Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24708169-20140324010721

Hey, after the not so positive reception to my first pasta audition/inspection/....thing, I fixed up the other one that i had already made. So here's The Nail Taker/Clippings (Take your pick for the title, let me know).

Click…Click…Click. Those are the only sounds I hear. The only sounds that take up my silence. The incessant clipping, constantly reverberating around my eardrums. I might as well explain.



My name is Nathan, a junior in high school, right in the middle of the city. If you ask anyone around my school, they would typically refer to my friends, Ben and Josh, and I as rude, mean, or most commonly, a bully. Yeah, we were mean, fully acknowledged it in fact. We practically took pride in it, walking around the dank high school courtyard like we owned the place. We barely got by in our classes, the teachers didn’t do anything about it; it was the life. We were known as the harbingers of chaos, quite a fitting name if I say so myself. I digress, what I must speak about. In many of my classes, there was this kid, Drake, also a junior, but him and I were practically opposites. He was shy, feeble, had no friends, but there was this eeriness about him. He never made a sound, no if, ends, or buts. In class, he was always completely silent, except for one aspect: his clipping obsession. Wherever he was, he always had a pair of nail clippers, sometimes more than one kind for different cuts. He would always cut away at his fingertips in the middle of class, all the time. Needless to say, we fucking despised him. The incessant clicking drove us insane, always shattering the silence. Even when it was loud, you could still somehow hear it. We bullied him, of course, mainly doing the typical: Shoving into walls, throwing some punches, the works. However, what bothered us was how he would just casually walk away, with his clippers in hand, picking and cutting his nails as he walked. This ticked us off way more than it should have. After 3 years of having to put up with this shithead’s ridiculousness, we planned to finally stifle the noise by eliminating the source.



             It was after school, the flood of kids pouring out of the school. We all met up near the car pickup line, where we found him, standing there motionless within the crowd of kids. We sat down and waited on a bench for almost an hour, until every kid was gone, except for Drake, who was still standing there motionless. At last, we finally arose from the bench and headed over to him. We pushed, punched, and beat him across the side of the car loop. Eventually, we pinned him up towards the fence, with the flowing river behind us, and took his backpack. I looked up at him, hoping to see some fear, but I was surprised from what I saw. His expression remained neutral, his face hadn’t moved since we had started. I held him up against the fence ever longer, as Josh and Ben rustled through the backpack. Finally, they had found all of the clippers. Suddenly, Drake’s face turned into sheer terror and started screaming profusely at the top of his lungs. He was thrashing, I had to get Ben to help me hold him down. Josh looked at me, with the clippers in hand and a shit-eating grin on his face, and eyed the river behind me. I smiled. I still regret doing so. Just as Drake managed to escape our grip, Josh tossed the clippers over the fence. We heard them plop into the flowing waters and then there was only silence. Drake just stood there frozen with his mouth wide open. Satisfied, Josh, Ben, and I started to leave the scene. That was until we started hearing a strange noise come from behind us, almost a murmur of sorts. All three of us turned around. The moment I turned around, my legs lost all feeling, almost as if they were paralyzed. We were still standing, but none of us could move. We looked up from our paralyzed legs and gasped at the sight in front of us. Drake was sitting on the floor, curled up into a ball, crying. He was softly yelling and screaming to himself, almost out of our hearing completely. We started laughing at first, but our smiles quickly left, for his tears slowly started turning black, like ink. We tried to run, but our feet felt like they were nailed to the ground. We had to watch the nightmare unfold for ourselves. Drake’s hair started rapidly shedding and fell onto the ground and on his lap. His skin started to rot and pale. His eyes rolled backwards in different directions into his head, continuously, until the color was entirely gone, leaving only white. His clothes started melting off, peeling off like a snake shedding his skin. His arms and legs started stretching outward, progressively getting skinnier until it was practically bone. Lastly, his mouth, over time, started to stretch downward, with his jaw curling, grinding together his teeth. As it stretched, the murmur turned into screaming, fierce howls. It got so loud, his teeth started to crack and his tongue burst open into a pool of blood in his mouth. After screaming for a few minutes nonstop, he jolted up to his feet and flicked his hands simultaneously. Abruptly, giant, needle-like claws erupted from where his fingernails were. The moment his claws were revealed, the feeling came back to my legs, but it was too late. The monster that was once Drake pounced onto Josh and viciously ripped open his flesh, turning him into a sprinkler of blood. Ben and I bolted towards the exit of the school property through the fence. We heard the screams of our poor, mangled friend’s screaming echoing around us as we ran for our lives, tears in our eyes. Just as we snuck our way into an alley out of sight, the screaming stopped. We tried to keep quiet, but we were breathing so heavy and couldn’t stop freaking out. Finally, we had managed to calm down. Suddenly, a hand rapidly reached around the corner and snatched Ben by the neck. I shrieked and ran through to the other side of the alley into the adjacent street. Around from where I was, police sirens were progressively getting louder. I finally had some hope. After turning the corner onto the sidewalk, I saw a city bus further down the road. I quickly dashed toward it as I saw Ben’s lifeless body fly through the air from the alley out of the corner of my eye with the terrifying screaming coming from behind. I reached the bus and pounded as fast as I could on the door, getting the bus driver’s attention. He opened the doors and I screamed at him to drive and don’t look back. I heard the ear piercing shrieking, and I think the driver heard it too, as he slammed the pedal. The bus was entirely empty, so I raced to the back, looking out the rear window. Drake was chasing the bus, gaining more speed and starting to catch up, like he was some sort of demented lion, and we were the prey. From behind, the cop cars were racing along side of the terror, firing rounds up the wazoo. Bursts of blood popped from Drake’s pale, moldy skin, which instantly melded back together. Suddenly, he pounced to the side onto one of the police cars, his hands growing tremendous in size, his fingers almost grabbing the entire top of the car. He threw the car onto the others, causing them to swerve and crash into various street poles. The monster quickly got back to its focus, nearly gaining up to the bus. It slashed out its long hands at me and scratched the glass. I jumped back, mortified. Suddenly, just as we passed an intersection, a pickup truck crashed into Drake, sending him tumbling along with the car. I stood there, flabbergasted at the sight, as the bus finally started to slow down. The driver told me that he thought it was safe to get off. Reluctantly, still frightened, I got off the bus. Conveniently, my mom’s apartment was only a few blocks down.



