Unsettling Stories

We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day at the beach. I smiled while I kept an eye on the kids. It was obvious that Ryan’s arm was getting tired. His two sisters, Madison and Regina, were looking around for things that might be able to help him out.

While I watched, Madison trawled for seaweed. She noticed Ryan was uncomfortable and tried to rush. Luckily for her brother, the pressure pushing against his arm had diminished and he was able to straighten up. “Hurry up!,” he yelled to Madison and Regina. He’s by far the most impatient one in the family.

“Don’t yell at your sisters,” I scolded. Still, I gently encouraged them to move faster. Part of me was wondering if my wife had used enough sunscreen on them.

“Time is a factor, kids,” I informed them. We were on a pretty tight schedule.

Madison brought the seaweed over to Ryan while Regina was arriving with a few heavy rocks. Regina set them down in front of where her brother was standing. She went back a few times and carried over more. Madison crouched, her butt in the water, and focused on slipping the seaweed underneath and around the rocks.

I stood, hands on my hips, and called out, “How does it look, kids?”

“I think we’re done!,” shouted Madison. She seemed proud of all the work they’d been doing. She’s never been particularly modest.

I looked back up the beach and all around. Then I strode out to where my kids had been working.

“You all did SUCH a great job!” I grabbed the three kids in a bear hug and they stood, watching as the tide came in over the area where they’d done their good work.

We walked together about a hundred feet down the beach and stood on the shore. It was time for me to give them their little quiz.

“Now remember kids, Mom will be back in a few minutes. What do we do when we see her coming?”

Regina piped up. “We pretend cry and look around in the water!”

“That’s right! How about you, Ryan, what are you going to say?”

Ryan stood proudly with his hands on his hips. “I say that Jason fell out of my hug into the ocean when a wave came and we can’t find him.”

“Atta boy!,” I crowed. I turned to Madison. “Maddie, are you excited to have your bedroom all to yourself again? No more crib and no more crying?”

Madison smiled shyly at her tall, strong father. “Yes Daddy,” she said.

“Good!,” I exclaimed, grinning. “And now your mom and I can have more money to buy you guys presents for being such great kids.” I glanced over to my left. “And I think that person walking waaaaay down the beach is Mom. You all ready?”

“Yeah!,” the kids yelled in unison.

“Go for it!,” I encouraged, blinking away the tears of pride that had started to well up in my eyes.

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I lost my husband and my daughter last summer. I was a wife and a mother. Now I’m neither. I’m alone in a big house overlooking the lake that stole the loves of my life.

Sometimes, when the house is quiet, Maria, the housekeeper, says she hears them talking and laughing together. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth or just saying it to make me think they’re watching over me with love in their ghostly hearts. It doesn’t particularly matter. I know they’re dead. If anyone’s watching over me, it’s Maria.

My life is a haze of daydreams and inactivity. The payout from Franklin’s life insurance policy means I won’t have to work again if I don’t want to. I probably will at some point. I’m just not ready yet. Every night, I go to bed wearing the same outfit I wore the last time I embraced my husband and daughter. It’s not much comfort, but it’s better than nothing.

About two weeks ago, Maria said she saw footprints in the hallway while she cleaned. Wet ones. It took me an hour to calm her down. I love Maria, but her superstitions can sometimes cause problems. I assured her she couldn’t have seen what she claimed, and I think I sounded pretty convincing. Still, in the back of my mind, I felt a twinge of fear. Not just fear; hope. But no. It was Maria’s superstition rubbing off on me.

Those slick trails Maria called footprints showed up every day since. She didn’t complain and she didn’t panic like the first time; she kept a stiff upper lip and cleaned up the water and mud without a word. I noticed the cross she’d always worn inside her shirt was exposed now, signaling her faith to the world.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to all the floors in the house covered in muddy water. It was Sunday and Maria was off. I was glad; I didn’t want her to have to see it. I wept as I mopped. I listened all day, praying I’d hear the conversation and laughter Maria insisted she’d heard when it was quiet. All I heard were the wet squelches of the mop with my pitiful sobs in the background.

Last night, before I could fall asleep, I heard something moving outside my bedroom door. I knew who it was. Without turning on the light, I sat up and watched as he came into the room, his body sloshing across the floor. His smell turned my stomach, but I didn’t shrink away. I’d been waiting for a whole year to see him again. I refused to be afraid. He whispered in my ear for a while, then he left. I bawled in my empty room until the sun came up.

