Three Twisted Stories Read Online Free

his chest. The guy’s face was inches from his. Their sweat mingled. Their body odors combined. He was older than Charlie had thought. Gray speckled his beard. His Afro was electrified with stalks of gray. Charlie should’ve been worried about the knife, but it was the look in the man’s eyes that terrified him most.
    Recognition.
    Charlie stopped fighting. His muscles went slack. He dropped to the ground.
    “We are each other.” The man stood over him with the knife still gripped in his hand. “I feel it, Charlie. Do you feel it?”
    Charlie was paralyzed. He couldn’t feel anything.
    “It’s your turn now.” The knife arced into the air. Instead of driving the blade into Charlie, the homeless man stabbed himself in the stomach. There was a snap as the skin broke.Charlie watched the knife sink almost to the hilt. Blood oozed out. Drops of it fell between Charlie’s legs.
    The man fell to his knees. He was smiling. He started to pull out the knife.
    “No.” Charlie put his hand over the man’s to stop him. He’d seen something on TV or heard a story about how you should leave in the knife if you ever got stabbed. “The blade will stop the blood.” Charlie looked inside the dry cleaner’s. Salmeri was behind the counter on the phone. “Salmeri’s calling an ambulance. Leave the knife in so it keeps the blood back.”
    The man wasn’t listening. He was pulling on the knife as hard as he’d pushed it toward Charlie moments before. He said, “Fate put us here together.”
    “Sure,” Charlie agreed, though he’d never seen this guy in his life. The man was probably on acid. His pupils were blown. And they were blue—so blue that suddenly Charlie felt mesmerized by the color.
    “Charlie, listen to me.” Streaks of red tendrilled through the whites of his eyes. “You’re gonna lose everything.”
    Charlie let go of the man’s hand. He tried to shake off the shudder that took over his body, like somebody had just walked over his grave.
    “You’re gonna end up just like me.”
    Charlie felt sick, like the knife was in his own gut. He looked down at the ground. He watched the drops of blood turn into a puddle, the puddle turn into a river that ran down the gutter.
    “Why?” Charlie asked. “Why are you saying this?”
    The man was smiling. There was blood smeared across his teeth, dripping from the corners of his mouth. His skin was ashen, almost white. “Do I look like me?”
    Charlie shook his head. He wasn’t making sense. “I don’t know you. What are you talking about?”
    “I feel like me.” He put his hand to his face, scratched his beard. “Dear God in heaven, I feel like me.”
    Charlie kept shaking his head.
    The man grabbed Charlie by the shoulder. “You listen to me, Charlie. You listenin’?”
    Charlie nodded.
    “This is how you end it.” He looked down at the knife sticking out of his belly. “Only,when you stick it in, make sure you go deep.”
    “Go—”
    He pulled out the knife. He collapsed to the ground.
    Two seconds later, it was over.

Chapter Two
    Charlie forked a piece of steak into his mouth as he stared at the empty chair on the opposite end of the dining room table. The meat had been cooked to within an inch of its life, but he couldn’t taste anything but blood. He didn’t know why. None of the homeless guy’s blood had gotten into his mouth. There were barely traces of it on Charlie’s clothes. His hands were another story. They were soaked in red. No amount of washing could get the stain out. Charlie had been forced to use the edge of his teeth to scrape it out from under his fingernails.
    And he still hadn’t gotten it all.
    “More potatoes?” his wife asked.
    Charlie grunted as he shook his head. He had his wife on one side of him and his daughter on the other, but he still felt alone. This was nothing new for Charlie Lam. He could be standing in the middle of a crowded room and still feel like he was all by himself.
    The phone rang. His daughter