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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/iifinch on 2024-11-25 17:31:21+00:00.

Can people change? Make sure you have the right answer because this is a life-or-death situation. Think about it as you hear how we met a creature named Omertà. She might still be out there, so if you meet her here and she decides you’re an enemy, here’s my advice:

Avoid Water. Do Not Go Outside When It Rains. Do Not Bathe. Do Not Shower. Do Not Even Drink Bottled Water.

Do not be persuaded by the safety other people have. Once Omertà hates you or someone you love understand she’ll want to kill you all—one by one.

Benni’s dad, Mr. Alan, didn’t believe me. Mr. Alan would be alive if he had. 

Finding ten different cases of water in his attic sent my head spinning, but my body went fear-driven still. It took a minute for me to recompose myself and my hands busied themselves to get rid of the danger, the danger being the cases of water. 

We warned him. His daughter warned him. Fine, don’t believe me, but trust your daughter, man.

The first hours of our arrival at his home were spent warning him, calming him, searching his house, and detailing why. That same day, we tossed cups away, recycled bottles, and only used drips of faucet water to put on a washcloth to bathe.

And we lived! They all were alive when they listened to me! 

That evening to keep us all from an early grave, I got to work burying the packs of water bottles. There was no need to be angry with Mr. Alan; the request did sound insane. There was a need to panic though. Mr. Alan’s legendary temper wouldn’t stand for a guest in his house burying his newly bought water in his backyard. 

His daughter and I weren’t a couple or anything, just friends, who needed a place where we could avoid most forms of water. Mr. Alan’s home was the last option left.

Mr. Alan and Benni would be back soon. If I dug fast enough, potentially I could bury the bottles and fill the hole back without him even noticing. My arms ached at the thought—shoveling is grueling work. I considered Benni and her graciousness in convincing her dad to let me stay here. Yeah, I could do it.  

Shoveling through a patch of dirt proved to be harder than you’d think. Dirt stained my clothes. My hands tore. My shoulders burned and groaned with the task, and my biceps begged for a break. It felt like the shovel itself was gaining weight. Ignoring all of this, I let the calluses form and pain persist because I really, really, really did not want to cause any more problems for Mr. Alan and Benni. The dark clouds were my only comfort in that hour—shade through the pain, I thought—but in actuality, they were heralds readying misery’s reign.

It was an hour straight of grueling work to make a hole large enough to fit all ten cases inside of it. Obviously, they couldn’t be poured out and risk making a God-forsaken puddle.

The sound of the door opening behind me shook me from the rhythm of my task. Mr. Alan and Benni were home. My friends describe me as shy, and they’re right. So, Mr. Alan launching every four-letter word and variation of ‘idiot’ at me would have stopped me in the past. But the necessity of the situation made me resist this time. I never turned to face him. I just kept prepping.

“Oh, dear,” Benni said. No need to look at her either. The cases needed to be buried. I hefted the first case, anxious to avoid a tear and anxious to avoid Mr. Alan.

“This is your friend, Benni. Your friend! You fix it.” Benni’s dad said, and he slammed the door.

I hefted another box into the hole and talked to Benni.

“Sorry about that, Benni,” I said. “I know your dad can be a handful at times. I know you’re scared he bought this water too.”

“Nooo, Jay,” she said. “He’s not the handful.”

“Well, I know I’m no angel, but you know what I’m doing is for our safety, y’know.” I hefted a second case into its grave.

“Jay-Jay,” she said. “My dad’s getting real close to kicking us both out. I don’t want to be homeless. Please, come inside. I’m begging you.”

“Not yet.”

“Now.”

“No.”

“Jay…” Benni’s words came out slow and soft, like she was babying a child. “Omertà was our friend. I don’t think she’d really hurt us.”

That stopped me.

“People change,” I said.

“Not that much.”

“I think you’d be surprised. And anyway, anyway,” it was hard to speak; exhaustion kicked in. The words got caught in my teeth. “There’s a decent chance she might have always been like this.”

“That wasn’t what our friendship was like with Omertà, and you know it.”

“Do I?”

She didn’t answer.

“Jay-Jay,” she said. “There’s a hurricane coming. I bought those cases because we could not have access to water if this gets bad.”

“Thanks to Omertà, if a hurricane gets bad enough, we’re dead anyway.”

