When the first box arrives, you don’t think much of it. Nondescript black, sealed with a glossy logo sticker. Dark Deeds: Midnight Reads for Horror Fans. You set it aside to deal with later. After all, surgeons are busy people. Your practice has been thriving. You don’t have time to look up what to read—that’s why you’re trying a book subscription.
It’s not until several nights later, after a full day of surgery, that you remember the box. It’s 11 p.m., and you know if you close your eyes now, your mind will fill with the frantic beep of a heart rate monitor, the convulsing of the man on the table, his blood spilling out and staining the bedsheets red, red, red . . .
Better to soothe your mind with invented horrors. Since residency, it has become the only genre you consume; it takes your mind off the real-life horrors you witness in the operating room and the other thing that haunts you. That time you—
No. Best not to think about that.
You flick open a box cutter and slice through the sticker; a motion familiar after two decades of cutting into skin. This blade is duller and less precise than your trusty scalpel, but it does the job.
The first thing you see is the printed note, obscuring whatever is packed in the nest of shredded paper beneath.
Dear Horror Reader,
Welcome to the Dark Deeds family! Each month, we send a handpicked horror book and a wrapped item labeled with a page number. When you reach that page in the book, you’ll be prompted to open your gift.
You’ll also find a scratch-off ticket in every box. Check yours for the chance to win your next month of Dark Deeds FREE! Concerns? Contact us at darkdeedsbox@gmail.com.
This month, our theme is FRIENDSHIP. If that doesn’t sound like a horror theme to you, it will once you’ve read the book.
Enjoy the nightmares,
Team Dark Deeds
You toss the note aside and dig in. The cover is black with a double-exposed image in the center. Two different faces fight to occupy the same space: one staring straight ahead with a wicked grin, the other looking up and screaming. You flip to the back to read the blurbs.
“Full of dark humor and shudder-inducing imagery, If You Say Kill will make you consider how far you’d be willing to go for your best friend . . . and just how far they’d go for you.”
Your thoughts turn to your former best friend. Nadine would have loved this box. The first week of college, she invited you to her dorm to watch Saw, her favorite movie. You were a shy, sheltered boy who had never seen anything scarier than Hocus Pocus, but you were lonely enough to say yes. As your friendship grew, so did your love for horror movies.
She hasn’t spoken to you in a year. You miss her.
You bring If You Say Kill to your room, turn on your lamp, and begin reading. It’s exactly your style—fast paced, engaging, and full of morbid humor—but the friendship in the book reminds you so much of Nadine that it hurts. After reading a few chapters, you go to bed.
It takes you two weeks—you work long, unpredictable hours, and sometimes you’re too tired to read—but at last, you reach the page paired with the surprise gift. Out of pettiness, you finish the chapter before fetching it. You’re used to being the one in charge; no note is going to tell you what to do.
You tear through the black wrapping paper, revealing a book bound in tanned leather. Inside, each page is blank, made of thick, hand cut paper. There’s no brand name anywhere. It looks like one of those handmade $200 journals people sell on Etsy.
In If You Say Kill, what begins as a dare from one friend to the other escalates until they kill one of their teachers and skin him. From his skin, they craft covers for a matching set of journals.
It was clever of Dark Deeds to include an item that feels like it was pulled straight out of the story. You run your fingers along the leather surface, wondering what animal it was made from. How human skin would feel.
You’re excited when the second box arrives. Despite your initial hesitance about the first book, the ending was decent. And while you don’t use journals, you’ll save it for your mom’s birthday. You won’t tell her it was free—that would make it feel less special. A little white lie never hurt anyone.
News plays in the background, distracting you. Some solemn-faced reporter goes on about a budding serial killer who’s claimed two victims. They were found laid out on picnic tables at different parks, covered by sheets. Both were stabbed with thin, sharp blades, and various body parts are missing. For this quirk, the killer has been dubbed The Harvester.
You’re not worried; men like you are rarely the target of these kinds of attacks. Still, you turn off the television and return your attention to the box.
It’s hard to believe you won another month of Dark Deeds, especially since the first box was a free trial. But you’ve always been lucky, and secretly, you feel you deserve every good thing that happens to you. You cut through the sticker.
Dear Horror Reader,
We’re pleased you decided to stick with us and promise you won’t regret it! This month, we picked a theme everyone can relate to: ENVY. Whether it’s at work, in your friend group, or in your love life, surely, you’ve experienced that soul-crushing, frustrating-as-all-hell emotion. It could drive anyone to the darkest of deeds.
As always, we’re at darkdeedsbox@gmail.com if you have any concerns.
Enjoy the nightmares,
Team Dark Deeds
Intrigued, you check out the book. Below the title, To Dine with You Every Night, is a bird’s eye view of a place setting. The white plate in the center holds a human heart and the matching white mug is full of blood. One corner of the book features a silver award medallion.
