The seventeenth of December, fifteen minutes before two in the morning. I’ll be twenty-eight years old. I have two minutes before it starts. A bottle of whiskey in my hand, Benzos on the floor, a needle, and even a few Oxys—I keep them there as insurance. If I need a way out, if the Wretches do something I can never come back from, I’ll down them all and be free. I haven’t taken them yet—I haven’t wanted to. It’s not that life is precious to me or anything. I just don’t want to admit defeat, not after everything I’ve been through.
They’re coming.
I turn on the TV and blare some news channel with a loud, obnoxious anchor—a good distraction. I take a long swig of the whiskey, and warm liquid pours down my throat. Thirty seconds later, I feel it kick in. My muscles slack and my head becomes fuzzy. I hear quiet laughter behind me. Don’t turn around, I remind myself.
Rule one: Never look at them directly.
The first time they came, I stared right at them. I heard the shuffling, and I saw one of their eyes peeking around a corner. I didn’t even think of running. I thought they were some kind of animals, maybe mutated rats or disfigured vermin—that was until they started to giggle, to gurgle, to squeak out sounds close enough to words to make me think they knew something an animal shouldn’t. They looked at me and inched closer. Another one appeared from under the couch, slowly crawling toward me. I stood frozen, confused, intrigued. Some kind of morbid curiosity kept me from seeing them as an immediate threat. Before I knew it, three of them had surrounded me.
Alone in the living room, just me and the Wretches, time stopped. They watched me. I looked back, flicking my eyes from one to the other. Their beady black irises met my own. After a moment of perfect, dead silence, they launched their malformed bodies at me. Two of them latched onto my head. I collapsed to the floor, rolling around, clawing at my face, anything for them to release me. I tried to inhale, but my lungs wouldn’t take air. Something burrowed into the flesh of my forehead and I lost consciousness.
When I awoke the next day, I could feel something missing. They had stolen my memories. It took me a while to figure it out, but eventually, I put it together. Three years of my childhood were gone. In their place, a perfect inexplicable void where the past once dwelled. That was the first time I met them.
The giggling grows louder, accompanied by shuffling from the kitchen. I focus on the news anchor ranting about something that doesn’t quite reach me. I root myself into the couch, making my body heavy and immovable.
Rule two: Do not run.
The second time they came, I bolted for the door, but the Wretches were faster. I had known, felt, that they would come again. The second time around I had thought, like a fool, that it would be easier. I was ready for them. They weren’t too big, mostly, and it shouldn’t take me long to get to the door. But things went differently than planned. Four of them had dropped down from the ceiling, their bodies squelching as they hit the floor. Two of them were snake-like but with added appendages and human mouths. The other two were like dogs—dogs with preternaturally long and flexible tails. They all had the same pitch-black, slimy bodies.
The moment they appeared, I turned on my heel and dashed for the exit. The dog-like Wretches whipped out their tails, wrapping them around my legs and sending me crashing into the floor. They dragged me back to the living room and crawled over my body, covering me in their dirty, thick sludge. One of them slithered onto my face, smiling close up, gazing at me nose to nose. It licked my eyes while I shrieked and writhed on the ground. Another unhinged its jaw and bit my hand clean off. Blood spurted from the open wound, drenching me and the carpeted floor. The creature spat my hand out and went about gnawing on my index and middle fingers. I went unconscious from the shock and pain. A day later, I opened my eyes. I knew they would be back.
A black rat-sized Wretch wriggles into sight from under my bed. Its three appendages jut out awkwardly as it rocks side to side haphazardly, fixating a single eye upon me and licking the lips of its two mouths. The eye rolls around lazily as it flicks its two tongues into the air as if to taste its surroundings. My breath comes in frantic, shallow gasps. I feel a drop, and my throat suddenly seizes. All of my senses beg me to get up, to scramble to anywhere safer than there, but I know that won’t help.
