I ring the door, and she came to answer.

“Yay! You’re here!”

“Yeah… you invited me…”

“Yeah, I’m glad I did!”

That’s strange. She wasn’t normally this excited to see me. Then again, she hasn’t seen me in weeks because of her surgery, so it’s not that weird.

“Please, come in. I have a surprise for you”

She said that in a singsong voice. This isn’t like her. Is she drunk?

I come in and she has a whole lavish plate of food out for me.

“Please, have a seat. I already prepared dinner”

It’s a bit early for dinner, but it looks great.

She sits down and I see an awful scar going down each of her fingers, joining at the wrist, and going down her arm.

“Whoa, what are those.”

“Ugh, my surgery scars are so ugly! They go like this over everything. The doctors say they’ll heal soon though, so it’s fine”

—

The rest of the visit was great.

We had burgers (well I had them she wasn’t hungry) we did deliberately bad karaoke, (she did some crazy ass death metal demon voice singing “Barbie girl”), it was perfect.

But later in the day she tripped on something, and the way she fell bent one of her finger bones 180 degrees.

“Oh my god!”

“Ahhh! That’ll wake you up in the morning, oooooh”

“I’ll get the first aid kit, should I call a doctor?”

I sprinted into her bedroom where I knew there was a first aid box.

“Wait, I’m fine, I don’t need first-aid-“

But by that point I’d was already in there. As soon as I turned on the lights I saw it.

An entire skeletons worth of bones, in a pile on the floor.

I turned around and she was suddenly right behind me, so close I could feel her breath on my face. Her finger was perfectly fine now.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

She put her arm on my shoulder and it bent like rubber. I tried to run but I bumped into something and it scraped off a chunk of my stomach skin, falling onto her bedroom carpet. Since when was I so weak?

“I was hoping we could have prepared you more”

“Who’s we? And prepared me for what?!”

“The food made you ripe for cutting, the karaoke let us all hear and mimic your voice. Now anyone can be you, at least for a second. I just wish we could’ve done more. You can come out now.”

Then she locked the door, and something clawed out from under her bed. It had the exact shapes of a skeleton, only it was pure flesh, and it was exactly my height.