Twisted 50 Volume 1

by Wessell, Stephanie

  Thankfully the ability to feel didn’t continue for long after the maggots hatched. Although I was left with the memory of how it felt, which was almost worse.

  The circle of life continued within me. Flies laid their eggs, maggots emerged and fed until they were fat and gelatinous, turning in time to flies who mated and then started the whole thing off again.

  I am pretty sure other bugs and creepy things joined them at the buffet. But it was the buzzing of the flies, day and night, that filled my head.

  As time wore on, my body swelled up around me, the gases let out by my decaying organs and feeding inhabitants filling the cavity.

  Eventually, like an over-filled balloon, my skin split and disgorged the squirming maggot soup I had become, which seeped away through the cracks in the concrete beneath me.

  I am not sure when the memories started. Time had ceased to have meaning soon after I fell. At first they ran through my skull like an unstoppable, jumbled train. Snapshots of a life I had lived.

  Soon, though, the jumbled train slowed and became ordered, flowing like a movie in the darkness. I saw the person I had been and watched as baby grew to laughing boy and from boy to man.

  I saw a child on a golden beach, giggling as rippling waves pulled at his toes. My father picked me up and swung me high into the air. My shrieks and squeals echoed. I remembered the joy, love and light. I walked between my parents on a golden beach.

  I saw an older boy on a golden beach, his hood pulled up. Sulking. My parents walking ahead, a gap where I could have been. Shoulders bent.

  I saw a young man sat on a golden beach, a can in one hand, a phone in the other. Shoulders hunched against the world. My parents walked alone along the beach as I updated my Facebook status: Wish I was somewhere else.

  I saw the world as it had been, my family, my friends.

  I saw the love which had been given and I had grown to reject.

  I heard the words I had spoken and felt the pain I had caused.

  I saw my mother’s tears and my father’s bewilderment.

  I wondered if they looked for me, imagined them on the nightly news begging me to return. Did they question Billy and Jono, or listen to their lies? Did they assume it had been my choice to go? Did they believe I was out there somewhere, living life as I wanted, hoping one day I would walk back in? I wondered: did they miss me, or was it a quiet relief?

  At last I understood. I had turned my back on everything that I had been. I listened to a rage that had no meaning. I chose rage over those who loved me. But the rage had left me cold and alone.

  Finally, my memories having run their course, I saw that last day. Saw mum asking me to clear the table and me, like a spoilt brat, storming from the room, grabbing my coat, slamming out of the house. I saw their faces, sad and tired. So very tired.

  It was a while before I noticed the fog. It curled itself along the walls, sending questing tendrils towards me.

  My memories have reached the last hours now: climbing over the railing, scrambling up the rusty staircases, standing in the early autumn sunlight on the roof. Looking out over the city; the yellow and grey trams trundling past. Ferrying the slaves of corporations and society. Not for us, that fate – no, we were free, slaves to nothing… Just the rage inside.

  The fog is flowing over me now, filling the voids.

  The rooftop lies in the golden light. I take the joint from Jono. Billy stands on the beam; we laugh as he starts to pray.

  I hold out my hand, wanting to stop the inevitable.

  Jono is over now, they are both looking at me. I take that step and…

  The fog is covering me. The memories have ended. There is nothing now. Just silence.

  Fingers

  by J.M Hewitt

  What’s your worst nightmare? That haunting one you share with your friends in the playground? Imagine sliding naked down a giant razor blade and landing in a pool of alcohol. Imagine being tied up and having your fingers chopped off, one by one. . .

  That one with the fingers. That’s me, right now, as a thirty-year-old woman. I’m strapped to a bed, having my digits removed with a cigar cutter, one by one.

  This basement, this prison is truly the stuff of nightmares. It’s dank, cold and I can hear water dripping. There’s a window up high with frosted glass and bars. I can see people’s legs as they walk past, going about their daily business. The first time I woke and noticed the window, I screamed for help. That’s how I lost my second finger. I had already lost the first.

  I am now four fingers and one thumb short.