Maria came at her usual time. She was surprised to see me awake. I’d gotten up at five to clean all the water and mud before she would arrive an hour later. I greeted her with a cup of coffee and asked her to walk with me. She could tell I needed to talk to someone and she’d always been my shoulder to cry on after I’d lost Franklin and Erica. We strolled in silence through the backyard. We reached the lake and sat on the small dock.

“I saw him last night,” I confessed. I didn’t look at her. I felt ashamed and nervous to admit such a thing.

Maria stared at me for a while, fingering the cross on her neck, before replying. “I knew he’d come back to you. Sometimes they just can’t let go.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. The sun was coming over the treetops and burning the mist off the surface of the lake. I thought about the time Erica asked if the mist was the ghosts of dead fish. I thought it was the most adorable thing I’d ever heard.

I stifled my tears brought on by the memory and asked Maria, “do you ever miss them?”

“All the time,” she sighed. “I’ll stand and look at their pictures on the mantle and just daydream when I should be working.”

Maria held the cross tightly in her fingers as she spoke and stared at the ducks in the middle of the lake. I could tell she meant what she said. She turned to me and asked, “when Franklin came last night, was Erica with him?”

I sniffed and tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t hold back my emotions anymore. “Can I see your cross for a minute?”

Maria looked puzzled for a second but unclasped the gold chain and handed it to me. It was warm from her hands. Heavier than I’d expected, too. “It wasn’t Franklin,” I whispered.

“What do you mean?,” inquired Maria, clearly confused.

The lake water rippled and the ducks flew away. Maria began to scream. I clutched her cross in my hand, feeling its edges digging into my skin. Silently, he rose from the lake. All of him; not just the part he’d sent to me last night. Before Maria could run, he’d wrapped his tendrils around her legs. His colossal bulk towered over us, all mouths and tentacles and tendrils and hideous, gaping orifices.

A thick, red tentacle with a purple gash in it descended onto the top of Maria’s head. “I’m sorry,” I told her. The loudness of the sucking sounds caused birds to fly from the trees and my hands to cover my ears as I watched. Maria’s body contorted as she was turned inside-out, her femurs erupting from the hole in her head before her hips shattered the skull entirely.

He drank Maria as I clasped the chain from her cross around my neck. He was finished in minutes. A smaller, thinner tendril slithered up the side of my body and wrapped around my ear. “Again. Next year. And I might give one back.”

“I remember the agreement,” I mumbled.

As I spoke, a yonic cavern in the main bulk of his body split open. The head and torso of Erica appeared. Her mouth opened and she vomited grayish-red jelly into the lake. She saw me and choked out, “it hurts, Mom,” before he re-sealed his hole and slipped, noiselessly, back into the water.

I walked back up to the house. Maria’s cross felt cold and heavy around my neck. I sat at the computer and sipped my tepid coffee. I browsed for a few minutes. There was no shortage of available housekeepers for hire. I sent a few messages and one replied immediately. Melissa. She gave me her number and we chatted for a little while. She was nice. I’m interviewing her in person tomorrow morning. On the phone, she sounded excited.

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“Where did they say they’re going again?,” asked Laura.

I sighed. “Dad said he was going to put gas in the car and mom needed to use the bathroom. The one here’s broken.”

I studied Laura’s face, knowing she was close to tears. She never wanted to be too far from our parents. Even though we could see them across the street at the gas station, Laura was worried they’d abandon her and she’d be stuck with her big sister forever.

“Look,” I told her, pointing out the enormous, floor-to-ceiling window. “There’s dad next to the gas pump. And there’s mom running toward the bathroom. I guess she really had to pee.” That got a giggle out of Laura, but I could tell the waterworks were imminent.

“What if they leave us here?,” she whispered, the latter half of the inquiry nearly inaudible under her burgeoning whimpers.

“Laura, it’s okay.” I did my best to sound confident and authoritative; Laura needed to believe with certainty they’d be returning momentarily. Otherwise, I’d be left with a blubbering wreck as we waited for our food in the middle of a crowded diner. “She’s four,” I reminded myself. “You were scared of everything when you were four.”

