Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

You Don’t Want to Meet Your Heroes

A short horror by Matthew Tonks

A quiet, casual meeting turns into a private screening of obsession—someone’s devotion has been framed and mounted, and the applause has teeth. Walk inside and keep your eyes away from the trophies on the wall.

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His smile wavers. He looks awkwardly away, as if embarrassed to even be there.

“I met your mum a couple of times, at her local supermarket,” he says. He reaches out—a failed gesture, the movement emotionless, clearly choreographed to be this way, but clumsily written and overacted.

His smile brushes his lips.

“I followed her for weeks. She didn’t know who I was, why I was there, or that I knew her at all,” he says, his smile smug now, his eyes fixed on something not even in his line of sight as his mind falls into the memory.

“Did she tell you about me—about what we did?” he asks, his smile widening, a wicked thing carving his face open like a crude knife.

“No, I doubt she would’ve—considering the things we did. How deep I went inside her.”

He swallows. His eyes narrow. The blurred world around him swings and sways. A gasp escapes—then a cough. Wetness spits from his lips—thick strings of red run down his chin.

“Oh no, are you okay?” he asks, pulling tissues from a box and gently wiping the crimson mask from his lips.

He looks up at him, eyes swelling with anger—while Theo laughs, kisses his forehead, and runs a hand clumsily through his hair. He gasps, then slowly presses his face to his head, edging his nose into the hair, inhaling deeply—each breath drawn deeper than the last.

He pulls back and shakes his head wildly.

“What a rush!” he screams, tumbling into his chair. He stares at him—lovestruck, almost.

“I—I,” he stammers, collapsing onto the table in an over-dramatic fashion, tracing gentle circles on the wooden surface. He mumbles incoherently to himself, then casts his eyes back to meet his wide petrified one.

“Oh, honey,” he says, snapping to attention. He reaches out and cups his face gently.

“What is it? Was I too much again? D-D-D-did I scare you? A-A-re you afraid of me?” he asks, trembling as he pulls his hand away and stares at him in panic.

“A-Am I t-the bad one? A-Am I the one the papers should be talking about—instead of you?” he asks, tears tumbling softly down his cheeks. Then, beneath the façade, his smile grows wicked.

“Was that Oscar-worthy? Are you jealous?” Theo asks playfully, then grits his teeth and slams his fist against the table. It bounces. He jumps, heart racing with panic.

“What do I have to do? Why can’t you see me?” he screams, hurling himself to his feet and storming around the room in a twisted frenzy.

He grabs handfuls of hair, bellows at the top of his lungs, then jerks his gaze back to him. Sweat pours from his brow. His grin—a twisted thing—slithers across trembling lips.

“I-I-I,” he stammers, a nervous laugh escaping his lips as he stands tall, stretching his neck to the right and then to the left—an explosion of cracks bursts out like a child devouring bubble wrap.

“I wanted to say sorry. I wanted to mean it. I needed you to earn it. But—” he says, turning his face toward him, tucking his head into his shoulder as he tears down a black curtain from the wall.

The curtain falls, revealing a wall of relics.

A shrine masquerading as a set. A temple built not for gods, but for obsession.

Movie posters of B-grade horrors, indie dramas meant to save his career—the blockbusters, the trash—hang crookedly along the wall. Some are framed, but most are stained, torn, curling at the edges.

Boxes of deodorant he never used—bought because of the star’s corny ads.

Dozens of VHS tapes fill the shelves. DVDs. Blu-rays. Digital discs. Every variation, no matter how minor. Watched like scripture. Even the bootlegs of films that never made it out.

Costumes and set pieces hang from nails like trophies—stained suits, sequinned jackets, a bathrobe hardened with bile and stage blood. A painted tree with jagged teeth and red eyes.

A wall of photos—signed, posed, defaced—alongside clippings from magazines that barely mentioned him. Names underlined and faces crossed out with feverish notes scrawled in red next to them.

A map of his achievements, a tour of his soul, and at its centre, mounted high, looking down at him with wide, glazed eyes—his mother’s head, crudely nailed to a wooden plaque—mounted like a trophy, proud and obscene.

Her hair curled and styled, stiff like plastic, while her neck is wrapped in a crimson feather boa, reminiscent of the one he wore when he starred alongside Hollywood royalty in his final role—a departure, an insult to his fans.

“She never got it,” he whispers, trembling. “She didn’t understand who you were—what you meant to your fans. To me.”

Then he thrusts his arms wide, like a prophet delivering communion to his faithful.

“But now—now she watches every scene. She knows every line. Like every mother should.”

He screams in his chair—pushing, pulling, fighting the binds that hold him. The chair shifts, it rocks, but it doesn’t fall.

He screams, his voice cracking. Tears—ones he didn’t think he had left—squeeze out of his dehydrated body. His heart pulses. His brain throbs. His voice falters until hoarse.

“She didn’t need to die,” Theo says, as he brushes the hair from her pale face. Her dead, empty eyes stare forward.

He kisses her gently on the cheek before turning, a smile adorning his lips.

“Now that,” he says, swaggering across the room like Mick Jagger.

“That—that is cinema!” Theo howls, slamming the table aside. The machete gleams in his grip. Their eyes lock.

“Ready for your close-up?”

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💬 Did this one echo?
Tell me—before it forgets your name.

—
Written by Matthew Tonks
→ Read more nightmares at mtonks.com

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