I slowly take three bars of Xanax and swallow them dry, nearly choking but not daring to cough. The pills hit my nervous system and calm my beating heart, washing over my body with a soothing buzz. I feel my eyes grow heavy. The whiskey-Benzos combination threatens to put me to sleep. I jam myself with the needle, and the adrenaline rushes into my bloodstream.
Rule three: Do not go to sleep.
The third time they came, I hid under my covers, popped an Ambien, and tried to sleep. I felt my eyelids drooping. An instant later, the Wretches piled on me with tremendous pressure. I squeezed my eyes shut, begging my body to give in, to take me away from them.
Eventually, I lost consciousness.
I awoke the next day in excruciating pain—my stomach in knots, my body going haywire, rejecting something. I vomited blood for three days until, finally, I regurgitated a black lump. One of the Wretches had crawled into my mouth and died in my stomach. After barely managing to call an ambulance, I learned it ate my appendix.
It took me a few birthdays, but through painful trial and error, I found a kind of solution. Ignore them. If they aren’t provoked or don’t see me as vulnerable, they don’t hurt me as badly.
The news anchor rambles about something involving a scandal on Capitol Hill, which I don’t dare focus on. The worm-like Wretch crawls onto my leg. Perched behind me atop the sofa, a second Wretch whispers gibberish in my ear. I hear a third Wretch gurgle and heave to my left before it scurries sideways on its many legs. It’s about the size of a small dog, with a human face bearing a Cheshire grin. It jumps on my chest and leans into my face. I can feel it staring at me as I pretend to look through it at the TV.
I shiver. My hands shake violently as I take another shot of whiskey. Tears spill from my eyes, and I hold back a whimper. The Wretch on my chest opens its thin lips and unfurls a long tongue. It licks my cheek, my forehead, my eyelids. It draws its tongue into its mouth and hisses at me, its foul breath nearly causing me to vomit up the whiskey.
For a moment, the Wretches are quiet, likely contemplating their next attempt to get a reaction from me. The Wretch in my face screeches, and I can’t help but flinch. At this motion, the Wretch behind me sinks its teeth into my neck. I bite my lip and stifle a scream. The Wretch on my leg climbs under the cuff of my pants; I can feel its cold, sticky body inching up my leg.
“P-please,” I whimper involuntarily.
“Please.”
“PLEASE.”
“Please.”
They echo my plea before breaking into more giggles. Something stabs my calf, a barb from the worm-like Wretch. My eyes water and my body tenses, but I manage to keep quiet. By my ear, the Wretch withdraws its teeth from my flesh and continues to whisper nonsense; the one on my calf makes it to my thigh. The Wretch in front of my face fixes me with a blank stare, only inches away now. I hear more shuffling; new Wretches are coming. The bottle of opioids looks so enticing, so comforting.
I reach for them but stop myself.
I sit frozen for five minutes, which feels like five hours. The new Wretches crawl on my arms and breathe on my neck. Bigger ones stand to the side and watch silently. On the TV, the anchor drones on. I sing songs in my head, name things around the room, and tense and untense my muscles. None of it takes my mind off of them. Eventually, after an endless few minutes, they all slither, crawl, or walk away.
Finally, the last one is out of sight. I burst into tears. I made it through the night. I laugh through my sobs. How much longer? I wonder. How much longer will they keep coming for me? How much longer can I endure? Dawn breaks. I wish myself a happy twenty-eighth birthday. Nothing was stolen from me. For better or worse, I survived again. Three hundred sixty-four days, and they’ll come for me again.
~~~
Many years have passed, and I’m still here. I’ve broken the rules more times than I can count. I don’t know how much more they want from me. I don’t know how much I have left to give. I still hold out hope that I can become stronger, stronger than my curse, stronger than the Wretches. Maybe I’ll give up and end my life. But until then, I’ll bide my time and wait, unmade and unwhole, for them to come again, to take me apart.
Piece by fucking piece.