If you wonder how I came to ask Reddit on advice about whether or not to eat a schoolmate, check out me ranting about our multi-generational-trauma in
Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/10wwfhj/and_you_thought_your_family_was_fcked_up/
Thank you guys for your kind words, it did make us feel a little less alone, and some of it was genius. Special shoutout to the person who suggested that I should get rid of all of my problems by “being annoying” and “letting out my inner theatre kid”. My personality apparently really shone through in my first post.
Anyway, I know most of you are wondering, so here you have it: I did try to kill Dave. I had to, especially, after what happened when Granny came home yesterday.
When we heard her keys, me and my brother sat down at the kitchen table.
At that point, we were dressed up pretty stupidly, because someone on here suggested I should cover up my skin-condition by getting a very dramatic style. Honestly, might not have been the most useful thing we did that evening, but we desperately needed the distraction. This meant I was now wearing various clothes from Granny who didn’t match up AT ALL, an overdramatic, but cool melon-hat, blue lipstick and long, orange eyelashes. Jaime joined in by dying purple streaks in his hair, and his eyeliner was definitely more on-point than mine.
But not even that could distract Granny from the looks on our faces.
Her eyes wandered between the two of us. “What happened?”
Now, Granny was a lovely lady with wrinkles from laughing too much, but in this moment, the graveness in her voice reminded me of Dad. Jamie must have thought the same thing because he winced at the sound of it.
“We had a fucked up day”, I replied. Granny wanted to say something, but she was interrupted by her ringtone.
“Sorry”, her face completely dropped when she viewed her phone-display, “I gotta take this.”
As soon as she turned around, my brother poked me with his fork. I attempted to hit him. “Hey. What the…”
“Do we tell her?”, he whispered. I shrugged. We had not come to a conclusion when she arrived.
“I don’t know”, I whispered back, “the Internet was more focused on hooking us up with a voodoo-priest or getting us to join the army, and I have no idea what she will…”
A clang. I stopped mid-sentence. Granny had dropped her phone. She didn’t even attempt to pick it up. Just looked at us. And when I saw her lips trembling, I knew what she was about to say.
“Yuna. Jaime. I… I am afraid”, she cleared her throat, “your fa… my son has escaped from prison.”
Suddenly, the kitchen felt very, very cold. I put a hand on my brother’s shoulder. He was shaking, but he was quiet again. Too quiet.
Granny saw it, too. She closed her steel-blue eyes. When she opened them, her calm had returned. She looked straight at me.
“Child”, she said, “You need to end this.”
I just nodded. “On it.”
For once in my life, I was glad that my brother and I didn’t have classes together. It was something the school counselor insisted on because we were too “codependent” and should “mingle with the other students” to “make new friends.” So, as usually, Jaime called me in the middle of his math-class.
“David keeps smiling at me”, he whispered.
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, it kind of makes me want to do the exorcism thing.”
I pressed a hand over my mouth. “Why are you joking about this?”
“Mom would call it coping”, I heard the smile in his voice, “better than eating people.”
“I don’t know about this. I get revenge, you get bad jokes.”
“Fair enough.”
We were silent for a while.
Then: “Yuna, he went to the bathroom. For the record: I still think this is a shitty idea.”
“Well, you didn’t find a voodoo-priest in rural [redacted] so, here we are.”
I raised my hand to excuse myself. Walking the empty corridors, my steps sounded unnaturally loud. I balled my hands to fists to stop them from shaking. Unlike my brother, I do not have the statue of the Incredible Hulk. But I had a lot of anger to make up for it. And my father had always loved me more.
He was the reason Jaime was not joining me today: My brother had this elaborate theory that Dad might have been the one who took on David’s shape. That this was the reason the bully knew so much about us: Our father actually was the evil twin in his generation. This made sense to me: First of all, Dad had mercilessly tortured my brother, which is something… a good person would kind of not do? Secondly, I still had no idea why Dad chose me as the “good twin” in the first place.
