The Collection

Everybody has a hobby. Some collect stamps. Others collect action figures. Some even collect porcelain clowns, which is a cry for help.

Me? I collect something a little more… intimate.

Now, before you judge me, let me explain. It started as a joke. A harmless tradition. I went on my first date at sixteen with a girl called Molly. She had a laugh like a dying goat and breath that hinted at a serious dental hygiene issue. Still, she was my first date, and as a memento, I pocketed the receipt from our dinner. Cute, right?

Fast forward a few years, and I had a box of keepsakes from every romantic encounter: a napkin from a coffee shop, a movie stub, a matchbook. Little things. Harmless. But then I realized something. Memories fade. The feel of someone's skin, the sound of their voice, the way they tilt their head when they talk—all of it vanishes, eventually.

That's where my collection changed. I wanted something more personal. More… permanent.

So I upgraded. A lock of hair here, a fingernail there. Nothing drastic. Nothing they'd miss. And it wasn't like I took them by force. I found ways. A sleepy tug with tweezers. A casual snip while they looked away. Do you know how easy it is to snag a fingernail clipping? People leave them everywhere.

My first real acquisition came from Vanessa, a redhead with pale skin that burned easily in the sun. We dated for three months before she decided I wasn't "emotionally available" enough—whatever that means. Before she left, I plucked a copper strand of hair from her sweater while she rummaged through her purse for her keys. It caught the light, a thin wire of fire glinting between my fingers.

Then came Rebecca. Dark eyes, darker humor. Her long eyelashes would brush against her cheeks. During dinner at an overpriced restaurant, one perfect lash detached while she laughed at something I said. It landed on the white tablecloth between us. She never noticed when I pocketed it, wrapped carefully in a napkin corner.

Dana was trickier. Observant, bordering on paranoid. But everyone uses the bathroom, eventually. Her apartment trash yielded a fingernail sliver from her morning clipping routine. Small but significant. A perfect addition.

Each new piece filled me with an odd satisfaction. I stored them in labeled jars, each a shrine to past romances. The collection grew: a strand of hair from Sarah, who loved horror movies and hated commitment, and a dried flake of blood from Emma's nosebleed, carefully scraped from a tissue.

People shed themselves everywhere, never noticing what they leave behind or who might take it. We're constantly losing parts of ourselves—skin cells, hair, nails—and most never give it a second thought. Their carelessness was my gain.

Each specimen went into a glass vial, labeled and dated. The collection lived in a cedar box scented with lemon oil. On quiet evenings, I would open the case, admiring each trophy in the soft light of my desk lamp before dusting them. I would remember the women they came from, the dates, the conversations, the inevitable endings.

I was a connoisseur of the corporeal—a curator of cast-offs.

Then I met Claire.

Claire was different. She wore dark clothes and bright lipstick and had a gaze that made me feel exposed. When most people have a conversation, they're just waiting for their turn to speak. Not Claire. She listened like she was solving a puzzle. She dissected conversations most people missed. When I tried my usual line about her eyes matching her dress, she replied, "They don't, and that's the third time you've used that line tonight. I counted." Her smile was confident, intelligent—a worthy opponent.

She worked as a museum conservator, preserving artifacts time was trying to reclaim. Her hands were stained with chemicals I couldn't identify. She gave off a scent of sandalwood, along with a hint of something metallic. Her apartment was minimalist, with no clutter or waste, and everything neatly in its place.

She was observant. Methodical. Her space stayed impeccably clean—no stray hairs on the bathroom sink, no nail clippings in wastebaskets. Nothing I could collect. After six weeks of dating, I had nothing for my collection. It was frustrating.

One evening, we sat on her leather couch, watching a serial killer documentary. Her choice, not mine. Lost in the show, she leaned forward, her face flickering in the blue light of the TV.

"They always get caught because of trophies," she murmured, gesturing at the screen with a glass of red wine. "Sentimental attachment. The need to keep a piece of the experience."

I made a noncommittal sound, heart beating faster at her words. Did she know? Could she suspect?

As the night wore on, her eyelids drooped. The wine glass tilted in her hand. I took it from her and placed it on the coffee table. Her breathing deepened, became rhythmic. A strand of dark hair fell across her olive-skinned cheek.

Perfect. My moment.

My fingers stretched toward it, careful and practiced. Just one strand. She would never notice.

Her hand clamped around my wrist. Her grip was ice-cold and strong enough to bruise. Her eyes—alert, pupils contracted to pinpoints—locked with mine. No sleepiness. No confusion. Only sharp, clear awareness.

"You collect too?" The question hung between us in the dim room.

My pulse hammered against her grip. Words rose but faded away in my throat.

She released me and got up from the couch with an eerie grace, too smooth to be natural. The air in the apartment cooled as she disappeared into her bedroom without another word.

I sat frozen, unsure whether to run or stay. Before I could decide, she returned.

She was holding a box—not cardboard or cheap wood like mine. This was old—ancient, maybe. The wood was dark as midnight, its surface gleaming with polish. It absorbed the surrounding light. When she placed it on the glass coffee table, the surface frosted beneath.

The hinges creaked—a sound like distant screaming—as she opened the lid.

Inside: dozens of vials, labeled in tight, spidery script. Their contents varied—yellowed nail fragments, coarse clumps of hair still attached to scalp, strips of skin with fine hairs visible. The specimens glistened in preservation fluid, thick with chemicals and something sweeter, floral.

A sickly wave of revulsion crawled up my spine. My fingers tingled with the urge to slam the lid shut and erase the sight—but I couldn't look away.

When she pulled out the vials, she revealed something worse.

Photographs.

Me. Sleeping in my apartment. Standing at my kitchen window. In the shower. At work.

And older images. Me at twenty, stumbling from a college party. At sixteen, in high school biology. As a child on a playground I barely remembered.

"I've waited years," Claire said, voice dry as autumn leaves. "Wanted to see if you'd develop the right... appetite."

Her fingers stretched before my eyes, joints cracking as they elongated beyond human proportions. Black veins pulsed beneath her graying skin. Her smile widened past the corners of her mouth, revealing another row of teeth.

"Most hunters bore me. They take what's discarded. Amateur collectors." She drew a vial from the box, swirling with sentient smoke. "I prefer the whole specimen."

Words in a strange language, guttural and ancient, spilled from her mouth. The air thickened to syrup, tasting of metal and decay. My muscles seized, turning to stone from the inside out.

Her eyes glowed electric blue, casting shadows across the walls. "Don't worry. You'll still be awake. All my collection pieces are. They watch each new addition. It's quite the community."

She opened a vial with a hiss. Ice-cold mist forced its way into my airways, crawling down my throat, behind my eyes, and into my ears. It burned and froze, like inhaling shattered glass.

Darkness consumed me, but not consciousness.

I awoke to stillness. My new reality: awareness trapped in a vial labeled with today's date. Through curved glass, I watched Claire arrange me on her shelf, between a banker from 2024 and a hitchhiker from 2026.

My last thought before my mind splintered into eternal screaming: at least I wouldn't need to dust my collection anymore.