December Story of the Month
Twitching Desires
by Jason Benskin
She awoke to the sensation of something damp pressing against her lips. It throbbed. Her eyes flew open, and the first sight was of raw, veined, twitching flesh. Something soft and alive was being forced against her mouth. She recoiled violently, spitting and choking on a heavy, metallic taste. The object in her mouth writhed as it hit the mud. It was a tongue, and it was still moving.
Panicked, she scrambled to her knees, gagging and frantically clawing at her own tongue in terror. Was it hers? Had it belonged to her? But no, she could feel the slick, trembling certainty of her own tongue inside her mouth. This one was somebody else’s. Then she became aware of the weight. Her right wrist was being dragged. Something cold and lifeless was pulling her down, locked tightly against her skin. She turned her head to see—a severed arm. Handcuffed to her own wrist. The skin on it was swollen, drawn taut over the bone as if submerged for days. Its fingers were curled inward, locked in a permanent grimace. One nail had broken off, leaving behind raw pink flesh, as though the limb had tried to free itself before being severed.
Then the fingers twitched. A whisper of wind stirred through the swamp. No, it wasn’t the wind. A voice said, “Mine.” The fingers dug deeper into her wrist. She screamed and frantically tried to rise, but the arm pulled her back, fighting her every move. The dead weight dragged her down further, the handcuff cutting into her skin as she stumbled into the dark water.
That’s when the arm began pulling her—not just as a weight of dead flesh, but something else was attached. She caught sight of it—a shoulder, a throat, a face emerging from the swamp like a corpse clambering from its own grave. The body was waterlogged; its lips were gnawed away, and its eye sockets were deep and void of light. A slick rope of intestine dangled from a gaping hole in its stomach, coiled around her ankle like a leash.
The creature opened its mouth, but no tongue emerged because she had already expelled it. The corpse pulled harder, dragging her upward—not toward the water’s surface, but toward its reflection. Then, she noticed something horrifying. The face in the water wasn’t her own. The woman reflected had her facial features, eyes, and hair, but her lips were moving. They were speaking, whispering, and screaming. And then—the reflection grinned.
It reached through the water, seizing her wrist from the other side, and yanked her under. She didn’t drown; drowning would have been a mercy. The water didn’t fill her lungs; it seeped into her skin. She could sense it wriggling under her flesh like a nest of leeches, bursting her veins, hollowing her from within. Her skin sagged before stretching too tight, becoming overly full.
Then—something else began to overtake her. Her arms moved without her command, her fingers twitching on their own accord. A voice—her own—spoke from her mouth, laughing. Deep in the water, where no one would ever hear, she screamed as another entity started wearing her like a suit, dragging her flesh through the swamp toward those waiting. The ones who had come before, the ones still waiting, the ones who needed fresh skins, new faces. They needed her.
As the creature wearing her body walked away, whistling an old, broken tune, her severed hand twitched in the mud, clawing its way toward the surface.
I am Jason Benskin, a master of the macabre, conjuring nightmares from the deepest corners of the human psyche. With a pen dipped in dread, I craft tales where the line between the living and the dead blurs, and every shadow holds a secret. When I’m not scaring readers into sleepless nights, I find peace in the quieter side of life—cooking, reading, and perfecting the art of ghostly storytelling. My work has been described as "terrifyingly immersive," blending the grotesque with the psychological to make every page a chilling journey. If you dare, follow me into the void—but be warned: something is always watching. And it might already be behind you. Yet, sometimes, I question if it's me who is being watched.
Story of the Month Winner Jason Benskin
Author Spotlight
Jason takes the time to answer our silly little questions:
1. If you could be any horror creature for a day, which would you choose and why?
I’d choose to be a skin-walker—not the folklore version softened by pop culture, but the old kind, the kind that steals shapes the way other creatures steal breath. I’d want to feel what it’s like to shed identity like a coat and slip into someone else’s life unnoticed. Just for a day… though creatures like that rarely give anything back when the day is done.
2. What is your favorite horror/sci-fi/fantasy movie and why?
The Thing, without hesitation. It’s the purest nightmare: not knowing if the person smiling at you is still a person at all. The slow rotting of trust, the cold that creeps into your bones, the sick realization that something intelligent is wearing a familiar face—it’s perfect.
3. What do you do when you aren't writing?
I walk at night. I like the quiet, the way shadows behave when they think no one is watching. I collect odd fragments of conversation from strangers, strange shapes from trees, strange movements from the corner of my eye. Most of them eventually wander onto the page. A few don’t. Those usually wander somewhere else.
4. What is your favorite short story that you have written, and where can we find it?
To me, “I Was the Last Name” isn’t just a horror story about a gruesome death or a haunted neighbor. I read it as a meditation on identity, memory, and vulnerability: our names — the things that define us — can be fragile, can be hijacked, can become prison-keys rather than protections.
The horror comes not just from violence, but from the violation of selfhood. The corpse in the bathtub, the etched papers, the dream of something wearing skin that’s “wrong” — they symbolize that identity can be deformed, replaced, warped.
Ultimately, the story warns: what defines us — our name, our sense of self — might be the most dangerous thing if someone else claims ownership.
It can be found here: https://medium.com/illumination/i-was-the-last-name-7a31c47d2da4
5. Who is your favorite author and why?
Shirley Jackson, because she understood that horror doesn’t always kick down the door. Sometimes it just sits in the next room, quiet and patient, waiting for you to finally notice it’s been there the whole time.
6. What is your favorite novel?
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s a story where hope is thin as a breath on a winter morning, and the world feels like it has teeth. The horror isn’t in the monsters—it’s in the silence after humanity has burned itself out.
7. What number are we thinking of?
13.
But you didn’t choose it. It chose you.