Albert's idiotic sacrifice and what happened afterwards

Everything was ready for the ritual. We stood in the dark woods just out of town. It was midnight and the moon hid behind a thick cover of clouds, while leafless trees surrounded us, branches curled up like the gnarled fingers of an old folk’s home.

“Everything is ready for the ritual,” Sophie intoned from beneath her hood. 

There were five of us, me and four others. I was good at maths. We stood around a black cauldron. I have no idea where Sophie got it from. It’s not like there’s a ‘Cauldrons R Us’ around here. It was thick and heavy, cast iron I think. Maybe normal iron. Some sort of iron anyway. 

I have hundreds of questions, but the biggest one was about to be answered. 

Can we raise the dead?

The cauldron sat on top of a fire. Slimy, green water bubbled and popped. 

“Tonight, we call forth the soul of Nibbles.”

Nibbles was my rabbit.

He died because I gave him avocado. Apparently avocado is not good for rabbits. 

You’d think they’d tell you that when you purchase your rabbit. Seems risky to assume the purchaser knows the ins and outs of rabbit diets. 

If I ever owned a rabbit shop, I’d make sure. But that’s just me. I’m conscientious like that. 

The loss of Nibbles hit me hard. I was miserable and I couldn’t concentrate at school. Completely lost as I thought of all the good times we’d had. The times he ignored me when I let him out of his hutch, or he’d run away from me. And all that poop.

Such a scamp. 

He was my best friend and I’d lost him due to stupidity. Well that and not knowing a rabbit's dietary requirements.

Seriously, they should come with a manual. Nothing too in-depth. Just a single page with ‘DO NOT FEED YOUR RABBIT AVOCADO!!!’

I should sell them on Etsy. A million-dollar idea if there ever was one. 

“Taken from us too early,” Sophie continued. Her voice quiet yet carried in the cool night air. 

It came as a surprise to me when Sophie saw how distraught I was. We’d never been friends. In fact we were probably closer to enemies. She was the hot cheerleader, with hot cheerleader friends and hot football boyfriends while I was the friendless nerd. Head in a book. Or hiding behind the oak tree at lunch time so I couldn’t be teased or have fruit thrown at me. Usually by Sophie and her friends.

Kids at school were pretty silly. They’d laugh and call me ‘Albert Smellbert’ which I guess would be pretty funny if my name was Albert.

It’s not by the way. It’s Heath. 

I’m not sure how it started but everyone called me Albert, even my teachers. After six years of high school I figured it was too late, and awkward, to correct them. 

“Now we offer a sacrifice to Beelzebub.”

All of us raised our arms up, chanting a hymn that Sophie had prepared. Sophie pulled me aside a week after Nibbles died. Asking me if I was interested in getting Nibbles back. I was confused at first. How could I get him back?

“How can I get him back?” I asked.

Sophie said, “I know a way. My family have been involved in the dark arts for centuries.”

That made sense to me. Her family was loaded. They lived in a mansion with fields of green grass and big, tall trees. Her parents drove expensive cars and she always had the best everything. 

“You’re a witch!” I exclaimed.

“Shhh”, she hissed. “The teachers can’t know!”

That also made sense. We were in a catholic school. The teachers wouldn’t look too kindly on witches. They’d want to perform an exorcism.

Or expel us. 

She brought along Darren, Rachel and Matt. Her friends and fellow ‘members of the coven’ as she called them. She said we needed five people, part of the pentagram, and I needed to be willing to make a sacrifice. 

We all were. 

She told me mine had to be the ultimate sacrifice. I thought she meant my life. Though giving my life to resurrect my rabbit seemed kind of pointless. But Sophie told me it wasn’t anything like that. 

Then she told me. 

And I said yes immediately.

Sophie looked at all of us, one-by-one. 

“Offer your sacrifice so we can return to life the soul of Nibbles.”

She held up a green shopping bag. Tears came to my eyes as I thought about the lifeless white bunny inside. A little smelly now but soon to be back in my arms. 

In the trees above an owl hooted.

Sophie dropped the package in the water. It made a plop and slowly disappeared beneath the slimy water like a sinking ship.

Sophie looked at Matt and he tossed in his sacrifice. A lock of his famous blonde hair. The hair that made girls swoon.

Next it was Rachel, who tossed in a capsule of what looked like nail clippings. She was always doing her nails. Filing them. Painting them. Growing them.

Then it was Darren, Sophie’s twin brother, who threw in a tube of liquid. It looked like water, but it was likely sweat. He was a football star, and he was always sweating. A kid who always looked like he’d just gotten out of the shower. 

And smelled like he always needed one. 

The water roiled and rolled, splashing about like a really nervous person carrying a pot of boiling water across a field of sleeping babies, and the others turned their cowled heads to me. Watching me, waiting. Patient, like death.

“It is time for the ultimate sacrifice,” Sophie said with the inflection of a funeral celebrant. “Albert, once you have made the sacrifice, your precious Nibbles will be returned.”

