My girlfriend, Emily and I have been together for a little over three years. She’s the best thing that ever walked into my life, very caring and supportive, and she makes some real good home cooked meals. She always brings out the best in me and I try to bring out the best in her. That’s not to say everything is perfect. We’ve had our ups and downs. The occasional argument bubbles to the surface now and then, but overall it’s been a very happy relationship. It was about three months ago when things started to get strange.
A heavenly smell wafted in from the kitchen. My girlfriend was making dinner for us as she liked to do, though we’d often cook together she offered to cook alone. Smelled like she was making stir fry and as I closed the distance I could hear the sizzle of vegetables in a hot pan. I came from behind and wrapped my arms around her. Leaning my head forward I kissed her cheek.
“You need any help out here?” I asked while pulling her closer to me
“No thanks. I’ve got it covered,’’ she said.
I could see her smile, and she reached an arm up and touched my hair and then… CRACK. A loud cracking sound echoed from her shoulder. It sounded like bone had broken into pieces. It was so loud, and it sounded like it would hurt. I instinctively let go of her, fearful that I may have somehow hurt her.
“Holy shit! Are you alright babe?” I said.
She turned away from the stove, still smiling at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Your shoulder just cracked. It was so loud. Sounded like your bone shattered.”
“Well I didn’t feel or hear anything. You sure it wasn’t something else? Might have just been the veggies in the pan,” she said while turning back to the stove to stir the vegetables.
I couldn’t really answer that. I swear I heard that crack come from her shoulder. It didn’t sound like the sizzle of a pan or even a pop. But I let this incident go without making too much of a fuss.
The next time it happened was a few nights later when we were getting ready for bed. I had brushed my teeth and gotten into bed already. When my girlfriend came in and started to lift her leg to get into the bed there was an ear splitting snapping sound. My blood went cold, and I expected her to cry out in pain and clutch her leg. But instead she just got into the bed like nothing was wrong.
“Babe, what is going on? Your leg just made a snapping noise! I don’t understand. Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.
She looked at me quizzically. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t hear anything.”
“I heard it clear as day! Your leg just made a snapping noise!”
“Is this some kind of prank? I’m tired. I want to sleep,” she was beginning to shift from confused to annoyed with my constant questions.
I relented and leaned over and gave her a kiss. I flicked off the light and laid there in bed. I know I heard it. It sounded exactly like the time I had fallen while playing soccer and broke my leg. I fell the wrong way while running, and there was a loud snap while my concerned teammates gathered around me. The pain was excruciating, there was no way it could be ignored and obviously I could not walk for awhile. The thought of that incident made me shudder and I tried to push it all from my mind so that I could sleep.
Incidents like this kept happening. She would move a certain way and something would pop, or grind, or crack. It was very worrisome, and I started to think she may be hiding a disease from me or something. Every time I mentioned it she became more annoyed. I felt like her personality had changed. The once calm and caring Emily I knew was now annoyed with me, but she showed no signs of pain from any of it. Still, one day I insisted she go to the doctor.
“You have to get yourself checked out! I think something is wrong. It’s not normal for this stuff to be happening.” I said.
“We don’t have money for that! And if we did you should be getting yourself to a mental health specialist. You keep saying my bones are popping or snapping, but I don’t hear anything! This is becoming ridiculous. You are hearing things that aren’t there!”
“No, no way. I hear it. It’s so clear,” I said.
“Yeah? Lots of people hear weird things, but they aren’t real. You are sick. You need to get help.”
I left the room, not trying to escalate the situation into an even worse argument. I thought she must be lying, but then stopped and thought to myself, what if she was right? But I didn’t seem to hear sounds from other people, only from her. For awhile I kept quiet about the whole thing, until one night things got even worse.
I awoke in the middle of the night to hear the sound of cracking and grinding. It was loud enough to wake me, and when I looked over at my girlfriend I could see her arm was contorting and moving in odd ways, ways that simply weren’t possible without bones breaking. My heart beat fast as her arm thrashed around and terror set in.
The sounds of bones snapping continued for what felt like minutes. I shakily said her name to see if she was awake, but her eyes were closed and her arm kept on moving and cracking and grinding. It wouldn’t stop. And then her arm reached for me, her fingers popping as they wrapped around my neck and began to squeeze.
That was enough. I grabbed her arm and pushed it back towards her body. The cracking and grinding stopped and she opened her eyes as I had my hands on her arm. She sat up in bed and pushed my hands off her arm.
“What are you doing?” She asked with a scowl on her face.
“Your fucking arm was moving on its own! You tried to strangle me. And your bones…they kept cracking and breaking.” I cried out.
“God, not this again. This is getting so tiresome. Now you are waking me up in the middle of the night for this? Look.” She moved her arm back and forth, twisted it. No cracking or grinding. “See? It’s fine.”
She rolled onto her side facing away from me. “I think we need to get you some help. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can find a psychiatrist or someone to help you. You can’t keep going on and on about this”
I said nothing, still feeling terrified at the whole ordeal, but I was pretty convinced now that I may be imagining things. I laid in bed for a while feeling confused, scared and unsure. I couldn’t get back to sleep. Later in the night Emily got up to use the bathroom. I got out of bed feeling more awake than ever and went to sit in the living room. It was quiet for a moment, and then I heard that cracking, and grinding noise emanating from the bathroom. I covered my ears and closed my eyes until the sound stopped.
