The Sewer Dog

A Japanese family go on holiday one summer by the coast. While there they encounter a small, hairy old stray dog, which seems to take a particular liking to them. The children feed it scraps and it follows them around, almost like a pet. When the time came to go home, the children beg to be allowed to keep it. Reluctantly, the parents agree.

They take the little dog home in a cardboard box, give it a bath and brush its fur. They feed it, and that night let it sleep with the kids on the foot of the bed. At first it seems to be the perfect pet.

But a couple of days later the mother, who works from home, notices the animal behaving strangely. To her alarm she sees that it is drooling. Its eyes are wild, and it's turning around in distressed little circles. She scoops it back into its box and drives it to the vet's.

There, the vet gives it a thorough examination. He asks the woman where she got the animal.

"It was a stray," she tells him. "We adopted it. Please tell me what's wrong with him."

The vet looks at her sceptically. "First of all," he says, "it's rabid. It'll have to be put down. And second of all, it's not a dog at all. This, madam, is a sewer rat."

The Custard Powder

The Second World War is in full swing and food is in scarce supply. A British family are struggling to get by, and so write to their American uncle, asking for a little helping hand. No problem, he writes back, and thereafter, every few weeks a food parcel arrives at their door. There's plenty of good food to help them get by in this parcel, but the special favourite among the kids is the small tin full of custard powder that their uncle always makes sure to include. It's delicious stuff, and hard to find in wartime, and every time a parcel arrives the children are thrilled to know that they'll be having custard for desert that night.

The mother writes back to the uncle thanking him, and telling him how much the children love the custard powder. It's two weeks before the reply arrives, and when it does it's in the form of a small, ordinary-looking box. She opens it up to discover that it's full of a whitish powder--custard powder, she guesses, although the box isn't labelled. The uncle must have received her letter saying how much the children loved the stuff and decided to send an extra box as a special treat between food parcels.

That night she cooks up the custard as usual, but it smells bad. It's the wrong colour too, and when she presents it to the children they barely manage a few spoonfuls before they push their plates away. Maybe it went bad in transit somehow, she thinks. Sadly, she throws the rest of the spoiled powder away.

Two days later she receives a letter. With it is an explanatory note from the post office. It was supposed to be delivered to her along with the parcel she received a few days back, but it got separated in handling. Puzzled, she opens the envelope and starts to read.

It turns out that her uncle has died of a heart attack. As per his wishes, he was cremated and his remains shipped back to his relatives in England. The parcel, explains the letter, contained the old man's ashes.

The Choking Doberman

A woman returns home from work one day to find her pet Doberman sitting on the doorstep, apparently choking. Deeply concerned, she loads the wheezing animal into her car and drives quickly to a vets. After a quick inspection the vet there informs her that there's some kind of obstruction in the dog's throat. It will require surgery to remove.

While the vet books the dog in for surgery, the woman drives back home. She's concerned about her dog; what could he possibly have been choking on?

When she returns the phone is ringing. She picks up, and hears the voice of the vet. "Listen," he tells her, "I think you better call the police." He tells her that in the dog's throat he found three severed human fingers. Even as he says this the woman notices something; the hall carpet is spotted with a thin trail of blood. The trail leads from the doorstep, where she found her dog, up to the bedroom. But whose blood? And whose fingers? She lives alone.

Quickly, the woman leaves the house and calls the cops from her mobile. They race to her house and head inside. A minute later they're out again. This time they're dragging a man in a leather jacket with a stocking over his head. He's cradling a hand which is missing half its digits.

"Found him," says one cop, "He was hiding in your bedroom."

The Barrel Of Rum

A wealthy family have recently moved into a rather large old house. Left behind in the cellar they come across a number of massive oak barrels. The father is all set to have them chopped up and thrown out, but as he makes a quick inspection he discovers that one is still full. Well, he figures, why waste a good thing. He has the barrel tapped.

The whole family gather round as he extracts the first of the liquid from the barrel. It is amber-coloured, and gives off a strong fruity smell. After a thorough inspection, the father has a taste. "It's rum," he exclaims in delight.

And so the family start to enjoy their happy find. It lasts for months, through puddings, after-dinner drinks, nightcaps. At last, after several months, the barrel is all but empty, and the father sadly decides that it's time for it to be broken up and taken away like all the others. To save time and money he decides that he'll do the job himself.

Grabbing a hatchet, he sets about dismantling the barrel. It's a struggle to begin with, but eventually he manages to stave in the top. Peering down into the murky depths he sees something strange. At first he cannot distinguish what it is; some large and lumpy shape sitting at an angle at the bottom of the barrel. He goes to fetch a torch, and shines it down into the dark. What he sees almost makes him sick with disgust. The lumpy thing is a dead body, perfectly preserved after years left floating in the rum.