Maybe, he knew that I was truly the fucked up one. Maybe, that’s why he favored me. He did what he did to protect his evil spawn.
Jaime had too much unprocessed PTSD to deal with Dad. But I would manage him. I always managed him.
If David turned out to only be some bully who read the police report and made some shockingly educated guesses… well, then Jaime was recording my call and we could show to the teachers that that motherfucker was the one at fault.
Either way, a win-win. Unless…
“Jaime, what do we do if this isn’t Dad, but like… the Devil?”, I asked, “someone said he might be.”
“What about an actual exorcism?”, my brother suggested, “I’ll steal some chalk to draw the symbols and come over. I… I know how it’s done.”
I doubted that this would be good for his mental health, or that it would work on the Devil, but I agreed anyway. Finally, I put Jaime on speaker before sticking the phone in my back pocket. “Wish me luck.”
It actually took me a while to find Dave. Jaime was right about him going to the bathroom, but said bathroom was in a part of the school-building that was currently under renovation. No one would hear us scream there.
Good.
David Nowinsky was standing at the urinal when I entered.
“Hi there”, I waved.
He whirled around. “You aren’t allowed to be in here.”
“Well, there ain’t much to see anyway, right?”, I shrugged, “besides, I think we need some alone time. I cannot have you poke around in my past, you stupid son of a bitch.”
He did not react to my choice of words. He simply put his penis back in his pants and smiled at me. “Isn’t that adorable? The sweet little sister standing up to defend her idiot of a brother?”
“Aww, you find me sweet?”, I came closer, “I hope you will be rather salty. I just had pancakes for breakfast.”
That was a lie. I hadn’t eaten anything, putting on the eyelashes had taken too long. My hands had been shaking, after all. I was wearing the same outfit as yesterday, by the way. If David started to roast me on the mess of that, we would have stood there all-day. To prevent this, I walked up to him and pressed him against the urinal by the neck.
“Hello father”, I hissed, “it’s time to do some catching-up.”
“What the fuck?”, Dave struggled against my grip. His fingernails tore of huge chunks of my skin, but I kept in position.
I frowned. Dad didn’t curse. Not even in disguise. But… but…
“But it has to be you”, I exclaimed, “it has to. How else do you know about the damn exorcism?”
You wanna KILL Jaime on a MAYBE?
I wanna exorcise James on a maybe.
You are my child, after all. My only child.
I love you.
My brother’s broken silouhette on the basement floor.
Maybe, love is not related to blood. Though I heard your Daddy spilled a lot of Jamie’s on the floor.
The look on Jaime’s face. Three good years. Three. And now…
I closed my yes to block out the memories. But the rage still exploded in my chest like fireworks. “You knew about this because you were the one who did all of this shit to him in the first place, weren’t you?” I was crying. It didn’t stop me. “You are the reason I wake up drenched in sweat, you are the reason for Jaime’s fucking scars, for his anxiety attacks, and now you come back to taunt us… for what? Why did you do all that… we had… we had… you were my Dad.”
I’m proud of you, Yuna.
You guys are all a father could ever wish for, you know that?
No, no story tonight. I’m tired. Goodnight, love.
All thrown away. For nothing.
“Why… why did you come back?”, I wispered, “for fun? Did you want to get a kick? Or will you only rest if you’ve driven my brother finally fucking insane?”
“I don’t know who…”, Dave chocked, “who you… who… who you think I am, but…”
“I’m not sure, either”, I answered, “Dad? The Devil himself?”, a smile curled around my lips. It was not a happy smile. “Let’s find out.”
This time, I started with the eyes.
My fingernails were colored red already, and they only got a deeper tone as I poked them in the sockets and pulled. Dave tried to scream, but I shoved some toilet paper in his mouth, which of course meant I lost grip of his neck. This shit was getting hard to do with two hands.
“Uhm, Yuna, first of all, what the fuck?”, my ass-pocket said, “Also, do you need help?”
“No”, I mumbled, “stay… stay away.”
