The Tarnish, First Encounter



Believe me, he is out there, and he is looking for you.

You might be wondering what the bloody hell I’m talking about, huh? Well I am talking about some strange creature I found in the forest, it appeared to be a small child. I approached wondering what it was and what it was doing, as I got closer I discovered that its skin looked as though it was too large for it's body.

“Hello?” I yelled stupidly, it immediately turned and looked at me with those eyes, oh god, those eyes, they were the stuff of nightmares I tell ya.

I immediately knew this was no child, it's face looked as though it had been burnt, one of its eyes was large and pure green, without a pupil, the other one ,which was bleeding, was sewed on, as it was a normal human eye. The creature had a large gaping hole in the center of its face about an inch in diameter, I assumed it was a nose, but I’m not sure. Its mouth looked like a triangle, or rather three triangles together so they went back to reveal a large beak and hundreds of small but sharp teeth.

It hissed in a horrible screeching voice, “What do one before want?”

I screamed in pure horror at the disgusting thing, and recoiled.. In its hand, it held a large axe.

“Why are you so unhappy? I will only eat you!”

I bolted. As I was running, it screamed “You tell...writer first...reader next!”

I kept running. And that’s how I got here, stressed, sleep deprived and fearing for my life. It started again one night when I was walking my doberman, he was a sweetie and wouldn’t hurt a fly, he never even play fought, or anything like that, he was not afraid of anything. So imagine my surprise when he starts growling and snarling, he stopped dead in his tracks, barked a few times, and started whimpering he wouldn’t move an inch forward.

I looked at were he was staring, and saw an eye—a human eye—looking at me from the inside of a bush. Puzzled, I stepped forward and looked into the bush, to find...a dead body staring at me.

It was completely skinned, from head to toe, and its skin had been made into a coat, which was sitting next to the corpse. I started freaking out, and ran back to where I left my pup, to my disgust he was gone, blood trailing back home, when I got there my wife asked me what the hell kind of joke it was to break the dog's leg and tie a note to it saying: WARNING ONE.

I backed away slowly spouting gibberish, my wife calmed me down, and that night I put a padlock on my bedroom door. A week later my wife was on vacation, and the dog slept next to me, but I was kept up all night by the sound of someone, or something scratching at the door.

The next morning I found blood and large axe marks on the door, and a note saying: NO MORE WARNINGS.

The next night there was disturbing silence. Yet the night after, I heard its voice from outside the door repeating “Coats, jackets, sweaters, and blankets! All for me in one neat yank at, the skin of him for me it will be, the tarnish.”

Disturbingly two years later the lock has held fine, but every night I am haunted by the chant, to the point where I sing it.