Emily came out of the bathroom, but something wasn’t right. Her head was tilted ever so slightly to the left for some reason, and something protruded from her neck on the right side. It pressed against her skin, pushing it to its limits. I said nothing about it, though our eyes met briefly and she only scowled at me. I figured I must have been crazy. She got back into bed and went to sleep while I spent the night sitting on the couch.
The next day I agreed to see a psychiatrist at Emily’s request. Her neck was normal when I saw her in the morning, the protrusion was gone. That was enough to convince me that I was suffering from some form of mental illness, complete with auditory and visual hallucinations. The first meeting was expensive, but I figured I needed help. The doctor sat me down and after some brief talk of my life he asked me about my hallucinations.
“Well I only seem to have them when Emily is around. I hear these cracks, like bones breaking, but they only come from her. The sounds are awful, but she says she is fine.”
The doctor only nodded and scribbled something down in a notebook.
“Are there others around when you hear these things? When you and Emily go out do you hear them?” He asked.
“Actually no. If we are out I never hear them. It’s when we are alone that it starts.”
“….Strange,” he said while eyeing his watch. “Listen our time is up for today, but I’d like to discuss this more in a week. I’d like you to log the times, and instances when you start hearing and seeing things. There may be a very specific triggers and if we can discover those and eliminate them we might be able to avoid putting you on medicine.”
I thanked him for his time and scheduled an appointment for next week with his secretary. I can’t say it was all that helpful. He didn’t really tell me what was wrong either, but I figured I would follow his suggestion. The matter of whether I was crazy or not still seemed up in the air.
After the appointment I sat in my car, not really wanting to go home to Emily. Lately it felt like walking on eggshells, her mood was dour, and she constantly bossed me around. I was feeling exhausted with everything. The sounds of bones cracking, and her trying to strangle me was scary, even if it wasn’t real.
I stopped by the store to pick up a notebook to document everything as the doctor ordered. But then an idea popped into my head. I figured there was one way to prove (or disprove) my sanity. I went to the store and bought a tape recorder. If I could catch the sounds on tape then I would know for certain that I wasn’t hearing things.
When I walked in the door I had the recorder going already. Emily greeted me with a hug and a smile which was a nice change of pace from her typical moodiness.
“I’m glad you went! How did it go? Did he get you on any meds yet?” She asked eagerly.
“No not yet. He wants to have a follow up appointment. I think he finds it strange that my symptoms only happen at home, and only around you,” I said with hopes of her not being offended.
“Isn’t he supposed to be the expert? Why is that strange?” She said while her smile fell into a scowl. There was a brief moment of silence and then CRACK
A loud crack rang through the room. It sounded like her back just broke, but she didn’t even move. I felt my hands begin to clam up, my heartbeat increased. She had no reaction to it as usual.
“Your back…it just…”
Her mouth contorted into a sneering grin as she looked at me. “My back what? It cracked?”
“Yeah, it was so loud!” I said feeling a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“I didn’t hear anything,” she said while maintaining that wicked grin.
I reached for my back pocket and pulled out the recorder. Stopping it I rewound the tape and started to play back the events from when I walked in the door. I was sweating, knowing that this was the moment. Emily’s face twisted into anger.
“What the hell is that?” She demanded.
I pressed play and it began to playback the events since I walked in the door. Emily was trying to paw it from my hand, but I moved back and listened closely as she shrieked at me to turn it off.
“Why is that strange?” The tinny voice of Emily spilled from the recorder. There was a moment of silence. I felt more nervous as time passed slowly.
Finally, there was a loud audible crack that played. The sound rang through the room. There was no denying it anymore. Something was wrong with Emily, not me. She knew she had been discovered and as I looked into her eyes I saw them change. Her eyes grew dull as she began to bend backwards, her back snapping again loudly until her upper body was parallel to the floor. Her neck twisted violently again and again until blood began to spurt out of her neck. Her arms began to move in unnatural arcs as the sound of bones snapping and grinding filled the room. Her body contorted into a bridge pose.
I tried to back away as the blood poured from her twisted neck, but she was so fast. She leapt at me, knocking me to the ground. She put her hand on my shoulder for a moment before the skin between her wrist and hand split as sharp bone shot out and stabbed me. I cried out in pain as my blood began to trickle down my arm, but adrenaline pumped through me. Using my legs I kicked her away. The sounds of bones cracking filled the room as she flew back against a wall. Pulling myself to my feet I fled from the building with a splintered bone protruding from my shoulder. The grinding and snapping noises grew fainter as I escaped.
I clutched my shoulder as I made my down the sidewalk trying to get further away from her- or whatever that thing was. The blood flowed from my shoulder and I reached into my pocket and called 911 before I lost consciousness. When paramedics arrived I vaguely remember them taking me in the ambulance. The doctors whispered in hushed tones as to why part of a radius bone was sticking out of my shoulder, but they took care of me nonetheless.
The whole thing left me terrified. Any snapping or crack from anything had me jumping, and I had to deal with the loss of Emily. I’m not sure if she was always that thing or if Emily had somehow been taken over, but I knew that she was gone now, and it left me feeling empty.
When I thought no one would hear me I spilled a few tears, but I guess I was not as quiet as I could have been. A nurse walked into the room, as I scrambled to try and hide my tears, but it was obvious I was crying.
“Don’t worry dear. You’ll be out of here soon! There’s no need to cry!” She said.
The nurse went and pulled a tissue from a tissue box and as she handed it to me there was a loud crack that rang throughout the room. It sounded like her arm had broken. My eyes widened and she looked at me with a sinister grin.