. I feel it on my tongue. I see the creature’s expectant stare–that look that says it will take what it is owed and I am owing.

By the time the creature leaves, the space where my tongue used to be is a hollow void.

The doctor smiles when he enters my room. He smiles when he checks my report. Smiles as he injects something into my bloodstream that he says will help with the pain.

“Beautiful day today,” he says. “The sun is shining. The first nice day we’ve had in a while.”

I want to ask how I would know. I want to say there is no window. I want him to see the hole in my mouth, the space where my tongue used to be, the empty void that now holds nothing but teeth.

“Should be any day now and you’ll see it too. I’m sure you’re excited to get out of here.”

He doesn’t know. Doesn’t understand. There is no leaving. There is no freedom. It is me and the bed and the creature. The doctor adjusts my IV drip and smiles down at me. His lab coat is white and his teeth are white and his hair is white, too. There are wrinkles around his eyes, and I realize now that they aren’t from age–they are from the smiling. The endless smiling.

I open my mouth as if to say See? See? I told you from the start. I told you it was real.

The doctor’s smile softens. His eyes turn gentle. There is something calming in his voice.

“I’m sure it’s been hard,” he says. He does not seem fazed by my empty mouth, by the teeth that form their hollow cave.

He asks me about the cancer. He compliments my strength. He asks if I remember anything from before the surgery.

“It couldn’t have been easy,” he says, “to lose your tongue at such a young age.”

I stare at him. I try to put together the pieces. I realize when he turns his back that it is the same story. Always the same.

You never had a tongue.

It has always been this way.

There is no creature. There is no monster. There is nothing but the four white walls and his stark white coat and his shiny white hair and the whiteness of his steps as he leaves the room.

I cannot call him back. Cannot make a sound. And it is in this moment that I realize the monster didn’t take only my tongue.

It took my voice, as well.

It returns in the darkness. I have been waiting. It is all I can do now. Wait. Watch. Pray it does not return. My mind has been spinning all day, putting together the pieces, trying to solve the puzzle.

It’s taken my toe.

It’s taken my hand.

It’s taken my tongue and my voice.

Piece by piece I’m disappearing to a monster that no one else sees.

It has always been this way.

The voices stir within me. They are supposed to be gentle. Reassuring. Instead, I find myself writhing against them, refusing to listen. I know who I am. I know what I’ve lost.

Believe me. Believe me.

Please.

The monster returns and this time it is different. This time it is a face I recognize, not from the nights where it has haunted me, but from the days I stood staring at my reflection. A face which has never known what it is to be loved. A face which I’ve picked apart and reconstructed until I recognize it no longer.

I know this face, for it is mine.

My own eyes stare back at me. My own hands stretch out, palms facing the heavens. The steps are even and sure as I walk towards my own bed. This creature and I have become one, a marriage of sinew and bone. But there is something it lacks. I know it. It knows it. And that is what it has come for. The final piece. The last fragment of myself that I have left.

I want to scream. I want to run. I want to fling myself from the bed and escape into the hall. But my muscles are dead on the mattress. There is no running. There is no escape. There is only me and the creature. Me and myself and that which it wants.

Its fingers–my fingers–curl and stretch. Stretch and curl.

Gimme.

Just like the first time, I know what it has come for. And just like the first time, I am helpless as it puts its icy fingers against my head and grins.

Gimme.

The word is in its eyes. The word is on its lips. The word is in my head. Rolling and rolling and rolling.

Gimme.

There is a pounding in my head, and I feel its fingers cutting through the marrow of my skull.

It is my mind which it has come for. My last tether to reality. In this moment I realize that there will be no more tomorrows. No more questions. No more waiting for night to come.

Its fingers press into my skull and dig, ripping through flesh and bone until it unearths that which it has come for. My mind throbs in its fingers as it pulls it into the open, soft and pink and strands of muscle. I simply stare, incapable of speech, incapable of motion.

I watch as it inserts my brain into its own head, and this time it is me smiling, grinning at the notion that I have officially lost my mind. 

The creature continues to watch me as I slip away into the dark. Its fingers curl one final time, and I swell with the pride of having given everything I could.

Gimme.