My sister took a loud, deep breath and exhaled slowly. It’s a technique I taught her for when she felt sad or scared. A tear dripped out of her right eye and slid down her cheek. She wiped it away, but no others came. She stared intently out the large window at our parents, who were getting back in the car.

Our food arrived. All four of us had ordered some variety of grilled cheese. Laura’s was on white bread with American cheese, and she picked it up and started shoveling the thing into her mouth. I didn’t bother to tell her to wait for mom and dad before eating. I was hungry too. I picked up my cheddar on rye and took a bite.

Down the street, a gasoline tanker was making its way in our direction. It appeared to be going much faster than any of the cars I’d seen on that road as we sat there. Mounting dread formed knots in my viscera.

I don’t know what caused me to push my head back against the soft leather of the booth and press my face into its corner, but when the truck careened into the gas station across the street and exploded, shattering the thick glass of the diner windows, I was shielded from the majority of shrapnel and the blast of heat. Laura wasn’t.

By the time I’d collected myself enough to react, I saw the left side of my sister’s head was blistered and encrusted with glass. She stared at me, motionless, in obvious shock. Then her hand rose to touch the side of her face. The touch became a rub. Blood oozed out of her small palm as it was lacerated by the jagged edges. She looked to her right and picked up the grilled cheese that had fallen onto her seat, wiggled it slightly to get the biggest shards of glass off, and began to eat.

The ringing in my ears had drowned out the overture of hysteria playing around us. But, gradually, screams filled my ears. I ignored them. All I could do was look outside at the hellscape of fire and twisted metal. I saw our car. A Subaru station wagon. It was facing in our direction, but upside down and on fire.

I watched a shape crawl out of the driver’s side window. Its clothes and hair were gone. All it looked like was a figure drawn in red and black. Still, I was with it enough to know it was our father. He hobbled over to the other side of the car and pulled another figure from the wreck. Mom. She didn’t move. Dad collapsed to his knees in front of her, and after a few moments, turned toward the diner. I’d noticed Laura’s shock had worn off and she’d begun howling in fear and pain.

I tried to get her to calm down. It was an exercise in futility; even I was crying and near panic. I held her hands and babbled, “it’s okay, it’s okay.” In the corner of my eye, I saw movement. I jerked my head around to see dad moving toward the diner. He couldn’t run, but he was hobbling on what looked like half a left foot. As he got closer, I could see how horrifically injured he was. Laura noticed him coming, too, but didn’t recognize him whatsoever. She screamed.

Dad made his way to us as the wail of sirens grew louder. The details of his injuries became clearer with every awkward step. Despite being burned, he was sopping wet. Fluid dripped from hideous burns on his head, chest, and legs. He made it to our table and reached out, grabbing Laura. Laura twisted in his grasp and scratched his arm, gouging deep tracks in the destroyed flesh. He pulled her out and held her tightly.

I clambered onto the table and through the window and stood, stupidly, not knowing what to do or how to help. Dad’s voice wheezed out of his lipless mouth. Over Laura’s screams, it was hard to make out what he was saying. He clutched my sister against his oozing chest and, suddenly, she realized who he was. She abruptly stopped shrieking and merely whimpered.

Dad looked up at me and I got closer. He repeated what he said before, over and over, his voice gradually tapering into gurgling nothingness. “We’re still a family. We’re still a family. We’re still a family. We’re still a family.” I looked across the street at the motionless, charred figure next to the Subaru. Then I looked at dad, still cradling Laura despite having slumped over.

I gently took Laura from our father’s lifeless arms. She sobbed into my chest as I ran forward, across the street. I darted between blackened vehicles and unidentifiable wreckage. “Still a family,” I thought to myself, and closed my eyes. The emergency workers managed to restrain me before we could reunite with our parents in the fire.

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I’ve always said to anyone who’d listen: “I’ll do whatever it takes to lose weight – even if it kills me.” No one listened. No one really cared. And honestly, I couldn’t blame them. I’ve always been overweight. Overweight by a substantial margin. I just couldn’t stop eating. Everything felt like it was spinning out of control whenever my stomach was empty. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. And for just as long, I’d hated myself for it.