  I don’t scream anymore.

  My name is Lucy and five days ago I was one of those people up there. My only concerns were what takeaway to have for dinner; red wine or white, or vodka? Now, a week later, I couldn’t even hold a bottle of wine or a glass of vodka.

  The man who snatched me off the street and brought me here knows what he is doing. I’m hooked up to a drip. He ties a cord around my fingers to drain them of blood before taking them off and then he affixes a tourniquet.

  A shuffling noise joins in with the dripping water. I stiffen, close my eyes. It’s him, and if he thinks I’m sleeping maybe he’ll pass me by. I almost laugh; how’s that for a childish dream? If I can’t see him he can’t see me.

  “Lucy.”

  His voice is low and gravelly, almost pleasant, and I don’t even want to know how he knows my name. I’m sure I didn’t tell him.

  I open my eyes and level my gaze at him. I realise, for the first time, he is not alone.

  There’s a woman with him. She’s no more than a shapeless, hunched-over lump sitting in a wheelchair. She has a blanket covering almost all of her body.

  “Theresa,” the man says, softly, and bends over, leaning his chin on her shoulder, a horrid gesture of familiarity. “This is Lucy, the lady who is helping you.”

  I flick my confused gaze between the two of them. How am I helping this woman?

  Theresa raises her eyes to meet mine; she smiles shyly.

  “Theresa, show Lucy how she’s helped you,” he says and straightens up, moving away to leave Theresa in the spotlight.

  She shrugs the blanket off her shoulders, moving them in an almost sultry manner until the discarded garment falls to the floor.

  She’s wearing a vest top and, despite my own state, I feel a wave of sympathy as I notice that both of her arms end just below her shoulders. Still smiling coyly, she lifts her left arm, waving it and a small giggle escapes from her.

  There is something there, a skin tag, or a bit of saggy skin. I lift my head, caught up in the curiosity and then I blanch as I realise what it is and, subsequently, why I’m here.

  Attached to her arm, crudely sewn on to her shoulder stump, is my thumb. Dizziness strikes, the ceiling spirals around as I fall backwards. Mercifully, I faint.

  When I wake up I’m minus another finger. All I have now is three fingers and a thumb on my right hand. My left hand looks like Theresa’s shoulder, nothing more than a rounded post with five tiny, bloodied stumps.

  At this point I begin to wonder if I actually want to survive, or at what stage of the ongoing amputations I will want to die. What about when he runs out of fingers and thumbs, what happens then? And how long can a human body survive having pieces of it taken away? Will I still want to live as just a head and torso? I don’t think so, but I guess I won’t know until I get there.

  I struggle against my binds and it’s a useless task. I thrash a bit more, if I can only loosen these straps, but they hold fast. They are buckled, like the ones used in a mental asylum or a prison hospital. They will never weaken or break.

  Nor will I!

  In a moment of fury and stark desperation, my survival instinct kicks in and I hump my body up and down and from side to side. I writhe so hard that the bed moves across the floor. I stop, breathing hard before going at it again. I’m whooping and tossing and concentrating so hard I don’t even hear him come back in. I don’t know that he’s standing th
ere, with Theresa, until he brings his hand down and thwacks the top of my bed.

  I freeze, motionless at his sudden appearance.

  He is angry, and by the dried tears on Theresa’s face I don’t think his anger is just because of the commotion I was making.

  He waits until he is sure he has my full attention and then he spins around, whips the blanket off Theresa and with a long, white, hairy finger he props up her left shoulder stump.

  The thumb, my thumb that is attached to her, has turned rotten. A yellow discharge weeps from between the black, stubbly stitches and the thumb itself has turned a nasty green-grey colour. I can smell it from here.

  “W-what about the other fingers?” I cry. “They might work.”

  As soon as the words leave my dry, chapped lips, I can’t believe I’ve said them. I’m encouraging this maniac to sew my fingers onto this girl. So fierce is his rage that right now, I’d chop my own remaining digits off if it would buy me some more time in this life.