The Severed Arm

A young medical student is living in halls at her university, along with a bunch of other doctors-in-training. For one reason or another, this young nurse is not particularly popular. She's always bitching and arguing, and her flatmates have had enough of it. One night, they decide to sort her out. They'll play a trick on her, a nasty one. Maybe it'll scare her into being a bit nicer, or maybe it'll just scare her. Her flatmates don't really care; they're so sick of her by now that they just want some payback.

So, they get in touch with one of their friends who's doing work experience in a surgery. The friend agrees to secretly fetch them the severed arm of one of the patients at the surgery. Normally that kind of stuff would be incinerated, but the friend reckons she can sneak it out.

She does. Arriving back one night she presents to them a severed arm in a cooler bag.

So the flatmates hide away their surprise gift and wait for their young victim to get back home. She arrives, and is as bitchy and unpleasant as usual. They wait until she turns in, then quietly sneak into her room and place the arm beside her on the bed. They sneak out again. Now all the remains is for them to wait until the morning.

The next day they're all up extra early. They wait around outside her room, expecting any second to hear the girl's screams as she discovers the gruesome present. But there's nothing. They wait and wait, but even long after the time when she'd usually be up, there's not a sound from her room.

Getting worried now, they knock on her door. When there's no reply, they let themselves in. She's awake all right, and she's discovered the arm. But now her hair has turned pure white, and she's sitting on the edge of the bed with the severed limb in her hands, shaking softly. She looks insane, shocked out of her mind. Eyes wide open, she's chewing on the arm.

The Clown Statue

A rich couple are going out for an evening, leaving their young baby boy in the care of a teenage girl from the neighbourhood, who has offered to babysit. She turns up early and they greet her at the door.

"The baby is asleep upstairs," they tell her, "and you can help yourself to anything from the fridge." She looks like a pretty capable young girl, and so the couple head off to their restaurant without any worries.

Halfway through the meal however, the man receives a call. It's the babysitter. "I'm having trouble getting him to sleep," she says. "Would it be all right to move the clown statue out of the nursery, only I think it's upsetting him."

"Clown statue?" says the man. "We don't own a clown statue."

"Oh," says the girl, "but it's right by his bed. . ."

The man realises that something is wrong. He's about to tell the babysitter to take the baby and get out of the house, but then the line goes dead. He redials frantically, but gets nothing. He and his wife interrupt their meal, jump into the car and drive back home. By the time they arrive the house is silent. The babysitter lies limp on the sofa, her throat slit with a carving knife. The baby is nowhere to be found.

The Envelope

A woman was posting a letter one day, and happened to cut her tongue on the envelope. It hurt, but she thought no more about it until a couple of days later, when the cut began to swell. It was painful too. Hoping that it was nothing more than a passing infection, the woman delayed going to her doctor. By the time she finally gave in and made an appointment, the swelling was the size of the tip of her thumb, and she could barely eat.

The doctor took one look at the swelling and pronounced it infected. Deciding to treat it immediately, he applied some topical anaesthetic, and then reopened the cut with a scalpel. To his horror, out of the flesh of the woman's tongue came tumbling a small but living cockroach.

It took a while and a lot of questions to piece together what had happened. The envelope the woman used had been resting in a drawer for years before she got to it. In that time a cockroach must have happened by and laid its eggs there. They became stuck to the envelope glue, and didn't germinate until they found themselves in the warm, wet environment of the woman's tongue. Ever since she cut herself with the envelope, the roach had been there, buried, growing like a seed about to sprout.

The Hook In The Door

One night, a young guy and his girl are out in his car. They're stopped by the side of the road right out in the countryside, necking. They've got the radio on low, to give a bit of atmosphere. It's dark outside, but they're pretty cosy inside the car. Everything's looking good.

But then the song on the radio cuts out. It's a special announcement. The girl sits up to listen.

"Oh," says the guy, "give me a break."

But she frowns at him. "Listen." And so, rolling his eyes, he listens.

There's been a prison breakout, says the announcer. "A serial killer has escaped and is now being hunted by police in the local area." Back before he was put away, says the announcer, this man killed twenty people with a butcher's hook. "If you see him, contact police immediately."

Announcement over. The music comes back on, but suddenly the girl's no longer in the mood. She's nervous now. Wide-eyed she stares at the guy. "Listen," she says sharply, "what was that?"

"What was what?"

"I thought I heard something. A scratching noise."

"You're imagining things," he says, "Now come on."

But the girl's freaked out now. She pushes the guy away. "Listen," she says, "maybe we should get going." And whatever protests he throws up the guy cannot calm her down. She insists. She's terrified. She just wants to get home. Frustrated, the guy throws the car into gear and screeches off.

It's only when they get back to her house that they see. It only then that they understand what was making that scratching noise: caught on the handle of the driver's side door is a rusty and bloodstained butcher's hook.