I couldn’t sleep that night; there was no doubt about that. When I got home, I found a note from my mom, saying that she had to go on a business trip for a few days, and that she wouldn’t be home for a while. How convenient after today. I was scarred; I dared not close my eyes. I lied in bed, for hours, staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, the glass on the window behind me exploded onto the floor to the side of me. I instantly jumped up and looked at the window. There was nothing there, I got up and looked out the window. Drake was standing there, but he was human again, with a new pair of nail clippers in his hands. He was staring up at me, with dead eyes. I shuddered. The clicking echoed in the silent night, getting faster and louder in my ears. I fell to my knees, yelling for help to myself. Suddenly, the clicking stopped. Drake tossed his nail clippers behind him. He flicked his hands, just like before, and the same giant claws burst from his fingertips. Abruptly, he disappeared into thin air, and all of the streetlights on the side of the road buzzed off. I was panicking at this point; I knew he was coming for me. Then, something weird happened. I felt something, like a claw, being jammed into my ears, but it wasn’t painful, it felt more like a pop than anything. Nonetheless, everything went black.



I was awoken by a stray ray of light landing on my face. I woke up, finding myself lying in a pool of broken glass. I felt like a corpse, I was aching all over, specifically my hands and feet. I couldn’t hear anything either. I tried to bend my head, but the shards of glass dug into my neck. I was in so much pain, so I lifted my hands towards my face and froze. My fingernails and toenails were completely ripped off, with disgusting pink and purple fluid where they used to be. I screamed, but I was surprised to find that there was no sound. I called out for help. No sound either. Suddenly, I heard the clicking, soft, faint. I shuddered and jolted upward to find one of my apartment neighbors at the doorway. He told me he had already called the paramedics. Once I got to the doctors, they explained to me that I was deaf, permanently, and that both of my eardrums were torn, slashed, and cut. As they told me this, the clicking started back up again. I shrieked and ran out the office building as fast as I could.



   I ran back up to my apartment building and slammed open my door jumped onto my bed, and started to sob. Do you know how painful it is to cry and not even hear your sadness? Suddenly, I heard a metal clang on the floor. I looked up and saw a pair of nail clippers on the floor. I quickly snatched them up and sat in my bed, crunched up. The clipping started to click at a rhythm, almost saying, “Do it” in it’s own cryptic language. I readied the nail clippers and started clicking at the repulsive green and purple flesh. I started laughing hysterically. I never left my apartment room, never to eat, never to drink. Even when my mother eventually arrived home, I remained silent, with my door locked, clipping at the repugnant skin. She eventually became distressed, trying to get me to leave the room, so I had to kill her of course; stabbed her in the eyes with the clippers and sliced them open with a quick little pinch on both. She went blind and fell on the kitchen floor, snapping her neck. My arms and legs became bone thin, and my skin turned flaky and white, but I didn’t care. The clicking was like music to my ears, and a cacophony from the depths of hell at the same time. Chances are, you’ll still probably find me, still in the room, writhing in my pool of insanity, dancing to the melodic sounds. Click…Click…Click.



Let me know what you think, starting the next one soon.

  