You’re alone. You’re alone in a house in the woods. You’ve been running for some time. Your legs are weak, your chest is shaky and sore, and something at the back of your brain is telling you to run run run run run leave this place. You’re better off risking the pitiless forest than whatever it is that’s chasing you. You try to steady yourself against the furniture. The wood is rotting and you collapse as it tears itself apart. You try to pick yourself up off the floor. You’re so, so cold. Why are you here? Why does the moon stream through the window, reflecting careless light off the tears on your face? If the thing chasing you were to charge in right now, at this moment, it would find you as scared and vulnerable as the day you were born.

It strikes you like an axe to the head that your parents will never know what happened to you. You didn’t tell them that you were going to the woods. Your mother will wander the house for days, wondering why you’re not picking up your phone. Your father will sit on your bed in absolute silence, because crying will admit your absence. Your siblings are too young to understand that you are never coming home. Your dog will wait by the door, every day, until its years are up.

There is something at the door. A curious and almost plaintive scratching. You try to shrink into the ruins of the dining table. The rest of the house is too far away. Do you make a break for it? You’re so tired. Your limbs are lead balloons. Your head is a bowling ball. Your innards are colourful confetti streamers, ready to make an arcade spectacle of your death. Why are the walls bleeding? All you can hear is your breath and the deafening thump of your heart. The scratching has stopped. So have you. Every process keeping you alive has thrown in its towel and gone home. In the second before the creature bursts through the door like it's your ribcage, you feel yourself leave your body. Which, thank God, because the creature clamps its teeth around your arm and pulls, popping bones from sockets and stringing your tissues apart like the perfect cheese pull on a pizza. You wonder why your side feels so wet. It’s the blood spraying from the bloody juncture where your arm used to be, your arm, the arm that grew inside your mother, the arm you wrote stories with, the arm your brother chewed on when he was a baby, the arm that threw sticks for your dog, the arm you made macaroni cheese with, that arm, the arm currently in the creature’s mouth, the creature with the rolling eyes and mouldering skin and saliva dripping in fat threads from its maw. It drops your arm and takes another bite at the blood fountain gushing with such force that even Moses couldn’t have parted it. You can’t move. Your three other limbs are rooted to the ground and your chest is so heavy it may as well be a lump of meat hanging from a butcher’s hook.

Wow.

You’re terrible at this.

Hi.

It’s me, the author, in your head from beyond the reaches of time and space. I’ll be taking it from here. You’ve seen Ratatouille, right? If you haven’t I’ll sit your ass down later and make you watch it. Okay. Let’s do this. Hey, stop struggling. I need your arm. And your legs. Yes, both. Great! Up we go. Wow. Mum’s spaghetti, right? Haha. Anyway. Try not to fall over, there’s only so much heavy lifting the author can do. Woah there! I’ve picked up your mostly useless ripped-off arm and I’m beating the creature with it! Dang. You can probably hear that delicious meaty schlap from wherever the hell you are right now. It lunges at you, tearing out a chunk of flesh from your thigh. Wow. Wowwww. That’s a lot of blood. Really reminds you’re a few cuts away from being sold at a deli. On your feet. Cowboy up, now. Are you really gonna lay there and bleed? Like I said, there’s only so much I can do. What happened to the indomitable human spirit? Get up!! Has all your adrenaline drained out of you with your life’s blood? Rise, my puppet! Rise! Rise!!!! GOOD! A solid kick with your unbitten leg, swinging at its face with the thick heel of your boot, yes – YES! SOLID KICK! ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS, NOW THERE’S A LEG THAT COULD HAVE SAVED BRAZIL FROM THEIR HISTORIC 7-1 LOSS AGAINST GERMANY IN THE 2014 FIFA WORLD CUP FINAL!!!

Wait, you don’t follow football? Never mind. Sorry. Where were we? Ah! The creature! Right! I made an axe appear in your hand – don’t look at me like that – so you can have a fighting chance, but your remaining arm is so weak. No, I’m not going to write the creature away. I’m feeling hungry and a bit sadistic. Let’s get this over with, shall we? Your arm is limp but I’m giving it your all, swiping at the creature with downstroke after downstroke, and maybe you’re getting somewhere, it’s spilling blood, clods of matted fur – Ah, beans. You’re down again. The creature lunges for your neck and bites down, hard, severing your jugular and popping your skull off your vertebrae. The last of your blood pools on the floor. Did you know old horror movies used chocolate syrup in the place of blood? The stuff coming out of you probably isn’t chocolate syrup. Don’t mind me. I’m just trying to distract you from the feeling of your flesh and bones being prized apart by something beyond your comprehension. Yikes. It’s really messy, I’m afraid. The creature’s big-time eating you. Sorry. It’s pulled out your small intestine like a clump of noodles from a bowl, slurped once, twice, gone. There isn’t much I can do about this. Well, there is, but I don’t feel like doing it. Please don’t be too mad at me. Next time I’ll put you in a nice bathhouse with those giant ducks from Spirited Away to make up for it, I promise. Or maybe I’ll get Senshi from Delicious in Dungeon to cook you a tasty meal out of the thing that’s currently eating you. You enjoyed my horror story regardless of the outcome, though, right? I needed someone to practise on and you’re a great suffermonkey. I think it worked. We should totally do this again sometime.

December 27, 2024