I found it while clearing out the attic. Hidden amongst old cardboard boxes, covered in a dusty film of spider web. A ceramic cup, plain earthy brown, with no handle; evenly spaced grooves ran along the side of it, the kind you’d expect to find on a paper takeaway cup. I picked it up and examined it. Aside from the grooves, the only markings on its surface were some words on the base, carved in scratchy straight lines that required me to squint to even make out.
“Fill me and make a wish.” I read out loud.
“What?”
Matt and I had been good friends since high school, and on that particular day he had offered to come round and help me with the work. He’d always been the more superstitious out of the two of us, the kind of person who believed in ghosts and cryptids and the like. He also considered himself an antique collector, though he lacked the money to actually buy any antiques and really just liked collecting weird things.
“Look.” I said, handing him the cup. He studied it for a moment.
“Huh. Can I keep it?”
“Sure.”
I didn’t see any reason to say no. The cup didn’t seem particularly interesting aside from the writing and where it had been found, and nothing about it indicated any kind of value. I figured one of the house’s previous owners had probably bought it as a souvenir of some kind, then ended up forgetting about it and chucking it into the attic with the rest of their junk. If Matt hadn’t taken it, I’d probably have just ended up pawning it or putting it out in a garage sale along with the various other trinkets and old furniture up there.
So unremarkable was the whole incident to me, that had it not been for what happened afterwards it would probably have been entirely forgotten by now, barely even a footnote in my memory.
It was two days later when I got a call from Matt. That in and of itself was unusual - he was one of those people who would never call someone if a text could suffice.
“Hey man, you gotta come round, you have to see this.” He said immediately after I picked up.
“Whoa, slow down. What is it?”
“So you know that weird cup you found the other day?”
“Oh that thing. Yeah, what about it?”
“I tried filling it up with water.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “You expect me to believe that it actually granted your wish or something?”
“No, no - that’s the thing. I tried filling it with water. It… it won’t.”
It was a short ten minute walk to his place.
“Show me.” I said.
He produced the cup, and held it out beneath a tap. He threw a glance in my direction.
“You watching?”
I nodded. Matt turned the tap to full. Water gushed into the cup. A few seconds passed. It didn’t overflow. A few more seconds passed. Finally, he switched the tap off, and tilted the cup toward me. Not a trace of liquid.
“Wait, do that again.” I moved closer, wanting to make sure that it wasn’t some kind of perspective trick. Once again, I watched as water flowed into the cup. This time I could see the liquid sloshing around inside it, however the water level seemed to refuse to rise above halfway. Matt turned the tap off, and the water quickly disappeared.
“I mean, it’s a great prank,” he said. “Make an unfillable cup and put ‘fill me’ on the bottom. Ha ha.”
“Maybe it’s being absorbed into the sides,” I suggested. “Like one of those super-sponges.”
“I’ve weighed it. It doesn’t get any heavier after I’ve run it under the tap.”
I frowned. “Pretty sure that breaks all kinds of physical laws.”
“Yeah, I’m telling you man, it’s supernatural.”
There was a brief silence.
“Well, then what are you going to do? I mean I bet you could make money off this, charge people a few bucks to come see ‘Matt’s Magic Mug’ or some-”
“No.” He said, interrupting me. “Please keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone about it.”
I opened my mouth to speak.
“Please.”
“…Fine. But keep me updated.”
Two weeks went by with nothing from Matt. Though I didn’t forget about what I had seen, the events seemed less real day by day; I’d mostly managed to convince myself that it was either some elaborate prank or some weird trick of the light.
I finished clearing up the attic, a task made more tedious by the fact that Matt was apparently ill and couldn’t come over to help. This explanation was reasonable - he had never possessed the most robust immune system but still, I hadn’t seen him in a while. By the end of the second week, concern started to nag at me, as he had stopped answering my texts a few days ago.
Finally I decided to pay him a visit, just to check on him. I made sure to bring a facemask, in case whatever he had was contagious, and a pot of chicken soup - his favorite.
Winter had really kicked in, making my breaths visible in the frigid air. Early morning fog lent the whole neighborhood a haunted atmosphere, and the only sound was the occasional distant rumble of traffic. No lights were on in Matt’s house, and the front lawn had definitely not been cut in a good while. Dew droplets clung to the over-long blades of grass, and to the heavily cobwebbed hedge, outlining everything in a ghostly pearlescence.
I held the metal soup pot in two gloved hands, its steady heat a welcome reprieve from the cold. Hesitantly, I made my way to the front door, set the pot down and rang the doorbell. Nothing. I rang it again, and this time I could hear footsteps.
Relief flooded through me. He was alright after all.