I had managed to get his first eye out. It made a disgusting little “sploosh” sound when it fell onto the floor. It was probably immediately drained in piss.
The other one was next. Dave had stopped resisting, so it was easier. It joined its twin.
I stared into David’s empty eye sockets and waited for the steel-blue ones to grow.
Nothing happened.
There were just two bloody holes in his scull.
Holes I had ripped in there.
Dave made a terrible, little gargling sound. I stared at the brown eye on the floor. It wasn’t… they weren’t turning to dust.
“You…”, I stepped back, “are you…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. Without me holding him up, Dave glid down on the floor. He pressed his hands in front of his eyes. I fell to my knees as well.
“I’m… I’m sorry, Mom”, i wispered. I remembered the anger in her eyes before I ate her. She had been right all along, i realized.
I was a monster.
My eyes stared at the empty floor, but I saw right through it. I needed to kill myself. I had just injured a kid. An ashole, but still. I… I was a danger. I…
The floor. The empty floor. The floor was empty.
The eyes had disappeared.
Dave removed the hands in front of his face. His eyes were steel-blue. “Oh, sorry, child”, he smiled, “sometimes, it takes me a little while. But then, I am very quick, you see.”
He was right. It took him only a few seconds. He did all the shit I do – popping the fingernails, toenails, shoulders snapping from joints. But he barely reacted. He looked like he was just crossing items off a shopping list. And not once did he take his eyes off of me. His offspring. His child. His sucessor. But when it was time for him to shoot in the air.
He didn’t.
Rather, he shrunk down, as if someone had popped a balloon.
“Oh, honey”, my grandma gave me one of those broad smiles. In her face, they actually looked lovely. “Your father was not the only twin, you know?”
I stared. “YOU are the evil one?”
“Hm”, she shrugged, “but my Ma just wouldn’t bite the dust. Had to spent half my life making sure she didn’t catch me. I helped your father murder his brother, just to keep up the charade. A shame, really. Hannes was such a talented shifter. But now, my Ma is dead, your Dad’s in prison… there is nothing stopping me now. Stopping us”, she stepped towards me, “I always knew it was you, honey, I just… I felt it. There is a darkness inside you, isn’t there?
You feel it, too. It’s what makes you so angry. You have never forgiven the world for taking your birth parents. You know it. You love nothing and no one, not even Jaime. At the deepest core of your being, you want to kill us all.”
“Yuna this isn’t true”, Jaime interfered, “also, Granny, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU???”
I nodded. “He’s right. You are lying.”
Granny shrugged. “Deny all you want, but I felt it. You are the evil twin. So, I told your Dad that it was Jaime, of course. My son fully trusted me. Followed my advice for the exorcism as well. God, we were so close to getting your brother killed, so close to winning… But you just had to save him, hadn’t you? After that, I wasn’t so sure about you anymore. Why didn’t you just kill him?”
I frowned. “Because I… do not want to?”
Granny scoffed. “Anyway, I saw your skin getting worse, but something was still just… off about you. I took you in, told myself: Just wait until she feasts again, then you’ll know for sure. But you never did, Yuna. And neither you nor your brother told me anything. I am not the youngest anymore, darling. As the years went on, I got impatient. I didn’t manage to win over your trust as the awesome, lovely grandma I was. So, I had to create a new character”, she smiled, “but when you’re angry… honey, you do show your true colors real quick. Went right for the eye-socket, no hesitation. As I like it.”
She came closer. Put her wrinkly, warm hands on my cheeks. “Oh, the two of us can do terrible things together.”
I drew back from her touch. “Stay away. I’m fucking warning you.”
“Just think about it”, she cooed, “how do you think I pulled of so many transformations in a row? I had to get a lot of skin. I can teach you how to get more. You want some, don’t you? I know that you feel it in your bones. The aching. The lust for that control. That power.”
Her voice was soft and warm, unlike her son’s hard tone or the Devil’s joyful sing-song. This voice meant home. I closed my eyes for a moment and leaned into her touch one last time as I imagined that everything was alright. That we were a normal family.
