Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Broken Conversations

“How many years has it been now?” Dan asks as he hands the bottle towards the headstone. “Oh, that’s right, you can’t answer,” he says, taking a large mouthful and looking up into the sky, disenchantedly.

“Twelve years, brother. It’s been twelve fucking years,” he says, looking back down at the headstone. “I feel stupid, but I guess you know that. Every year, I think maybe this time you’ll be here—sitting, waiting for me with a bottle of something cheap and nasty. But you’re never here, are you?” He takes another mouthful.

“Debbie is still remarried. Happy, apparently. I called her yesterday, but he answered the phone and told me not to call again. He lectured me about how she’s moved on from you, and that every time I bring up the past, she’s a wreck for days. I told him where he could stick his opinions, and he told me where I could stick mine. Then the piece of shit hung up. She called me later and told me not to call again—that the past was the past and she needed to move on. Apparently, me calling her every year wasn’t helping her get the space she needed to do that. I tried to talk to her, but she just shut me down and hung up when I wouldn’t let it go,” he says, swaying from side to side before taking another mouthful from the bottle.

He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his creased shirt and gasps for air, then coughs violently. “You know what the worst thing about it all is?” he says, fumbling with the fly of his pants. He pulls out his penis midstream, wetting his trousers in the process as he pisses over the headstone. “You always had it easy, even in death, you were a fucking her—” His sentence is cut short as something hits him in the back of the head, and he crashes to the ground, hitting his face on the headstone.

Dan pulls himself to his knees, using the headstone to brace himself. He tastes the saltiness of his blood, feeling around in his mouth with his tongue and touching the broken roots that remain from where his teeth once were. He swishes saliva around in his mouth, then spits a wad of blood onto the ground.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he sneers, spinning around to face the darkness behind him. Slowly, as his eyes adjust, he sees a figure move forward towards him.

“I have more, but we’ll get to that a little later. I want you to be coherent for this conversation. The others, you can scream your way through,” she says, crouching in front of him with a smile.

“Y-Y-You think I’m scared of you?” he stammers.

“I don’t think anything. I know you’re afraid because I can taste it in your sweat,” she says, grabbing his head with a powerful grip and licking his forehead. “And your sweat tastes divine,” she whispers, her smile growing wider.