Bile Aftertaste

Milk Wine

2004-10-04T20:58:00.000-04:00

Tonight I celebrated my fifth year of sobriety with a dinner of sautéed Amanita phalloides, also known as the death cap mushroom. Cooking does nothing to weaken its toxic nature. Cooked with a ruby cabernet and rosemary, it is delicious. I can expect its effects to take place in anywhere from six to fifteen hours. The interesting things about this mushroom are that, A) unlike most poisonous things in nature, the taste of the death cap gives no indication of its malevolence- no bitterness, no tingling, and B) by the time that symptoms of poisoning appear, the liver and kidneys are already, like an altar boy on a field trip with a priest, completely fucked.
From what I’ve read, death cap poisoning really wouldn’t make the list of Best Ways to Snuff It. I can expect, in six to fifteen hours, a rather vicious degree of nausea and delirium before I collapse and slowly die. Nobody recommends it as a quick and easy way out, but then, I don’t expect to see it through either. I planned it as an incentive for me to use the revolver here on the desk beside me, before things get too bad. A handgun is highly recommended for suicide, provided that you remember the dos and don’ts.
Do use a sufficiently powerful caliber of handgun- at least a 9mm. I’ll be using a .44 magnum, just to err on the side of caution. Don’t be tempted to buy a cheap .22 or .25. These small caliber weapons run the risk of leaving you alive but severely brain damaged or blind or deaf or with any number of possible handicaps.
Do point the muzzle so as to make a line in one ear and out the other. You want to destroy the matter as close to the brain stem as possible. The brain stem controls breathing, heart rate, swallowing and other functions keeping you alive.
Don’t do like they do in the movies and put the gun to your temple. I mean, yes, chances are that the blast and head trauma will be fatal, but if you live, look forward to being paralyzed, being unable to use language, or having one thought repeat over and over in your head.
Don’t put the gun in your mouth. A considerable number of these suicide attempts involve the gun moving as the shooter flinches, the slug missing the brain entirely, and the shooter surviving with a mangled face.
Do use a powerful handgun. Don’t use a shotgun or a rifle. It’s too hard to properly aim the long guns, and the survival risk is too great. For every Cobain success, there is a Judas Priest-fan failure.
This isn’t generally something that you can practice at, not if you’re really serious about it. I only want to shoot myself once.
Yes, I have done my homework on this decision.
No, this isn’t my first suicide attempt.
I’m trying to be optimistic about the death caps.
I’m not one hundred percent sure that they will work.
I’m laughing about that last line. I’m hoping that I fall over dead, and when some pudgy paramedic finds me face down on the floor, he’ll read that last line and laugh and say something like, buddy, you got nothing to worry about.
I’m trying to be optimistic about the death caps working because I’m having trouble comprehending the possibility of the gun not killing me. As I said, this isn’t my first suicide attempt, but it is my first attempt with a gun. I’ve tried to overdose four times in as many years.
I said that this is my fifth year of sobriety, but that’s not clinically true. I use the term “sobriety” in reference only to one particular substance. I’ll get to that in a minute.
I experimented, in the past five years, with a vast number of substances. None of them could replace my one addiction, my one substance that I can never again find. I’ve tried handfuls of yaba, ecstasy, meth, PCP, ketamine, oxy, xanax, valium, ritalin, heroin, and anything else available. I purposefully tried to foster an addiction to any and all drugs that I could find. I forced myself to drink vodka every day. Try as I might, I could not form a dependency on any one of these things. I could get high, I could get sick, but I failed to develop that addiction to replace that one thing that I still crave.
I’ve tried support groups, but how could I explain my situation?
Hi. My name is Tom, and I have nothing in common with any of you.
I was never a big fan of drugs. I never really saw the appeal of it as a recreation. I don’t have a family history of drug or alcohol abuse. I smoked weed once in 10th grade and hated it. I tried it again in 11th grade and confirmed my antipathy for it. In my first 24 years of life, I was drunk three times. My pattern of substance use generally consisted of a glass of wine or a beer with dinner while eating out.
That was before the milk wine.

Harold Somerset gave me the first glass of milk wine after dinner. Harold and Cindy Somerset were my new neighbors. They had moved into the rancher next door. They moved to my neighborhood from South Orange, New Jersey, they said. Harold appeared to be in his 50s, while Cindy appeared well under 30.
Harold looked high school physics teacher, balding and bespectacled. Cindy looked eastern European porn star, with enormous breasts. She had an accent that made me wonder if her name was really Cindy, though I never did find out where she came from. Before South Orange, that is.
I never really interacted much with any of my neighbors, but the Somerset’s had moved next door and were very friendly. Aside from the casual wave, I never initiated contact with them or anyone else on the block. I tried to avoid them within the confines of politeness. I always preferred to have a comfortable social distance from neighbors, as a matter of privacy.
But as Harold and Cindy would make an effort to talk to me over the fence, I really didn’t mind. It was summertime and we were frequently outside at the same time. Harold seemed like a pretty funny guy and Cindy was both charming and fond of tight shirts. I began looking forward to my chance encounters with the Somerset’s, so when they invited me for dinner, I was happy to visit.
We made the usual chitchat. Harold said that he took early retirement from a major pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey. Cindy also worked at the same company. Harold was a systems analyst. Cindy was a quality assurance/quality control analyst. It seemed as though Cindy had also taken early retirement. I explained my own crappy office job, and we laughed about the idiosyncrasies of office work.
They served a magnificent Thai dinner, heavily seasoned with hot peppers and lemongrass. After dessert, Cindy raised her eyebrows at Harold and asked,
“Harold, would you like to share your latest concoction?”
Harold grinned, revealing slightly yellowed teeth.
“Sure! I’ll be right back,” he said, hopping to his feat and dashing towards the kitchen. Cindy stared at me, barely blinking. I didn’t know if she was flirting with me, expecting me to speak, or if I was overstaying my welcome. I blinked.
“Oh, and what sort of concoction might this be?” I asked, adding, “If it’s a drink I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. I’m not much of a drinker, you know.” I smiled and made an effort to laugh politely.
Harold looked crestfallen as he stepped through the doorway, holding a bottle and three wine glasses on a tray.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought that, since you had had wine with dinner- oh, well, never mind. Everything in moderation, right?” He turned to walk back in the kitchen.
I felt Cindy’s foot nudge my leg under the table. Her expression pleaded with me. I said, without thinking about it,
“Well, wait, what is it you have there, Harold?”
Harold stepped back into the doorway.
“Well,” he began, “I guess it’s one of those hobbies that retirees tend to take up, but I’ve been dabbling in a little home brewing.”
“Oh, uh, you mean you make your own wine?” I asked.
“Well, yes, I do.” His face began to brighten.
“That’s interesting. You know- a glass won’t hurt me,” I said, trying to feign enthusiasm.
“You’d like to try it, Tom?” he asked.
“Sure!”
“All right, then,” he smiled. “Why don’t we sit down in the living room, and you can tell us about the finer points of this town?” He was holding his tray again, and the three of us walked to the living room. We sat down and Harold set the tray on the coffee table.
“So…what is this concoction?” I asked with melodrama.
“It’s a bit unorthodox,” Harold said, “but I found it in an old recipe book and thought, what the heck, why not try it? It’s milk wine.”
“Milk wine?” I stiffened my smile into a mask, deeply regretting my polite interest in his homemade wine.
“I know, I know. It doesn’t sound very pleasant but- well, I understand if you don’t want any-“
Oh, no, please. I’m curious,” I said, annoyed at myself for saying these words, because I really didn’t want any. Just say no thanks, I thought, but he seemed so eager to share. I was afraid to be rude, and I somehow felt extremely pressured by Cindy’s glares to try it.
I expected to see a milky sludge, but was pleased to see that it looked no different from any other white wine. We raised our glasses together.
“To…” Harold trailed off, apparently struggling with the right toast.
“To milk!” I said chuckling. This brought roars of laughter from my hosts, and they repeated the toast with an uncomfortable enthusiasm.
I am no wine connoisseur. As I said, I would only have a few drinks socially. Wine culture has always escaped me. I never understood the pretentious and arcane discussions of bouquet and body and mouth feel and what was a good year and what was not. It is very possible that a wine aficionado may have the vocabulary to describe how this wine tasted, but I cannot do so.
I only know that I have never tasted anything so perfect. If I may be unselfconscious of the clichés, it tasted like divine nectar, like liquid silver, like love, and like your finest childhood memory. That’s the only way that I have to describe it.
I know that, as only an occasional and moderate social drinker, I possessed a lesser alcohol tolerance than most. And perhaps the wine had high alcohol content, but I knew what it felt like to be drunk. This wasn’t like being drunk.
The milk wine affected me almost immediately. I watched Harold and Cindy through a soft white haze. I felt insubstantial, as though I had no weight. I could see my hosts talking, yet words traveled to me in fragments. I heard my name and the words “tomorrow” and “more.” I wasn’t sure if I was saying the words or if they came from Harold or Cindy.
I remembered being outside at night, and I remember seeing my bedroom, but that is all.