Diets came and went. Atkins, Weight Watchers, paleo, Zone; just gimmicks. They’d give me a day of hope and then I’d wake up the next morning with a bottomless pit in my stomach. If I didn’t at least try to fill it, I’d want to kill myself. And God, how I wished I could have. But no. That’s not me. That’s a brave person. I’ve never been brave.

The worst part of it all was the utter lack of hope. I’d dream about a future me who’s lean and lithe and happy. But I knew with every fiber of my massive being that it was all a pathetic fantasy. I knew my habits. I knew how I operated. I’d be even bigger in a year. Bigger still in five. At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t be able to walk when I reached my 45th birthday. And I’d still lack the confidence to kill myself. I’d be trapped.

It was the image of myself confined to my bed that catalyzed my last-ditch effort to become the person I’d always wanted to be. I’d never been a sociable person. But still, I knew meeting people would be a step in the right direction. So, with a bit of effort, I started visiting various online fora and chat rooms. After a while, I connected with some people. The relationships were tenuous and fleeting, but I still felt flickers of hope that’d been impossible to experience before I set out on this mission. More time passed. I talked to a few people who could sympathize with my condition. People who actually seemed to care. And then I met Lee.

Lee understood how I felt more than I ever thought anyone could. He even lived in the same city as me. We connected on so many levels and I have to admit, I felt more attached to him than I probably should have. I’d never been in a romantic relationship before. I hadn’t even given thought to whether I was straight, gay, or anything else. Romance and sex were just so far from my mind all my life that it took until I was 37 and talking to Lee before I even considered I might be attracted to another man. The thought filled me with joy and fear. Joy because I felt normal. Normal people fall for other people. My fear, though, was nearly paralyzing. What if he grew to hate me? I am so, so hateable.

Months passed. Lee and I had agreed to meet at my apartment. We’d talked about my diet plans for weeks and I’d finally agreed to try what he’d found so successful for his own weight loss. I remember sitting down on my toilet with the tiny, sharp wire brush and wincing as I used it on myself. When I got up, the bowl was filled with blood. Not enough for me to worry I’d done severe damage, but enough for me to be ready.

Lee came over a couple hours later. He was beautiful. His smile was wide on his thin face which accentuated his protrusive cheekbones even further. When he undressed, I admired the craggy ravine between each of his ribs and the sharp rise of his hipbones. Then we proceeded. I cried before he started and I cried harder during. But after, while I cleaned myself up, I felt a level of hope and optimism that eclipsed anything I’d ever felt in my life. He held me while we slept.

It’s been six years and I’ve finally gotten to a weight where I feel confident enough to walk down the street and look at my reflection in the shop windows as I pass. Lee and I spent a beautiful four years together before he passed. They were the best four years of my life. But I know I’ll be seeing him soon enough. I remember stopping in front of a store this morning and looking at my trim shape in the mirrored glass. I ran my hands up and down my sides, feeling the ribs under the size-small t-shirt that once belonged to Lee. I winced a bit when my fingers knocked against a lesion on my lower back, but the pain was quickly forgotten. The man I’d always wanted to be stared back from the reflective surface. I smiled. Finally, a life worth living.

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The visual effect of geometry in art can be intoxicating. Symmetry is beauty, and vice versa. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and seeing asymmetry. Chaos. A shape, certainly, but not one of mathematical precision or artistic effort. Rather, one of slothful neglect. The product of a blind, talentless sculptor using mud instead of marble. I decided to change. I could be beautiful, too.

Everywhere I went, I looked for inspiration. After a brief period of searching, Nature Herself provided me with all I needed. I knew what I could become.

I began to lose the extra weight I’d been carrying around. It wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected. The speed at which the pounds came off became an added bonus; I was left with skin that sagged over my beltline and under my chin and under my arms. A happy accident.

With 60 pounds lost and a newfound energy I attributed to better physical health, I began to work on my art. Over the last few months, I’d accumulated thousands of the different tools I’d need for the process. I employed the smallest ones first. One by one, I inserted the thinnest of the pins into the pores under my chin. The pain was surprisingly mild; I’d expected my nerves to put up more of a fight. Knowing my body was so accepting of this change made me smile. I was a blank canvas with unlimited potential.

I slept soundly with the hundreds of metal pieces occupying the saggy flesh. Each one was stretching the pore. Each one was making room for the next tool.