The door swung open, and my heart dropped. Matt was pale, his hair unkempt, deep bags under his eyes. He had a wide eyed, frantic look about him, pupils darting from side to side constantly.
“Hey man, why are you here?” He said.
“Just wanted to check up on you. You haven’t been responding to my texts, and I was worried.”
“Well I’m fine.” He moved to close the door, but I held it open with a foot.
“You don’t look fine. I brought you some soup but - seriously, maybe you should go to a doctor…”
“I’m fine.” He said, more forcefully, and tried to push the door closed again. That’s when I noticed his hand. It was covered in dozens of cuts, some which had healed into scars, and others which looked recent. Very recent.
“Dear God, Matt!” I shoved the door fully open, stepped inside and grabbed his wrist. “What the hell have you been doing?”
“No! You don’t understand - you can’t be here. It’s mine, I won’t let you-”
He broke free from my grasp and shoved me. I stumbled backward into a wall as he scrambled away.
“Matt… Please… What’s going on?”
“Its MY WISH. MINE.”
Realization dawned on me. If this was all over that stupid cup… I remembered my promise, but that seemed unimportant given what was happening. He’d clearly developed some kind of psychotic fixation with it. I needed to get him some proper help - arguing with him wouldn’t do anything.
I put my hands up in defeat.
“Fine. You win. I’m going to go now. I’m leaving the soup there, you can take it or leave it.” I turned to leave.
“No.” He said, voice suddenly low and dangerous. “No, you’ll speak. You’ll tell people about it. They’ll want it. It’s mine.”
I made a dash for the door, but he was quicker, slamming it shut. He had a gun drawn, and I slowly backed away, both hands up.
“Calm down… calm down… I’m not going to do anything, I just need you to let me out, okay?”
“No. You’re going to do as I say. Turn around.”
I did as instructed. The gun pressed into my back. He led me through the house to the living room. The place was barely recognizable from my last visit. It stunk of raw meat, the carpet stained red with large blotches of what must have been blood. He’d cleared away the couch and the TV and the bookshelf, and moved a table into the room. When I saw what was on it, bile welled up at the back of my throat.
A pile of remains - bits of bone and teeth and fur - sat to one side. On the other side was a bloodstained kitchen knife, next to which was the crudely dissected corpse of what may have once been a raccoon; its innards, plus cubes of its flesh had been scooped out and deposited into a large blender. The centerpiece of the whole macabre display was the cup.
It may have been my imagination, but it looked much more vibrant than when I had last seen it. Its dull brown now had a tinge of red, and it seemed slightly less worn down, the varnish glossier.
“Sit down. Legs crossed. Arms behind your back.” Matt commanded. Reluctantly, I did as he asked, sitting down on the sticky carpet. I wanted to ask him what he had done, what he was doing, but fear kept my lips glued. There was a click as my only exit was shut behind me. My eyes darted around the room. All the windows were boarded up, the ghastly scene lit only by a dim fluorescent bulb.
“Now stay there. If you move I will shoot. Don’t try anything.”
The calmness with which he now talked chilled me, especially in contrast to his earlier manic demeanor. Slowly, he moved around the room to his grisly workstation and laid the gun down. I eyed it, but knew that he could probably reach it before I could even stand up, with my legs crossed as they were.
“Don’t worry man.” He said cheerfully, all of a sudden sounding like his old self. “I’ve just gotta fill this up, get my wish, then everything will be back to normal. It’s nearly done. You’ve just gotta stay put.”
I watched in morbid fascination as he cut apart the remaining piece of raccoon, picking out any large bits of bone and pelt before throwing the meat into the blender.
“I have it figured out, you see.” He said, turning it on. Its noise was deafening in the confined space. The muscle, fat and offal within quickly homogenized into a red slurry. “It asked me to fill it, but you can’t thrive on just water, can you? No, no - you need something more substantial. First I tried processed stuff, but that isn’t exactly nutritious, is it? I gave it meat, raw from the butcher’s, but it craved something fresh. I fed it bits of myself, and it liked it, but that wasn’t nearly enough, oh no. ”
He poured the meat-slurry into the cup, more than double the volume that it should have been able to hold. It drank it up greedily, and the red tint of its ceramic grew in intensity. With the poor lighting, it looked almost organic now.
Matt squinted at the cup, and then sighed in exasperation. He scanned the table, and seemed annoyed there wasn’t another animal carcass to cut up. I could see the gears turning in his head; the raccoon clearly hadn’t been enough, so he needed to get more meat, but he couldn’t exactly do that and watch me at the same time…
His eyes met mine, and realization sparked in them. A twisted grin made its way onto his face, and a horrible sinking feeling settled in my gut. He reached for the gun.
“Y-you don’t have to do this.” I pleaded, standing up shakily.