I awoke with a piercing headache and Cindy and Harold standing by my bedside.
“Are you okay, Tom?” Harold asked.
“What’s going on?” I said, my own voice loud in my ears.
“You must have had some kind of reaction to dinner last night,” Cindy said.
“What happened?”
“We had to help you home,” Harold said, concern bending his face. “Do you want to see a doctor?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think, I better,” I answered, the pain in my head, extreme. I tried to sit up, but movement made the pain intensify. I touched the back of my head and found gauze taped in place.
“Don’t move around,” Cindy said, her accent stronger now. “You fell down and bumped your head. I bandaged it.”
“Why…why didn’t you take me to the hospital?”
“We wanted to respect your privacy and dignity,” she said. “You see, you did- well, something with the wine bottle last night, and it took us some time to take care of the situation. But, it’s okay, now. We’ll call the doctor today.”
Dread moved in next to the agony in my skull. I suddenly felt very thirsty, and asked for water. Harold left and returned with a mug, which Cindy took and held to my lips.
I felt the pain slip away from my head, like sheets of ice falling from a mountainside. I felt cool relief and a beautiful tingling sensation throughout my body. Cindy became an angel as she stroked my hair and did something with the back of my head. I heard voices, I think coming from the Somerset’s. The voices sounded like music sung in a language that I could not recognize, for the most part, though I did hear what sounded like,
“…almost out…not much left…home…”
And then they were gone, leaving me to luxuriate in the greatest experience of my life.

It when on like this, for some time, the Somerset’s feeding me their milk wine, leaving, and then returning again while I was withdrawing. Had friends or family visited me, they could have intervened. I liked my privacy, however, and never encouraged the practice of people just dropping by, unannounced.
I languished for I know not how long. The Somerset’s visited at progressively longer intervals, or so it seemed. The periods of withdrawal soon overwhelmed the bursts of euphoria. While I waited for them to arrive, I chewed my pillow in agony. I smashed the lamp and the alarm clock, or anything at hand, overwhelmed by the need to for that calming elixir, fed to me by Cindy.
The day arrived when I could no longer stand to wait for my oh-so-caring benefactors to come relieve me. I became furious that they would leave me alone for so long without bringing more milk wine. A black cloud poisoned my mind, and I pictured the Somerset’s, surrounded by hundreds of full bottles of milk wine, hoarding them, gloating over them, laughing and facetiously joking about whether they could spare one for dumb, ol’ Tom next door.
I felt the back of my head, and realized that there was still a fresh wound. What’s more, I wondered about the tiny hole through my scalp, a pretty deep hole at that. Why the fuck hadn’t they called the doctor, I wondered. Well, that was something that I would do myself, after I replaced the phone that I seemed to have smashed while smashing the fish tank, after I went over to the Somerset’s and told them exactly what I thought, after I had walked over to their house and got the milk wine that was rightfully mine.
I mark this as the point at which the hallucinations began in earnest. Although I certainly hallucinated while drinking the milk wine, I had not as of yet hallucinated during withdrawal.
Storming across the lawn, I was aware of my nakedness, but did not care. I think that it was nighttime, or perhaps only overcast. I don’t remember. I remember trying to open the door of the Somerset home, but finding it locked. I found a shovel next to the tool shed and used it to break open a pane of glass. I reached inside to turn the lock, but found it locked from the inside as well. A red rage blossomed in my eyes, and I swung the blade of the shovel against the wooden door, again and again, until the wood was gouged and hacked and savaged but still too intact to open. I diverted my frenzy to a nearby window and soon found myself inside.
I padded through the darkness, heedless of the broken glass embedded in my feet. I went from room to room, but found no Harold, no Cindy, and no milk wine.
The basement! Of course, I reasoned, he probably kept his home brewing equipment in the basement. More importantly, he probably had rack after rack of pure heavenly milk wine bottled.
I found the basement door, a thin sliver of light from under the door illuminating my bloody feet. I put my ear against it, and heard muffled voices. It sounded like a foreign language, and I wondered where the fuck Cindy was really from.
I found the door unlocked when I turned it. I opened it and walked down the stairs, slowly, quietly, I imagined myself as a ninja. I heard the voices louder now, but still at a distance, and through a wall or door. As I walked down the rough-hewn steps, a bare light bulb lit the basement. I saw a great deal of odd equipment and old furniture, but no wine racks.
I saw the door, set in the stonework wall, and located the noise coming from beyond.
Still gripping the shovel, naked, without an idea of what I would do, I approached the door. Perhaps I would demand I would berate them. Perhaps I would defend myself against them. Regardless, I was determined to leave with whatever quantity of milk wine they possessed.
It would be, maybe, more accurate to say that- up to this point- I was only delusional. The point at which I opened the door definitely, concretely, absolutely marks the point at which I truly began hallucinating.
My bare foot kicked in the door. A long moment passed, during which time my fevered brain spasmed and convulsed, attempting to make sense of this vision before me.
The first thing that I saw was that Cindy was naked. The second thing that I noticed was that glass or plastic tubes hung fastened to the nipples of her copious breasts, apparently by suction.
I saw that clearly.
Everything else blurred together. I heard the shouted voices of the Somerset’s, chanting in a language unknown to myself. A metal pot of some sort pumped out a pungent smelling smoke, making the air hazy. Candles provided the only illumination, candles resting in what looked like saddles on what looked like black goats. The smoky incense mixed nauseatingly with the heavy animal stench. Harold stood shirtless before a book that rested on a pedestal. Something hung from his back that resembled intestines or tentacles or enormous maggots.
Intermixed with the candles and indescribable statuettes, I saw plenty of modern-looking lab equipment and electronics. I saw several computers, tangles of cables, and unidentifiable, mechanical devices.
But what really caught my attention were the hoses running from Cindy’s breasts to a stainless steel vat. Cindy, who stood in a circle of some sort, drawn on the floor in what looked like charcoal perhaps. Cindy, whose mouth was covered with blood, presumably from the potentially mammalian form lying at her feet.
I saw all of this, and as the eyes of the Somerset’s focused upon me, they saw me too. They did not cease in their activity, but then neither did I, as I saw row after row of bottled milk wine on a shelf from floor to ceiling. I gathered as many bottles as I could and ran back to my house. In my greed, I grabbed a trashcan and made several trips down to the Somerset’s basement, emptying the rack of every bottle that I could find.
Their faces twisted in pure, unadulterated aggression, yet both Harold and Cindy stood in similar circles drawn on the floor. They seemed unwilling to either stop what they were chanting or to leave their circles.
At least, that is what I hallucinated. I don’t know what really happened.
I spent what I calculated as the next month in a delicious haze of the milk wine. I neither cared where it came from nor when it would run out.
But run out it did.
I found the Somerset home vacant and for sale, when the dream ended. I found bottles scattered throughout my soiled and vandalized home. I found the power and water out. I found myself in a profound depression, in agony.
I broke into the Somerset home, but found it completely empty.
I wept, lying on that basement floor in my filthy bathrobe, unwashed, unshaven, and hopeless.
A social service agency found me psychotic, reeking, and starving.
A brief stay in the state hospital prepared me for a concerted attempt at self-destruction.
I cashed in my 401K savings and began a five-year binge of drugs and alcohol, totally unrewarding to the last hit. I derived no pleasure from it, but I’ve been over all of this before. I’m tired of trying to find a replacement for that milk wine. I bought a book and tried home brewing it myself. I came up with a repulsive, cardboard tasting atrocity that did nothing for me.
I’m done. It’s time for the revolver.
I’m still worried about the gun not working. If it was just my resistance to overdose-that would be one thing. What scares me is that-well, I cut off one of my big toes this morning with a pair of bolt-cutters.
I didn’t feel anything. I bled, but I didn’t feel anything. An hour later I tried another. Twelve hours later, and I’m out of toes.
The gun has to work. The death caps have to work. There is no milk wine. There never were any Somerset’s.
There is an end to pain.

THE END

The Stinkers

2004-09-27T22:55:00.000-04:00

The Stinkers
By Kurt Strouse

The panic hit Joseph when he felt the coffin growing smaller inside. He felt the wooden panels moving closer to each other, very slowly. So slowly he thought, that nobody but the person inside could detect it.
“You all fucking die when I get out of here! Let me out! Let me the fuck out of this box!”
The panels pressed against his shoulders. He felt the coffin growing shorter, as he was standing upright in it, the box standing vertically. He pushed at the lid with his forearms, unable to extend his arms fully. He pushed in every direction, each limb seeking to stop the slow, slow advance of the panels.
“Alright…alright, I’ll work with you…just let me out. Let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out…” he panted trying to catch his breath, feeling drool run from his mouth. “Let…me…out…let…me…”
He felt so tired suddenly. His legs felt numb, and he collapsed, as much as the oblong coffin would allow.
He saw shapes emerge from the darkness around him. Purple flashes, like blossoms, broke in front of his eyes. Where his body once was- now purple splotches burst and disappeared, only to gather into new shapes. He watched as they formed swirls, dissolving into faces, the faces of his associates who were now with him inside the box. There was Lucy, and Troy, and the others.
“I hate you, Todd. Todd, I fucking hate you most of all.”
Todd, as he watched him, turned into a priest. The others formed a circle around him. Joseph watched as Todd made motions with his hands. He realized what this was. It was a funeral. They were burying him, yet he could see them clearly, though they were entirely purple. He watched the purple color fade from them. He watched the sky as it glowed orange, tinged with red. He examined the detail of the cemetery, a graveyard that he knew quite well.
“Nobody uses this cemetery anymore!” Joseph shouted, panic stabbing into him as he realized that no one would ever find him here. He knew this cemetery. Somebody comes along and mows it once a month, but that’s it. Nobody would ever know he was here except for the people burying him.
“I’ll get out! I’ll get out and hunt you all down!! You fuckers!! You fucking fuckers!!”
He wondered how long it would take to suffocate. How much earth would they have to shovel on top of his coffin before he ran out of breath? He would pass out first.
“I’m- still- seeing –you-“ he gasped, pushing against the lid.