I took a deep breath and reached into the deep pocket of my robe and pulled out the knife. The blade was long, serrated and sharp. I stole it from the knife block in the kitchen when I snuck out of the house.

The others began their chant. It started quiet but it picked up and I felt it building within until their voices reached a crescendo. They chanted as one and it infiltrated my ears, probing my brain. 

Telling me to do it. 

And you know what?

I did it. 

With a single flick of the blade, my hand plopped into the cauldron and the green liquid bubbled violently.

The chanting abruptly stopped.

Elation ran through me and I stood there, triumphant. My arm still held out, the stump where my hand used to be was oozing blood, flowing into the cauldron like stormwater discharge after a heavy rain.

Sophie was the first to pull her hood down, the others followed after. They all stared at me.

I grinned back at them. “He’s coming,” I said. I could feel Nibble’s presence.

“What the fuck!” One of them said. I wasn’t sure which.

I was confused. Shouldn’t they be happy?

Then the pain came.

White hot pain burned the stump and I screamed, clutching the stump to my chest, trying to stem the flow of blood. The woods erupted in a chaos of shouting, each voice competing with the other to be the loudest, like a Christmas lunch with the family.

“Let’s get out of here!” 

“He actually cut off his hand!” 

“I’m calling an ambulance.”

“We’re so screwed.”

“The moron cut his own hand off!”

All the voices echoed in my head like an empty corridor and my world was spinning. Somehow, I was on the ground, surrounded by dead leaves. Lancing pain shooting up and down my arm and everything went dark.

----------------------

Days later

Matt, with his long, golden hair pulled back into a ponytail, worked part time as a gardener for his dad. He hated the job but loved the money. It allowed him to get the best hair products, the best clothes and the best drugs. He’d sell those drugs on a Friday or Saturday night, usually in exchange for money, but sometimes...certain favours. 

It was win-win.

The girls got what they wanted.

He got what he wanted.

Victimless crime.

Sure there’d be an overdose here or there, but no one died. Well, Dave died. But aside from Dave, it was victimless.

No one liked Dave anyway.

Like Albert, still in hospital after cutting off his own hand. No one liked Albert.

He laughed. What a moron.

It was Halloween and he was in a hurry. Halloween meant a lot of partying, a lot of drinking and a lot of favours. He had one last job to do.

He stood before a huge pile of branches. He groaned, this would take hours. The day was sunny and the houses around were all dressed up ready for trick or treaters while Matt got started, the rumble of the engine occasionally interrupted by the grinding of branches as the sharp, metal teeth shredded them.

His phone buzzed. It was a message from Sophie, asking if he had any 420 on him.

He smiled, Sophie was always good for the non-monetary payments.

As he replied, typing with one-handed and feeding the chipper with the other, he felt a tug on his ponytail. Absently he brushed his hair and continued texting.

Another tug. This time harder and he swung around. He thought it might be his dad trying to teach him a lesson about paying attention but there was no one there. Only the chipper buzzing and grinding away.

“Weird.”

He finished texting Sophie, adding a joke about Albert and how they should call him ‘Stumpy’ when his head was wrenched off his feet. It was as if there was a weight tied to the end of his ponytail and he was pulled back. He cried out as he stumbled backwards…

Into the chippers chute.

The sound of the engine echoing off the metal walls rang in his ears. He tried to pull himself out, but something had hold of his hair. 

He struggled trying to pull himself out of the chute, but whatever had him was impossibly strong.

“Help!” he screamed as he felt himself sliding down the chute, the metal teeth gnashing at him. “Help!”

Suddenly the pressure on his ponytail eased and something small shot past him, out of the chute. Matt had a moment of relief, but before he could climb out, the teeth latched onto that famous hair and pulled him back in. His larynx-tearing scream-turned-gurgle echoed around the street as people gathered to watch the new Halloween display.

“The effects look so real,” said one neighbour as blood and gore sprayed the lawn.

-------------------------

“Have you heard from Matt?” Sophie asked, checking her phone.

Darren shook his head and Rachel said she hadn’t.

“Jerk was meant to bring me some weed.”

Darren shrugged while Rachel pulled a nail file out of her tiny purse and started filing her nails in the middle of the makeshift dance floor. The party was raging as people moved around in their costumes, drinking, making out, trying to scare each other. Music blared and there’d already been three neighbours knocking and complaining about the noise to which Sophie replied with a middle finger and a door slam.

Sophie - dressed as a cliched slutty nurse - spun on her heels and disappeared into the crowd.

“Your sister needs to chill,” Rachel said, blowing off some nail dust.

Darren shrugged, “Who cares.” He produced a small baggy from his pocket containing two white pills. “Wanna get freaky?” he said with a devilish grin that suited the devil costume he wore.

Rachel returned the grin and tried to snatch the bag, but Darren was too quick. Those football reflexes too much for Rachel’s upper fifth avenue ones. He pulled a pill from the bag and handed it to her. “I gotta take a dump. I’ll meet you in my room.”

