Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

See a Penny 

The ground twists and turns beneath his feet as he stumbles from here to there until he eventually crashes into the still-spinning earth with a vicious thud. 

For many moments, he lies there with his eyes tightly closed, frantically gripping handfuls of dirt in a desperate bid to stabilize the world around him. But his desperation is only rewarded with a thick sea of vomit that escapes his gullet and sprays out of his trembling lips onto the twisting land before him. 

“I told you it would be a wild ride,” Kevin sneers as he crouches over the trembling Marshall. “You should’ve taken the red pill and gone back to the fake-arsed reality you love so fucking much.” 

“Y-Y-You said it was a lie!” he spits through wet, saturated lips. “Y-Y-You said she w-w-was still alive, and I’d b-be able to s-see her a-a-again.” 

Kevin raises his eyebrows and smiles wryly as he shoves his hands in his pockets and tilts his head to the air. “That doesn’t really sound like something I would say. All that stuttering is definitely not me!” he jests cheerfully. 

Marshall’s eyes tear open, and he stares up at Kevin with terror-filled eyes. “DON’T DO THIS!” he spits. “DON’T LIE! DON’T PLAY ME LIKE A FOOL!” 

Kevin’s smile widens broadly. “A fool is a fool regardless of how they are played, and you, my finely feathered fool of a friend, are truly a sight to behold.” 

“S-STOP IT!” Marshall screams as he thrusts himself unsteadily to his feet, taking random steps back and forth, swaying as if he were on the deck of a boat. “T-T-Tell me the TRUTH!” 

“But I have, every time you have asked, I have said,” he says with his wry smile, looking amused. “I answer with only the truth, while you hear a lie.” 

“T-T-THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S ALL YOU DO!” he snaps, stumbling to his knees as he vomits bile and blood from his now empty stomach. 

“OUCH!” Kevin says with a hiss. “I’d sit this one out if I were you, sunshine. That isn’t what you want to be seeing when you go the old heave-ho. If you’re not careful, next time we might see some organs.” 

Marshall spits out a mouthful of sickly tainted saliva and drags his hand across his face. “I-I just… I just want to s-see her,” he stammers, tears running down his face. 

Kevin frowns and takes a deep breath as he pulls a small key from one of his pockets. “See this key?” he asks, holding it proudly out towards Marshall, who nods uneasily. Kevin winks and smiles. “This key unlocks a lock, like all keys do, and like all things locked, there’s something inside whatever the lock this key opens is locking. But that’s not what I was looking for,” he says as he tosses the key away and reaches back into his pocket once more. After several more moments of fumbling around and pulling faces, he finally smiles again and pulls out a shiny single penny. “THIS IS IT!” he announces proudly. 

“W-W-What is it?” 

Kevin rolls his eyes and smacks his lips together. “Obviously, it’s a penny, Sherlock.” 

“I-I-I, I can see that. W-Why do you have it, and why is it important?” 

“Ah, right, the what is it,” he says bemusedly. “It’s what they call a piece of luck, the old ‘see a penny, pick it up and all day you’ll have good luck’ shtick. Well, this penny, this is that penny.” 

“W-W-Will it h-help me see her again?” 

“What? No, no! This penny is mine, I found it, I have the luck,” he says, thrusting a thumb into his own chest. “But if you found one, maybe that would help you see her again.” 

“W-What if I took y-your penny? W-Would it help me see her?” 

Kevin smiles wryly, “What? Are you se…” Before he could finish his sentence, Marshall awkwardly launches himself toward Kevin. 

With a pathetic thud, Marshall hits the ground before Kevin. 

“Really? Did you just try and attack me?” 

“J-JUST GIVE ME THE P-PENNY!” he screams. 

Kevin shakes his head disapprovingly as he flicks the coin into the air and catches it, before he crouches over Marshall once again. “You don’t get it, do you? I can’t give it to you and you can’t take it from me. If either of those happens, the penny is no longer lucky. The only way this penny will work is if I were to lose it, and you were to find it, and neither of those things are going to happen,” he says as he flicks the coin up into the air once again. This time, Marshall leaps upwards and drives a blade up into Kevin’s chest, catching the coin in his other hand. 

“BULLSHIT!” Marshall hisses with a beaming smile across his lips as he tightly grips the coin and begins to laugh. Then he screams as the coin burns through his flesh and drops to the ground before erupting in flames. 

“N-N-NO!” Marshall screams. “W-WHAT HAPPENED! W-WHAT HAPPENED?” he screams, looking over into Kevin’s empty, dead eyes, a smile etched across his lips.