Two nights in the box, he was told in what seemed like last week. Two nights in the box and he would be out.
One year ago, Joseph did not know that this group even existed.
He only knew that one night he was to leave bodies at a certain point in the swampy point near the creek. He dragged the corpses of three large men; each wrapped in a bed sheet, down a bank and to a tree tied with a white ribbon. He dragged them one by one from the covered bed of a pick-up truck. The overcast night left him in darkness. He heard the sound of a branch snapping, coming from the tree line. Drawing his weapon, he bolted from the body drop point, and up the rocky bank. Joseph slipped on a wet rock and fell hard against the ground.
Laughter. He heard laughter stabbing slowly through the thick air. Fumbling in the grass, he found his gun, and then rose into a crouch. The laughter continued. He held the gun pointed at the ground while he stared down the embankment and into the trees. He froze as a white hand appeared from behind a boulder, waving at him. He heard a muffled snickering. Joseph reached into his pocket and drew his flashlight, waiting for the rest of the person to appear before he turned on the light. The hand continued to rise and yet he could not see the arm, just a hand that now went up and down. The disembodied hand then danced in the air, stiff and ridiculous. The stifled laughter of multiple voices grew louder now, the sound of chuckling suppressed by hands covering mouths.
Joseph switched the light on and his invisible company broke out in open laughter. The beam illuminated the foggy night air and landed on the hand. He now saw that a stick, apparently held by whoever crouched behind the boulder, held it up. He advanced upon it, his .45 halfway raised, and the hand fell. The laughing voices withdrew into the woods, breaking sticks as they fled. Joseph shined the light into the trees but saw no one. He looked back at the sheet-wrapped corpses laying in the mud and high grass, and quickly retreated to his truck.

He would encounter the voices again in the months to follow. Joseph would receive an assignment from his employer to dispose of bodies in one remote location or another. The locations were usually remote, but not always. Sometimes he would deliver them to an abandoned house or decrepit factory. Sometimes, his instructions were to leave a car somewhere in town, with the cadaver or cadavers locked inside the trunk. Once, he was ordered to leave one in a shopping cart, the body made to fit.
Usually, his instructions involved leaving the corpses in woods or fields or old barns. Tool sheds were a brief fad. Sometimes he had to drag or wheel the bodies far from the road. Sometimes he had to transport them in sections. Sometimes his instructions required him to find a cave.
Most of the time, he did not know the names of the people of whom he disposed. Some of them, he did know. Joseph killed some of them himself. A couple of others were mostly dead when he received them, and these he completed before disposal.
The police never found any of the bodies, or if they did, the event never made the news. Joseph did not know where the bodies went, or who took them. He did not know why he was assigned to carry out these disposals under so many different circumstances and settings. He asked his employer, delicately, what was going on. His employer told him little, but gave him the impression of ignorance. All that Joseph learned was that somebody had a great deal of product to move and a great deal of money to make it worthwhile.
He disposed of at least one body per week. He waited to hear of a big investigation. He waited for someone to notice how many people went missing. Some of the disappearances became stories, when someone had friends and family looking for them. These cases were surprisingly rare, and never comprehensive.
More and more, Joseph became surprised at how many people can cease to exist without it being a major problem for anyone.
He realized that, if arrested, he could not even say what happened to the remains after they left his hands. All he could say is that he fed them into the night, and the night digested them. He could name his boss, and some of the bodies, and the locations, but beyond that, Joseph could implicate no one else.
One night, he was scheduled to make a disposal, transporting a body from the back seat of a Lexus to an old shack. When he found the car, he found his disemboweled employer in the vehicle, face down between the front seats. He sighed deeply, speculating on the future of management, but reasoned that he had been paid, and that there was a body, just where it was supposed to be.
He arrived at the shack in the middle of a snowstorm. He hoped that the snow would continue for as long as possible, since he feared leaving a visible blood trail.
He remembered his instructions- leave the body on the table inside, take the man’s shoes off, and place them on his chest. He dragged the obese man into the shack. Joseph had largely wrapped the man in plastic and duct tape, making an effort to contain the entrails.
Joseph shined his flashlight into the shack and found himself staring at photographs of himself, tacked to the rough wood inside. He saw pictures of himself on various disposal jobs, stopped at traffic lights, dragging bundled bodies, and in bars. Scores of photos, some of them enlarged, stared back at him. Photos of his house. Photos of his truck’s license plate.
Loosening his gun in its holster, he walked outside. He saw nothing but white snow and darkness in any direction. Nothing moved but falling snowflakes. He walked to his truck and grabbed a black plastic trash bag from the seat. Walking back inside, he pulled down the photos, one by one, and slipped them into the bag.
He stared, for a long moment at the corpse and at the bag.
He dragged the heavy corpse by its jacket, straining to lift it onto the table in the dark. He estimated the man’s weight at 300 pounds. Joseph chuckled to himself as he thought of movies where people pick up their wounded friends and carry them hundreds of yards. He stacked up crates next to the table, propping up his flashlight for illumination. Grunting with the effort, he half-dragged, half-lifted the body onto the crates, and then did the same to move the fleshy man to the table. The head, lower legs, and arms hung over the edges of the tabletop. Panting, Joseph retrieved his light and removed the expensive Italian shoes, starting with the left. When he removed the right shoe, a bloodied, folded sheet of paper fell to the floor.
Joseph picked up the paper. He unfolded it, reading the scrawling across the waxy surface. It appeared to be waterproof. It read:

Stay here tonight. We know you have enough supplies in your truck.
Stay here tonight, in this cabin. You will have visitors. Do not shoot them, do not harm them, and you will not be harmed.
Stay the night. We have something to show you. We have more pictures of you. Your boss is dead. You have no job. This is not a trap. We could have killed you or informed on you long ago. Just stay and watch, and don’t shoot your guests tonight. And when they knock, do let them in.

