Do you remember when... #011
you blew out your birthday candles? (600 word short horror story)
Weekly horror stories, writing tips, and activities to exercise your inner demons.
We’re on number 11 of the series of based on your half-forgotten memories. Do you remember this one? You can vote at the end!
Previous memories:
Do you remember when you blew out your birthday candles?
Were you turning seven, maybe eight or nine? It’s hard to be sure, it was so long ago. Even now you can’t be sure it happened.
The anticipation of the sugar-rush pounded in your chest.
Your family was there, including your Uncle Gerald from your mother’s side. He smelled like mothballs and had a face like a red snooker ball, his skin smooth and glistening. His fingers were like iron pokers, always jabbing you when you didn’t expect it, laughing when you squirmed like it was a joke, but you never found it funny.
The lights went turned off and your mother carried in the cake. Candlelight flickered over her features, casting strange shadows across her eye-sockets.
It should have been a happy moment, but the thought crossed your mind that ‘eye-sockets’ was a strange name. It made them sound like eyes could be plugged in and out, like light-bulbs. If an eye burnt out or popped, you should be able to replace them. You imagined the wet squelch of plucking an eyeball, how it would feel heavy and wobbly, like a water balloon rolling in the palm of your hand. You could take a fresh eyeball, pull back the flaccid eyelid to reveal the damp darkness, and wedge the new one into place, making sure it didn’t escape your grasp like a slippery fish and go flopping across the floor.
In the darkness of your mother’s eye-sockets, her eyes glinted. She placed the cake on the table before you. The frosting looked deep. Your mouth watered.
Happy birthday to you…
Happy birthday to you…
There were so many candles it seemed impossible to blow them all out in one go, but if you didn’t then your wish wouldn’t come true.
They sang, and you took a huge breath in. Your lungs felt like a pressured cannister, waiting to explode.
Hip hip, hooray!
“Blow out the candles and make a wish!” your mother says.
You puffed out your chest even more, cramming in a little more air and, just as you were ready to blow—jab!—Uncle Gerald’s bony fingers stabbed into your side. Pain exploded between your strained ribs, a raging heat like he’d punctured you and all the air should rush out sideways, blowing him away and splattering your lungs and bones across the room, but instead the air splashed from your mouth, casting spittle across the cake. One candle remained flickering—terror struck you—you had to extinguish it for the wish to work! With the last wheeze, you spluttered it out, and breathless stars danced in your vision.
In the sudden dark, you rubbed your aching side, fingers exploring the new tenderness. Uncle Gerald laughed and laughed, and everyone else laughed too. You crunched up your eyes and wished like you’d never wished before, your childish fury driving a spear through the night, hooking back something nameless, shapeless, and terrible.
The lights came on. Your mother stood by the wall-switch, her laughter dying. Confusion chilled her soft features, like waves inching up a beach. Her brow crinkled and her laugh faltered, her smile fractured and broke. She searched the room, like the furniture had all been rearranged but she couldn’t place how.
Uncle Gerald was gone.
When your mother looked at you, her smile rebuilt itself, but it was floppy, like fabric of a tent held up only by poles, not moored to anything solid.
No-one ever mentioned Uncle Gerald again. You never found him in any photos. Ask anyone in your family, and they’ll say he never existed. But the next day, you saw the bruises from his bony fingers. As the days went past, you were happy as those marks faded away forever.
The end
Hope you enjoyed that, I think it’s one of my favourites so far!
While you’re here, I’ve put a new T-shirt design into my shop, it’s the house from the Alfred Hitchcock classic ‘Psycho’, and available in two versions, night and day:
Daytime version on Threadless.
At the time of writing these are coming to my Redbubble shop, but might take a couple of months to clear (they have a different process for fan art for some brands on there).
If you enjoyed this week’s story, don’t forget you can read previous memories here:
Hope you have a wonderful week.
Go be kind and spooky,
Mata
xxx
Ah-ha! I knew he was real!!