Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

An Envelope Written for Me 

Blood runs down his face as he stares at his fractured reflection in the cracked mirror. He curls his lips, baring his teeth like some deranged wild animal. The gash on his forehead gapes wider, the skin peeling apart like fruit left out in the summer sun—warm, sticky, and rotting too quickly. His gaze drifts toward the eye that stares silently back—buried deep inside the flesh, staring at him from within the bloody wound. 

A grunt growls through his clenched teeth. He slaps the wound, punches it hard. The eye shifts beneath the skin, its gaze infuriating. With trembling fingers, he pinches the torn flesh together and drives the needle through it. A grimace contorts his face as he pulls the line taut, then weaves the needle through again. And again. Slowly. Clumsily. Stitch by agonising stitch, he buries the eye beneath the flesh. He bites down on the thread and rips it free, snarling as he spits the bloody remnants into the sink. 

Leaning back, he grips the grimy white ceramic basin and glares at his twisted reflection. His face is a mess of sweat, blood, and poorly sewn flesh. He tilts his head, baring his teeth as he clenches his jaw tight. His facial muscles twitch as a laugh escapes—a dry, broken sound that echoes through the filthy room. 

The laugh dies quickly as his legs give way. His bare feet slip on the blood-covered tiles, and he collapses backward. His head slams into the edge of the sink with a wet crack before his body crumples into a tangled heap on the floor. 

For minutes, maybe longer, he lies there. Above him, the flickering light casts his twitching body in erratic bursts of brightness and shadow. The stitches stretch as the buried eye shifts, pulling the skin taut. The torn flesh splits as the eye slowly, deliberately—impossibly—rolls upward. The thread snaps, and the flesh hangs open again. The eye stares out, triumphant, unblinking, watching the world. 

He awakes with a sudden cry, the room unfamiliar. A low hum of machinery fills the air, rhythmic beeps echoing from the machines linked to wires piercing his flesh. The door opens, and a striking blonde woman in a nurse’s uniform enters. She smiles softly. His lips tremble, his brow furrows, and a sea of sweat cascades down his face. 

“W-W-Where a-am I?” he stammers. 

The nurse continues to smile as she checks the machines, her eyes glinting in the cold fluorescent light. 

“H-H-Hello?” he tries again, his voice cracking. 

She looks at him and nods politely but says nothing. His trembling hand lashes out, snatching the folder from her grip. It’s blank. His heart races as he looks back up at her. Her mouth opens wide, revealing rows of jagged teeth. She screams, the sound shrill and relentless, like a siren tearing through his skull. 

His body jerks, and the pain consumes him. He opens his eyes again, heart pounding, to find himself back on the floor, staring at the cracked sink. The blood pools beneath him as he lies in silence, the room bathed in suffocating darkness. 

Then, from the cracks in the tiles, a whisper rises. A low, incomprehensible murmur, wet and insidious, wrapping itself around his mind like a vice. His lips twitch, curling into a grotesque, blood-painted grin. The whisper grows louder, burrowing deeper into his ears, his skull, until the words become clear. 

“Do it,” the voice commands, jagged and sharp, cutting through his sanity like a razor slicing through skin. 

A low laugh rises, soft at first, then swelling louder. He jerks his head backward, smashing it into the tiles with a sickening crack. Blood sprays across the floor. He slams it back again. And again. Each blow deliberate, each strike harder than the last, his laughter growing more hysterical, more unhinged, with every impact. 

Finally, his body falls limp. His eyes remain wide and empty as he lies in an ever-growing pool of blood. His skull is a shattered mess, the cracks in his head leaking crimson rivers. 

As silence fills the room, something stirs. A small, grotesque creature slithers out from the remains of his skull, its single wide eye gleaming as it crawls free.