Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1

by Nora Thompson

  Black oil creeps in.

  Black oil oozing from her eyes. Oozing black from her red, red lipsticked mouth.

  Oozed. Oozed. Past. Tense.

  She’s constantly reminding me of that. In my head, yes, in my head she’s reminding me.

  Past tense past tense past tense.

  It’s over. Done. Finished. Terminated. Eventually I’ll get it right. Eventually she’ll let me go.

  I’ll let her go, I mean. From my head. Out of my head. She will, she’ll go, I know. But I have to earn it. Just don’t talk anymore about that night.

  Out loud. Don’t talk anymore about it out loud. As if it never happened. It never happened. Can’t let it sneak out of my head.

  Or my mouth. My words. I’m good now, I am. Even if I do still see all those things, here in the dark, they won’t come out of my mouth. Won’t come out of my...out of my...red...lipsticked mouth.

  My saliva feels so thick. In my mouth. Oily thick. Sometimes it’s just so hard to swallow. Please…please could you loosen the buckles just a little? Everything here is just so, so dark. Oily black thick baggy lipstick red dark.

  But the screeching and the screaming and the squealing. The squealing! The squealing streaks through my head and across the room like lightning. The squealing brightens up the room like day!

  Brightened. Brightened. Past. Tense.

  Like day.

  No more dark today. No more lipstick. No more baggy black oily red lipstick today.

  In the present.

  No lipstick here today, in the present tense.

  Eat Your Vegetables

  So I chew and chew. And chew. And they never go away. Still. I can’t swallow.

  “Eat your vegetables,” Mom says. But they won’t let me. They won’t let me swallow. I just can’t swallow. I need to spit out the cud that’s collected in my mouth, and I need to ditch the rest of the dung sitting cold on my plate.

  The same story as last night. And the night before. This time they’re peas. Last night, corn. Tomorrow, broccoli. And so on.

  Peas fit perfectly in that little crevasse, right there, in that space in the wall beside my chair. Mom will never know. And I’ll never tell her, and she’ll never know. All the little green balls disappear when she’s not looking, and once I can’t see them, they don’t exist. Once they’re all in the crevasse, I can’t see them, and they don’t exist.

  And tomorrow night will be broccoli in the crevasse. I’ll chew and chew, and I’ll drop one of those little trees in the little crevasse when she isn’t looking. And then I’ll drop another one. And another.

  And then the crevasse will open wider. And wider. And it will groan. And everybody will stop what they’re doing to look at the crevasse.

  “What did you do?” they will ask me.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I will plead back.

  And then the crevasse will growl a little. It will open wider. And wider.

  “Was that always like that?” I’ll ask.

  Everybody else at the table will scoot their chairs away from me. From the crevasse. But I’ll be mesmerized.

  “Were those teeth in there before?” I’ll ask.

  I’ll lean forward to look down in the crevasse. It smells bad in there. Things are fuzzy. And growing. And green. It smells bad in there. I’ll put my head in a little ways.

  “It smells bad in there,” I’ll say. I’ll look at everyone. They won’t answer. “It really does,” I’ll say.

  They’ll look…surprised.

  “What?” I’ll ask.

  I’ll sit up at the table, but I’ll feel I’m sinking. And I’ll be mesmerized.

  “Did I always sit in here?” I’ll ask, “In the crevasse?”

  The crevasse will grow. Bigger. And wider.

  “Veg. Ta. Bull,” it will say in its deep, resonating voice.

  And I’ll sink and sink. Into the crevasse.

  But then something will happen. I won’t be mesmerized anymore. I’ll hold onto whatever I can. Mesmerization over and I’ll hold on.

  I won’t let it swallow. It will chew and chew, and I’ll hold on, and I won’t let it swallow.

  I’ll never go away.

  I will never let it swallow.

  The End

  Colophon

  The jacket image was rendered digitally in Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. Interior images were rendered in graphite and Photoshop. Body copy text in the first printed edition is set in Goudy Old Style, originally designed by Frederic W. Goudy for American Type Founders in 1915. Titles and page numbers in the first printed edition are set in VT Portable Remington by Susan Townsend.