The warmth of the blood on Granny’s hands ruined my illusion quickly enough.
I thought of the last three years, the years we had been tormented by nightmares. About the cold, uncaring expression on my father’s face before he returned upstairs. About the powerlessness I felt the morning David Nowinsky said those fucking, fucking awful words. I never wanted to feel that helpless again. And this was a way out. I knew she was right. In that moment, I wanted it. Maybe more than anything I ever wanted in this life.
It is how it always is.
I closed my eyes.
“Yuna?”, my brother’s voice in my pocket. Panicking. “Yuna? Why are you so quiet? Did she do something to you?”
I opened my eyes. “No fucking thank you, Granny.”
With that, my jaw unlocked. Sharp, unnatural teeth pocked out of it. There was a sadness in Granny’s eyes, but her smile widened as well. “I knew it. Not a real evil twin. You weren’t a true part of this family after all.”
With that, she jolted at me. I escaped her snapping jaw by a whisker, but she grabbed my shoulders and her sheer body-weight threw me on the floor. Then, she was on top of me, her fangs snapping and snapping.
“Fuck, okay, I’m on my way. Bringing a crowbar. Try to stall her, Yuna, don’t start any fighting.”
I used all my strength to pull myself up, slammed my teeth in her arm, and suddenly, I was on top, I was holding her down, she somehow got a hold of my feet, and we were rolling around the floor, an angry mass of body-parts.
Two monsters.
Granny fought with precision, but I was angry, I slammed my fists in every soft spot I could find, her belly, her tits, her knees, and…
An unbearable pain exploded in my leg. I let go of all I was touching and whirled around. Granny somehow had gotten her teeth slammed into my flesh.
I shook, trying to get her off of me, but her teeth were like little hooks, and they only gripped harder the more I pulled.
“GET OFF”, I begged, “get THE FUCK off of me!”
She turned her head and looked at me. The pure joy in her eyes reminded me of the Devil.
She tilted her head.
I don’t know how to describe the sound. It was a mish-mash of someone chunking down a really good steak, and a metal grinder.
I could not even overhear it over my scream. Her teeth went right through my bone. When the agony was finally, finally over, she shoved the whole thing into her mouth. And chewed.
Chewed, chewed, chewed.
She got up as she continued to eat, and stood above the urinal.
I stared at the ground. At where my leg was supposed to be. I still… I still felt it, you know? It hurt. It really fucking hurt. But… but there was nothing there anymore. My leg.
She had bitten my leg off.
Fucking off.
My Grandmother was eating my leg.
Maybe it was the bloodloss, but suddenly the absurdity of the situation made me bust into hysterical laughter.
“Yuna, what’s happening? I need two minutes, I went to the wrong bathroom, I’m almost there, I…”
He would be next. The laughter died in my throat.
Granny was turning her back on me right now. I had one shot.
I gritted my teeth and pulled. I used my elbows, robbing over the cold floor. Granny’s feet came closer and closer. Dragging my leg over the ground was unbearable. I was slipping in my blood. But I was going forward. One centimeter. Then another. Another. True dedication. Dad would be proud. Another one. Granny’s feet came closer and closer. They loooked delicious.
I could see her shoelaces. I could do this. I could actually do this! I…
Something hard slammed against my jaw.
My world became black for a second, but the pain wouldn’t stop.
When I was eight, Jaime helped me pull my milk-tooth by attaching it to a door and then slamming said door. My whole mouth had been full of blood.
This was similar.
Only now, my roots were way, way deeper.
Granny slammed again. It was something silver. Something from the toilet. Metall. One more time. Then another. And another. I swallowed a tooth. And blood. Lots of blood. I choked. I couldn’t breathe. I would choke on my own blood. And vomit. It was mixing with vomit. But Granny didn’t stop. Didn’t stop until l finally, I was nothing more than a bleeding puddle.
Something disgusting was shoved into the remainders of my face. Clothes. A gag. Sure. Like I could speak without teeth.