Looks interesting enough. You put it on your nightstand.
The next night, after getting paged six times, you need a few minutes to wind down before trying to fall asleep yet again. You pour yourself a glass of sparkling water and start reading.
Several chapters in, you’re not sure you’ll enjoy this book as much as the previous one. The writing is crude, and the main character feels like a caricature. He’s in love with his neighbor, a woman who clearly has no romantic interest in him. As she begins dating someone else—a man who seems a little too perfect to be real—the main character starts stalking her and growing more obsessive.
You feel your irritation grow with each scene. You hate when books are reductive. You know exactly what it’s like to be that guy, and it doesn’t always happen this way. Sometimes, the girl really does end up with the wrong guy.
This damned subscription box keeps making you think of Nadine. You picture her in a sleek black dress and red lipstick, the way she looked the last time you spoke. That night, a year ago, when you went to her house for drinks, hopeful that it was the start of something. Instead, your friendship ended. You still don’t know why. All you know is the next day, you woke with a pounding headache and no memory beyond those first few cocktails.
Despite your annoyance, you continue reading throughout the next few weeks. As much as you hate to admit it, the story is addictive. You watch the main character’s obsession turn full blown, ramping up until he attempts to kill his neighbor’s boyfriend.
As you read the climax, a chill runs through you. You try to stay focused on the page, but your mind flips back to Nadine, crying. Asking you to recommend a colleague you trust. Her husband, Nathan—even his stupid name matched hers—had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As a surgical oncologist, you were perfectly positioned to help find him the best doctor.
So, you did. You offered to treat Nathan yourself.
You force yourself to focus on To Dine with You Every Night, pushing away thoughts of the past as you finish the book. In trying to kill the boyfriend, the pathetic main character accidentally kills his love interest instead. In a wildly implausible turn of events, he manages to sneak into the morgue and steal one of her bones, which he then cleans, grinds up, and mixes into clay. He turns the clay into a dinnerware set so he can have dinner with her every night for the rest of his life.
You’ll admit it is fun when the meaning behind a title only becomes clear at the end of the story, but it’s not enough to save the rest of the book. You’re still annoyed by the main character, and the ending leaves you unsettled in a bad way.
Prompted by the book’s last page, you open your gift to reveal a huge, white mug signed “Ash Ceramics” at the bottom. While it matches the mug on the book cover, there’s nothing special about it other than its size. After long nights on call, you need lots of coffee to stay alert enough to operate, so it’ll come in handy, but you’re disappointed by its plainness. If this box hadn’t been free, you’d be really pissed.
While it’s on your mind, you email darkdeedsbox@gmail.com to cancel your subscription, adding a strongly worded suggestion to source better items.
An hour later, you receive a reply. They’re apologetic. They’ve cancelled your subscription; you won’t be charged for any boxes. They’ll take your thoughtful feedback into consideration. And if you ever decide to resubscribe, you can use a special discount code to get twenty percent off your next box.
You roll your eyes. You’re not going to resubscribe. Ever. You stick the latest book into your bin of items to donate and think no more of Dark Deeds.
When the third box arrives, you’re outraged. You cancelled. You know you did. You pull up your last email exchange to confirm, and it’s all there. Evidence. Annoyed, you log into your credit card account and scroll through the transactions, searching for the Dark Deeds charge to dispute.
There’s no charge.
Both confused and angry now, you send Dark Deeds another email. The response is immediate. It must be a warehouse mistake. They’ll make sure their system is updated. But, since it was their error, you’re welcome to keep the box.
With mixed feelings, you decide to see what their system error has brought you.
Dear Horror Reader,
We hope you enjoyed last month’s selection! This month’s theme is one of our favorites: MURDER. The book is about someone seemingly normal who ends up doing worse and worse things. Anyone can be driven to commit murder, don’t you think? In fact, we bet you’ve committed murder. You can lie to us (and everyone else!), but you can’t lie to yourself.
As always, we’re at darkdeedsbox@gmail.com if you need us.
Enjoy the nightmares,
Team Dark Deeds
You reread the note. What the fuck? If this is their idea of a joke, it doesn’t land. Who would find this funny?
It occurs to you that you don’t know anything about the team behind Dark Deeds. You only gave the box a try because you were getting ads for it, increasing in frequency until you finally grew curious enough to click. (Funny, how easy it is to narrow down your advertising pool when you know your target audience well. Really well.) And then they offered the free trial box, and you won the next one free . . .
You hop in the shower to clear your head. By the time you’re out again, you’re back to being your regular, non-paranoid self. The note isn’t personal. It’s a horror subscription. Of course they’d try to spook their fans. You pop a frozen dinner in the microwave and dig the book out of the box.