Joseph folded the paper up again and placed it back inside the shoe. Collecting the bag with the photos in it, he proceeded to his truck and drove away from the shack. He followed the remains of the old logging road around the twists and turns, halting at the sight of a dilapidated school bus blocking his path about two miles from the shack. Drawing his shotgun, with a flashlight mounted beneath the barrel, he hopped out of the truck and walked over to the bus. He saw crude, homemade wheel locks on the left side facing him, and, crouching down, he saw them on the other side as well. Walking around to the front of the bus, he saw squares fashioned out of inch-thick steel bars, three feet long per side. The square devices were attached to the front of the bus, secured in place by heavy locks. The squares encircled several large oak trees. Joseph walked through the trees to get to the other side of the bus, and found the rear of the vehicle attached in the same fashion as the front.
Pushing open the doors, he stepped inside, raising his shotgun. The driver’s seat was empty, but a pair of shoes protruded from the aisle.
“Get the fuck up! Now!”
The feet did not move.
Propping the muzzle of the shotgun against a panel, he drew his knife. His hand moved in a snapping motion towards the ankle, striking something hard underneath the sock. Bone, Joseph reasoned. Still, the feet did not move. He put the knife away and walked onto the bus. He moved up next to the driver’s seat in a crouch, and almost shot the manikin sitting in the aisle, dressed in an old-fashioned bus driver’s uniform. It sat with one arm awkwardly raised in a salute. A cardboard sign hung from its lapels by safety pins, reading:
We can’t go yet! This bus doesn’t leave for another twelve hours!
Joseph walked over the manikin, examining the interior of the bus. Stuffing oozed and springs jutted from the torn vinyl seats. Snow sifted through a number of the broken windows. His light reflected off the dirt covering the remaining unbroken windows. The rear emergency door hung slightly opened, fastened partially with wire. He walked out of the bus and back to his truck. Hearing movement in the trees behind him he spun, and his light illuminated a dark-clad figure running loudly through the woods, breaking branches and sticks underfoot, disappearing behind a row of trees before Joseph could draw a bead.
He walked back to his truck and found his spotlight. He climbed into the cab and made a four-point turn. Driving back to the shack, he examined the tree line with his light, looking for his “visitors” and for egress from the logging road that terminated, oddly, with the shack. Finding nothing, he eventually arrived back at the structure, snow accumulating on its roof. Trees encircled it, preventing any exit but the one already blocked. He parked the truck facing away from the shack. If he had to escape quickly, he reasoned, he would drive back to the bus and travel by foot to the main road.
Joseph cautiously entered the shack, but found nothing inside but the crates and his dead employer, freezing solidly on the table, mouth open, yet not slack.
Cursing, he walked back to the truck and gathered the emergency supplies that he always carried, should he be stranded. He carried his gear inside, stacking up crates to cover the one window. The door had no lock, but he stacked up some of the crates in front of it. They were too light in weight to act as a barricade, but he would at least, should he doze off, hear the door being opened. He arranged a space in the corner farthest away from the cadaver, a space where he could lay in his sleeping bag to stay warm. He placed the remaining crates in a sort of low wall, shielding him from the door. He sat on the floor with his back to the corner, his shotgun across his lap, his handgun in its holster, and his spotlight at his side.
He remained awake, adrenaline and fear keeping him alert, listening to the deafening silence of the snow falling outside. He checked his watch constantly- time never seeming to move. He ran complex conspiracy theories through his mind, imagining everything from a police sting to extortion schemes to questioning his own sanity. His employer was dead. Somebody had a great deal of him on film. And they knew about, and planned, the disposal job earlier in the evening.
Did they? His boss was dead, but perhaps he was killed in self-defense. Maybe his would-be victim killed him and, coincidentally, left him where he himself was to be found. Maybe this was all a set-up by the would-be target, who would shoot Joseph with a deer rifle when he stepped out of the shack in the dawn light.
Nothing made sense to him, but when the door rattled, every nerve inside him came to life.
He rolled to a kneeling position, his shotgun aimed towards the door. Having blocked what little light existed-he stared into the ink before him. The door rattled again. Something pushed against it. Joseph heard his heart pounding, but still he did not turn on his light. A crate fell from the top of the stack, the noise stabbing into his spine. He waited in the dark. Another fell, and then another, the noise making him angry with his own fear. He thought about opening fire at that moment, letting the buckshot punch through the thin wood and into his tormentors. Sweat ran into his eyes.
When the door had enough space to open, when a weak band of illumination bled into the shack from the snow-blasted night outside, when he saw the vague silhouettes of people coming through the door- it was only then that he pressed the flashlight button on the fore grip of his shotgun, painting his target with light instead of pellets.
He thought about his instructions to not hurt his visitors. He made a great effort to think about these instructions. He questioned deeply the reasons why he should follow the instructions of strangers, when everything inside of him screamed for him to shoot.
To kill.
To stop from walking.
To stop from getting any fucking closer to him.
Given a different setting, he would have described his visitors as hillbillies with birth defects, most likely blind to judge by the milky bluish-white of the eyes. He watched them, as they shuffled through the door, clad in snow-dusted and dingy clothing, bow-legged, arms hanging limp at their sides. The first one, a woman, appeared pregnant but bald. Some sort of skin disease affected her scalp, face, neck, and hands. Cysts grew in lumps on her head. Boils festooned her face, neck, and hands, the colors brought into vivid detail by the high-intensity light.
A man walked in behind her, similarly hairless. Neither of them had eyebrows. Joseph noticed that their limbs appeared too short for their long torsos. They moved awkwardly, almost like toddlers, dragging their clunky shoes on the wooden floor.
Joseph said nothing, and the pair ignored him. They focused, instead, upon the body, now largely frozen upon the table. They seemed to smile, brown nubs the only indicators that these mouths ever held teeth. Viscous strands of saliva stretched as their mouths opened wider.
They made moaning sounds at each in patterns resembling speech.
The man and woman gripped the plastic sheeting covering Joseph’s dead boss and tore it with long, heavy fingernails, yellow and jagged. They mostly tore it away from his midsection, knocking the Italian shoes to the floor. The cadaver’s stiffened limbs did not respond to the movements. When the pair had removed the plastic, they unfastened and tore at the clothing around his abdomen, revealing his intestines frozen into a distorted mass.
Joseph’s skin crawled as he watched the woman pull down her pink sweatpants. She kicked off her boots, and then finished removing her pants and visibly stained underwear. The boils and growths continued on her legs. She gripped the table with her stubby hands and began to pull herself up on top of the dead man. She fell with a wail, but without warning, and Joseph heard her head impact solidly with the floor. The man did not move to help her, and she lay motionless on the floor.
Joseph watched, and presently, she began to stir. She sat up abruptly, rose to her feet, and began making another attempt at the table. Blood and pus leaked from cysts on her head, ruptured on impact with the floor. She met with unlikely success in her ascent this time, aided by the cadaver’s mass. The woman kneeled on the corpse’s ribcage and made a grunting noise. Joseph watched as a grayish, clumpy matter fell into the abdominal wound with a splattering noise. He watched as she continued to discharge this material. He thought of caviar, as the stench filled the room. The woman squatted for a long moment until she appeared to be finished. She tried to climb off of the table, falling once again to the floor without catching herself, falling like a very large sack of potatoes, once again hitting her head.
Joseph noticed that the man stood now with his pants around his ankles, staring blankly while the woman lay unconscious on the floor. After fifteen minutes of neither moving, Joseph suspected the woman of being dead. After another five minutes, she sat up again. She rose to her feet, swaying. The man moved close to the cadaver’s wound, and the woman rubbed him until he ejaculated on top of the grayish material. The expression of neither person changed, just the open mouth, brown tooth-stub, milky-eyed staring. Joseph thought of nature films and trout spawning, and he felt bile rising in the back of his throat. Bitterness soaked into his mouth, the smell in the room almost suffocating.
The couple dressed themselves again, awkwardly, clothing worn crookedly. They shuffled through the door, leaving it open behind them. Joseph rose to his feet, following them as they walked slowly through the snow, oblivious to the cold on their hairless heads. They walked into the woods, bumping into trees, noisily making their way. Joseph walked behind them at a distance, his eyes scouring the woods around him. The snow fell differently now, wet flakes making a very faint sizzling sound as they landed. The trees made inky black shapes in the heavy snow.
Joseph followed his departing visitors, keeping an eye on the shack and his truck. He followed them as long as he dared, as long as he could see his vehicle in the distance. They moved slowly, but without stopping, without pause to avoid tree limbs and trunks. Joseph soon quit the chase and walked back to the shack. He looked at his watch. The sun would be rising soon.
He decided, as he approached the shack, to gather his gear and drive to the school bus barricade.
Entering the shack, he looked at his dead boss on the table, regretting his decision to follow instructions, to come here. He looked at the mess splattered over the man’s intestines. His face appeared frozen in a wince. Joseph felt odd, seeing his employer like this, the man’s former dignity stripped away, befouled now. Joseph realized that he would always remember him this way. The smell poisoned the air, and as he gathered his belongings, he hoped fervently that the stench would not remain on them.

He drove down the old logging road in the predawn light, his teeth clenched, staring hard at the road in front of him. He drove slowly, prepared for a sudden stop. The snow had ceased, leaving a murky gray color in the sky. The truck rolled through well over a foot of snow.
He recognized the bend in the road, approaching the point of the barricade, a rise in the landscape preventing him from seeing the location of the school bus. He slowed the truck to a crawl, and drove with his .45 in one hand.
Rounding the bend, he saw five people standing in the road, facing him. They wore snowshoes and light backpacks, and Joseph saw no weapons.
He wondered why they smiled at him.
Joseph threw a blanket over his shotgun and stopped the truck. He held his handgun beneath the window, out of sight, and rolled the window down.
“Greetings,” said a young-looking man with large, farm-animal-like teeth that gleamed in the dim light. “How was your visit, Mr. Schwieriger?”
“Fan-fucking-tastic. What do you want?” he replied.
The man shrugged and looked back at the other three people, approaching the window.
“Well,” the man said, grinning, “what did you think?”
“What did I think about what?”
“Your visitors.”
“What did I think about- fucking mutant hillbillies- dumping vaginal discharge and busting a nut on my late, dead employers intestines? Well I guess that’s pretty fucked up, isn’t it? I guess I’m wondering what might possibly be the point of said exercise. I’m thinking about why I’m here, why the man is dead, why I’m talking to some assholes on snowshoes. I’m wondering how you moved a goddamn school bus through 16 miles of snow, and why you would bother. But most of all, I’m thinking about why the fuck you’re wasting my time.”
A snickering went around the group, reminding Joseph of all the times he’d been shadowed.
“Well, Mr. Schwieriger, it is a very long story,” the man said with mock seriousness. “And to tell you the truth, it’s almost dawn. My associates and I have much to do. I would like to take this opportunity to present you with a little eh- what should I call it?”
A woman whispered something in his ear. “Ah, yes,” he continued, “a consultation fee!” He produced a large zip lock bag from his pack and held it up. Joseph saw wraps of cash. The man stepped forward and handed it to him. “On behalf of my esteemed colleagues and myself, I apologize for any inconvenience that the untimely demise of your employer may have caused you. Please accept this gift from us and look at it, not as severance pay, but as a sign-on bonus.”
Joseph took the bag, examining it out of the corner of his eye.
“Go on,” Joseph said.
“Well,” a woman stepped forward, a deep hood obscuring her face, “we’d love to, but I’m afraid that there just isn’t time right now. We’d like to meet with you, oh, say, Monday evening and, uh, discuss a new opportunity for you. Why don’t we pick you up- is eleven good for you?”
“Pick me up where?”
“How about McGarvey’s? We saw you there last week…”

The smell never did leave Joseph’s sleeping bag. Monday morning saw him stuffing it into his trashcan.

Monday evening found him at the corner of the bar in McGarvey’s, a neighborhood dive in a blue-collar district, far enough from Joseph’s home to allow him anonymity.
He knew she was one of them as soon as she walked in the door. She looked at him and smiled as she pulled back the hood of her black coat. It seemed to Joseph less of a smile than it was a smirk. A blonde woman with tired eyes stopped trying to talk to Joseph about her husband’s impotence and stared at the newcomer. The woman walking in looked distinctly non-local, wearing her long black hair in a strange pattern of one braid dangling from each side of her head, and one in the back. Her face might have been beautiful, but for overly large eyes suggesting psychosis or chemical over stimulation.
A hush fell over the mostly male bar. Joseph glanced about the bar and noticed everyone but the side-glancing bartender staring at her. Joseph sighed and asked for another shot of whiskey. The patrons returned to their conversations and half-heartedly pretended not to stare as the woman approached Joseph.
“Hello, Joseph,” she said, as he downed his shot.
“Hello there,” he replied. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked without emotion, annoyed that she drew so much attention, but attempting to make the meeting seem natural. The blonde woman stared at the bar.
“Sure,” she said. She shook her head as someone offered her a barstool. “No thanks. We can’t stay long.”
Joseph raised his eyebrows as the bartender approached, looking over at the woman.
“Triple shot of Jaeger,” his new companion said quickly, as though it were one word. She stood staring at Joseph as the bartender fetched her drink. When he handed her the drink, she bolted the dark-colored fluid and wiped her lips with the tip of a gloved finger. Setting the glass down hard on the counter, she tilted her head and asked, “Ready?”