“C’mon man. It won’t hurt one bit if you don’t make this difficult.” He aimed.
I dove to the ground. The crack of the gunshot echoed in the enclosed space. Miss. There was nowhere to run, so I picked myself up and rushed him, grabbing his wrist before he could aim again. His expression was furious as he struggled, trying to aim the weapon toward me.
“Stop this!” I begged. He snarled, and bit down on my hand. Agony erupted through me, and I pushed him away with all my strength. A momentary look of surprise crossed his features as he fell backward into the table. I stumbled back as everything on it slid onto the floor, including the cup.
He made a futile grab for it as it fell, expression now one of horror. I stared, transfixed, as it hit the ground. Off-red slurry began to spill out of it, forming an expanding puddle of stale remains. My stomach heaved as the sickly metallic smell of rotten blood hit my nose.
Matt scrambled toward the cup. I was seemingly forgotten, but my nausea prevented me from acting on his distraction. The slurry grew more and more putrid as the cup retched it up but he didn’t seem to notice, continuing to crawl through it on his hands and knees.
“No…” He wailed, voice shrill and piercing. The flow of liquid stopped as he grabbed the cup and stood it upright. He turned towards me, expression furious.
“Look what you’ve done! You… y-you planned this. I knew it, you just want it for yourself. But now look at what you’ve done!”
The puddle of liquid around him began to stir.
“I’m going to fucking-” He stood up, cup still gripped in one hand. Confusion flickered across his face. His fingers seemed to shift of their own accord, moving into the mouth of the cup. They contorted at unnatural angles, and I heard several snaps, but he didn’t seem to feel it. He stepped back, and there was a horrible squelching sound as his hand separated at the wrist. The gore coating every inch of the room began to move, blood and meat being drawn toward the cup as if it were some kind of magnet.
He tried to pull his arm back, and a bemused expression crossed his face as it began to disintegrate, ribbons of flesh unraveling and being sucked into the opening. Bemusement slowly morphed into panic, and he turned toward me, mouth open as if to speak. The skin on his right cheek began to pucker and bruise, until at last it broke, and a stream of blood was drawn toward the cup behind him. That entire side of his face was then quickly stretched and pulled apart, and whatever words he was going to say were lost.
“Matt!” I shouted uselessly.
Tears welled in his remaining eye, only to be whisked away into the accretion disk which now swirled around the hungry cup. About half of him was left, and in some sort of terminal lucidity he held his intact hand out toward me. His face was so messed up that I couldn’t make out his expression anymore. I reached forward, and our fingers brushed.
Then he lost his footing, and fell backwards.
Matt crumpled like a sheet of paper, and then he was gone. The remaining viscera spiraled inward, a maelstrom of dark crimson which disappeared into the cup as quickly as it had been spewed out.
I slumped against the wall, sick and exhausted and unable to process what had just happened. The room was now spotless - every single bit of blood had been sucked away, yet it somehow felt more sinister than it had just minutes ago.
The cup, it seemed, was finally full. A cherry-red glow emanated from it as it hovered, about five feet off the ground. Its light seemed to pulse in time with the pounding of my heart.
And suddenly, I understood what I had to do.
The neighbors had heard the gunshots, and called the police. They arrived to find Matt and I having chicken soup in the dining room. No gun was found anywhere in the house, and we explained that the shots had probably come from the woodland beyond the property - a popular spot for illegal hunting. The officers agreed, and told us to watch out - apparently they’d been dealing with some psycho who had been setting up snares and bear traps around the place.
Law enforcement gone, I breathed a sigh of relief. I stared across the table at ‘Matt’, whose skin was stretched just a little too tight. The cup’s work was far from perfect, but it was good enough to fool anyone who didn’t look too closely.
My wish had been simple. I asked it for my friend back.
Problem is, it slipped a little something extra in, something of itself. It wouldn’t hurt me, not if I was careful - Matt had been foolish, sticking his hand into the mouth of a starving animal. And it wasn’t hungry anymore, at least, not for now; it had barely even touched the chicken soup. Rationally I should have loathed this uncanny facsimile of my friend, but I felt that there was indeed some spark of him in there, hidden within whatever dark sentience had been inside that cup, and which now resided incarnate before me. After all, how else could it move the way that he did, speak the way that he did?
I’d have to do some more research. The cup was supernatural - there was no doubt about that now. But I couldn’t help but wonder what else was out there. Perhaps something which could help Matt? I stirred at my soup, thinking.
While I did that, I would have to keep ‘Matt’ well fed. If it worked anything like the way the cup had, it would be unwise to let it get too hungry. I also somehow doubted that it would be content with chicken soup.
As if reading my thoughts, ‘Matt’ smiled, just a little too wide.