inmanegraves

[inmanegraves]

Missing Mary

My daughter was six when she went missing. Mary was always a bright, creative child. I still remember the moment my husband and I got the news that our adoption was finalized and she was ours. I cried and cried, tears of joy racing down my face like their short lives depended on it. I remember the first time she called me dad. Her large eyes gazed up at me and she laughed and smiled. I felt so proud I couldn't stop smiling for the next few days. I remember sitting in front of the tv, Sesame Street beaming brightly down at us while we played with large puzzle pieces and the little, soft ragdolls I had made of universal monsters for her. I tickled her belly while pretending the wolfman was eating her up. I was so happy. My husband, Georgie, was so happy. We were a family and we were invincible.  

Until I went to pick her up from school. It was a late fall day and colorful leaves covered the ground in front of the hulking building. The air was cold. I watched and waited for her class to come out, to see her straight ginger hair being tugged on by the wind, her royal purple peacoat that she loved wrapped around her. But it never happened. Her class came and went and she was nowhere to be seen. Worried, I went into the building and confronted the septuagenarians filing paperwork in the front office. None of the sweet old women had a clue what was going on. I moved to her classroom where her teacher, Ms. Otz, was tidying up the mess the children made.  

"Please" I croaked out almost in tears "Please have you see Mary anywhere?"  

She stood upright and turned to look at me "Oh, Mr. Vets! You scared me!" She took a deep breath and thought. Her skin grew pale before my eyes, she floundered for her words "I- I don't think I've seen Mary since lunch."  

With that my whole world fell apart. We called the police and there was a huge search effort. For weeks the large men in blue uniforms and a not small number of volunteers combed the school and the surrounding woods for any sign of our daughter. The police gave up after the snow started to fall, but we kept searching. Our family and friends help us search until one by one they all gave up and accepted the inevitable. We were never going to see Mary Frankie Vets alive again.  

To Georgie and I's despair, a year and a week after she went missing, we were holding a closed casket funeral for her. She had been declared legally dead. My therapist told me that the funeral would help Georgie and I find closure. In reality all it did was drive us further apart.  

As we were searching for our missing child, our marriage began to slowly fall apart. We stopped copulating. We stopped doing things for each other. Every time he looked at me his eyes burned with rage and guilt. Not long after the funeral he sat me down and asked me for a divorce. I had lost everything I truly cared about.  

It was spring when he moved out. I didn't know how to move on for a long time. I saw my therapist more frequently and threw myself headfirst into my work, but when I was home, I was miserable. Once it became too hot outside to stay in, I began spending my afternoons wandering the woods around my now empty house. I didn't own a lot of land, but enough to have more space than I could possibly need.  

I always felt safe in those woods. The warm shade and singing birds always brought me a sort of comfort. No matter what was happening in my life, they were always there. So, once my work was done for the day, I'd spray on some bug repellant, covered my body in high spf sunscreen, donned my favorite sunhat, and lost myself out in those woods until I got too hungry or tired to keep going.  

It was during one of these self-indulgent woods trips where I found something I couldn't really explain. I was walking through a part of the woods I didn't really visit often because the small lake attracted so many bugs in the heat. I hate bugs, but I wasn't really paying that much attention to where I was until I was looking at the swarming mosquitos and flies over the water. I was just deciding to turn around when something caught my eye. The bright shine of something reflecting the sunlight on the other side.  

I checked my watch and decided to see what it was before I headed home to start making the meatloaf I wanted for dinner. I carefully made my way around the pond trying to avoid both the water and the thorny underbrush as much as possible. When I picked up the thing that had reflected the light a noise of indescribable terror escaped from my throat.  

It was a six-inch-tall ragdoll, made in the same style as my little monsters I had made Mary so long ago. But this ragdoll, it had straight red hair and a royal purple peacoat with little black shoes, its shiny glass eyes looked up at me and I was caught between a scream and a cry. It was soggy and covered in dirt and leaves, but without a doubt it was my daughter.  

I dropped to my knees in disbelief. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't wrap my head around it. Who could have made this? Who tossed it out into the woods? Was this some kind of fucked up joke? I had to force myself to breath, but hot tears rolled down my face regardless. In a way, my daughter had come back to me and I had no idea how to respond.     

