TRUE TALES OF TERROR
WHERE IS MY TOE?
One day, a young lad was skipping and frolicking merrily down a lane that ran innocently alongside the village cemetery when he stumbled across a toe. Now it was rather unusual to find a big toe so cleanly separated from its body and lying in the middle of the sidewalk, so the delighted boy picked it up and took it home.
When the boys’ criminally neglectful parents saw what he had found, they congratulated him heartily and set about cooking the toe for dinner. That night, they feasted on toe burgers, toe au gratin, and toe fricassee, and the satisfied boy went to bed with a full stomach and a warm heart. But in the middle of the night, when the hour of midnight struck and the veil between this world and the next was momentarily parted, the slumbering boy was roused from his dreams by a low and plaintive cry from far out in the night. “Wheeeere iiiiiiisss my toeeeeee?” the voice moaned. Well, the groaning question was eerie indeed, but the boy figured that it sounded quite far away and, honestly, what were the chances that it had anything to do with the toe that he had picked up and eaten? 50/50 at best. A few minutes later, the voice called out again, and this time it was right outside the young boy’s house. “Wheeeere iiiiiiisss my tooooooeeeeee?!?” This time, the boy felt an icy shiver run down his spine. The unearthly voice was very close now and sounded 30% less mournful and 60% more vengeful. The frightened boy pulled the covers up over his head and trembled like a leaf. Seconds later, from within the boy’s room, the voice boomed out in anger, directly over his bed. “WHEEEERE IIIIIIISSS MY TOEEEEEEEEE?!?” “Okay, okay,” the boy sighed with more than a little attitude as he threw down his blankets and stared at the moldering figure before him. “Obviously, you know where it is or you wouldn’t have come all the way here. But if you know where it is, then you also know that to give it back to you is gonna take me a minute. Wait here.” The irritated boy trotted down the hall to the kitchen and retrieved his mother’s best strainer before sequestering himself in the bathroom. After several minutes of intense straining and a few groans of his own, the boy managed to expel what was left of the toe into the strainer and he took it immediately to the ghost or zombie or cadaver or whatever it was. The creature looked over the boy’s offering with a grimace of disgust, backing away as the foul odor overwhelmed him, and muttered one parting remark as he left the boy’s home. “NEEEVEEEERMIIIIIND. YOUUUU CAN KEEEEEEP IIIIIT.” |