The cover of Cadmium Crimson resembles a canvas splattered with red paint. Below the title, a disembodied hand holds a paintbrush with a knife’s handle, blood dripping from its bristles. According to the back cover, it’s about an artist who finds herself in a rut. Nothing feels fresh, and her work isn’t selling. Then she cuts herself, accidentally bleeding onto the canvas. The piece becomes an instant hit, and suddenly, galleries everywhere want her inventive new paintings. She begins drawing her own blood to keep up with the demand. Soon, her body can’t produce enough blood, so she looks for supplies elsewhere . . .
Finally! A book with a premise that carries no personal baggage for you. You take your meal out of the microwave and sit down to read while you eat. It’s so good that you end up reading until you’re ready for bed.
Later that week, you’re in line for lunch at the hospital cafeteria when you hear two orderlies talking about The Harvester. One of them mentions that she doesn’t leave her house after dark anymore, lest she end up “dead on a picnic table like those three other women.”
Someone else in line chimes in. “The Times released info about the third victim yesterday. Lorilee Sorenson, mother of two young kids. Cancer survivor.”
Clucks of sympathy sound around you, but you stop paying attention. Why does that name sound familiar?
Lorilee Sorenson. Cancer.
Could she have been one of your patients?
The Harvester doesn’t seem like a distant figure anymore.
As the cashier rings up your meal, you remind yourself that all three targets have been women. He—it’s a safe assumption since serial killers are usually men—seems to have a penchant for killing women. He’s not going to come after you.
Still, you look up articles over lunch. The internet is abuzz with speculation on how he’s choosing his victims. The first two had kids in the same school district. The second and third were cancer survivors.
You picture The Harvester at work. Stabbing women with a sharp blade, then slicing them open and removing something, possibly while they’re still alive. It’s not unlike the surgeries you perform, ridding patients of unwanted parts. Organs riddled with cancerous growths. Tumors heavier than a newborn baby. You’re always taking things out of people. But you operate to help others, not hurt them.
Except for that one time.
That night, you can’t sleep. Images of murdered women keep running through your mind. Cadmium Crimson promises to be a good distraction, so you continue reading. This time, you’re prompted to open the gift around the halfway mark, when the artist, compelled by guilt, uses blood to paint her first victim, “a young girl lying on her back in a field of wildflowers, viscera spilling out from a hole in her chest.”
You rip open the black paper to discover an unstretched canvas, furled up like a scroll. You unroll it. As you do, your fingertips brush the canvas, feeling the raised texture of paint on its surface. Based on the other gifts, you expect a painting like the one described in the book. You let the rest of the piece drop open.
Instead, it’s a man lying on an operating table, skin splayed open, organs exposed. Hovering over him is a surgeon in scrubs, looking furtive as his gloved hand touches the patient’s IV pole. The three other people in the painting are busy, attention focused elsewhere. The entire tableau is rendered in monochrome, every detail a shade of reddish brown—the color of old bricks.
Or dried blood.
You stare. The thing you’ve been suppressing for a year and a half forces its way to the forefront of your mind.
Your best friend’s husband lies unconscious on your operating table. As you open him up with your scalpel, you remind yourself that Nadine loves him. That you became a surgeon to save lives. Soon enough, you slip into the zone, and he becomes just another patient. You’ll do your best for him the way you do for everyone you operate on.
You mean to. You really do.
But the Whipple procedure is long and complicated. You have too much time to think. You start to wonder—to hope, even. Maybe you’ll open him up and the cancer will be too widespread. Maybe it’ll be impossible to get a negative margin, and you’ll have no choice but to close him back up and give them the bad news.
But it doesn’t happen that way. It’s operable. You’ll be able to save him.
You took an oath, so you do. But before you close him back up, you think of Nadine. You imagine giving her the good news—you’ve saved her husband!—only to have Nathan sicken, in subsequent weeks, from an infection he could’ve gotten anywhere in the hospital.
Maybe after Nathan dies, she’ll turn to you—her best friend, who did everything he possibly could for her and Nathan—for comfort.
When the anesthesiologist, circulating nurse, and scrub tech are all busy looking elsewhere, you reach out and touch Nathan’s IV pole, breaking sterile technique. Your heart hammers as you look around to confirm that no one saw you. Then you continue operating, wearing your contaminated gloves. Introducing bacteria into Nathan’s exposed body.
It was a momentary lapse in judgment. You regret what you did, but it’s too late now. No one should lose their entire career over one split-second decision. Your chest tightens, breaths growing shallow as you remember those guilt-ridden months after Nathan’s death.
You thought no one knew what you’d done. But someone does, and there’s only one person you know who would go through all this trouble to toy with you. You understand, now, what Dark Deeds is.
A threat.
You drop the scroll, pick up your keys, and head to your car.