  And it strikes me, the question that I was pondering earlier; when will I give up? Not quite yet, obviously. The realisation is cheering but only fleetingly. My head is soon plunged back into the darkest, depths of horror as he wraps his hand around the rotten thumb and yanks it off her arm.

  Theresa screams.

  I join her.

  I pass out again.

  I’m almost happy in the underworld of dreams. If death is like this, then maybe I would welcome it, after all. But I wake, again, eventually. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep but I can tell immediately that something has changed. I look down, count; three fingers and a thumb. My relief is short lived as I locate the source of strangeness. I’m missing both my feet. The left one looks like it has healed a little better, which suggests he took that one first.

  Funny, how he works from left to right. And the fact that I have this thought tells me I’m closer to madness than when I arrived here.

  I’m not alone. Theresa is here; calm, shy Theresa who gives off a vibe of wanting to be friends. I have to use her. I have to try.

  “Will you help me, Theresa?” I ask quietly. “If you help me, I can help you. I work for a plastic surgeon; he’s one of the best in England. He can get you new arms that are even better than the ones you had.” It is a lie; I work in a pharmacy.

  “I’ve never had any arms,” she replies, wide-eyed. “I was born this way.”

  So she’s lived decades like this, why, why, WHY does he need to change her now? And what is she to him? Wife, daughter? My time is too short to find out so I rush ahead.

  “Unbuckle me, Theresa,” I plead. “I’ll take you with me, I’ll help you, we can help each other.”

  “Can’t come with you,” she says flatly.

  She hunches over so her head is almost touching her knees. I wonder what’s wrong now, then she moves, and I realise with her disability this is the only way she can possibly wheel her chair.

  Then she is beside me, leaning over, baring pointed, yellow teeth near my neck and I inhale sharply, then I let the air out, a whoosh of relief as she attempts to unbuckle the straps using her teeth. They are her only tools.

  It takes a long time and my eyes are always on the door, wondering where he is; could he arrive at any moment? My heart thuds in my chest and I feel lightheaded. I focus on the wound on her shoulder where he ripped my thumb off. It is red and livid, with an aroma of rotten vegetables.

  She moves back, breathing heavily, and I am free. I sit up, leaning on my right hand.

  She pats her lap and holds her stumps open, as if for a hug. I realise that the only way I can get from my bed to the door is by using her as transport.

  I let myself topple and then I’m on her, and she leans to the left, hunched right over, and I use my right hand, and together we wheel ourselves to the door. She talks as she wheels.

  “He tried arms, before, but they never work. Too much blood loss, or something,” she whispers. “He thinks if I had digits I’d be able to do more, you know, around the house. And then he gets so angry when it doesn’t work.”

  “And my feet?” I ask, matching her quiet tone.

  She shrugs. “He gets mad.”

  So my feet are useless to them, but he took them anyway, out of anger. I grasp the door handle, open it and peer out.

  It’s a hallway, as dark and dank as the basement and Theresa nods.

  “The only way out.” Her tone is grave, serious, and I look upwards.

  It’s a kind of well with a steel ladder attached to the side. At the top is a metal lid. I don’t know if I’d be able to remove it, even if I made it to the top of the ladder.

  “That’s the only way?” I hiss.

  She nods sagely. “I have to leave you here.”

  Then I’m falling forward, landing painfully on the concrete floor at the bottom of the ladder.

  “Jesus, no, come with me, please!” I cry. I don’t understand, surely she wants to escape this torture chamber as much as me? “What about when he finds out you helped me? He’ll kill you!”

  She smiles, still sweetly, but something has changed. As she is backlit by the open door, she looks very different; older, weaker, tired.

  “He already has,” she says. “He’s given up on me. He can’t change me or make me normal, so I’m useless now. Maybe he’ll find a new project.” She looks at me and there are tears in her eyes. “He told me he put methanol in my drink last night.”

  I know methanol, I know that if ingested it can take around twelve hours for the deathly symptoms to appear. Any time now Theresa will be vomiting, her blood pressure will fall and she will go blind before her body starts to shut down.