Once I had managed to gather myself, I brushed some of the dirt off of her hair and face and carried her under my arm back up to the house. I thought about running the doll through the washing machine, but the hair was too delicate, too much like real hair. It unsettled me a little, but I decided to handwash the doll after dinner. I sat her on the kitchen table and she seemed to watch me with her little glass eyes as I moved around the kitchen preparing dinner and packing up the finished food to last me the next few days.  

I studied her while I ate my meal. I was baffled by the thing's existence. I couldn't think of anyone who would know this style of doll making, know Mary, and be insensitive enough to create something like this. Her little mouth seemed to smile at me, as if she was studying me too. It unsettled me a little.  

When I had finished cleaning her up and had dried her out with the hairdryer, I put her up on my mantle in the living room, right in between Frankenstein and Dracula. She looked like she was just a missing part of the set.  

That night I had restless nightmares and didn't get much sleep. Images of detached limbs crawling towards me and disembodied voices screaming woke me up over and over. In the morning, I had found that the doll that looked like Mary had fallen off of the mantle in the night. I frowned and returned her to her perch, instructing her to "Stay Put Silly" before leaving for work.  

The next few days passed in much the same way. I'd have terrible nightmares all night, find Mary sitting on the floor in the living room and put her back, go to work come home, fill the hours with whatever nonsense I could muster, make dinner, go to bed. Except, every once in a while, I thought I could see something moving out of the corner of my eye. A shadow. Or I'd hear a strange sound, almost a giggle. I put it down to my lack of sleep. Everyone knows that not getting enough sleep messes with your head.  

That was until today. This morning went as usual. Woke up, found Mary on the floor again, far closer to the door than should be logical, but I shrugged it off and went to work. The work day was slow, ambling along at a snail's pace. I chugged coffee, sorted papers, swept floors, chugged more coffee, doing anything and everything to make the day pass by. 

When I finally got home, I was so tired I could feel darkness at the edges of my perception, I was blinking slowly and my body dragged as I pulled myself up the steps to the front door. My hands fumbled and I dropped my keys when I went to unlock the door. At length, I picked my keys up and made my hands cooperate enough so that I could get inside.  

Everything was as it always is when I got inside. The hall was empty, quiet. A haunting reminder of the daughter and husband that used to great me every day. I turned away from the hall to hang up my coat, take off my shoes, and gather up the emotions threatening to spill out all over the carpet. I took a long, deep breath and turned back to the hall. 

Standing in the hall outside of the living room door, as if it were as regular as rain, was the Mary Doll. It took me a moment to confirm what I was seeing. She was on her little toes, black, shiny glass eyes looking up at me, head half tilted upwards.  

I blinked a few times trying to make sense of it all when my knee gave out, which while not uncommon for me didn't help the overwhelming feelings building up in my chest. What happened then only made everything that much worse. 

"Are you ok dad?" came the sound of my daughter's voice, as clear as a bell. 

[inmanegraves]

Tomaboy

When I was in college, we had our own local urban legends. I suppose most if not all colleges do, to some degree. Ours was the story of a kid called Tomaboy. I heard the story of Tomaboy was my first year of college. I entered the school later than most other people my age due to some serious fighting with an autoimmune disease that kept me in and out of the hospital for years. I was proud when I finally recovered enough to pick up where my life left off, even if my social skills were a little lacking because of it. I always felt like I was falling behind my peers because of it.  

It was a smaller school than most and I was in the even smaller group of students within the school’s nursing associates program. An ironic course choice in retrospect, but I live in an area where medical staff is in high demand. I never really wanted to be a nurse or anything, but I wanted a good career that could carry me through my life. It seemed like a rational and reasonable choice. If I wanted to have a stable job, I would choose a job that’s high in demand. And it wasn’t like I was squeamish around blood or anything so that wasn’t a concern of mine. 

I quickly settled into an easy routine. Go to classes in the morning, take a brief lunch, study, more classes, and dinner at my favorite little restaurant on campus. I wasn’t a very good cook so I’d swing by the 50’s style diner ran by a sweet older woman named Violet.  

My first evening in the diner, she asked me if I was a student or just passing through.  

“I’m in the nursing course” I told her and felt almost embarrassed by it 

“You know” she mused “Weird things happen on campus all the time. Strange accidents, mysterious disappearances. I’d be careful if I were you.” 

I waved my hand and laughed her off. I figured she was just a superstitious middle-aged mom.  

I hadn’t been at the school for more than two months before Tomaboy became an ever-lurking presence in my life. I think it was something as simple as that word being written on a bathroom stall that was the place that began it. Carved into that laminate door with a pocket knife some incomprehensible time ago. That was when it began.   

