Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Just Beneath the Surface

He tightens his grip on the knife and digs the blade deep into his arm. His lip curls, and he grimaces as he drags it downward, letting out stuttered hisses as he does. Saliva drips from his trembling lips as a river of crimson floods his skin, spilling thick and warm before the knife falls to the floor from his trembling hand. He staggers, then drops to his knees as the world spins violently around him. Sweat cascades down his face, his chest heaving as his vision dissolves into an abstract blur.

Black pockets of light explode before his eyes. He blinks rapidly. He turns his head, rocking it gently from side to side as if to shake the blindness away. His head tilts as he sways from side to side. He grimaces, his eyes rolling back into his skull. For a moment, he feels the cold touch of death encompassing him, but the pain draws him back, and he casts his fevered gaze to the bloody wound across his arm.

With wide eyes and trembling lips, he forces the wound open and presses his fingers into the sickly, sticky cavity. The subtle softness and inviting warmth make his stomach churn, but he swallows the bile that threatens to escape and continues to dig. His breath stutters to a stop as his fingers touch something unnatural—a foreign shard of metal lodged deep within him. He reaches, feeling desperately. As it seems out of reach, he clenches his teeth and narrows his eyes, flicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he finally grips it and pulls.

At first, it resists his tugs, staying steadfast and true, tangled in flesh, but his desperate yanks free it with a wet, grotesque tearing snap. He pulls it free and places it in his bloodied palm, the jagged rod glimmering under the flickering light. It feels wrong in his hand—it feels alive.

The rod twitches, and his breath catches in his throat as the rod’s jagged edges ripple, splitting apart like the legs of an insect. He cries out and drops it instinctively. The rod tumbles through the air and lands with a hollow clang, but it doesn’t simply fall to the floor and stay there. Instead, it begins to move.

His mind reels, sweat pouring down his clammy flesh. The room tilts wildly as his body teeters on the brink of collapse, yet he doesn’t. He sways, swings, but refuses to fall. Instead, he sits and watches—staring, unable to look away. The rod scurries across the floor toward him, its tiny legs clicking against the blood-slicked floor like the hands of a clock ticking. He grimaces and tries to force himself to his feet, but his arms feel heavy, his breaths shallow and fatigued, while the river of red he sits in continues to grow.

By the time it reaches him, his world has become an illusion of images that could not be real—people laughing, lights, fireworks, celebrations. He shakes his head, torturing himself to recall why he is here. Why he can’t remember. He feels it tear into his flesh, and his hollow eyes widen as he focuses them down to the floor, as the thing digs its razor-sharp legs into his flesh, then disappears into him.

He screams as he tears at the wound—gouging holes in his flesh in desperation. Blood sprays and spatters across the floor as he stuffs his fingers deeper into his own flesh, trying to claw the thing out. But it only burrows deeper—twisting and writhing within him. He arches his head toward the roof, screaming in agony as his body convulses violently—spasms trembling through him as he howls and sobs, before clawing at his flesh again, desperate to dig the thing out—while beneath his skin, the thing pulls him apart from within, piece by agonising piece.