My grandfather did terrible, cruel things in life. Now that he’s dead, I finally understand why.

He was stuck in a mental institution, as determined by law, for my entire life. I was never allowed to visit him. Thus, I never really knew him as a person. I only ever heard the stories.

Randomly attacking people. Breaking objects. Being a nuisance to society. What sent him away for good was when he ran over thirteen people with his car. Most of them died. They think it was a significant cognitive illness onset by years of CTE from being in the military. I know better.

I was given his watch at his funeral. I don’t exactly know why my dad gave it to me. Guess he thought it would be a kind gesture. Its weight was light in my hand. Cheap. A simple automatic silver watch with beaten leather straps. 

It had something etched onto the back.

A sigil. Like in possession movies. Two intersecting triangles, like a star of david, with the top-pointing triangle corner replaced with a square. It was all surrounded with a circle. Permanently entrenched upon the metal backing.

Although I wasn’t much of a watch guy, I wore it for the next few days after that. It felt nice having something with history with me at all times.

One morning, when I woke up and checked the time, something changed.

As I sat there, the tiny lines making up the numbers around the edges of the face began to move. I brought the watch close to my tired eyes. They moved quickly, reorganizing into the center of the watch to form words.

HOLD YOUR BREATH

I was baffled. I thought I must have been dreaming. I didn’t hold my breath. I just sat there and stared, dumbfounded.

Suddenly, a sharp pain radiated through my wrist. It felt like I was being poked with a bunch of needles. I winced and gripped the area with my other hand. It only lasted for a few seconds. When I looked back at the watch, it had gone back to normal.

My wrist still sore, I attempted to remove the watch. The straps came undone easily enough, but the watch case didn’t. As I lifted it, the skin underneath pulled with it painfully. It looked like my skin had been superglued to the back. 

After exhausting all options I could think of for removing it, I gave up and just left it on. I had to get to class.

At the end of my first class of the day, right when the professor excused everybody, I felt a faint buzz on my wrist. I looked down.

The letters rearranged themselves.

TRIP THE NEXT PERSON IN THE AISLE

I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. Trip someone? I glanced up at the students beginning to stand up and walk down the aisle. The first person was about to pass me as I sat at the end of the row. I contemplated actually doing it for a second, but my foot hesitated. 

They walked past me uninterrupted. 

I heard a quiet click and short grind coming from my watch. Before I was able to look down, an intense stinging pain shot up my forearm from the wrist. It felt like I was being stabbed. My jaw clenched and I tried to look normal.

By the time the pain stopped, after about fifteen seconds, the skin around my wrist had gone pale. Looking closer, I could now see a few faint, dark lines spurting out under my skin from the watch case.

I quickly left the room.

During my second class of the day, sitting in a giant lecture hall, listening to a professor drone on about calculus, I felt another buzz. I looked down.

STEAL HER WALLET

I turned to my right. A girl was sitting next to me, her face down, presumably asleep. Her wallet was sitting right there on the desk. Imagining the intense pain under my watch, my right hand started to twitch. I needed to get that wallet. Consequences be damned. It wasn’t that bad, right?

Just as I was an inch away from touching it, she jerked awake. My hand reeled back instinctually. 

Damn it. If I could just–

My thought was interrupted by the rapid firing of every single nerve in my wrist and hand. It was so shockingly bad that I couldn’t contain a pained groan from escaping my lips. My skin felt like it was being flayed and the bone underneath being crushed into dust.

I gripped the edge of my desk for support as I rocked through the waves of misery. It didn’t stop for several minutes this time. A slick sweat had formed on my forehead by then. 

Inspecting the watch, I found that the skin around the leather straps had grown up around the edges. Or maybe the leather was sinking into the skin. It was hard to tell. But lightly tugging on the band revealed that it was completely fused to me.

My mind raced.

If I could just get somewhere private. 

The time on the watch told me that I wasn’t even halfway through the lecture yet. I tried to just sit there and focus on the class material. I hoped it would end quickly.

Right before the end of the class period, the buzz came again. My stomach dropped.

STAB HER

I realized then that I was gripping a sharpened pencil in my right hand tightly. The girl next to me had her left hand laying flat on the desk.

