I never believed in my mother’s rules.
They were the kind of rules that came from her village, not logic. Don’t whistle after sunset. Don’t sleep with mirrors facing the bed. Don’t cut hair or nails at night. None of it meant anything to me. It was just noise—old fear passed down like bad furniture.
That night, my phone died at exactly 1:17 a.m.
I plugged it in and stared at the wall, suddenly aware of how quiet the house was. Too quiet. The fan hummed. The refrigerator clicked. Somewhere far away, a dog barked once and stopped.
I noticed my fingernails when I rubbed my eyes.
Too long. Jagged. Catching on the fabric of my blanket.
I sighed, reached into my desk drawer, and pulled out the nail clippers.
The first snip sounded louder than it should have.
From the hallway, my mother’s voice cut through the dark.
“Why are you cutting your nails now?”
I froze.
“Because they’re long,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”
She appeared in my doorway, hair loose, face pale in the low light. She didn’t yell. That was worse.
“You shouldn’t do that at night,” she said. “It invites things.”
I laughed. “Invites what? Bacteria?”
She didn’t answer. She just watched my hands.
That should have been my first warning.
I clipped all ten nails, letting them fall onto the tile. Small, curved pieces. Harmless.
When I stood up to put the clippers away, my mother pointed at the floor.
“Pick those up.”
“They’re just nails,” I said. “The cleaner will sweep them tomorrow.”
Her mouth tightened. “They’re still part of you.”
I rolled my eyes and went to bed.
I woke with a fever.
The room felt thick, like I was breathing through fabric. My head pulsed. My joints ached. My mother hovered at the edge of the bed, unsurprised.
“I told you,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “You were right. Congratulations.”
She brought me tea. As I wrapped my hands around the cup, something felt… wrong.
My nails scratched against the ceramic.
I stared.
They were long.
Not just long—longer than they’d been before I cut them.
I held my fingers up, turning them under the light. Thick. Smooth. Pink at the base like fresh growth.
“Did I dream it?” I asked.
My mother frowned. “Dream what?”
“I cut them last night.”
She hesitated. Just for a second. “Maybe you didn’t cut them properly.”
That hesitation lodged somewhere deep in my chest.
By evening, they had grown more.
Not dramatically. Just enough to notice. Enough to catch again on fabric. Enough to make me keep looking at my hands.
I clipped them a second time.
This time, I didn’t let the pieces fall. I gathered them carefully and threw them in the trash.
That night, I dreamed of scratching.
Of my fingers digging into dirt. Of something tugging back.
I woke to pain.
Sharp, immediate, undeniable.
My hands were wet.
I didn’t move at first. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, heart racing. The smell reached me before the sight—metallic, warm.
Blood.
Slowly, I lifted the blanket.
My fingers throbbed violently. The skin around my nails was split, red and raw. And the nails themselves—
They weren’t just longer.
They were thicker.
Curving.
Layered.
Like they’d been growing in overlapping sheets, pushing forward without stopping.
One had split through the skin at the side, tearing its way out.
I screamed.
The doctor didn’t know what to say.
He suggested infection. Hormones. Stress. He wrapped my fingers and prescribed antibiotics. He avoided looking too closely.
My mother said nothing on the way home.
That night, I didn’t sleep.
I felt them growing.
Not all at once—little pulses. A pressure beneath the nail beds. A sensation like something stretching, satisfied.
At 3 a.m., I heard a faint clicking sound.
Not from my hands.
From the trash bin.
I followed the sound into the kitchen.
The lid was slightly ajar.
Inside, the clipped nails were gone.
In their place was a smear of dark residue—half-dried, like something had dragged itself out.
Behind me, my mother spoke.
“You fed it twice now.”
I turned.
Her face looked older in the kitchen light. Not wrinkled—emptied.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered.
She swallowed. “Nails grow after death. Did you know that? That’s what they say.”
My stomach dropped.
“They don’t really,” she continued. “Skin pulls back. Gives the illusion of growth.”
She met my eyes.
“But some things do grow. Especially when you give them pieces of yourself.”
I locked my bedroom door that night.
It didn’t help.
I woke screaming as something pulled at my hands.
The pain was indescribable—white-hot, tearing. I felt pressure at my wrists, my palms, my bones.
I looked down.
My nails were no longer attached to my fingers.
They had moved.
They were extending beyond my hands, fused together into long, jointed shapes—too many segments, bending where they shouldn’t.
Like fingers made of nails.
They dragged themselves across the floor, pulling more growth behind them, splitting my skin open as they went.
Each movement felt like being flayed.
They were leaving me.
And taking something with them.
My mother found me at dawn.
I was barely conscious.
Blood soaked the sheets. My hands were mangled stumps of torn flesh and exposed bone.
She didn’t scream.
She knelt beside me and whispered, “I warned you.”
I tried to speak. I tried to ask where they had gone.
She stood and opened the door.
The hallway was marked with thin, curved scratches—dozens of them—leading toward the front door.
Out into the world.
“They grow better at night,” she said. “And once they learn the way out…”
She closed the door behind her.
Weeks later, my hands healed.
Sort of.
The doctors called it a miracle I didn’t lose them entirely.
But my nails never grew back.
Sometimes, late at night, I hear scratching outside my window.
Sometimes, when I walk barefoot, I feel something hard and curved beneath my foot.
And sometimes—just before sleep—I swear I feel a familiar pressure at the ends of my fingers.
Like something remembering where it came from.
Waiting for dark.