Rachel put the pill on her tongue and flicked it into her mouth like a frog catching a fly. She pulled him to her and gave him a long, passionate kiss.

“Don’t take too long,” she said evilly. Betraying her angelic, albeit slutty, costume.

Darren, feeling the effects of a kiss that promised so much more, charged through the crowd like a fullback until he reached the bathroom where the line was longer than nerds on iPhone release day.

He danced from foot to foot, offering favours and threats to move ahead but no one was having it. That toilet was working in overdrive.

A big believer in being prepared, and practicality, he finished his dump and hurried up the stairs to his bedroom with his pants undone and around his ankles.

He burst into the room to find the lights off and cast in darkness except a square of light from the hallway, his huge shadow blocking it.

On the far side of the room he saw Rachel’s unmoving form on his bed.

“Shit,” he muttered. She was asleep or passed out.

“No matter”. He shut the door behind him and shuffled across the room, tripping on the desk and barking his shin on his football helmet, until he finally had his legs free of his pants.

He belched, his multiple beers repeating on him, and he blew it on Rachel’s face. She hated it when he did it.

Rachel didn’t move.

“Damn girl, you are really out of it.”

He reached out for his bedside table where his protection was and paused. If she was passed out...why bother?

He climbed on top of her, she didn’t move.

He frowned. Even completely passed out, she should be moving.

Probably should be breathing too.

“Hey,” he whispered, nudging her. “Wake up.”

Nothing.

Anger boiled out of him, and he grunted, “Come on, Rachel. Fuck!” he shouted as both an exclamation and a verb. He reached out for the lamp on the side table and flicked it on.

Dull yellow light lit up the corner of the room and he cried out in shock.

Rachel lay there, lifeless eyes staring at the roof. Her mouth was stuffed with hundreds, maybe thousands, of finger and toenail clippings, spilling out of her mouth into her hair and onto the bed

The contents of his stomach rocketed up his throat and spewed forth from his mouth, spraying the wall, the bed and even his (former) girlfriend.

He turned, wanting to get the hell out of there, and he had less than a second to take in the hand that held his football helmet. The helmet that slammed into his face. Breaking his nose and smashing his teeth.

He fell onto his bed, dazed and groaning. Blood and teeth fragments filled his mouth as the helmet slammed into his face again. And again.

It kept going. Mashing his face until it was nothing but a bloody, unrecognisable pulp.

Meanwhile, downstairs the music blared, rocking the house and the neighbourhood.

------------

Sophie tossed her phone on her bed, angry at Matt. She left another threatening voicemail message. From Darren’s room she heard a yell and a thump and knew he was drunk-fucking Rachel. 

She growled and examined herself in her dresser mirror, combing her hair for no other reason than to be doing something. Her phone chimed. “Finally,” she said, reaching out for it.

As she did, she heard her door open and close.

“Hey, asshole!” she said, reading her phone. “Bedroom is off limits.”

The message was from her parents, telling her they would be late coming home tomorrow. Sophie sighed and tossed the phone on the bed. Realising there had been no reply and no one leaving the room, she turned around.

There was no one there.

But on the floor was a severed hand.

Rolling her eyes, she went to her door and pulled it open. The hall was empty. “Ha-ha, really funny!” she shouted, expecting to see Matt, or Darren and Rachel hiding somewhere.

She slammed the door shut. Her plans for the night had been ruined. She wanted to get high, but Matt let her down. Again.

“Limp dick, asshole,” she muttered.

She picked up the hand and studied it. It was so lifelike, the skin felt real, not rubbery and there was blood and dirt at the wrist where it had been ‘severed.’

A finger moved.

“Shit!” she started, jumping a little. Then she laughed, “So cool,” she said.

Another finger moved.

“Is it animatronic?” she wondered.

The fingers wrapped around her middle and index finger and squeezed. She laughed. This was an amazing Halloween prank. She wondered where they got it from.

“Ow!”

The hand tightened its hold and she felt her fingers being crushed. 

“Ow! Shit. Let go!” she cried out, trying to shake it off. But the hand kept tightening its grip and she screamed as she felt the bones in her fingers snap. Sophie shook her hand wildly, but it held on. She pulled it, feeling her finger joints popping until, finally, she felt the relief as the pressure released and the hand let go.

She gasped, relishing the relief in her fingers and she tossed the hand on her bed. “Stupid thing!”

Her phone buzzed again and she reached for it.

The hand suddenly sprang up. Sophie tried to cry out, but the hand was too quick, and it gripped her around her throat. Her scream caught in her throat as the hand squeezed her throat. She gurgled, as she struggled against the inhuman hand, pulling on the fingers, trying to rip them away but it kept closing, choking her.

Her vision started to blur, darkness creeping in from the edges as she tried to suck in precious air, but the hand crushed her trachea, her oesophagus and the cartilage in her throat. Sophie fell to the ground, unable to breathe. Her throat resembling a used tube of toothpaste and the hand, Heath’s severed, now conscious hand, slowly crawled away.