Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Drawn All Wrong

“I honestly don’t understand a word of anything you just said!” Shawna says as she falls back into her seat, clutching the half-empty glass of whisky and nervously dragging back on her bent cigarette. “I-I-I, I’m sorry, I-I-I, I really am. I just don’t FUCKING understand any of it, n-n-none, n-not one little bit of it!”

He screws his face up and raises his eyebrows with wonderment, blinking several times before letting out an exhausted sigh. “What’s not to understand, I—”

“I KNOW! I KNOW! I heard what you said, every FUCKING insane word of it,” she says, with arms flailing every which way. “I know that you’re telling me that Jimmy was killed by a FUCKING drawing you made when you were five. I get that part, I really FUCKING do. I-I, I just can’t bring myself to believe what you’re saying!”

He smiles softly. “It’s okay, it really is. I know it’s hard to get your head around my story. Trust me, every time I think it’s all in my head, something like this happens and I’m back to being a five-year-old kid again, trying to find a way to rub out the drawing before it hurts Mum or Dad.”

She lets out a muffled laugh and downs the rest of the glass, letting out a loud hiss of appreciation as the whisky burns her throat on the way down. She slams the glass back on the table. “Do you realise how FUCKING insane that sounds? DO YOU? You,” she says as she gestures towards his frail frame, “you are PHYSICALLY chasing a drawing. No wait—sorry—that’s not popcorn enough, is it? You’re chasing a murderous FUCKING drawing you drew when you were a kid because it’s come back from being rubbed out and is killing your friends because it’s jealous that you haven’t drawn it in a long time! Is that pretty much right?”

He nods his head and splays his arms out as he shrugs his shoulders. “That’s pretty much my whole bag.”

She laughs loudly this time, slapping her leg with gusto as she does. “No wonder you’re locked up in here! You’re fucking crazy as a mad hatter!”

“Hey, Nurse Ratched! You’re locked up in here too, although I walked in through the front door of my own free will, while you, you were dragged here kicking and screaming because you can’t be out there with the normal people.”

“There aren’t any normal people left out there anymore. WE’RE the normal people! We ARE!” she spits back.

“We’re not normal—we—” He stops mid-sentence and freezes on the spot.

She stares at him in confusion. “What the FUCK has got into you now?”

“Y-Y-You d-don’t hear t-t-that?” he stammers as his lips tremble, his eyes widening more and more with each passing second.

“I don’t hear nothing except your annoying, whiny voice getting in the way of my money.”

“S-S-Stop it, s-s-stop making fun of it,” he grunts, with a sneer chiselled across his lips. “I-I-It doesn’t like being made fun of.”

She laughs loudly again. “Well, honey, if it didn’t like what I had to say before, it’s not gonna like the next few moments,” she says with a grin.

“D-D-D-Don’t, p-p-p-please,” he stammers.

“HONEY, I AIN’T BEEN LISTENING TO MEN MY WHOLE LIFE, AND I SURE AS SHIT AIN’T GONNA START NOW! SO, IF YOU DON’T MIND, YOU CAN TAKE YOUR LITTLE STICK MAN, AND FUCK OFF—” But her words are stolen as he is quickly upon her, driving the blade of a knife deep into her stomach.

“RUB THIS ONE OUT, BITCH, WHILE I RUB THE OTHER ONE OUT!” he snarls with a chuckle, as he twists the blade and drags it up and out.