Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

“Jeremiah” contains scenes of sexualised violence and strong profanity that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

Jeremiah

They stand gathered around the hastily dug hole in the ground, with bowed heads and closed eyes. Today, this family buries its patriarch, a man who they all thought would live forever, but now they stand in awe of the truth that nothing lives forever.

Jeremiah Talbot was a man of few words but many actions, with a temper that ran through his veins and out through his fists. For as long as he had lived in these parts, only strangers had attempted to pass through what Jeremiah saw as his territory, as the rest of the neighbouring area stayed well away from Jeremiah and his kin. Because of that, almost every soul that travelled within his lands never reached the other side, and those who did would soon succumb to a violent death before being able to report any wrongdoings by Jeremiah and his demented flock of children.

As his busted and broken children weep while the wooden box that is to be his coffin is lowered into the hole, the reality is lost to most of them. What his death truly means is yet to hit home. Over the course of his seventy-two years, Jeremiah fathered over one hundred and eighty-nine illegitimate sons and four hundred and forty-six daughters. Life for those who survived past their first few years was a harsh, brutal world, with only a handful reaching their teens. Those who were not victims of the world they lived in fell to the impairments in their DNA as a result of genetic mutation caused by the oversaturation of the gene pool, mainly from the constant inbreeding that took place, where many of his daughters mothered their own brothers and sisters. Jeremiah was a man governed by no rules but his own, and he made a point of ritualistically starting sexual relationships with his daughters once they reached the age of eight.

Of course, there were also the travellers. The ones who took the journey across, into Jeremiah’s land, off on adventures, with the belief that new things waited on the other side. But they were never to find anything else, as they would never reach it. Instead, they would succumb to Jeremiah and his children. The men were killed and provided the family with fresh meat, while the women became new play toys for Jeremiah, impregnating some and beating others until their life had left them. Very few of these outsiders ever became part of the family, for they could never accept their fate, and eventually, all became food, for here nothing was wasted; everything was recycled into something of use, something to sustain more life.

The eldest of his sons, the twenty-eight-year-old Calvert, stands at the head of the grave and looks up to his thirty-six brothers and sisters and frowns deeply, not out of sorrow, but out of dissatisfaction.

“Daddy, Daddy was a great man, but now he’s gone. We are strong, and we will survive,” he says with a smile. “Daddy would want today to be joyful, a celebration of what he stood for. So while we be sad, we be happy, because from today I am Daddy now. It falls on my shoulders as I am oldest; his seed runs through all of us, and my seed will run through all of you, for it is his as well as mine,” he says as he pulls down his pants and grips his hardening member. “Let my seed go with you,” he says as he furiously begins to jerk his now hard penis until he empties himself over the top of the wooden box, then looks up at his brothers and sisters. “Rest now Daddy, for my seed is now yours and what you did sow, now will I.”

His brothers begin shovelling the dirt back into the hole, covering the box as the rest make their way out of the shrine-like graveyard.

Inside the box, she opens her eyes urgently, to the muffled sounds of something thumping above her. Her eyes widen with fear as dirt leaks through the cracks in the wooden box. Desperately she feels around, touching something cold and hard. Instantly she realises that she’s being buried with Jeremiah and begins to scream in absolute terror.

Suddenly a frozen hand grabs her by the wrist. “Don’t you be worrying, girly, it’s going to be warm where we be going,” a raspy voice hisses into her ear.