Creepypasta Origins

A Nail Biting Story

  It was more than obvious that I hated nails. My older sister would make sure to remind me of that every time she'd claw at me when we were fighting. I just couldn't stand them. Scars would always cover my arms and legs, decorating my pale skin with cuts. Her baby-pink nail polish would occasionally get stuck within the wounds, making it even more difficult to get it clean. Despite not doing anything to fuel my sister's rage, she always found a reason to keep doing it anyway.

So instead, I started to prevent it. Furious, my mom would always scold me when I started to bite down on my fragile nails. And it became the worst habit of habits. Every day, in and out, I would continuously chop my nails down with my bare teeth. I didn't really care — as long as they would be kept down to the grid, I'd be satisfied.

Soon my nails were a mere third of an inch long, barely visible on my plump fingers. Alongside the nail, skin started to tear away with each time I dug my teeth down, deeper and harsher with every bout. Soon, I became used to seeing the edges of my fingers covered in small pools of dried blood.

It was my favorite obsession.

The fights between me and my sister never stopped, either. Every day, there was a new issue. Who was to take care of the laundry, who got control over the remote. Simple trivial things. But this one time, we crossed the line. A punch to my sister's chest and the rule of not crying was broken. My mom sent us both off to our separate rooms with her voice filled with rage, saying she would deal with us later.

Feeling my anxiety rising up through the roof, I didn't even bother to turn on the lights before I sat down in the corner of my bed, pulling myself together before I allowed my teeth to dig into the last remaining lengths of my nails. Grasping at every skewer of nail, pulling off the skin again to calm myself down. And as per usual, it would send me right off to sleep.

Within a few minutes, I woke up again.

My mouth was filled with the taste of iron. Without being able to fully wake myself up, my tongue started to swirl around inside my mouth. It wasn't until I felt something fall farther and farther down my throat that my body jerked upwards to let out a hurried cough. My legs stumbled across the cold floor as I threw myself into the bathroom, flipping on the lights as fast as I could. My reflection in the mirror didn't startle me at first --- not until I noticed the red stains around my mouth.

The object stuck in my throat once more reminded me to cough. As my lungs compressed themselves together, I managed to squeeze out a rather stiff clasp of air before what had lingered stuck in my throat came out. It was a sharp thing that fell into the sink with a low thud, scraping down the smooth porcelain onto the edge of the drain. It took me a second to realize what had been stuck in my throat all along. A piece of a nail, torn with skin fragments it once had been attached to.

My first thought was that I had gone insane. That a fever dream I couldn't remember had made me go mad, pulling my own nails off. I glanced down towards my hands.

My old nails remained upon my fingers, chewed down and torn. None of them were missing.

My eyes went back into the sink, and then I noticed the shade of the nail.

A strange, familiar color of baby-pink.