I’d see it written on walls, scribbled in such a way that you’d have to squint to read it or in places that no one would think to look. I’d hear people whispering about Tomaboy as I traveled from class to class over the campus. I had to have heard that word a million times.  

Tomaboy.  

Tomaboy.  

What did that even mean? The name infiltrated my life like a slow fog, crawling in from the edges until it consumed everything. It was nonsensical. I told myself over and over to just forget it, it was a ridiculous word that didn’t mean anything at all. An urban legend, a ghost story that my peers were telling each other behind my back. For a long time, I just ignored it. My coursework was heavy, and I had my meager social life on top of that. Not to mention that I was far too old for playground rumors and ghost stories. It was nothing but rubbish drivel.  

But having to hear that word everywhere I went finally got to me. It began to encroach on my mind. I found myself thinking about that word more and more times a day. I had to know what this thing was. I was imagining a million different tales every time I heard the hushed, quick murmur of Tomaboy. I pictured a thousand different horrific faces contorted in a thousand different ways and yet, none of it could satisfy my obsession. I broke. I needed to get Tomaboy out of my head. I couldn’t focus on my work. My grades were beginning to suffer. I couldn’t take the mystery anymore. I had to know what this thing was so I could stop thinking about it. 

When I went to sleep at night that word was the last one to cross my mind. It was the first thing to flash across my consciousness in the morning.  It might not have been a ghost, but it was certainly haunting me. It overtook my mind like a virus.   

One night, when I couldn’t get anything done because all I could do was sit there and think about this thing, I called my friend Tod Dunlap who lived in a dorm on the other side of campus. Tod was one of those popular “got in on a sports scholarship” type of guys. Honestly, I don’t know how we ever got to be friends to begin with. We were from completely different worlds. He was tall, strong, and handsome with bouncy blond hair and a golden retriever personality. I am shorter, a little on the thicker side, and preferred to spend my time sleeping or playing the few video games that could grab my attention for long enough for me to find enjoyment. Yet by some inexplicable manner we found ourselves studying together and by rate became friends.  

I figured if anyone knew what this thing was, it would be Tod. He was one of those guys who had his finger on the pulse of everything on the campus. He knew every fling and break up before anyone else did. He knew which classes would be called off because the professor had a hangover. Tod was the kind of guy who seemed to exist to know things.  

“Hey, Terry, my favorite shut in! What’s got you ringing me at this hour?” Tod’s warm and jovial voice rang out with a laugh. 

I rolled my eyes to myself “Hey man, I wanted to ask you a question really quick if that’s cool.” 

Something on his end of the call creaked slowly “Yeah, shoot, I’m just working on this paper. I’ve got time.” 

“What the hell is this Tomaboy thing? I think if I hear that word one more time my head is going to explode.”  

“Oh, no one has told you yet?” 

“If someone had told me, why would I waste both of our times by asking?” 

“Yeah fair” he sighed “Alright, but you didn’t hear the story from me, got it?” 

I hesitated for a moment. Why would he even care about that? “Got it.” I relented “Now just tell me what this thing is so I can go about my life ignoring the damn thing.” 

He seemed satisfied enough to begin. “Tomaboy is just what they call this guy who died in the 80’s. His name was Xavier Moore from what I’ve been told, but really that could just have been added to the story over time. Dressed in dark turtlenecks and jeans with thick glasses. He looked like a walking stereotype. Story goes he was an English major making strides. On top of his class, almost flawless grades, you know that kind of thing. All of his teachers thought he was going to go somewhere.” 

“Well, you know how people are. A couple of guys weren’t fans of being shown up by some nerd. So, one night, as he was walking back from his last class, a group of them cornered him and beat the absolute shit out of him. It got really bad. They brought him over to a fountain nearby, dragging him by his scruffy brown hair. They started trying to drown him on and off in the fountain. Then, they started to slice him open between each dunk in the water.” 

“But, when they cut him, these things started to come out of his body. Yeah, there was blood, but there was also these...these blobs of flesh and hair and bone and tissue. The blobs were coming out from all over his body. He was covered in them just under the skin and nobody had a clue. Because he wore those thick clothes all the time no one saw the lumps covering his body. They were teratomas, a type of tumor that can form its own organs and soft tissues. With each cut, the assailants cut free the teratomas and they fell to the ground in a mess of undulating red flesh.” 