They walked to the door, and she slid her arm inside his. “My name is Lucy,” she whispered in his ear. They walked outside and across the icy parking lot where a green Plymouth Volare station wagon with tinted windows sat idling. “You get shotgun,” she said as they approached the vehicle. She had flipped her hood up and Joseph no longer saw her face.
The first thing Joseph saw, opening the passenger door of the car, were big white teeth set amidst green vinyl interior.
“Mr. Schwieriger! How do you do?” the man said. “My name is Todd.” He extended his hand as Joseph sat down. Joseph ignored the gesture. Lucy climbed into the rear seat.
“So. What do you people want to talk about?” Joseph asked as they pulled out of the lot.
Todd grinned, glancing back at Lucy in the rear view mirror. Todd had almost white-blonde hair and eyebrows, and ruddy pink skin.
“Well. We know what you do, so I guess that this is the part where we tell you what we do,” Todd explained. “Some time ago, it came to our attention that you were something of a specialist in getting rid of bodies. You had developed kind of an expertise- it’s fair to say. We got in touch with your boss, a friend of a friend, so to speak. We’re the reason you’ve been dragging bodies from here to bejeezus for the past year.”
“Why?” Joseph asked.
“Good question,” Lucy said from the back seat as she lit a cigarette in a theatrically long cigarette holder. “And we’re honestly not sure sometimes, but it seems that it’s always so the stinkers can do their thing with them.”
“The stinkers,” Joseph repeated. “Those, uh, people I saw back in the shack?”
“Yeah…,” Todd said, “I don’t know if I’d call them people, exactly.”
“What do you mean?” Joseph asked.
“Well, to be perfectly honest,” Todd said, scratching his head, “we’re not really sure what they are. They might be people with some kind of disease, or maybe they’re born that way. I don’t know. Our boss never really told us what they are. We just know that as long as we follow instructions and make sure that bodies get to the right places where they can be-um-“
“Where the stinkers can lay their eggs?” Lucy chimed in.
“Oh, see, you gave away the punch line, Lucy,” Todd said, punching the steering wheel in mock anger. He sighed. “Well, yeah, they seem to be laying their eggs in corpses, fertilizing said eggs in said corpses, et cetera.”
“And when do they hatch?” Joseph asked.
“Well,” Todd replied, “usually in a couple of weeks. Longer in the winter.”
“And what do they hatch?”
“Smaller stinkers. Usually only a couple in a litter. They’re kind of like tadpoles in that it takes a week or so for their limbs to form. They look like…well, how would you describe them Luce?”
“Like,” she shrugged, dragging on the cigarette, “a lump of shit with a head.”
Todd and Lucy laughed.
“Yeah…yeah, that’s about right,” Todd said.
“So…what do you want from me?” Joseph asked.
They became silent.
“We want you to join us,” Lucy said.
“Nah,” Joseph shook his head, “I work alone. I mean, I’ll do jobs for you on my own, maybe, but I’m not much of a joiner.”
“Well, see, that’s the thing,” Todd said. “The boss kinda wants a team structure. And to tell you the truth, we’ve pretty much been working with each other for the past year, like it or not. You have to admit- the money’s pretty good.”
“So my boss died so that I could work for your boss?” Joseph said, ice water churning in his stomach.
‘Well, you do the math,” Todd said.
“He cried like a little girl,” Lucy said, giggling.
“But, anyway, think it over, and I mean- think it over well,” Todd said, “and tonight you can meet the rest of the crew.”

They arrived at an old stone farmhouse- its asymmetrical shape suggesting mid-19th century construction. A large barn stood on the opposite side of the driveway, and multiple smaller buildings lay scattered around the property. The car pulled into what was perhaps an old carriage house. Joseph followed Todd and Lucy, their boots crunching the ice-frozen snow underfoot. They walked to the barn, and Lucy opened a door beneath the overhang of the second story. Light spilled out, accompanied by animal smells. They entered a corridor, lit by naked bulbs overhead. They passed walls of rough-hewn wood, and then passed empty stalls.
Joseph jumped as a woman stood up in one of the stalls, naked, with a horse’s bit in her mouth. She made a neighing sound, and Joseph felt a stabbing pain in his buttock. Todd grabbed Joseph’s arm as he reached for his gun, while Lucy latched onto his other arm. Joseph launched himself with his legs slamming Todd into a beam, but failing to dislodge him. He twisted, pressing Lucy against the half-wall and she groaned with pain. Joseph almost pulled his arm free of him, but then other hands grasped him. As a strong arm locked around his neck, he felt his knees weaken and he fell to the stone floor. He saw the floor rise to meet him, and he fell next to where a now-empty syringe lay.

He awoke in darkness, and everything hurt. He reached around himself, feeling wooden panels on every side. He pushed and leaned and kicked, but nothing gave. He screamed in rage and fear and frustration, his claustrophobia rising to a fever pitch.
He heard voices speaking to him, eventually, muffled voices coming from outside of his container.
“What’s going on?!!” Joseph screamed at the voices.
“Hey! Hey! Joseph! Relax!” Todd’s voice said, “Sorry about all this, but it’s all part of the process. Um, you’re in a coffin.” Joseph heard something click in the box, and hoped that the box would open.
Instead, something sharp jabbed him in the thigh.
“Ow! What the fuck was that!” Joseph yelled.
“It’s a long story,” Lucy said.
“Well he’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” Todd said.
“Okay, well,” Lucy began, “we lied to you. It turns out that, yeah, we do know what turns people into stinkers. It’s an infection. In fact, we’re infected with the virus. In fact, you are too, now that you’ve been injected.”
“What??!! What the fuck are you talking about??” Joseph yelled, gasping for breath, heart pumping wildly.
“That’s the bad news,” Lucy said, her voice sounding far away, but clear. “The good news is that Mr. Somerset has the drug to keep the virus in remission. So here’s the deal, honey. You stay in the coffin for two days. When you get out, you get the second shot. It only lasts for a month or so, so you have to keep getting it. But aside from that, everything’s pretty cool. Think of it as a good thing.”

Joseph screamed, threatened, and raged at them for the first twelve hours, then passed out. He cried when he woke up, hallucinated, and passed out again, and repeated the cycle.

Joseph felt the coffin open up around him and light blinded him. He fell hard to the floor, his muscles weak and his head pounding. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light, which less and less seemed to stab him in the eyes. When he could see, he saw four pairs of boots standing around him.
He rose to his knees, and then fell into a sitting position. He saw a heavily muscled man and the woman from the stall, now clothed. He saw Lucy, and he saw Todd, smiling with his great horsy teeth, a syringe held between his fingers.
“So what will it be?” Todd asked. “If you take the shot, you join us, and life goes on as- well, normal. You get an entry-level position in a growth industry.
“Or see what’s behind door number two. We lock you up with some water, and inside of a week, your hair falls out, you break out in sores, et cetera, et cetera. You turn into a stinker and lose all of your memory. We pair you up with a female stinker out in the woods or in some abandoned factory.”
“Take the shot, Joseph,” Lucy said, “please.”
Joseph felt the room tilt, his vision slightly blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut, and then slowly nodded his head. Todd stepped forward and he felt a sting in his arm.
“There you go, chief,” Todd said, “that’s the prevention, with a wee, little speed chaser to get you going.”
Slowly, unsteadily, Joseph rose to his feet.
“And now,” Lucy said, “Meet your new boss.” She gestured theatrically towards the corner of the room. A stocky gray-haired man stood in the corner. He wore an antique-looking suit, with a stiff white color, but the first thing that Joseph noticed were his eyes- the same milky blue of the stinkers he saw at the shack. The man smiled, his face creasing with wrinkles.
“Benjamin?” the man said, his voice a leathery rumble. The muscular man standing near Joseph walked into another room. He returned dragging a wooden chair, with someone sitting on that chair. Benjamin spun the chair around, and Joseph saw the blonde from the bar. The woman sat wide-eyed and gagged, her limbs bound to the chair. Lucy walked over to a table and picked up something. She raised the object up to eye level, a hooked steel blade, somewhere between a carpet knife and a sickle. She swung her arm fast enough to make the blade whistle through the air, slowing as it slid through the woman’s throat.
Lucy pushed the chair over backwards as blood pumped in an arc from the neck. The chair and the woman laid on their backs. Joseph thought that he heard Lucy snarl as she slit the woman’s dress down the middle, ripping the fabric open. She placed the blade against the woman’s stomach and pulled, slitting open the skin. She made another intersecting cut, and then pulled open the flaps of skin as the woman continued to spasm and make noises from her open throat.
Lucy placed one foot on either side of the woman, straddling her, standing in the pooling blood. She hitched up her own dress and cut the fabric of her panties on either hip with the blade. The room laughed as she threw them at Joseph, and they landed on his shoulder. Lucy squatted down over the woman’s stomach and began making grunting noises.
“Oh, yeah. We’re not completely cured of the virus,” Todd said, turning towards Joseph, his big teeth gleaming, “ and there’s just one more thing you have to do…”

THE END

(This was rejected by Weird Tales. They said that editors are always looking for new and different material or material presented in a way that is INTERESTING. I felt a bit irritated by this, considering the amount of cheesy werewolf & vampire material they run. Sour grapes, I guess.)

The Oak Tree

2004-09-08T22:27:00.000-04:00

The Oak Tree
By Kurt Strouse

It is an exceptionally cool day in August, and if it would help my situation, I would walk out back, climb the tallest of the oak trees, and promptly hang myself. I’d stare at the clouds crawling across this bluest of Pennsylvania skies first- let the sun warm my skin for a moment, and then fall into oblivion.
But it wouldn’t work.
My name is Keith Wilson. I knew Joseph, Sarah and Rebecca Henry. While I cannot pretend to understand the events taking place within the last weeks, I write this down only as a record of my personal experience.
I’m not sure why I’m writing this. Perhaps I want to give to others information that may prove valuable. I wish that were true, but I don’t really believe it. I believe that something irreversible occurred. I believe that, for anyone reading this, this information will seem either painfully obvious or completely imaginary. I’m not sure that I care.
Sarah Henry ceased to be Sarah, as I know her. Joseph Henry ceased to be Joseph, as I know him. Sarah and Joseph’s mother, Rebecca, ceased to be Rebecca, as I know her.
I do not say that they are dead. I say that all of them changed to the point that, their definition of being no longer matched the cluster of traits previously defining them.
I’m still not sure why I write this. I don’t have any advice to give. I’m not sure if I even care what happens next. I think that the only reason I write this is because I want to be remembered. If the personality named Keith Wilson ceases to be, I want some physical record of myself having existed. I want to write this because I don’t know how long I will be able to write this.
I feel oddly driven by futility. None of what I say will change anything. I will not change anything. I will only be changed, or perhaps destroyed. I know that I cannot destroy myself. At least, I know that trying to destroy myself may lead to consequences other than annihilation.
Constantly lurks in my mind the idea that I could have avoided all of this, that I played a central part in beginning the process. Of this, I wonder deeply.
I wonder how much choice I possess.
What have I seen?