Circling us, black clouds haunted the skies like vultures on a corpse.

Mr. Alan rushed outside, sidestepping his daughter, rushing to me, facing me, and swinging a large purple metallic cup in front of his face. The cup overflowed with water.

“Yes, I have water in a cup,” Mr. Alan mocked. “Ooooh, scary.” He took a swig. “And yes, it’s a Stanley.”

Guess what? He smiled. So, I smiled. I guess he was safe, and that made me happy. He frowned in surprise at me. What? Did he think I wanted to spend a day burying water bottles? I shrugged. If we were fine, I’d need to put the water bottles back in the house and start to board things up again. But first, if we were safe, I would take the warmest bath possible.

A white hand popped out of the Stanley and grabbed Mr. Alan’s throat. It squeezed. Benni’s dad looked at me, eyes big, scared, and wanting… I don’t know.

The pale hand flicked its wrist, and Benni’s dad’s neck cracked. He fell with an unceremonious thud. 

Dead.

His unbelieving eyes stayed open and the red, angry, pulsing, handprint on his neck looked to be the only part of him that was still alive. 

But he also knocked over the Stanley Cup. The water spilled on the floor as did the hand. I leaped back to avoid it and fell into the hole and onto the bottles of water.

CRACK

CRACK

CRACK

The water bottles cracking might as well have been gunshots into my chest. Panic. My hands and feet slammed into water bottles, cracking more open. Omertà’s many hands materialized from the water, defying the logic of men, daring the brain to break into laughing and insanity at the horrifying impossibility of the matter. Scratching through our reality, one hand squeezed mine at first, not unpleasant because the calloused feminine hand breathed familiarity despite its lack of mouth. The hand clutched mine. 

That hand helped me up mountains, that hand had pulled me from a stream and saved me from drowning, that hand walked with me through life when I needed a friend; a week ago, it was us against the world. 

Like the saying goes: “All this hate was once love.”

The hands went squeezing and scratching into me; my own ankle went cracking. Bones broke. By reflex, I reeled, destroying more water bottles, birthing more calloused, petite, and strong hands wanting to break me so that place may be my burial.

The hands blossomed from the wet dirt like flowers and demanded my death like herbicides. Longing for my death through suffocation, one worked on my neck with great success, two groped in my mouth and one kept my mouth open, while their companions dug in the earth, tossing dirt, worms, rocks, and sticks inside. 

The other hands clapped for themselves as joyous as I was drooling. There was so much mass, mass, never-ending mass, only limited by their tiny hands and my assailants’ need to gloat.

My eyes swelled as my past with Omertà shrunk until only this moment mattered.

Tears fell as my body was lifted, lifted as the hands that had once protected me searched under my body for more ways to torture me.

Four hands punched into my spine, hoping to break it. Powerful thumps slammed into me in a straight line up my back, weakening it with every blow. My spine giving way. My last moments would be that of a paraplegic, and that was petrifying. How long would she make me live, only able to blink? 

The whirl of a chainsaw brought me from oblivion. Like a horror movie villain, Benni stood above me, and with fury she never showed before, she sliced at hands as they rose from the ground. Omertà’s silver blood dripped and then poured from the hands as Benni hacked away. I sputtered and spit out all the nonsense they put in my mouth. Benni pulled me up; silver blood covered us both.

Limping together, we made it inside, but her dad’s dead body did not. Instead, that great white hand of Omertà was slowly dragging it into a puddle with her.

Unfortunately, Benni went back out to save the body. A valiant effort from a good daughter. But of course, it was all a setup.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I mumbled, still attempting to get control of my mouth back. Benni still didn’t get it. She didn’t understand the limitlessness of Omertà’s cruelty.

Omertà had no use for a dead body. Benni dived for the body. Omertà tossed it away and with a vice grip grabbed Benni’s diving hand and pulled. I knew Omertà was yearning to kill Benni, to drag Benni inch by inch into the puddle and into Omertà’s realm and once Benni was there she would end her life.

Benni kicked hoping for impossibility, to anchor on air. Leaping, then falling, then crawling, I reached for Benni. Her dad’s dead eyes yelled at me to save his daughter. His empty mouth hung as if anticipating another failure on my part.

Benni piece by piece disappeared in the puddle, alive and screaming loud enough to travel acros…

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