“Sorry, darling”, Granny whispered, “but I just cannot allow you to make a sound. I want you to listen, after all. And after I finally get rid of this… issue, we will have a long girl-talk. Promise.”
I was dragged over the floor. The door slammed. The stalls. I was in one of the stalls. My head slammed against something hard. It lulled to the side and found the cool, comforting, piss-soaked floor. Something else was pressed against my face. My phone. She made the call so silent that I could barely hear it. My brother was running.
Granny took my melon-hat off the floor and put it onto her head as she changed skin for another time.
Then, she slammed the door shut. It wasn’t even locked. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move. My hands were tied. When the fuck did she do that? I didn’t realize. Maybe, I had lost consciousness a few times. I missed my brother. But he was coming.
I recognized him by the pattern of his steps.
Then, another sound. Crying.
My crying.
“Jaime…”, my voice whispered, both on the phone and outside the stall, “it was Granny, she… she was Dave all along, she… she… I ate her. I did, I… it’s over. Everything is over.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Yeah, she bit my arm, that bitch.”
“Comeone”, my brother said, “let’s get you out of here.”
I could hear every. freaking. sound. Has anyone here ever felt something similar awful? Those moments, in which you are aware that someone you love will die, soon, and that you will hear every sound? I wanted to stop it, but my teeth were bashed in, my skin peeling off, my leg missing. I could not move. I could not speak. But Jaime had forgotten to hang up. So, I heard every word.
“Let’s take the back-door-entrance”, Granny advised, “We cannot stay here.”
“Sure”, he answered, “sorry for being late, by the way.”
Granny wasn’t a rookie. She did my step-pattern correctly. However, her steps were getting louder. She was moving closer to him.
“It’s alright”, she sighted, “I got us into this mess. I’m the monster, after all.”
From the sound his feet made, I assume he turned around.
“What? Don’t say that. I thought we were over this.”
“But, it’s true”, her voice got quiet. My voice. “Granny was right. I do… I do crave for power.”
“So do I. But you are not heartless.” Granny was so close to him now, I could hear her breathing. Silent tears ran down my face.
“I only have one question”, I heard the smile in Jaime’s voice.
“What?”, she answered.
“Is my sister alive?”
I held my breath.
“What do you mean?”
His breathing got louder. Granny seemed to back away. She sounded scared. “Jaime? What is happening to you?”
“IS. MY SISTER. ALIVE?” He was crying now.
“I’m right here”, Granny said, “what is happening to you?”
Another sound. A familiar sound. A laugh. “You really think I’m idiotic”, Jaime scoffed, “but at least I’m a strong idiot, or you would have killed me right there. What was your plan, anyway? Overwhelm me from behind? Maybe you got a gun at home? But why do you think I’m stupid? The muscles? The quietness? I mean, I probably have some attention-disorder or some shit, but that doesn’t make me dense.”
“What do you mean?”, Granny asked.
“I’ve seen movies”, Jaime cleared his throat, “also, Yuna tried to pull, like, the exact same trick on Mom. And unlike you, the real Yuna would believe that I would check. Hell, she would ask me to check.”
“Jaime”, Granny groaned. It sounded shockingly like me. “Is those one of these stupid ‘I need proof for the hypothesis’ situations? I know you love science, but I just ate Grandma, I am too tired for your shit, I…”
“What’s the first thing you said to me after you killed Mom?”
“What?”
“If you are Granny, everything else, and I mean everything, is stuff Dad could have told you about as well. But when you got me out of that basement… that was just us. So. What is the first thing you said?”
“It was…”, there was a hesitation in her voice, “it was… I was…”
Her voice became cold. Finally, she sounded just like her son. “It was the same thing she’ll say when she finds your body.”
Then, there was just screaming and bashing.
“Fuck”, I wispered soundlessly.
And then, my world went black.
The next time I woke up, steel blue eyes stared back at me.
I shuddered.
Just kill me.