  Theresa retreats, wheeling awkwardly back into the basement, closes the door softly behind her and waits to die.

  I lie on the floor, looking up at the edge of the sky that shows through the ill-fitting lid.

  I put my foot stumps on the bottom rusty rung of the ladder and bite my lip at the flare of pain. I hear an animalistic noise from the next room. It could be Theresa dying. Or it could be him, coming to look for me.

  I grab the second rung with my right hand and heave myself up.

  I begin the impossible journey towards the light.

  Gooseberry Pie

  by Jessica Brown

  Edna crouched lower, reaching for the gooseberries that she knew were hiding in the midst of their parentage. She felt a tightening in her back, her aging body hindering her needs, but she continued to gather the fuzzy fruits with a nostalgic glow.

  Cooking and baking were her passions. They were a constant throughout her life, something to lean on, to distract and give her confidence, when the inevitable obstacles of life arose. People came and went, her children had left and emigrated with her grandchildren, but the lure of homemade shepherd’s pie and cherry cake always brought them back to visit her. She loved that she could make her family instantly feel at home with just a mouthful of ingredients, despite their new lives a thousand miles away.

  Nobody loved her cooking as much as her husband, Charles, and Edna prided herself on it. The look on his face when he entered their quaint kitchen as she slid a golden crusted pie from the steaming oven, the corners of his mouth moistening, his Adam’s apple protruding as he swallowed with compulsive want. It was intimate. He wanted something that only she could provide to his exact tastes. Nothing could satisfy him quite like her baking, not even that bitch who had offered her body to him like she was a raw piece of meat.

  She had found her husband, pants down, hulking over the kitchen worktop, humping what appeared to be her best hand-carved chopping board, until she saw the red nails and pale legs wrapped around him. Yet Edna looked upon the event – an event that would test the sanity of any wife – with sentiment. It had been their making. Edna had known he wouldn’t leave her for that rake of a woman – she probably couldn’t even cook! He loved his food and Edna could sate him just so. They were more devoted to each other than ever before, and her baking was improv
ing each day in line with their relationship.

  Gooseberry pie. The ‘Marmite’ of baking was Edna’s favourite recipe, and she was certain that no-one could outwit her composite of sugar, fruit and spices. Anyone who had politely stated their preference for apple, or plum, had humbly requested a second slice after tasting. She’d always borne affection for the underdog and felt a certain affinity for those phlegm-coloured, sour, vascular berries.

  Edna carefully straightened her posture, smiling fondly at the family of fruit trees before her. She stroked a leaf maternally, before turning and pottering back up the patio path to the French windows that were seeping with the scent of sweet baked pasty. It was ready! Edna quickened as much as her age would allow.

  Charles was already sitting at the head of the table in wait. She donned her oven gloves and swooped to the oven door, peering inside. Perfection.

  Placing the pie on the cooling mat by the window sill, Edna took a deep breath. “What do you think, Charles?”

  Charles shifted his eyes to hers pleadingly. She did love the power that she had over him, no matter what age they were.

  “We must wait for it to cool. You will burn your mouth!” she teased.

  She began to wash the gooseberries she had picked in the garden. Her neighbour used to comment that she should make a large batch of filling and freeze what they didn’t need, but she found the idea ludicrous. It was the process that she loved; why would she not want to repeat and perfect it as often as she could? As one pie came out, another could go in. It never had to end; Charles always had room for more.

  As the syrupy fruit simmered over the hob, Edna gently hovered her hand over the freshly-baked pie.

  “This will be lovely with some cream, Charles.”

  She shuffled over to the fridge, removing a pot of cream, before opening a kitchen drawer to grasp a large funnel. Laying it on the table, she plugged in the blender, opened the lid and plopped in the whole pie. It splatted into several chunks as it hit the bottom. She poured the entire pot of cream on top of the steaming boulders, fixed the lid, and pressed the button to turn the pie and cream to mush.