I traveled to meet Joseph Henry at the P&S General Store in Kreitzville last week. Joseph told me in previous telephone conversations that I would probably find it difficult to locate his farm, and he agreed to meet me at the store.
I found Joseph a much thinner and paler man than I remembered him in college. He looked like himself, as portrayed by a sickly actor. He looked older than his 31 years. He looked worn out, his hair receding, seeming to show hints of gray. The beginnings of wrinkles marked his face. His lean, muscular frame now looked slightly malnourished. He wore a gray work shirt and jeans, his clothing as faded as himself. I thought of clothing sold as “pre-distressed,” and thought that the term applied equally to Joseph.
I wondered if this was an older sibling or uncle of Joseph for a moment, but his mannerisms positively identified him. I recognized his toothy grin and the way he kind of turned his head when speaking. He looked like his old self after a heavy night of drinking. He looked like that plus six years of wear and tear. I felt bad, immediately, and wondered if I looked equally weathered. Had it been so long?
I had stayed in touch with Joseph after graduation, but we exchanged emails, phone calls, and visits less and less with each passing year. Neither of us ever seemed to have any good news to share, and the mutual discussion of failed relationships, terminated employments, and general despair did little to re-vitalize our friendship. Without saying it out loud, we both mourned the loss of our youth, and realized that our best days had set. Even more depressing than talking about our problems was talking about the good memories we shared, experiences that seemed commonplace at the time only because we could not foresee the future scarcity of anything memorable. Reliving these memories only contrasted those happy times with our present-day bleakness, a vibrancy and color swallowed up by the drab current status.
Hardship motivated me to contact Joseph again. My failure at maintaining a job, a family and a home motivated me to remind Joseph of an old debt. He offered to let me stay at his place until I stabilized my life, though we never discussed a plan to fulfill this objective. I thought that perhaps Joseph sought companionship- a friend to keep him from slipping deeper into depression, or company in that slow descent. Another part of me saw it as a means for him to evade paying his debt, but I possessed few options and saw this as the best one.
I followed his battered pick-up truck (a far cry from the days when Joseph drove an immaculately-clean Mustang) down a series of roads that often appeared little more than paths. I understood why he did not trust me to follow the directions. Few road signs existed, and among the trees and rotting houses I saw little to serve as landmarks. I wondered if Joseph’s farm looked like the structures we passed, falling down without maintenance or care. I idly scanned through radio stations as we drove, finding progressively fewer stations with the distance from the main road. One station played a piece consisting of a woman speaking in gibberish while a violin played discordance in the background, followed by a man reading very slowly from the Book of Revelation. Another station sounded like praying in German or perhaps Pennsylvania Dutch. I turned it off after the only station audible played someone screaming in an unidentifiable language.
I tried to remember the route back to the store, but had a great deal of trouble memorizing the turns in sequence. I gave up, eventually, and decided to ask Joseph and write it down later.
We arrived at the Henry farm after crossing a bridge with wooden planks that rumbled as we crossed it. Passing over it, the creek below dimly reflected our vehicles in its murk.
I found the farm pleasantly well kept after passing the squalid shacks and houses en route. The clean-white house stood across a gravel driveway from a solid-looking barn. Smaller buildings and sheds dotted the property. I saw a field in the distance behind it, the property surrounded on all sides by trees.
The farther that we drove up the driveway, the more surprised I became at the sense of bleakness crawling over me. Attempts to convey this impression by describing the house’s appearance would prove futile, as there was nothing dilapidated or strange to see. It was a white house, on a green lawn, surrounded by foliage lush and green with an exceptionally rainy summer. At the moment, I ascribed these feelings to the long car ride, my fatigue, and the recently humid weather, my car’s broken air conditioning leaving me sweating in my seat. Also in my mind lurked a fear of isolation and an uncertainty as to how long I would stay here and what prospects awaited me after I left. I ignored these thoughts as much as possible as I stepped out of my car.

When Joseph brought out the whiskey bottle that night, I looked forward to getting drunk while at the same time dreading the talk of the “good ol’ days.” I was relieved when the discussion remained on idle topics of this or that job that we lost, the weather, and so forth, but eventually the conversation petered out. Running out of subject matter, we decided to watch a movie. Joseph had a monitor connected to a DVD player. I was surprised to learn that he had no television, living out here alone. He explained that the reception was terrible, and that cable still wasn’t available in the area. Satellite TV, he said, was simply too expensive.
We watched an old Peter Cushing movie and I was fairly drunk halfway through it. I squinted as the scene cut from a 19thcentury Carpathian village to something (judging by the picture quality) filmed more recently. The scene showed a run-down cabin, with a rusted 1970s-model pick-up truck in the front yard. As the camera approached the open front door, a weeping sound became audible, growing in volume, becoming hysterical. I glanced over at Joseph, who sat nodding in his chair, his eyes closed. He startled me by jumping up and staring wide-eyed at the image. He darted over to the screen, obscuring it as he stood in front of it, turning off the appliances and unplugging the cords. The weeping had grown to a screaming by the time that he turned off the movie, and I only saw the peripheral movements of some apparently violent scene.
I stared at him as he unplugged the monitor and carried it out of the room.
“Fucking thing’s broken,” he said. “I have to get it fixed…”
I waited for him to come back in the room.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked him.
“Ah, I don’t know. It switches movies randomly.”
“But isn’t that a single disc DVD player?”
Joseph looked over at it and rubbed his mouth.
“No,” he said, “No, it’s a multi-disc player. Maybe I ought to get that fixed, too.” He walked over and carried that out of the room as well.
I asked him, when he came back,
“What was that other movie?”
“Ah, just some foreign crap. I forget what it’s called. Hey, look, I’m gonna crash, okay. Do you need anything else for your room?”
“No, man, I think I’ve got everything, thanks.”
“Alright, well, make yourself at home, help yourself to the kitchen and everything. Good night.”
“Night.”
I found sleep with difficulty that night, tossing and turning on the springy mattress in my room. I propped a noisy box fan as close to myself as possible, trying to disperse the muggy air enough to sleep. I tried to pretend that I was only visiting, that I had some other place to call home.
I dreamed that night that I was trapped in a basement room. I clawed the walls, trying to find a way out in the dark. I found myself standing in the doorway when I woke up, my sweaty hand gripping the doorknob.

I rose in the morning, less out of feeling rested than being too uncomfortable to sleep. I showered, dressed and found Joseph at the kitchen table reading a lawnmower manual.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
“Care for some bacon and eggs? Cereal?”
“I’ll have some cereal, thanks,” I said getting out the milk and preparing my breakfast.
“There’s coffee there, too. Oh, I forgot to tell you- Sarah and my mom are coming by today.”
“Oh, yeah? Good!” I said, my voice cracking slightly with the forced enthusiasm.
Sarah-Joseph’s sister-and I shared an awkward experience in college. One night, after meeting her for the first time at a party, we went back to my room. Sarah was 18, very drunk, and barely able to stand up. I found myself at 21 pretending to be drunker than I really was. I wondered if she would remember any of it. It was not rape, but I unquestionably took shameful advantage of her. We fell asleep afterwards, and when I woke in the early morning hours, hearing her crying quietly, I pretended to be asleep. I feigned sleep until, after a couple hours, she rose silently and left.
We avoided each other after that, never acknowledging each other in passing, until I became friends with her brother, Joseph, and then we carried on a superficial acquaintance. Sarah and I never spoke of having met before Joseph introduced us.
“Yeah,” Joseph said, “They’re on their way back from vacation in the mountains.”
“Oh. Yeah, I haven’t seen them in- years. When are they coming?” If they don’t work, I thought, how could they have a vacation? A vacation from what?
“This afternoon, I guess.”

Joseph’s sister and their mother, Rebecca Henry, arrived late that afternoon. I questioned the timing of the visit, and wondered if they speculated about my presence as well.
Both Sarah and Rebecca appeared roughly as I remembered them, with the addition of a few pounds. Sarah still appeared fairly athletic, her white sundress clinging to a frame more voluptuous than past years. Rebecca appeared younger than her age, which I knew to be in the early 50s.
I felt as though I was returning from the world as a failure. I had nothing to boast of- or anything to speak of to show that I had progressed in any way from when I last saw them. I had nothing but lost time, and I felt ashamed. Joseph was haggard and worn beyond his years, but at least he had a home. Still, I consoled myself with the fact that the three of them were all living off trust funds and never had to struggle like I have struggled.
I surprised myself with the realization that I enjoyed seeing them all again.