I wanted to say it, but all that escaped my broken mouth was a whimper. I just knew that I could not live like this. I could not become Granny’s bitch. I could not have my brother’s murderer be my only relation to the world.
But it was okay.
My tears were taking down more and more of my body.
In a few hours, maybe a few days…
I just had to refuse to get skin.
Just refuse to…
“Fuck”, the face above me said, “Are you… breathing?”
I blinked.
Jaime smiled sadly. “Guess who just joined the parenticide-club.”
We had to hurry. Jaime had killed Granny near the locker-rooms. With a locker, apparently. His school-books were ruined. But I felt like our academic career was coming to an end, anyway.
Jaime’s only priority had been to get her away from me before they could fight. That the rest of the school would not be too thrilled to see an old lady’s body in the hallway had not crossed his mind.
My brother carried me, and he got my skin all over his shirt, but it didn’t really make a difference, anyway. My body fucking hurt. Real bad. Jaime’s voice sounded quiet, but I made an effort to listen.
“We need to skip town”, he said, “at least one of us will be wanted for murder, and even if we get out of this, foster-care ain’t an option. The Internet said that you should use your powers. Steal corporate secrets, join the military, become a spy, shit like that. Feast on the evil. Right?”
I made a movement which he correctly read as agreement.
“Anyway, I know you don’t trust the government, but… like, do you know those guys from that show, Supernatural?”
I groaned.
“Ever thought of doing that for a living, but like, in fucked-up?”
The guys from Supernatural both died every season, but I was not really able to bring that up. Because in that moment, we crossed the corner and found Jaime’s locker.
And for a moment, my breathing stopped.
“Well… shit”, said my brother.
There was a bloody mess on the walls, and on the ground.
But no trace of Granny.
“Guess she still had enough skin left to do one last round”, Jaime said. He started shaking, but he didn’t drop me. “I’m so sorry, Yuna. I should have checked her pulse, but I swear to God, I bashed her face in so bad, I really, really thought she was dead, and I… I… I wanted to find you, I needed to see if you were alive, and…”
I buried my head deeper in his shirt.
We are on the road now. Jaime just kind of… took Granny’s car. It is a blue minivan. Looks kinda stupid. His driving-skills are also very based off of Mario-cart, but we have not killed anyone so far.
Yay.
If we get murdered by our grandma, I want you to remember our story. I want someone to remember that we were more than just two screwed up kids, or a scary story you tell around a bonfire.
I like dressing up, and the feeling you get when it snows, and I have once told the Devil that he should fuck himself in the ass with his own tail to see if it lights him on fire. Only in a dream, but it still counts.
Jaime wanted to become a marine biologist, and he always googles who the murderer is in movies because he can’t stand the suspense, and then he falls into a Wikipedia-hole, and you can rely on him. You really can. Except when it comes to killing your Granny while she looks like you. But I don’t blame him for that. I obviously weren’t that good in the killing-Granny-department, either.
But at least we aren’t dead yet.
However, we are highschool-dropouts with factually no source of income. My skin is itchy. I am pumped up on pain-meds right now, but it will soon start to hurt. Very, very badly. I will need to eat someone if I want to live. It will probably be someone random, some dickface Jaime picks up at a bar and lures in my dark corner. Not a nice guy, that’s for sure, but not exactly the embodiment of the devil on earth, either.
That’s me, after all.
I will do it. I want to live. I want to walk properly, and I want to be able to communicate with my mouth, not only through text. But after this victim… I want to eat the right people.
And I can, with your help.
So if anyone has a… well, family dynamic that is similarly fucked up to ours, just DM me. I could join your household for a while. Some say, bad things happen around me.
But only to those who deserve it.
And, the most important point: Granny is onto us. And she desperately needs to get more skin.
I don’t exactly know that she looks like herself right now, but I suspect it. It is her… most innocent costume, after all. So, if an elderly woman knocks at your door. Or if she wants to talk with you… alone. If she has a beautiful smile that makes her steel-blue eyes sparkle. For God’s sake.
RUN.