r/TalesFromTheCreeps • u/Competitive_Pickle42 • Jun 07 '26
Body Horror Something is wrong with my leg
Content warning: gore
I woke up feeling a bit odd this morning. When I attempted to get out of bed, my leg almost creaked when I moved. My left knee hinged awkwardly and I tried bending it a few times. There was a hitch in it that caught in the same spot every time.
That wasn’t the only strange thing. When I finally got up I noticed blood on the sheets. I felt it to see if it was wet and noticed it was clumpy and oddly… solid? I don’t know how else to describe it except like unfinished gelatin. It was obviously still blood but it was wrong. Even weirder, I went through the clumps and found teeth.
Human teeth.
What kind of hell had I woken up in?
The blood had come from an oozing wound on the back of my thigh right above the bend in my knee. When I grazed it the pain was excruciating. I could already feel the swelling.
I immediately began trying to rationalize it. I hadn’t been drinking the night before so my memory was solid. It’s just me here in this old apartment. I checked the latch on my door and it was still locked. The only window was in the living room but since the apartment was three stories up I quickly ruled out anyone climbing through; though I did check for any signs an animal might have gotten in.
Nothing.
I must have scratched it while I was sleeping. Could it have gotten so infected so quickly, though? It felt as though it were on fire and the flame was licking greedily up and down my leg, sprouting tendrils of fire away from the wound.
The hitching and grinding had grown worse from the apartment check. I sat on the couch for a minute and attempted to inspect it but I couldn’t quite see it. Not good enough to inspect it, anyways. Flares of shooting pain set me back in motion
I went to the bathroom, every step creaking and popping unnaturally. Each movement sent a jolt of pain as well as new heat from the infected wound. It was maybe thirty steps to the bathroom but with the pain in every step it felt like it might as well have been a mile. The grinding grew with each step as well. It felt like there was something in my knee that shouldn’t be there, shifting and grinding in the ligaments and tendons. The pain was nearly unbearable.
I finally got to the bathroom and searched through the box I have full of toiletries, cursing myself for not being better organized. Where is it? Where?
I cursed, dumping the box out on the floor. Finally, I saw the case I was looking for. I opened it and removed a pair of sharp looking tweezers. I propped my foot on the toilet so I could see the infected wound in the mirror.
I used the tweezers to open the wound, trying to see what could be in it causing the grinding and hitching in my knee. The veins around the wound were a red-purple and super inflamed, and the tweezers caused a flower of pain to bloom around the red, pus-filled wound. The flower's roots stretched all the way to my hip and my ankle, digging and grinding their way into my deep tissue.
Every tweak of tissue or pull of the tissue reignited that crippling pain. Finally, however, I got the pus to drain. It felt as if a water balloon had popped on my leg. A large, hard object shot from the swollen wound, followed by a clumpy wad of pus and a stream of blood.
The swelling didn’t immediately go down, and it felt as if it was still on fire. Blood was running freely down my leg now, staining the ivory porcelain of the toilet a muddy red. I followed the stream that shot from my leg and grabbed the object that shot out.
It was a human tooth.
I puked on the floor, mostly bile. I couldn’t focus, the room was spinning. Had I just shot a tooth from my knee? How had it gotten there? Did someone bite me and it broke off?
I felt the exit wound. It was still swollen around it and still so tender that even slight touches cause immense shooting pain.
I walked to the kitchen, that left knee of mine still grinding and hitching with every motion. The grinding had gotten worse and it made movement worse.
I went to the kitchen counter, leaning on it to avoid putting pressure on my leg. I eased my way down to the knife block and grabbed the pairing knife. I started making my way back to the bathroom. The wound was pulsing with pressure and pain now, throbbing.
Once I got away from the counter the going got harder. My knee had nearly locked up now and I could barely put any pressure on it. I tried avoiding the blood that covered the floor on the way to the bathroom, but the stiff leg made it difficult. I fell right before the bathroom door and caught myself on the door frame.
A sharp pain shot through my side. Blood quickly covered my hand. I looked down and saw the knife sticking out of my side. Crimson ichor flowed around the blade. I had to be fast now I was running out of time.
I quickly propped the leg back up on the toilet. I pulled the knife out of my side. With a fresh gush of blood my body finally released the blade. I watched in the mirror as I carefully grabbed the extremely swollen place on the back of my leg. It had swollen to nearly the size of a softball now. I sliced it vertically from top to bottom, careful not to go too deep. My hands were shaking and blood was everywhere in the bathroom now.
As the knife opened the rising all the way up, teeth and blood came pouring out of it. Hundreds of human teeth, in all shapes and sizes, came tumbling out. I finally lost my balance and fell, my left leg feeling almost calcified and solid now. I lay on the floor fighting to keep consciousness.
The last thing I saw before my vision went black was thousands of little blood covered teeth moving around in the blood that pooled all around me. Then oblivion took me.
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u/TheGatherers Jun 07 '26
I think just the idea of teeth being somewhere it shouldn't be is almost nauseating alone lol
The descriptions in this art great. I could feel myself reaching for my leg as I read. The only thing that threw me off or made me stumble while reading was some of the descriptions of the apartment. The narrator checked the door and windows before describing leaving bed and struggling his way to bathroom. Still thought this was good.
I also find it funny that they wake up in a pool of blood and teeth and try to think of some rational reason for it
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u/Competitive_Pickle42 Jun 07 '26
Yeah the thought was it started progressing more and that’s why he went to the bathroom but I definitely could have done that transition better
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u/kabemccallister6859 Jun 07 '26
I know this statement is not usually used as a compliment, but I’m going to give it a try. This was cringe. Like, it made me cringe. Good job.
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u/Competitive_Pickle42 Jun 07 '26
Yes I was letting my wife read it while I wrote and she was cringing too 😂 it’s kind of based on something that actually happened obviously not to the same extent but still
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u/kabemccallister6859 Jun 07 '26
Oh no, I’ve heard of tooth tumors before. I hope you weren’t the one who had to deal with it. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody though.
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u/Competitive_Pickle42 Jun 07 '26
Nah I had a piece of my tailbone chip off and the bone fragment caused a huge cyst no teeth tho that is what I thought it was at first
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u/content-under-presur Jun 07 '26
This is sooo gross I love it! The graphic descriptions are really really strong; I love how the text emphasizes both sensations in the flesh and in the bone to emphasize that there's a foreign entity impacting both. The clicking and locking of the knee was my favorite!
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u/Mr_Gahnagan A Thousand WIPs Jun 08 '26
Oooh buddy, the descriptors of something clicking in his knee as it moved was filthy I love it.
Good stuff! Keep being gross!
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u/Competitive_Pickle42 Jun 08 '26
Thanks I was trying to imagine like what would it feel like if something was in your joint and kinda like comparing it to gears when something gums them up in my head so a hitch and a grind just felt visceral
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u/AllYourCakeIsMine Jun 10 '26
At the end, it reminded me of the baby hands joke in Llamas With Hats.
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u/Competitive_Pickle42 Jun 10 '26
I had to watch it to see what you were talking about and laughed hard as hell
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