The following day, I swapped the first set of pins for the next, slightly-wider set. Again, there was little pain. I twisted each of the pieces around in lazy circles, allowing the motion to widen the spaces in which they’d been set. When I removed one of them to see if I was making any progress, the little hole stayed open. It was working.

Days went by as I repeated the process with wider and wider pins or needles. I was grateful for the loose skin. There was so much more room to work. After three weeks, the holes were the diameter of a pencil eraser. After two months, they were as wide as my pinky finger is thick. I’d reached the maximum size of my tools. It didn’t matter; I was done. I pulled the skin down to expose the holes. There were hundreds of dark, bloodless pits occupying the pores.

I’d never walked around the house with the holes exposed until that moment. The sensation of air against the nerves inside was indescribable. It was as if I’d grown a whole new body part that was feeling for the first time. How much more of me was trapped beneath the surface, deep in slumber, waiting to be awakened? I would have to wait to find out. There was so much left to do.

Mother Nature, in Her wisdom and beauty, had presented me with a wasp’s nest on the day I sought inspiration. I remember studying its pockmarked surface, each hole a beautiful, hexagonal prism. When I returned to the nest, it’d grown larger. I’d planned for this, though. I used smoke to nullify the majority of the adults as I took their home with me. Once there, I carefully cut the nest in half. The few angry wasps that remained were destroyed. I was after their children.

With great care, I smeared small bits of honey inside each of my new holes. Everything I’d read told me how much they loved it. Once the interiors were coated, I used a tweezers to tease the larval wasps from the papery cavities. They fit inside me so perfectly. Hours later, I was finished. I felt full. Every so often, one of them would wiggle inside. Pressed against the sensitive flesh within the pore, it was like the larvae were tickling me. I sat back and watched myself in the mirror, giggling as I admired the work of functional art I was becoming.

I’d have to wait nearly two weeks for the larvae to start spinning silk for their metamorphoses. I dutifully fed them honey as they grew fatter and more active, feeling them stretching the pores beyond the diameter to which I’d grown accustomed. The pain, while greater than I’d experienced before then, was still hardly a concern. It was all worth it.

While I waited, I studied my body to find the site for my next project. My belly was the most obvious, as it was the largest area and had the most loose skin, so it was what I chose. I didn’t want to use wasps again, though. If I was going to be a true piece of art, I wasn’t going to only use one subject. I found a picture of a beautiful frog that kept its eggs inside holes in its back. When they hatched, left behind a lovely, cratered surface. I was overcome by the beauty of it all and decided the frog would be my next featured piece.

I rushed to create the holes in my belly. In a burst of creative inspiration, I included my chest and the skin under my arms. Because of my excitement, I started with much thicker needles than I’d used on my chin. The pain was intense and blood poured from the sites, but the holes appeared quickly. After weeks spent dealing with complications and having to stretch cavities whose diameter decreased as the swelling and infection surrounding it increased, I felt the little cocoons in my neck start to hum. The larvae had spun their silk and sealed off their little homes many days ago. They were changing. So was I.

More days flew by as I grappled with the reality of how I wouldn’t be able to find the frogs in time before the new holes swelled to the point of being nearly shut. I was depressed for a day or so, but its curtain was lifted whenever the babies inside my throat hummed to me. During a particularly dark period of sadness, I noticed flies were landing in the areas of my body that’d been overcome by putrefaction. I’d given up my hope of featuring another piece of beautiful art and was taking consolation in the fact my throat and neck looked so lovely. So fertile.

As the flies gathered, though, I realized what they were doing. I pushed my fingers into the holes and pried them open. Deep within, writhing in the sludge at the bottom of each cavity, were tiny maggots. As tears ran down my eyes, I rushed to the mirror. The openings, while ugly, were still in a clean, symmetrical pattern. Was it all exactly what I’d intended? No. But was it better? There was no doubt. Not all art has to be perfect.

While I stared at my reflection, wondering what I could do next, I felt one of the cocoons hatching in my neck. Then another. And another. Joy overwhelmed me. I was giving birth. It was then I realized I wasn’t only an artist, but a parent. A true contributor of beauty to the world. My art hadn’t only imitated life – my art had created it.