It’s near midnight when you arrive on my doorstep.
Up until now, every scene has been composed in my mind, perfected, played on repeat. My imagination does not match reality precisely, but it’s close enough. I know you better than anyone does—and time spent peering at you through a telescope or following you in disguise filled in the rest.
I let you in, and we stand in my living room, facing off.
You speak first. “Why the elaborate scheme, Nadine? Inventing an entire subscription box? You always were a drama queen.”
“Better than what you are.” I clench my fist. “When you operated on Nathan, you infected him.” I fight to keep my rage tamped down—I’ve struggled to keep it under control this past year. Ever since that night you came over for drinks. You’d been acting strange, and I had a suspicion. Drunk and drugged, you confessed.
“I swear it was an accident.” You sound so sincere when you lie. “By the time I realized his infection might have originated in the OR, it was too late. You were there with me through college, med school, residency. You know how hard I’ve worked, how many lives I’ve saved. Why should my future patients suffer over one mistake?”
“But there have been other mistakes, too.”
You look confused.
I press on. “My husband isn’t the only one you’ve killed. You covered it well, but I pieced it together and contacted others. Patients whose operations you botched, then lied when their recovery was slower than it should be. Or, in the case of the unluckiest ones, family members of patients who died because of your mistakes. I’ve gathered all the evidence I need.”
“I never killed anyone but Nathan.”
At your admission, I smirk.
Your eyes narrow, tone changing as you drop the contrite, nice guy act. “You’ve obviously grown unhinged this past year. No one’s going to believe you.”
I flick my eyes over to a corner of the room and back again, as if by accident. Your gaze follows, landing on the camera’s red light—recording.
In an instant, you cross the room and tear the camera from its spot on a shelf, throwing it against the wall. I flinch.
“What the fuck, Nadine?” You notice the other items on the shelf. A Ziploc bag containing a stained surgical sponge. Notes in your handwriting, printed from patient records. A rusty scalpel. You pick it up. In the yellow glow of the overhead light, its blade glints a sickly hue. You step toward me.
“I’m going to expose you for the instruments you left in patients. The surgeries you botched,” I say.
“But I didn’t do those things.” You’re closer now. I don’t shrink away.
“It won’t matter. Everyone will believe you did. I found former patients of yours who suffered difficult recoveries. A woman whose sister died on your operating table. I convinced them there’s a pattern. That you’ve been covering up your mistakes.”
You’re an armlength away. The veins on your neck pulse as your anger builds.
I talk faster. “I’m going to destroy you for murdering my husband. No one would believe just me, but they’ll believe all of us, together. We’ll file a malpractice suit. We’ll testify, and you’ll lose your reputation, your practice, your license. Everything. You’ll—”
Your hand wraps around my neck, squeezing, cutting off my air. Your face is a mask of rage as you lose the tight control you usually keep. “Why, Nadine? Why are you making me do this?” You release your hold for a minute, and I gasp.
“You deserve it. You’re a murderer and—”
I cry out as you plunge the blade into my throat, precise as a surgeon. It’s a sound I’ve grown familiar with these past few months. Each time I killed one of your former patients.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” you say as my blood spills onto your hands.
I collapse forward. As I lay dying in your arms, I smile up at you. “Human leather, bone ceramic, blood painting.”
“What?” You lean closer, certain you must have misheard.
“Doctors make good harvesters.” My words come out garbled.
“You’re in shock. You’re speaking nonsense.” You sound panicked.
“I swear I didn’t kill the others,” I whisper, mimicking your voice. Savoring the look of confusion on your face as you try to understand. You’ll see soon enough. They’re your words to keep.
I close my eyes, letting myself imagine one last time. When the police arrive, summoned by my pre-recorded, frantic call, they’ll find the evidence I gathered in my amateur hunt for The Harvester. How I suspected my former best friend. The victim profiles I’ve built; all former patients of yours—or their loved ones.
You never hurt any of them, of course. You’ve always been a genuinely good surgeon. Except for the one time.
Good thing none of them can contradict my story. Not since The Harvester silenced them and turned pieces of their body into souvenirs that now grace your home.
I didn’t want to die, but it would’ve been too easy for your lawyers to poke holes in my evidence otherwise. This way, I’m impossible to ignore. The world will think you went on a murder spree to silence us all and save your career.
Eventually, you’ll own up to killing me. You’ll claim an argument between friends, gone wrong. My death will stop bothering you.
But you’ll never get over the death of your reputation.
You’ll try to save it. Prove you were a good surgeon if not a good friend. Convince everyone I’m the only woman you killed. I hope, then, that you remember my last words. I swear I didn’t kill the others.
You’ll be repeating them until the day you die.
Originally published in Human Monsters, edited by Sadie Hartmann & Ashley Saywers.