My heart began to pound. No time for rationalizing. I couldn’t go on like this. My hand shook in anticipation as I mentally prepared myself for a quick exit from the room. I raised my hand.

The pencil swung down in a flash, crossing through the soft flesh of the girl’s hand like butter. It jammed into the wood underneath. A violent shriek and a trickle of blood onto my hand told me I needed to go. I grabbed my bag and ran out of the room.

I made it to my house soon after. In all the rush, I didn’t ever notice any pain in my wrist. Visually, it looked no different than it had before the gruesome task. A sickly wave of relief washed over me.

In hindsight, I realize that this wasn’t the right move. But that evening, after hours of nothing from the watch, I felt safer. I began to prepare dinner, which involved cutting up a tomato while water sat in a pot on the stove.

I shuddered and missed the trajectory of my slice when a new buzz made me jump. I squeezed the kitchen knife in my right hand and grimaced as I looked to the watch face.

CUT OFF A FINGER

Adrenaline shot through my spine and I considered my options. As much as I didn’t want to do it, I imagined the possible consequences. I pictured myself with no pinky. 

No way. That’s not a fair trade. 

I stabbed the knife into the cutting board. I figured losing a finger was worse than the watch getting even more stuck than it already was. I braced.

Molten metal soaked through my skin and into my veins. Everything burned a white hot pain worse than anything I had ever felt before. I collapsed to the ground in agony and began to weep.

The silver metal of the watch was spreading across my skin, growing and rooting itself. Becoming a part of my arm. Mechanical groans and clicks and whirs rang in my ears. I screamed.

My screaming alerted my roommate. He ran out into the kitchen to see what was wrong. He found me curled up on the tile floor, crying and gripping my wrist.

I told him to get out. But he wouldn’t listen.

After a half hour, the pain gradually subsided. He refused to leave my side, not wanting to leave me alone since I wouldn’t let him call an ambulance. I could tell that the sight of my arm left him terrified.

Bzzzt.

My teeth would have shattered if I clenched my jaw any tighter when I felt it. I glanced at my spasming mechanical arm.

THROW BOILING WATER AT HIM

I had no qualms about it. I couldn’t think of a better solution. I wouldn’t let this progress any further.

I threw my roommate’s arm off my shoulder and I rose to my feet without a word. I walked to the large pot of water, now boiling violently. With no hesitation, I gripped one of the handles with my right hand and flung it at him haphazardly.

The water flew across the room in a steaming arch, reaching him before he could move. The boiling water splashed across his face, chest, arms, everything. Soaking into his clothes. He shrieked in a way that shook me to my core.

A cloud of steam formed around him as his skin turned red, then darker, then it began to fizzle and pop and crack. The air reeked of burnt meat and hair. 

Visions of my grandfather crossed my mind. The stories. The thirteen people. The girl’s hand. The man sprawled out on the floor in front of me. 

How many more people?

I knew then that it would be until I died. I’d be just like my grandfather. I looked down as my wrist buzzed once again.

KILL HIM

No.

I turned around and raced to the cutting board.

I shoved a dish towel into my mouth. I grabbed the kitchen knife, my knuckles white. I threw my heavy, mechanical arm onto the board, slamming with immense weight. I followed the metal to its end. Right about halfway up my forearm. 

Before I could stop myself, I thrust the knife into the soft, pale flesh. It sunk in easily, the pain less intense than that of the watch. Blood quickly began to flood from the growing wound as I sawed away.

I struggled to break through the bone, hard and slippery in the bleeding mess. Pressing all my weight into it, I heard two sick, wet snapping sounds. My head grew dizzy. The world spun.

Eventually, the last bit of flesh separated under the blade, and I heard the familiar chop of the knife against the board.

I backed away from the counter and my left arm didn’t follow. The part-metal-part-flesh contraption laid dead in a pool of blood. I took all the dish towels in the room and tightened them over my bleeding stump. I tripped over my roommate’s charred, barely breathing body as I ran to the phone.

I’m writing this out from a hospital bed. It’s been a couple of days. I’m stable now. I think they are going to have psych people coming in to see me soon. So I’m preparing my story.

Whether or not they believe it, I know the truth about my grandfather. 

Don’t repeat the same mistakes that your families made. It’s not worth it.