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I’ve always been self-conscious about my thumb sucking problem. And it is a problem. Most kids either grow out of it or have the habit gently coaxed away by attentive parents or counselors. My upbringing was different, though. I never grew out of it. I never saw my parents for more than a couple hours every week. They’d be so busy with work that the only people I’d see on a regular basis were the servants and housekeepers. God knows they weren’t going to correct the habits of their employer’s only son. The heir to the family fortune.

Maybe if I had friends or family members around, I would’ve matured normally. That opportunity is long gone, though. I think my habit is a plea for security; having no real comfort or warmth in my life probably leads me to engage in such an infantile practice. I’m 20 – way too old to be doing something as immature as thumb sucking, but here I am. I never expected anything to change for the better.

When my parents died in that car fire, I was the only one left. I was 15 years old, wealthy beyond my comprehension, and aside from the servants, the only one in a home that would be better referred to as a palace. The servants doted on me like they’d been taught to. My tutors came and left on schedule. No one dared to tell me to get a social life or interact with the world around me. They left me in peace with my laptop and video games. For all they knew – for all I knew – I’d be browsing and playing alone until the day I died.

Like I said before, I’m 20 now. Until recently, my life continued the way I’d expected. Then I met Aria. Aria is the daughter of one of the servants. She’s younger than me, probably 16 or 17. But she’s the first person who ever took interest in me on a personal level, rather than just going through the motions of servant-to-master interaction. When her mother, whose name I don’t even know, found out, she was very angry with her daughter and apologized to me profusely. I was assured Aria wouldn’t bother me again. I said it was okay. I allowed Aria to visit as frequently as she wished.

We quickly grew close, and it didn’t take long before Aria brought up my habit. I was mortified. I didn’t realize I’d been doing it while she talked to me. I slid the wrinkled, saliva drenched thumb out of my mouth and clenched my fist around it in some halfhearted attempt to hide my shame. Aria told me not to be embarrassed. She took my hand in her own and gently unballed my fist. As I watched in disbelief, my heart pounding so powerfully I worried she’d hear it, Aria took the still-wet thumb in her own mouth.

You have to realize something: I’d never even hugged a person aside from my mother when I was a child. This was a level of intimacy I’d never expected to see in person, let alone participate in. I shuddered with nervous excitement. Aria stopped what she was doing and asked if I was okay. I nodded and told her I just needed to get some air. I left her on the couch.

I stood on the balcony and gazed at the city below. I realized it was the first time I’d been outside in months. While the fresh air loosened my tension and helped clear my head, I felt Aria come up behind me and wrap an arm around my waist. I jumped a little at the contact.

“Shhh,” Aria told me. “It’s okay.” She knew I was nervous, but the feeling was dissipating. I felt comfortable with her. Comfortable enough to engage in my habit without feeling like a baby.

I brought my hand to my mouth. My head spun when I tasted the remains of her saliva on the wrinkled digit. I sucked with purpose, wanting to swallow what had been inside her mere minutes ago. I sucked harder. I felt the nail come off and stick to the roof of my mouth but I didn’t care. My tongue sought out the virgin flesh underneath. Aria turned me around to face her, and our eyes locked.

“Please let me help you,” she whispered. Before I could oblige, the door opened on the other side of the room. A servant came in, pushing a cart with a tray on it. She kept her head down, apologizing for interrupting me.

“I’m sorry sir,” she muttered, “but perhaps you’d prefer a fresh one?” The servant removed the cloche from the tray and revealed 10 severed thumbs, neatly arranged in order of skin color. I dragged the old thumb from my mouth. I’d used it for over a day and the skin was beginning to slough from the bone. Aria looked at the tray with excitement. “Can we share these?,” she asked. I grinned at her, then noticed the bandage on the servant’s left hand. She quickly hid it behind her back.

“We had trouble finding a tenth one, sir,” the servant informed me. “I’m sorry, truly, if mine is not good enough.”

“Which one is it?,” I asked. She pointed to the third one from the end. I picked it up and handed it to Aria. She looked at it for a moment, then slid it into her mouth. Her lips formed a smile around the dark digit.

I dismissed the servant. Aria and I stood on the balcony, quietly sucking our thumbs. I felt her hand wrap around mine and she leaned her head against my shoulder. I beamed with happiness. Finally, a chance to live a normal life.

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