Tender Talons

''This is the first creepy pasta I've written, and I'm thinking that I over boiled it. X''

Tender talons By Cs2Xsist

There’s always lemonade for sale up in Doolemay Street.

We’ve advanced far from the time of cheap lemonade stands, but if you look hard at the home printed sign, you’ll find that you can buy four cups of lemonade and five homemade choc-chip cookies for only 50 cents. It’s a bargain nowadays. It’s a pretty common thing anyway, but when it’s a street like Doolemay, everything changes. No one in the right mind –particularly locals - go up there. It is a cul-de-sac, but locals call this place Dead End road, even though. They never like talking about it. There are only about three excuses of houses up there, though the street goes a fair way up. No one can ever see the houses properly without actually driving up there, and the walking option hasn’t been taken in over twenty years. No criminals are game enough to go there. Hell, even pot growers don’t. Mostly, it’s covered in a thick patch of dead guinea grass and even deader trees- even after a solid rain. Even after monsoon. There is a bit of an odd air about it, and an even odder history.

The summer of 1960, somewhere in December...

Back when the rotting skeletons of houses still had flesh on their aching frames, the summers were bright and happy up in Doolemay. Back then, it was still called Doole Street, and it had about twenty families living up there. It was the happiest street in the suburb, and there was always little Fiona Fischer and her little brother Sammy selling lemonade. With fifty cents, you could buy yourself four cups of lemonade and five homemade choc-chip cookies. But little Fi and Sammy had rivals just up the street at ’25, and they had to keep adjusting their prices. Max and Delina O’Connor ran the show up there. They were cruel, mean, and they were teenagers. Today, they were nowhere to be seen. Today, they were probably hitting the bitumen; probably in their packs, ready to haunt the primaries after they came back from school.

They were gutless, and it was a bit of a pastime; a hobby. Rumour had it that Max and Delina were sick ‘up there’. Fi and Sammy and most of the other Primaries hadn’t an idea what ‘sick up there’ meant, but they all had a feeling that it wasn’t like a tummy ache. At school, the primary schoolers always formulated plans to outrun what they called the DeMax, or the high schoolers. They liked to apparently call themselves the Piranhas.

On that particular morning, on that particular day, Delina was nowhere to be seen when Sammy and his sister were going home. They had a little plan already- they were sick of being beat up. Sammy had a funny feeling that Delina was toying.

“Fiona...I think they’re watching...”

Fi looked at her younger brother, his eyes wide and innocent. “Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t.”

“I don’t like their version of business, Fi.”

“Nobody does. Sally said that they put cooties in their cookies.”

Little Sammy’s brown eyes got wider. “Cooties? They are mean to their customers as well?”

“Oh, apparently they are. I heard mummy say that Max killed a wallaby with his .22 yesterday. He’s gonna be grounded for the rest of the year.”

“That’s right,” Said a sneering voice from behind them.

Sammy turned around, his eyes bulging in the sockets. His sister grabbed his hand, ready to hurl him to safety.

“Oh, it the Fischers…the fischers…...god, don’t they smell like rotting fish today? Probably been fishing in their cess pools. How disgusting.” Max said, from somewhere in front of them.

Sammy looked around him, to see if the rest of the piranhas were near.

“No, Sammy boy. It’s just you two and us.”

Fiona leaned in towards her brother, trying not to take her eyes of either Demax. “Remember the plan, Sam.”

Sam exchanged a worried look with his sister.

Max walked forward and flicked Sam in the face. “You have soft cheeks. You’re a little softy. Your mum’s been looking after you too well. You better not tell your parents about us. Or we’ll chew you two up.”

Delina walked up and slapped Fi. “And why don’t you two brats stop selling your stupid glasses of rubbish lemonade? Our little biz is just gonna wipe you out slowly…and painfully…”

“Yeah,” Max agreed, “How many times do you have to be asked?”

“Well that depends, dipshit.” Fi shot back. She had had enough. Today was the last day. She was only eleven, but they deserved it. She had a plan.

Max looked stunned for a moment, but it dissolved within two seconds. “Dipshit? Are you sure you know what that means?”

“I don’t need to know what it means to insult you two. You only know how to swearlanguage. So, I’ll drop to your level for a decent conversation. You have an IQ of zero and can’t make lemonade for shit. And to answer your last question, no. I don’t know how many times it will take for us to stop. Obviously you find it hard to process the word, stop, as well.”

Delina’s eyes widened. “You wanna play debates? Well, I’ll play then…”

Fiona tugged her brother and darted around Max. They were only fifty metres away from home. Their parents wouldn’t be back until 5.00, but they could lock the house. Hell, they would lock the house. Delina spun on the spot, her icy blue eyes registering every movement with a scary accuracy. She produced a pocket knife from her pocket, as Max produced a long piece of wire. Fiona didn’t want to know what he’d do with it.

Sammy ran as fast as his little legs would carry him. Fiona gave up halfway and dropped her backpack. Delina, who was not far behind, tripped. Max ran and she heard him trip over Delina. Sammy risked a glance behind them and smiled softly. They were almost out of the woods, and only ten metres from the house.

