Dark Tales

Humans Can Lick, Too!

A young girl was often left alone at home because her parents worked late, so they bought her a dog to protect her and keep her company. One night before her parents left, they warned her to lock all windows and doors. However, there was one window in the basement that would not close properly. Trying as best as she could she finally got the window shut, but it would not lock. So she left the window and went back upstairs. Just to be safe, she put the dead-bolt lock on the basement door.

She then sat down to eat dinner and feed her dog before deciding to go to sleep for the night. Her dog was known to sleep underneath her bed. As she was about to drift off to sleep, she reached her hand down and let her dog lick it as she said goodnight.

During the night, she woke up with a start. The girl lay there wondering what had woken her, when suddenly she heard a noise. It was a dripping sound and seemed to be coming from the bathroom. She must have left the water running, and now it was dripping into the drain of her sink. Without giving it much thought, she went back to sleep.

Again, sometime later in the night, she woke up hearing the sound of dripping. She reached down and let her dog lick her hand reassuringly. Then, she fell asleep once more.

Then, not even an hour later, she woke and decided that she had had enough. It was close to midnight, and she got up just in time to see her parents pulling up to the house. Good, she thought. Now someone can fix the sink. 

She walked to the bathroom and searched for the source of the noise. Not seeing a single leak from the faucet, she turned to the bathtub. She reached out to pull open the shower curtain and fell back in horror, her hand flying to her mouth.

There, strung above the bathtub was her dog.

The noise she heard was its blood dripping into a puddle in the tub. She felt the urge to scream, but she could only gag–her chest heaving as she tried to keep back the contents in her stomach.

Her head spinning, she stumbled out of the bathroom and into her bedroom, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. Whoever did this might still be in the house. 

As her eyes searched the length of her room, they caught on a small note next to her bed. Scrawled on it were the words, "Humans can lick, too."

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Source Adapted From: www.scaryforkids.com/humans-can-lick-too/

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Other story variations feature a nearsighted old woman rather than a young girl. The fate of the dog also varies, from the dog simply being hanged to it being skinned, disemboweled, or otherwise mutilated. The message is sometimes written on the floor or on the bathroom mirror rather than on the wall. Some versions include the parents' return and their discovery of the killer hiding elsewhere in the house, frequently the basement, the girl's bedroom closet, or under her bed. In other versions, the girl's parents arrive back in the morning and ask if their daughter had a good night. When she tells them that her dog had kept her calm by licking her hand, she is told that the dog in question had been locked either in the basement or outside.