“Someone finally saw the torment these guys were putting Xavier through and called the police, but by the time they arrived he was already long dead. The cause of death was identified as pulmonary edema, the water in the lungs from what was basically being waterboarded.” 

“Wow, that’s fucked” I wasn’t sure how to respond, but then a thought struck me “But if that’s the whole story, why is everyone talking about this guy all the time.” 

Tod exhaled heavily “Because people say that every few years he shows back up, like ghost sightings? No one knows the exact fountain he died at because the school really tried to cover up the whole event. Removed him from the year books and all that. You can see a group of those cringey ghost hunter types running around the campus sometimes trying to catch a glimpse of the infamous Tomaboy. Here’s the thing though. They say that if you do see him, it’s only a matter of time before you find a small lump under your skin. Then another. Then another.” 

I laughed audibly “People really believe that you can get a tumor from a ghost looking at you? That’s so fucking stupid.” 

“Yeah, saying it out loud it does sound pretty silly.” he conceded “Anyway, that’s the story so now you can stop worrying about it man.” 

“Thanks Tod. I plan on not ever thinking about this dumb ghost again.” I shook my head “I don’t get why everyone is talking about it. Like, it’s a sad story, but it’s the kind of story you head once and go about your life.” 

“There have been a few people who have claimed to see him, so it’s got everyone on edge that there are more Tomaboy sightings. It’s basically the school’s cryptid. I wouldn’t put much stock into it.” 

After that we began to talk about other things for a while. Largely, upon hearing the story I was able to move on with my life. I was able to focus on my homework, focus on my part-time job, and even spend time with my small group of friends playing video games with zero thoughts of Xavier the Tomaboy for the next few weeks. It was almost a blissful silence compared to the obsessive thoughts I had been stuck with before. I breathed a lot easier during that time, without a ton of weight on my chest.  

One day in early November, however, that changed. I saw him for the first time while crossing the courtyard to my dorm. A tall, lanky shadow that zipped past my periphery. It startled me so much that I stopped and turned my head around looking for whatever flew past. I couldn’t see anything. I thought it was a bug of some sort that flew by my head with how little detail I could actually see of him. But somehow, deep in the pit of me I knew that there wasn’t anything else in the world that it could possibly be. It was him. It was the Tomaboy.   

Every few days I would see him in the distance, a shadow keeping a watchful eye. What’s worse is every few weeks he would inch closer. I began to become paranoid, constantly watching over my shoulder for the thing lurking at the edge of my vision. I stumbled into walls and doorways. I was unable to answer questions in the classroom because I knew I could see him sitting just a few rows ahead of me. I looked for him in the crowds at the end of the day and at lunchtime. I closed my eyes while alone in the bathroom after I caught him in the mirror for the first time. I was too afraid that instead of my reflection, I would see his face looking back at me.    

As he got closer, he slowed his movements down so I can get a look at how horrible he was. I could barely make out shaggy brown hair hanging limply over grey-blue skin. My grades began to plumet. I missed classes. I asked a few of the people around me if they could see him and they looked at me like I was a mad man. I stopped talking to most of my friends all together. I stopped leaving my dorm except for work. I couldn’t handle it. I knew he was out there waiting for me to catch a glance of his horrible visage watching me, waiting for some unknown purpose. All I wanted in the world was for this whatever the fuck it is to leave me alone.  

I’m by no means a religious man, but for a time I began to go to church, as if by some blessing, I could cast out this beast with the might of the Lord. I could barely stand the services full of bigotry and misogyny, but I would have done just about anything to hide away from this thing.   

Unfortunately, I knew deep down that Tomaboy was coming for me one way or another. I could try to fight it, but I genuinely didn’t know what I could possibly do against something that I didn’t even really know what it was. It was only a matter of time before he caught up with me and there was nothing I could do about it. 

It was a cold, snowy day in mid-January when I finally came face to face with Tomaboy. I had ducked into one of the locker rooms on the east side of campus to get out of the wet, sopping snow that seemed to smother the entre campus. My boots squeaked and thudded with every step; my breath steamed in front of me even here. It wasn’t any warmer, but at least it was drier than the outside was. I sat down on a wooden bench running through the room and pulled my scarf slightly loose to get a better chance at air. 

