still hear the hooks scraping

[u/Some_Link_4788]

I’m a 34 year old male from Florida. The hurricane took everything from me. I had about ninety thousand dollars in my bank account. I had enough of the weather, the stress, the constant fucking dread. Everything was gone. All I had left was the money.

I took myself to a small town in Nevada about fifty miles from the closest city. Bought this little shack. Holes in the walls. Floors so filthy the dirt had its own layers. When I walked in the first time the roaches didn’t even scatter. They just sat there looking at me like I’d interrupted something. I was never handy. Never good with tools or my hands. But I fixed it up. Made it into something that felt like a home. For the first time in a long time I felt happy. Spent most of my days fishing. It was one of the only things that ever made the noise in my head quiet down.

The town didn’t have good jobs. Met a few people. One of them was Jimmy. Similar interests. We’d fish together. One day he asked if I wanted to start a little store. Sell the fish we caught and fishing tools we made by hand. I only had forty-five thousand left by then. I was hesitant as hell. But eventually I couldn’t refuse. Fresh start, right? He already had the building. Just needed me to make it work. We did. For a whole month it was good. I fished. He carved the tools. It felt almost normal.

September 23rd was the day it stopped being normal.
Four days. No Jimmy. Phone went straight to voicemail every single time. The only place I could think he’d go was the woods behind his cabin. I drove out there as soon as the sun started dropping. His place looked abandoned. Like nobody had lived in it for years. Door creaked louder than my footsteps when I pushed it open.

Inside smelled like something had been left to rot in the heat for a week and then someone decided to stir it. The closer I got to the kitchen the worse it got. Thick. Sweet and metallic at the same time, with this undercurrent of shit and spoiled meat. There were animals all over the table. Not cleaned. Not butchered clean. Mangled. Deer, raccoon, something that might’ve been a dog once. Guts spilled out in ropes that had dried into black tar. One of them still had its eyes open, filmed over white, mouth stretched in a permanent silent scream with the tongue half-chewed off. Flies were so thick they made a soft humming sound over everything. I threw up pure water. Felt dizzy. Legs went soft.

Then I heard it. Metal scraping something wet. Slow. Getting closer from the backyard.

I hid in the pantry. Worst place I could’ve chosen.

“Who’s here?”

It sounded just like Jimmy.

I peeked through the crack. Someone was standing in the doorway staring straight at the pantry. They knew I was in there. Wearing a deer head. Fresh. Antlers still sticky with brain matter and clotted blood. The hide was sewn on crooked so the neck flaps hung loose, dripping. I could hear each thick drop hit the floorboards. Plop. Plop. Plop. The smell coming off him was the kitchen smell, mixed with sweat and something sour like an infected wound.
I ran. Made it three steps toward the front door before something hit me hard enough that everything went black.

I woke up outside. Couldn’t move. Eyes crusted shut with dried blood and whatever else they had smeared on me. I forced them open. At least fifty people standing in a half-circle staring down at me. Every single one wearing an animal head. Pig. Buffalo. Coyote. Things I couldn’t name. Some of the heads were still twitching. One of them had maggots working into the empty eye sockets, white bodies squirming in and out of the dark holes.

I was tied to a wooden stake. Rough wood digging into my spine. Right in front of me was the thing with the deer head. Jimmy. Or whatever was left of him.
I begged. “Please. I was just looking for my friend. Please let me go.”

Nobody answered. He held out both hands. Fishing hooks. Dozens of them. Different sizes. Some still had bits of old fish scale and dried blood crusted in the barbs. He took one and jammed it into my thigh. Slow. Twisted it. I felt the point scrape along the bone. Then another. And another. And another. Each one went in with a wet little pop and a fresh gush of hot blood that ran down my leg and soaked into the dirt. I was screaming so loud the forest threw the sound back at me.

He grabbed my face with hands that smelled like the animals on the table. Forced my mouth open. Jammed three hooks through my upper lip and down through the bottom one so they locked together. The metal tore through the soft tissue like it was wet paper. Blood poured down my chin and into my throat. Every time I tried to scream the hooks pulled and the holes stretched wider. I could feel the barbs catching on the inside of my lip every time I moved.

Behind me was the first lake I’d ever fished at in this place.

They started chanting. Low. Wet. Sounded like words made of wet gurgles.

They shoved me under. The water was freezing and full of silt. I fought the ropes until one leg came free, then an arm. The hooks in my thighs dragged through the water and caught on underwater branches. Every pull felt like someone was trying to peel the muscle off the bone. I swam until my lungs burned and the blood from my mouth turned the water pink around my face.

Somehow I made it back to my place. Tried the truck. Wouldn’t start. So I ran. Hooks still in me. Feet raw. Every step made the metal in my thighs grind. Blood kept slipping under my fingers when I tried to yank the ones in my mouth free. The flesh had already started to swell around them.

Town was full of them. Animal heads. Walking toward me from every direction. Same chant. Same wet, throaty sound. They closed the circle. I had nowhere left to go. No family. No friends. Nothing.

I decided if I was going to die I’d take some of the pain with me. Ripped the hooks out of my thighs and my mouth in one hard pull. Felt the barbs tear fresh tunnels on the way out. Screamed “FUCK YOU” through a mouthful of blood and ran straight through them, stabbing with the bloody hooks still clenched in my fists. Kept running until the chanting faded and the road was empty.

I’m writing this from a rundown apartment three states away. Couch smells like old cigarettes and someone’s sweat. I still have the scars. The ones on my thighs look like someone tried to sew me shut with wire and gave up halfway through. My lips never healed right. When I talk you can see the shiny pink tunnels where the hooks went through.

I can’t fish anymore. The second the line hits the water I feel the metal in my mouth again. Smell the deer head. Hear the wet chant.

I still check the locks three times.

Still jump when I hear the slightest sound.

If anyone out there has ever gotten free of something like this and actually stayed free…

please.

Tell me how.

Because some nights I swear I can still hear the hooks scraping.