We cooked together that night, and over dinner I expressed my gratitude towards Joseph allowing me to “stay until I got back on my feet.”
“It’s no problem,” Joseph said. “I have plenty of room and I can use some help in keeping the place together. By the way, since it’s getting late, why don’t you two stay over? It’s too late to drive home,” he said, looking at Rebecca and Sarah.
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“What do you think?” Rebecca looked at Sarah.
“Sure. I don’t feel like driving anymore tonight,” Sarah said.
“We can set up the other spare room for you two,” Joseph said. I thought about offering to sleep on the couch so that one of them could have my room. I didn’t make the offer out of a fear that Sarah would misconstrue the gesture as a hint of some sort.
“Super!” Rebecca said, quaffing rather than sipping her wine.
“Yeah, you still have a few hours of driving left,” I said. I wanted to sound neither overly pleased nor rude. When the women stared at me, I felt trapped. Did Sarah ever tell her mother about us? Did she think I would try to fuck her tonight? I began cultivating, carefully, an air of nonchalance. “How many rooms are there in this house, by the way?” I asked Joseph.
“Six bedrooms,” he said. “I wasn’t really sure about moving in here. I probably don’t really need this much space. I just got a good deal on it.”
“And you like the quiet,” said Rebecca.
“Yeah. Yeah, anymore I do. I spent enough time living in the city. I like not having to worry about a parking spot or neighbors blaring bass at three in the morning.”
“Well, I don’t know if I could do it,” Sarah said, “I mean…no offense, it’s beautiful out here. I just couldn’t live by myself, this far away from everything.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“It might be lonely for some people,” Rebecca said, her face flushed with wine. She looked over at me when she said this, and I did not care for the way that she stared into my eyes. Her husband died about a year ago.
“Yeah,” Sarah said, “I need to be around people. I don’t know why really, it’s just- I don’t know.”
“It really doesn’t bother me,” Joseph said. “I’m not that far from civilization. It’s just more of a drive to get anywhere. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything out here. People…I don’t know. A lot of times people live very close to each other and yet, they have a great distance to them.”
“What do you mean?” Rebecca asked, pouring herself more wine.
“Well- how well do you know your own neighbors? How long did the Stoudt’s live next door to us? Did we ever have them over? Even once?”
“Nope,” Sarah answered.
“How about the Fern’s? The Wohlner’s? We never really interacted with them, so, you know, even though they were close in physical proximity, they lacked-“
“Emotional closeness?” Rebecca said. A chill ran down my spine as a foot slid along my calf. Physical proximity ruled out anyone but Mrs. Henry.
“Well, yeah,” Joseph said. “I mean, it didn’t really matter if they lived 100 yards away or 100 miles away. They still didn’t really impact our lives either way.”
“But what about the neighborhood kids? You wouldn’t have had anyone to grow up with,” she countered. I was moving my leg back as far as I could under the table, trying to avoid a foot that I knew lurked in wait.
“Well, it’s different if you have kids. I don’t have kids so it’s not an issue.”
“Okay, but,” Sarah chimed in, “to me, it’s important just that other people are around. That I can drive home and see that other people are around. You know, so if something happened, people might be around to help.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “most social psychology experiments show that the more people are around, the less people are willing to get involved. Everyone assumes that somebody else will help out. The problem is if there is no somebody.”
“So…if a woman has too much to drink at a party,” Rebecca said, “she is safer in a small, intimate gathering than in a large anonymous one.”
I felt my stomach drop. I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know if Sarah had told her, or if she was flirting with me, or if it was just casual conversation. Since I had no response for the first two options, I treated it as though it was the third possibility.
“Right,” I said. “At a big party, people may feel anonymous. They can lose themselves in the crowd. It’s often when you see- a person’s true character often comes out in a crowd. A lot of people believe in all of this mob mentality argument. That people get swept along. I think that’s crap. I think that being in a crowd lets your true nature come out. Sometimes we don’t even know ourselves until we see what we’re capable of. And sometimes we might not like what we see.” It sounded corny to me after I said it, but maybe I was trying to apologize. I regretted saying it, and was afraid to look at Sarah.
I was afraid to look at Sarah, but I also needed to look away from Rebecca, whose staring was, at this point, becoming definitely uncomfortable. Sarah and Joseph looked down at their glasses.
I needed an exit plan.
“So…,” Rebecca said, “In the end we need other people. We need them to reflect back upon us our true natures.”
“Sure,” Joseph said, “If that’s what you want to see.”
“Well, why wouldn’t you want that?” Sarah asked.
“Because,” he answered, “it’s not always pretty. Like Keith said, you might not like what you see. We like to see ourselves a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that we are what we want to be. You know what I mean?”
“I guess,” Sarah answered. “So are you hiding from your own reflection?”
“Me?” Joseph said, half of a smile curling his lip, “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t like being the mirror for someone else. Are you okay, Keith?”
I did not feel okay. The questing foot had returned, and while Mrs. Henry looked young for her age, she only looked young for her age.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just really tired. I think I might turn in early tonight,” I stretched my arms, affecting fatigue. “You two will be around tomorrow morning, right?” I asked as an afterthought, not knowing when I would actually see them again.
“Sure,” Sarah said. “We’re not leaving until- do you want to stay until around twelve, Mom?”
“Um…yeah, alright,” Rebecca slurred, still staring at me.
“Okay, well, goodnight everyone!”

I heard crying when I woke up, and I thought that it was coming from a TV in my room. I thought for a moment and realized that there wasn’t a TV in the room, nor was the crying coming from inside the room. It was still dark. No hint of dawn tinted the night outside the window.
The crying seemed to come from another room. Was it Sarah, crying again? Did she always cry? It definitely sounded female. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to involve myself with the Henry family’s inner conflicts. It was probably none of my business.
Footsteps thudded down the hallway. I heard the voices, muffled by distance, of the family talking, arguing perhaps. I heard sobbing. It sounded like something more than just a drunken family argument. If something happened, I couldn’t just say that I didn’t hear it.
I rose, slowly, pulling on shorts and shirt. Opening the door cautiously, I peered down the hallway. Rebecca stood in the doorway at the end of the hall, dressed in a nightgown. Facing her stood Joseph. They both glanced at me, but ignored me.
“What are you talking about?!” he said.
“Look at the window!” Rebecca hissed. They both stepped into the room. I still heard Sarah weeping. The air smelled thick and heavy, the summer heat bringing out that baked attic smell peculiar to old houses. They left me standing alone in the hallway.
I walked towards the room. The fact that they didn’t seem to care what I noticed alarmed me.
“Is, uh, everything, okay?” I asked, walking towards the room. I didn’t want to walk in, but I realized this might be an emergency.
Sarah sat in a corner of the room, wrapped in a sheet, though she wore pajamas underneath the cover. Her mother kneeled beside her on the floor, holding her hand as Sarah cried, her face buried in the fabric. Joseph was opening the window. I didn’t know why it was closed in this heat.
“What…happened?” I asked. “Do you need me to get help?” I felt stupid for asking, but I didn’t know what was going on. It was like seeing the aftermath of a car accident without the blood and broken glass.
“There was- some kind of animal got into the room,” Joseph said. I now saw that, with the window open, he inspected a ragged hole in the screen, about a foot in diameter.
“Is it still in here?” I asked.
“Uh…I don’t think so, but maybe we ought to check around,” he said.
“It isn’t in here anymore,” Rebecca hissed. “I saw it go out the window. And then I shut the window behind it.”
“What-kind of animal was it?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” Rebecca yelled at me, then turned back to comforting Sarah. I looked at Joseph, hoping to gesture towards the hallway where we could talk, but he avoided my gaze, inspecting the torn screen.
“Well- is she hurt? Did she get bitten?” I half-whispered. No one answered me. I stood in the room for several minutes, not sure what to do. Sarah continued to cry. Her mother continued to comfort her. Joseph continued to stare at the screen as if he was deciphering the Rosetta stone. I turned and went back to my room.
Back in my room, I closed all of the windows but found the suffocating air unbearable. Nobody seemed to have been hurt, so I attributed the episode to the women being unused to animals that live in more rural areas. Maybe it was a raccoon or something that tore its way in, was frightened by the women, and left again. I just couldn’t imagine anyone getting that upset about a raccoon or opossum, so I expected to hear them laughing about it in the morning. I felt irritated that no one would explain what happened, however, and determined to find out the next day.
I heard more weeping, more yelling, and doors being slammed during the night. Having already offered them assistance, and having been ignored, I stayed in my room. Eventually, I fell asleep, listening to the drone of the fan, sweating into the sheets.