He came on slowly at first. One hollow footstep that echoed through the room. I froze, unable to do anything but listen. Then another. My breath hitched in my throat. My mind ran like a bullet thinking up every worst-case scenario of what was in the locker room with me. It was impossible to tell where they came from. The footsteps sped up faster and faster, an impossible speed for anyone to walk. It was more akin to the beating of my own heart.  The sound stopped all at once and there was nothing but the sound of my labored breathing.  

I forced myself to close my eyes for a second and take a deep breath. Once I re-centered my mind, I stood up cautiously and took a few steps to look at the door. There was no one. I laughed aloud at myself for being so worked up and paranoid over what was probably just the sounds of my own body. What an idiot! I sat back down, shaking my head at myself in bewilderment and amusement, and looked at the tiled floor for a second before looking back up.  

My eyes met orbs that were glazed over and ice blue, almost clear with how light the pigment was. Red and blue veins crisscrossed over each other, becoming more of a tangled web toward the corners. They were framed by eyelids that were sagged and swollen, as if I could reach out my finger and poke them to expect a sponge like texture. The eyebrows were dark and showed no sign of any discernable emotion. They were so incredibly empty those eyes. I had never seen anything so cold and bottomless. 

For a long moment I was completely frozen in terror, unable to move no matter how much my mind screamed at me. Those terrible eyes were holding me in place like a tractor beam. When my body finally relented from its frozen state I shot backwards from the pent-up momentum, tripping over the bench and scrambling against the lockers on my hands and ass. I blinked and he was in front of me again, standing before me and I was able to get a good look at the thing they call Tomaboy.  

Xavier’s skin was a putrid grey except for his face which took on a more blue and purple hue. His mop of brown hair hung like a curtain over his head. He was tall and his dark green sweater hung loosely over his wiry frame. The top half of his sweater was covered in white mold, the scent of which permeated the air. His sweater and his stained black jeans were covered in slashes, dried blood keeping the ends from fraying. Those same gashes were deep in his skin, oozing a slow-moving purple-blue liquid. His black penny loafers and white socks squished with each subtle sway he made. It was as if he were a tree caught in the wind.  

All at once, his hand was on my arm pinning me back against the lockers further and I couldn’t move. I pulled and yanked. I jerked harder and harder, with all the force I could manage, but it was like being pinned down by a building. Whatever he was now he was inhumanly strong, and all my frantic stirring wouldn’t change a thing. I was a rat in a trap, and it was all at once horrible and ghastly.  

“What do you want with me? Why are you doing this? I didn’t even do anything!” My voice sounded weak and strangled as I pleaded with Tomaboy. My lips trembled as I spoke. 

But it made no difference. His expression never changed. His lips were just as closed as they had been before. He offered no comfort, nor horror in the form of words. Still, it was impossible to get away.  

From somewhere unseen he produced a long sharp blade and my eyes widened so far, I thought they might pop out of my head of their own accord. He moved it closer to me with a surprisingly swift movement and I cried out in terror. 

“No! No! Don’t come near me with that thing you sicko!” I kicked and thrashed as much as I could, but for whatever strength I had built up it was of no use.  

My chest heaved with every panicked breath that escaped my lips. I involuntarily pissed myself, the sour and offensive scent expelling into the fair as if it was aerosolized. I couldn’t do anything but sit in a spreading puddle of my own urine and scream.  

The knife met my skin all the same. It was as inevitable as rainfall.  

It went through my clothes like butter and bit into the flesh of my arm like I had just rammed into an especially sharp icicle. I screamed so hard and loud my lungs burned like I had swallowed a burning cotton ball. Then it came again. And again. Over and over the knife found purchase in new areas of my body, each more painful than what came before. Each movement is more precise and judicious than the last. The cuts he placed on my legs became a scorching pain from the puddle of urine almost as soon as he made them. Eventually my voice gave out so I couldn’t do anything but scramble against him and whimper.  

I could feel myself growing nauseous and tired from the pool of my own blood and fluids surrounding me on all sides. Time seemed to drag on, each second of this torture felt like a lifetime in and of its own. The cuts finally stopped, and I looked up at the same, expressionless blue-grey face looking down at me.  

“Y-you’re a monster” I creaked out in breaking words and something deep within him seemed to ignite.  

His fist met my face with a swift, harsh motion, completely unlike the grace and care he had displayed before. My head thwomped off the lockers behind me and my eyes flashed with a blinding light. He hit me with another jab, followed by an uppercut before he seemed satisfied enough to stop. My ears were ringing like a cathedral belltower and my perception seemed to throb. A line of drool and blood dribbled out of my mouth.  

