It kind of looked like a video game… a spray painting. Except it wasn’t two-dimensional. No, it was alive and real and it looked like carnage, the way the hand was tearing at the monsters flesh.

He was frozen in fear for a moment. Too long of a moment. They were after him. He turned and fled down an empty hall. The walls seemed to radiate blue, crashing down on him like a ton of bricks. How can this be? he thought, It’s just light.

He could hear other people screaming. The sound ricocheted off the cold, hard surfaces and bounced to him. He wanted to scream back. Really, he should have expected this. Nothing, lately, had been going right. So much so, in fact, that he had almost been waiting for this to happen.

Suddenly he tripped and fell, his knee hitting the ground hard. He could feel cartilage separating from bone as his breath was forced deep into his lungs. Looking behind himself, he could see the hand – the claw – getting closer. He screamed when its sharp nails dug into his flesh.

Even unreality was fucking him over.

-cecilia evoy

Creepy Hand of Death

My cousin had a new-born granddaughter. She saw the baby once, right before she died.

Her DNA lived on and she probably thought that she had fulfilled her function.

She did not have to fight for life. She could surrender, and so she did.

Her husband of forty years was her first and only man.

Till her last breath he was beside her. He was her nurse and companion.

I think she was happy when she was dying. Can one be happy when dying?

Now she is reincarnated as a squirrel, fish or hamster.

Does living make sense? The end is always the same: death absolutely wins.

By the way, two months after the funeral her husband married another woman.

by Farida Samerkhanova