Terrifying Tales

Bloodless Vivisection

Julie began vanishing slowly. One morning she and I woke up to find her left pinky missing. No blood, no sign of any injury, merely absence. Of course, we rushed straight to the doctor but he proved just as puzzled as we were.

"No sign of contusion or laceration. It's just gone," he informed us unhelpfully.

After a battery of tests found nothing else amiss we went back to our daily lives, which we both continued as normally as possible. That is, until the next morning.

It was a toe this time.

Panic set in. We ran back to the emergency room, demanding more than the brush-off we had gotten the day before. They decided to hold her for observation. I stayed by her side as she fell asleep and long into the night until I too surrendered to the abyss.

Another finger.

The various instruments they had plastered upon Julie gave no better explanation than had the doctor. All they could say for certain was that at 2:14 AM her right ring finger had been attached to her hand and at 2:15 AM it was not.

Understandably, Julie was distraught. I held her as she wept, whispering soothing platitudes in her ear which I myself disbelieved.

Whatever power confronted us now was clearly beyond the pale of medical science. And so, against all the doctors' advice, we rushed off to healers, mystics and religious leaders, desperate for the explanation science had failed to give.

"This herb will ward off evil spirits" a voodoo priestess informed us.

"Speak these words and draw a chalk circle around your bed at night," an occultist suggested.

None of it forestalled the inevitable. Every morning at 2:15 AM another appendage vanished from Julie's body. Fingers and toes were just the beginning, however.

Soon, more vital body parts were drawn into this terrible void. Muscles, tendons and nerves according to the MRI results. Julie was confined to a wheelchair. The general atmosphere of our house settled into an overwhelming, gray oppression which threatened to suffocate us both. The Sword of Damocles hung over us, day by day.

Julie's work as an attorney continued, but she could no longer appear at trial. She no longer possessed the strength or conviction. She took to setting an alarm for 2:15 AM, waking and thoroughly examining her body for its latest betrayal. But, soon, the malevolent force which had gripped her gave rise to more sinister losses. In conversation I brought up old friends and events from the distant past which she could no longer remember. It became clear, then, that on those nights when no physical deprivation was apparent her mind was being slowly stolen.

One night, as we both sat in a grim diner, with the flickering neon sign standing austerely above us, and the exhausted waitress shuffling from one table to the next as in a dream, she told me,

"If it gets too bad... I want you to end it, Jim. I don't want to end up like my father."

We had both seen her father's long, excruciating descent into dementia, depression and death.

"I don't know if I can do it," I whispered, looking up at the broken "e" in the sign.

"You have to," she insisted, and took my hand with what was left of hers, drawing my gaze back. Three fingers remained. Fortunately, her thumb hadn't yet been taken.

And, in those pleading eyes I saw a sincerity I could not refuse. I nodded, and sealed our fates.

"If the day comes that I don't remember you, you'll know it's time."

And that night, as I pushed her wheelchair back to the apartment in perfect silence, our hands, hers mutilated and mine shaking, clasped each other as if clinging to life itself. We squeezed and squeezed until it seemed our hands were becoming one with the pressure, and I wish that they had. Gladly, I would have shared her fate, for mine, in surviving her, was far worse.

***

That day came a week later. Julie, now bedridden, woke and screamed upon seeing me sharing her bed. After the initial shock, and my careful explanation, I helped her into the wheelchair and changed her bedpan.

Her last MRI scan had revealed extensive neurological damage. So many vital nerves and brain areas had gone dark on the screen.

But, I could not bring myself to murder the woman I loved. Not while there was something left of her to destroy.

I carried on as best I could, making sure Julie was as comfortable as possible. But, soon, she could no longer even leave her bed to sit in the wheelchair without my help. And, some days after that, one of her lungs disappeared and her breathing grew incredibly labored.

It was about that time that I engaged the services of hospice care. Not too long afterwards, one of the nurses from the agency slipped me a vial of morphine and whispered in no uncertain terms that its dosage was lethal.

"For when the time comes," she told me. "Only you can know when that is."

She did not know the nature of Julie's condition but in truth neither did I.

I knew when it was time. One day, I looked down at Julie and saw the shell of the woman I had once known. Our eyes locked once more and in their pleading depths I saw that same sincerity she had shared with me all those months ago.

My error in ignoring her wishes could be continued no longer.

"I'm sorry," I whispered into her ear, my tears falling onto her already nearly lifeless face as I depressed the plunger into her IV line.

And, as her eyes closed in peace and serenity for the final sleep, I cursed the nameless fate which had stolen the woman I loved from me, a piece at a time. And yet I was the one who finished the evil work.

I still wonder sometimes if I did the right thing.

***

That night, I dreamt of death. Formless and faceless men walked with me in procession as we bore a casket to the waiting grave. It had been dug into the earth some yards away and, as the march of the seasons, we progressed towards it.

A terrible foreboding settled upon me and the whole affair was somehow more frightening than sorrowful. There was a ubiquitous sense of impending doom.

My fellow pallbearers wore identical suits and had the selfsame dedifferentiated faces. They were smooth and utterly without blemish.

Suddenly, one of these creatures stumbled and dropped his side of the casket, allowing it to fall open and its contents to be revealed.

Within the velvet lining was my own body. Unmistakably mine.

With the terror of a wounded animal, the impulse to flee took hold of me. I knew that there was no other option. I must complete the process of my own burial. And so the grim procession resumed, mechanically marching towards oblivion...

***

The next day I woke to that terrible foreboding.

As I grasped blindly after my glasses, I realized that I did so with only four fingers. And, in that instant, the horrifying futility of it all bore down upon me.

There would be no one to release me from my fate when the time should come.