Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

More Ways Than One to Change Who You Are

He squints one eye tightly, closing the other as his tongue pokes into the corner of his mouth. His trembling fingers carefully thread the catgut cord through the needle’s eye. A bead of sweat trickles down his brow as he draws several stuttering breaths. What feels like an eternity passes before the line finally slides through, and he exhales a sigh of relief. Turning to the pale, dazed stare of Kyle, he offers a nervous smile.

“How embarrassing would that have been—to get through all the bullshit before, only to trip up right at the end? It would’ve made a mockery of everything terrible I’ve done to you, wouldn’t it?” he says, his nervous smile curling into a hideous grin.

He takes Kyle’s limp hand, placing it gently onto a crudely modified lazy Susan. Its surface, fitted with several restraints, is marred by deep, dark crimson stains. Fastening one of the straps around Kyle’s wrist, he secures the hand in place. Tilting his head, he purses his lips and leans back, carefully surveying Kyle’s outstretched hand. One by one, he gently locks each finger into the roughly fashioned holsters. Closing one eye and sticking out his tongue again, he leans back, studying Kyle’s bewildered face with smug satisfaction.

“You know, when I first started doing this, I used pruning shears and chloroform. The results weren’t great,” he says, holding up a decayed hand, its fingers at various stages of rot.

“Growing up, my father thought the best kind of punishment was the kind that involved taking my fingers off at the hilt—one by one. So, what do I really know, right?” His words dissolve into a hysterical cackle as he picks up a cleaver and brings it down hard, severing Kyle’s hand in one clean stroke.

Blood pours out in a wave of red. He nods, tilting his head as though evaluating his own work. Glancing at Kyle’s glazed eyes, his smile grows wider.

“Don’t worry about bleeding out. The drug I force-fed you doesn’t just keep you docile—it thickens the blood. They use it in all those big, expensive hospitals where the surgeons are gung-ho mavericks who couldn’t give a fuck about the person on the table before them.” He grunts, letting out a stuttered sigh as he wipes his arm across his sweaty forehead, leaving a crimson smear on his pale flesh. Pursing his lips again, he looks over the severed hand and nods in satisfaction, glancing at Kyle with the grin of a used-car salesman sealing a deal.

“Everything has a place, a shelf, a spot to exist. You take what was there away, you replace it with something else. Balance. Without that, nothing exists. They say self-improvement starts at home, and you can make the change just by deciding it. You’ve got to work for it—put in the hard yards—and if you can find a corner to cut, you cut it,” he says with a hearty chuckle, slapping his own hand onto the table with a sharp thud.

Without hesitation, he grabs the cleaver again, rests its blade against the curve of his wrist, catches several short breaths, and allows his smile to twist into something more unhinged than before. Tilting his head to the side, he glances over at Kyle, who meets his gaze with a crossed-eyed stare.

“Don’t do that. You don’t know what true art is—what true change is all about. This is evolution,” he spits, raising the cleaver. Without hesitation, he brings it down in one quick, brutal motion.

He screams as the pain rushes through him like a freight train, taking out everything along the way. He hisses, roars, and then begins to laugh hysterically. A gush of red sprays from the wound, but like Kyle’s, the flow slows and steadies. He clenches his jaw, stumbling forward before collapsing in a confused heap. Closing his eyes, he takes several deep breaths before staggering back to his feet and focusing his gaze on Kyle’s severed hand.

“P-P-Perfect,” he whispers through gritted teeth, turning the lazy Susan around and pressing his own bloody stump against the severed hand. He looks over at the vacant Kyle and smiles. “N-N-Now, you probably thought everything we’ve done so far was the hard part. Well, that’s where you’re wrong, because this part—this part—” He stares off into the darkness with an empty expression before shaking his head and laughing softly.

With his free, trembling hand, he holds the threaded needle, its catgut line gleaming.

He swallows a jagged mouthful of air before piercing the needle through his own flesh and then into Kyle’s former hand. Yanking the thread through with a grunt, his eyes roll into the back of his head. He sways momentarily before looking back down and repeating the process several more times, each stitch as grotesque as the last.

“S-S-S-See, Kyle? Now y-y-you’re a l-l-little piece of me, a-a-and you, well—” He stammers, pulling the cord taut as he ties the final stitch. “You’re just a little less of you.”

He arches back and frees the restraints from the fingers, then the wrist. Like a king of the jungle holding a newborn high, he raises his hand into the air, studying it with perplexed wonder. The hand twitches involuntarily at first, spasming as though electrical connections are impossibly joined. Then he flexes his fingers, grimacing through the pain.

“Look at that, Kyle—a perfect fit,” he says, a twisted grin stretching across his lips. He looks over at the despondent Kyle as a single tear trickles down his cheek. “Oh, don’t worry, baby boy. You’ve still got a long life ahead of you—because I’m nowhere near done with you yet. Not while I’ve still got so much of me to change!”