With his free hand, I watched as Tomaboy reached into a cut on the left side of his torso and fish something out with his skeletal fingers.  

As soon as I was able to process the small lump of flesh with strands of hair sticking out of it, I threw up violently. Because I couldn’t move the stomach acid, mucus, and half-digested croissant sandwiches and hash browns I had earlier in the day landed all over the front of my chest and abdomen, mixing with the blood and cuts. It stung me like I stuck my entire body in a fire ant nest.    

What happened next, I could barely understand through my tear-blurred eyes. With two fingers he pulled open the cut on my arm and with the rest he...he pushed the rotting, tumorous lump of flesh he pulled out of his body into mine. It stretched my skin painfully and uncomfortably. It felt swollen in a way I couldn’t have ever imagined. He did it again, one by one he slowly filled each pocket he had created in my skin with the decaying balls of tumorous tissue out of the wounds in his own skin.  

I began to feel completely disconnected from everything. My whole body felt numb and my perception dozed in and out as glob after glob of putrefying meat was gingerly paced under my skin. In my arms, in my legs, one after one he forced various sizes of clumps of hair, bone, and soft tissue that had been long since dead into my body. Some of the lumps kept their shape and remained ridged. Some of them seemed to disintegrate into a mess of puss inside me. I stopped knowing how to respond to it all and just sat quietly floundering my mouth open and closed, tears making their way down my face. 

A slap to my right cheek brought me back to reality with a start and a small cry. It was like a shot of adrenalin to wake my system back up. Another one came and he grabbed my chin, forcing my eyes to his horribly empty face. Not once during this whole ordeal did his expression change once. The complete lack of care made it so much worse than if he had been flying off the handle with rage. He was calm, collected, and precise in his movements and actions in the most sickening way. 

Another slap and my brain felt like it was rattling around in my head like rice in a container. Puddles of saliva drained from my lips like a slow-moving river. I closed my eyes and leaned back. I wanted it all to be over so bad. I just wanted to go home. Images of all the people I loved flashed in my mind as I thought over and over “I am going to die here. There’s no getting out of this alive.”  

I vomited again. Stomach acid expelled from my esophagus and burned and seared my open, bleeding wounds.  

Suddenly, his face was directly in front of mine, that same empty expression. Those same terrible eyes cold and uninviting. My body twitched and stuttered with surprise. He held up the knife from before, still covered in my own blood, and waved it in front of my face as if to make sure I could see it. It was almost in a mocking way, but all at once I understood what the creature was telling me.  

Without words, the thing wanted me to know “I’m going to kill you now. I’ve had my fun. I’m getting bored of this.” 

I could barely move my mouth and my voice broke and fractured as I pleaded to him “Yes, please, please just kill me. I’m done. I don’t want to live anymore. Please kill me.” Those last three words I repeated over and over until they didn’t seem like words anymore, just noises. 

Xavier looked at me the whole time, studying my face it seemed like. He nodded and took a few steps away before coming back and putting the knife to my throat. The steel pinched into my skin, then muscles and tendons, digging deeper and deeper into my neck. Whatever blood hadn’t already seeped out through the pockets of teratomas he had made in my body seemed to be releasing from my neck, covering his face. In a sick, awful way it made him look incredibly handsome.  

For a moment, I wondered what the person who would find my body would think, what my mom would say, how my younger sister would react. Then I thought about Xavier. None of this made sense to me. Why would he choose me? Why did he target me? What had I done to deserve all of this? His actions, his attitude didn’t line up with the story I had been told at all. I would have thought he would have been resigned or maybe looking for revenge. Instead, he was cold, cruel, uncaring, and abusive in every sense of the word. I looked at his cold, dead face as if any answer would be written there in the shape of his lips or the length of his nose.  

Finally, after everything, as everything was fading out completely, Tomaboy finally spoke.  

In a voice more beautiful than and I had ever heard in my life, a voice like hot chocolate, honey, and chamomile, he said something that both melted my heart and terrified me to the core. “I did it because I wanted to. For no other reason. None at all.”  

He cackled, a hideous, shatteringly loud sound, as he dragged the rest of the knife through my neck. 

And then, for me, there was nothing and never would be again. 

[inmanegraves]

To be honest, I didn't rightfully know where else I can actually post my work that isn't like wattpad or something so I'm going to be posting some of my horror stories here as I feel like. - Inman