PERFECT SYMMETRY

an excerpt from Finn's recent novel, short story Marionette

Perfect Symmetry is a novel released containing nearly twelve short stories written by author Finn Charbonneau. The point of this novel is to exercise the art of horror in brief takes.

(content warning for self-harm and lightly described gore)

Doctors tried to insist that the inexplicable movements were muscle spasms, hypnic jerks, basic involuntary body movements that anyone could experience. Sofia knew the truth though. That something beyond mortal comprehension was at play, that she was no more than a puppet strung up by marionettes. The gods were cruel puppet masters, leaving her to suffer for the choices they made.

The pills didn't help. If anything, all they did was dull her mind to the truth -- that she was being controlled. (It was a common thing for people that suffered from hallucinations. That the medicines never helped.)

She could never find the wires, as much as she tried.

It wasn't until the voices came that guided her. Instructions to slit tendons in her legs were the first. If it weren't for her neighbors, she probably would have bled out. By some miracle, the doctors kept her alive. She was given a second chance to live, hopefully without the ties of those strings that she insisted were there.

Horror bloomed on her face as she looked inwards at her wrist. Blue lines sat just below the skin. Thin, blue wires.

The sound of the EKG monitor sounded like an alarm and doctors came rushing. Some seemed mortified by what they had waiting for them in there. Some turned away as bile crawled its way up their throat and splattered onto white tiles. Seated upright on the medical bed sat Sofia as she began to unravel the veins from her wrists with a scalpel as her voice came out weak.

"I finally got them out."