Appendage(2023)

Submitted by Evan B

Pooper:
Hannah prevents her parasitic twin from killing Kaelin and it shrivels back to its infantile state. Hannah promises to raise and love the twin, hoping that her care will cause it to change its evil nature.

Long Ending:
Hannah (Hadley Robinson) is a young woman who works in a high-pressure job in the fashion industry. One colleague is her best friend Esther (Kausar Mohammed). She is also in a new relationship with Kaelin (Brandon Mychel Smith), who she met through Esther. Hannah has a strained relationship with her parents, especially her mother. With a lot of stress building up after the boss threatens to fire anyone who doesn’t impress him in the next few weeks, Hannah begins feeling sharp pains in her side below a large birthmark she has.

One particularly stressful evening, Hannah is horrified when a small creature bursts its way out of her birthmark. The creature begins talking to her and saying many horrible things, calling Hannah a bitch and suggesting that Kaelin and Esther are having an affair. Hannah eventually ties the creature up and locks it in her armoir. While cleaning up the blood from the creature’s exit, and looking at her ripped clothing, Hannah becomes inspired and designs a daring new dress. Her boss at work is very impressed. Nonetheless, thanks in large part to the constant berating of the creature, Hannah becomes withdrawn and sleep deprived.

Hannah begins researching the condition online and manages to find a support group for people who claim to suffer from the same problem. She attends the meeting, which is hosted by a doctor. They explain that they (and therefore Hannah) all were twins that ingested their other twin in the womb (and all have birthmarks like Hannah). The creatures, which the group has dubbed an “appendage,” is the ingested twin that survived inside their bodies. The appendages are, like Hannah’s, all mean and bitter. The appendages also have psychic powers and try to hypnotize their hosts for unknown purposes. Because the host and the appendage are linked, the appendage cannot be killed without killing the host (and vice versa). Further, when some members of their group tried to go to the police or medical professionals about their condition, they were taken to government prisons to be experimented on. The group therefore tries to deal with the situation by keeping their appendages anesthetized (using anesthesia provided by the doctor). At the meeting, Hannah befriends another young woman named Claudia (Emily Hampshire) and Hannah begins hanging out with her while cutting Esther, Kaelin, and her parents out of her life. Hannah also begins drugging her appendage despite its pleas to be let free and ita promises to help make her successful (noting that its emergence inspired her successful dress).

Things in Hannah’s life continue to get worse. Hannah grows weaker and sicker. She gets in a big fight with Kaelin after she tries to tell him what’s been happening and he doesn’t believe her. Hannah also has a fight with her mother when they discuss a time in high school when Hannah tried to commit suicide. One night, Claudia confides in Hannah that she’s been using her appendage’s psychic powers to help out her life and urges Hannah to do the same. Hannah visits her appendage that night and they begin talking. As they talk, Hannah realizes that the appendage is hypnotizing her. She tries to anesthetize it but is surprised to find the needle empty. Hannah passes out and the appendage breaks free. After whispering terrible things into Hannah’s ear, it extrudes a long, spiked tongue and begins sucking blood from Hannah. The appendage grows and slowly turns into a clone of Hannah.

When Hannah awakens, she is brought by her appendage and Claudia to the basement and tied up there. It turns out that Claudia and the rest of the group had similarly been taken over and replaced by their appendages and Claudia (the appendage) tricked Hannah into suffering the same fate (convincing Hannah to talk to her appendage so it could hypnotize her and emptying the syringe of anesthesia so Hannah couldn’t drug it). The appendages have learned if they completely drain another person’s life force that they build an emotional attachment with, their connection to their host will be severed (allowing them to kill their host). Hannah’s appendage keeps Hannah alive to feed on her while it searches for a victim to drain.

Esther grows suspicious of the appendage due to how it acts differently from Hannah and also doesn’t have Hannah’s tattoo (since it couldn’t replicate the tattoo ink). Esther investigates and finds Hannah in the basement and rescues her. The pair realize that the appendage must be going after Kaelin and they rush to his apartment. There, the pair knock out Claudia and manage to stop Hannah’s appendage from draining all of Kaelin’s life force. As Hannah’s appendage shrivels up to its original state, it reveals that it’s so angry because it didn’t ask to exist as a parasite and just wants to live. Hannah kisses the appendage and promises to take care of it.

A few months later, Hannah has left her job and started a small but growing business with Esther. She also stands up to her mother and begins repairing her strained relationship with her parents. Hannah is also raising her infantile appendage in the attic of her home.