Fi smiled back at her brother. “Drop your bag, Sam. We’ve gotta make sure we get there faster.” Sam gave a slight nod and tried to shoulder it off. His breaths were quick and sharp. Fi slowed down, ready to grasp it and sling it at the Piranhas. They just had to run for another few metres and unlock the door.

“Ok Sammy, when you get your bag off, throw it at them while I open the door.” Sammy nodded.

Fi turned and ran for the door. She dug into her pocket, produced a key and shakily tried to slot it in. For some reason, she kept missing. She he heard a sharp cry of pain and the sound of backpack on concrete. Suddenly her brother was beside her, screaming. “Open the door!” Fi slotted it in and twisted it, but it was too late. She felt two hard hands squeeze into her shoulders like claws. They dragged her along the pavement. She looked up and saw a pocket knife. And that was the last thing Fi saw before she was knocked out.

* Fi woke to the sound of screaming. She was somewhere in the bush, and her arms were tied behind her back. Max was standing in front of her brother, and Delina was holding him down.

“Oh, little Sammy…little privileged Sammy…” Max was saying, a wicked grin on his face.

Sammy’s eyes were wide, and he was screaming. “Where am I? leave me alone!”

Delina turned and looked at Fi. “Oh!” she squealed in delight. Her dark hair was pushed from her face in a ponytail while her icy eyes bored into her. “Our little patient is awake!”

Max grinned, his appearance much the same. Both had scraped knees. “You know what, Fiona? I hate scraped knees. I hate getting…violated, by a little kid even more. And you know what happens to bad kids?”

Max waited for a response. Fiona only shook her head.

“They…get…punished!” Delina said, her eyes an electrical blue. She looked like a kid at Christmas.

“Now that you’re finally awake, I can do a live demonstration. And I'll even have an audience! Don’t worry, I’ve got enough experience…” he gestured to a small heap of bones near a rotting tree stump. They grinned while Delina made her way to a screaming Sammy. She fished out her pocket knife and pulled out all of the tools slowly while she spoke:“You know the funny thing, Fiona? We’re actually not far from the street. People just don’t like getting involved, you know…It’s quite a shame.”

Max produced a piece of thick wire. “You know what, Sammy boy? You don’t actually need sharp blades or guns to have fun.”

“LEAVE MY BROTHER ALONE!” Fiona screamed.

The two piranhas laughed hysterically, as if it was an extremely amusing joke.

Max grinned and wiped away a tear. “Stop being so funny. You’re delaying my fun.”

Delina laughed at that and got out the scissor tool. “I wonder what this does?”

She snicked to herself and drove it deep into Sammy’s nostril and snipped, like she was just cutting a piece of paper. Sammy screeched and tears sprung to his eyes. Blood poured down his nose.

Max shook his head. “I don’t think that’s quite enough. We need to fix him up. This is going to be quite a complicated procedure. You see, he has mental issues, and I don’t think he’s going to make it through.”

Fiona screamed one last time before her mouth was taped up. Delina smiled and brought out a polaroid camera. “I got this just in case you miss out on anything.”

Max got his wire and drove it deep into Sammy’s leg. He twisted it to make sure Sammy screamed to new heights. Delina got to work on Sammy’s finger nails with a pair of pliers. All the while, Sammy screamed helplessly.

Nobody came.

Within half an hour, Sammy’s right leg was unrecognisable. He was losing consciousness in five minute intervals. All the while, Delina was taking polaroids and helping out.

Within an hour, both legs were hacked off.

Within two hours, he was dead. They had dug the wire into his guts and had dissected him alive. Halfway through dissecting his intestine, Max had gouged out both eyes with his bare hands. Then he had thrown the squishy remnants of them at Fiona.

After he was done with that, he hacked off the head and forced Fiona to eat her own brother’s warm gooey brains. By 8:00pm she had eaten his heart, some of his arm tissue and parts of his leg and cheek. All the while her parents and neighbours were in the distance, shouting. They were so close yet so far.

By 9:00 a swarm of people were searching with torches in the bush. The police had arrived. Max and Delina looked at each other worriedly and produced a knife. They slit Fiona free but dragged her behind them. She was at their house by 9:30, and their unemployed parents were nowhere to be found. She soon found them, dead on the couch. They had been repeatedly stabbed and someone had shoved a fork in various parts of their bodies.

By 10:30pm Fiona was dead. They had decided to hack off both arms with a rusty old saw and test the ‘death of a thousand cuts’ theory on her. She died with hate, despair, and anger. Mostly, she was angry. She was not afraid anymore.

* No one ever found out what really happened. Everyone in the town thought it was a grown man, a grown psychopath who was responsible for all the deaths. Nobody really knows why they can still hear the sound of screaming from that street at about 10:30 every night. Nobody knows why there is always lemonade for sale, even though nobody lives there after the big event of the summer of 1960. But most of all:

Nobody knows why Delina O’Connor and Max O’Connor disappeared out of thin air on that day. They haven’t been seen since, and were presumed dead by the police. But stories go around at night, and every young kid of around 5-11 knows best. Check under your bed, look in your closet, and bloody hell make sure you don’t have a monster waiting for you in there.

Who knows? You might find them one day.