As the day before, the sticky air woke me up. It looked hazy and overcast through the window. I had a slight headache and a bad mood as I rose and walked to the bathroom. I could still hear Sarah crying as I urinated, and it deeply annoyed me.
I walked down to the living room, unpleasantly surprised to see Rebecca sitting on the couch. She wore a black dress and two dark circles of exhaustion under her eyes. Her gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She sat with her hands underneath her legs.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Hm. Did you see it?”
“See what? The, uh, animal?”
“Is that what it was?”
“It wasn’t an animal?”
“I guess you didn’t see it.”
“No. No, I didn’t see it. What was it?”
“Didn’t you hear all the screaming?”
“Yes, I did. I came down to your room, and no one would tell me what was going on.”
“It came back through the window later.”
“Okay, what was it?”
“Well, tell me Keith. What do you think would do this?” Rebecca lifted her hands from underneath her dress. It took a moment for my eyes to focus. What I saw looked at first like two pieces of raw, red meat. They looked too swollen to see the details of her hands. I stepped closer, a swampy feeling oozing through my belly. I couldn’t see her fingers, but when I looked more closely, I saw her fingernails, set in blocks of swollen flesh. They appeared burned, swollen together, until I realized that the skin was fused together, her fingers no longer separate.
“Did- are you going to the hospital?” I asked.
She shook her head slowly, tears welling up in her eyes.
“I can give you a ride,” I offered.
“No.”
“You need to go to the hospital. What happened?”
“I don’t know what it was,” she said, choking back tears. “We were asleep, and then Sarah woke me up. She was thrashing around in the bed, trying to get something off of her. I pulled the covers back, and it was- it was between her legs, attacking her.”
“What? What was it?”
Rebecca stared at the floor for a long moment, then looked up at me.
“I…don’t know! It looked like-like a spider-“ she tried to describe the shape with her hands, and became frustrated in trying to do so with her new deformities. “But it-it also looked like a lizard, but with black fur, like a- a rat, maybe…I don’t know how to describe it. ”
“How did it do- how did it hurt you?” I asked.
“It didn’t happen just then. I picked up a shoe and hit at it, but that didn’t work, so I took a pair of pants and sort of- wrapped them around my hands-” She turned his hands to demonstrate. Up to this point, I had only seen the backs of her hands. As she turned what should have been her palms outward, I gagged at what I saw. Where each palm used to be, a wet, pink tube of flesh now protruded from a sheath-like growth. The only thing that I could compare them to would be erect dog penises. She must have noticed my disgust, because she stopped talking, looked at me wide-eyed, and began bawling. Her crying intermingled with that of Sarah upstairs. Rebecca went to put her face in her hands and then recoiled at the touch of the pink flesh appendages. I felt my face grow hot with fear and confusion.
“Rebecca. Rebecca. Where is Joseph? Do you know where Joseph is?” I asked.
Rebecca did not answer. She only shook her head and sobbed.
I walked around the house, calling Joseph’s name. I picked up the phone with the intention of calling an ambulance. My ears began to ring, an internal stimulus due to the fact that I absolutely could not remember what to dial. I slammed the phone down and ran outside.
I found Joseph sitting with his back against the huge oak tree behind the house. Stubble grew on his face, his hair and clothing disheveled. He held a half-empty fifth of cheap vodka in his hand. He stared up at the sky.
“Joseph…what’s going on? Your mom’s hands are…hurt. We need to take her to the hospital.”
“What?” he asked, turning to face me.
“We need to get your mom to the hospital. Joseph.”
“Mm-hm. You think you can get her there?” His voice was hoarse, almost whispered.
“Yeah. Yeah, I can get her there. Why don’t you come along?”
“I have to stay here.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? How’s Sarah?”
“Not too good.”
“Alright, Joe, you stay here and drink your fucking vodka! I’ll get them to the hospital.” I walked away- clenching my teeth while Joseph mumbled something behind me.
Back in the living room, Rebecca had stopped crying and now stared listlessly at the floor. I walked upstairs to Sarah’s room and pounded on the door.
“Sarah?” It was quiet inside. “Sarah?” I knocked again, and then opened the door. Sarah lay on the bed in a fetal position. The window was broken, glass scattered across the hardwood floor. Blood lay dried on the floor, seemingly from where somebody had cut their feet on the glass and walked around the room. Sarah stared at me blankly, still dressed in her torn pajamas. “Sarah?” She did not respond, only staring at me. A box fan lay face down on the floor. A wooden chair rested upside down on the windowsill. It appeared as though the chair hadn’t broken the window, but had been placed there as a sort of barrier. “Sarah. What happened?” She ignored my question. I sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Look. You and your mother need to go to the hospital. I can take you. Come on, Sarah.” I reached out to touch her hand. She shrieked and recoiled from me, falling off the edge of the bed onto the floor.
I walked out of the room. I walked downstairs, past Rebecca, out the back door, past Joseph, and out to the old carriage house now serving as a garage. I backed my car out, turned around and headed down the driveway. I didn’t know how to get to the hospital, but I still had three-quarters of a tank of gas.
Pulling out onto the road, I reasoned that maybe I would just find a payphone and dial…dial what? I couldn’t think of what I would dial. I slowed the car down, trying to think, trying to remember how to use a phone to call an ambulance. Why couldn’t I remember? I sped up, deciding that I would stop at the nearest business and tell them and they could call an ambulance. Could I remember the address?
I came to a fork in the road and turned, not knowing which way I had arrived. I took several more turns at random, until I realized that I was completely lost. I drove erratically, my palms sweating, trying to remember, trying to find something familiar.
I saw a house in the distance. Drawing closer, I saw the white buildings of the Henry farm. I had come full circle. I pulled into the driveway and stopped the car in front of the carriage house.
I sat in the car and stared at the house for a long time before getting out.
Joseph still sat underneath the oak tree. When I found him this time, I tried to discern his expression. It was neither mocking nor understanding, but perhaps a confused resignation.
“You got lost, didn’t you?” he said.
“Yeah. How do I get out of here? You can write the directions down for me.”
“Naah,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “It wouldn’t do any good. What happened when you tried to dial the phone?”
“I- I don’t know. I couldn’t remember, uh, what emergency number to dial. What’s the number?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I could tell you. You wouldn’t remember it. I could write it down. You won’t be able to read it.”
“Joseph, what the fuck are you talking about? If you know the fucking number, then call it!”
“Tried it. I can only remember because I’ve given up on trying.”
“What?”
“I mean,” he said, resting his bottle on the ground between his legs, “That as soon as I try to do something, to get help, I can’t remember what to do. Just like you trying to find your way out, or when you tried to dial-“ he said something unintelligible. “It doesn’t work- we can’t think when we try.”
I stared at him, and he looked away from me staring up at the sky. “Looks like rain,” he said, a massive gray cloud creeping overhead.
“How are Sarah and Rebecca?” I asked walking toward the house.
“I don’t know.”

How long had I driven around? I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I left. I found Rebecca on the couch, mucous running down her face, laying on her back.
“Please. Hold me,” she whispered, extending her arms towards me. The pink palm-appendages fluttered slightly as she did so. I felt my stomach spasm. Her entire skin looked pink and covered with a clear slime, soaking her dress and leaving the couch underneath her wet.
“How’s…how’s Sarah doing…Mrs. Henry?” I managed to gasp.
“I want to go home!” she mewled through rubbery lips, slobbering down her chin.
“Okay, Mrs. Henry. Okay, we’ll get you home,” I said, backing away from her toward the stairs. I turned and walked up the stairs briskly, slowing as I receded from her line of sight.
The door to Sarah’s room was shut, but not locked. I knocked, feeling foolish for doing so. No one answered, so I walked into the room. Sarah sat on the bed, her back against the headboard, her legs stretched out before her. Sweat plastered her hair across her forehead. Her pajama shorts hung in tatters over her skin, but as she stared blankly at me, she didn’t move to cover herself.
“Sarah. How are you doing?” I asked. My voice seemed very loud in the room. Her expression did not change. The room smelled of stale sweat. The box fan continued to run, the only movement in the room. I walked over, picked it up, and turned it so that it blew on Sarah. A ripple of expression crossed her face.
“How’s my mom?” she asked.
“Your mom? She’s fine.” I said.
“No. Really. How’s my mom doing?”
“She’ll be okay.”
“How do you know that?”
“We’re going to get her to the hospital.”
“We are?!” she sat up, animation finally coming to her face. “When? I wanted to take her, but I- I couldn’t remember how, for some reason.” She sprung to her feet, and began going through her suitcase, exposing her ass, but not caring as she pulled out shorts and t-shirt.
I stepped out into the hallway. She joined me, once she was changed. She wore clean clothing, but looked very ill, sweat beading on her pale, clammy skin. I reached out and touched her forehead, checking for fever, but she did not feel hot. We walked downstairs.
Sarah let out a howl of pain when she saw her mother. Sarah ran forward to embrace her. She hugged her mother, but recoiled as the pink tubes in Rebecca’s palms poked across her face. Sarah fell backwards and over the coffee table. She leapt to her feet and darted to the far side of the room. Rebecca made blubbering noises, her face puffy and red and shiny with moisture. Her eyes looked swollen shut.
“We should…call an ambulance,” Sarah whispered.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Can you call?”
“What’s the number?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Can you look it up? Call information?”
“I don’t know how…”
I went to the phone, but couldn’t imagine how to use it. I walked back to the living room.
We both stared at the floor for a long time while Rebecca made retching sounds from the couch.
“We need to get her to the hospital,” Sarah said, breaking the silence.
“How?”
“What do you mean, how? You have a car. I mean I do, too.”
“Yeah, but…it’s like the phone. When you try, you just get lost-“
Sarah screamed, her fists clenched, her eyes pressed shut.
“We’re fucking taking her to the hospital. No matter how long it takes us-“ she spoke with her teeth clenched, “no matter how lost we get. We’re fucking taking her to the hospital.”

It was raining by the time we got Rebecca out of the house. Joseph sat under the oak tree the whole time, oblivious to the rain, oblivious to our requests for help.
Sarah and I had rolled Rebecca onto a blanket. Despite Sarah’s requests that I pick up her mother, I was loath to touch her oozing flesh. Rebecca had more of the pink tubes beginning to bud on what passed for her hands and feet.
Sarah and I used the blanket to drag Rebecca out to the car. Getting her into the car proved more difficult, and Sarah wept when I excused myself to get rubber work gloves before I handled her mother.
Rebecca lay, swollen and moaning, in the back seat of the car as we drove. I let Sarah pick the turns, since I had little luck when I tried. We became lost, just as I had before. The car reeked as Rebecca lost control of her bodily functions, and I listened to her retching commingled with Sarah’s hysterical crying. The windows fogged with the moisture and heat inside of the car. I rolled down my window despite the pouring rain. A piercing headache stabbed into my temple. I considered stopping the car, getting out, and walking- but soon we saw a cabin, mold grown, but somewhat intact. An old pick-up truck rusted in the front yard. I pulled into the remnants of the small gravel driveway.
It wasn’t until Sarah was knocking on, and then opening, the door that I recognized the cabin. It was the same cabin that I glimpsed on Joseph’s television screen the other night.
I cried out for Sarah to stop, but she was already slipping through the door. I froze, my stomach churning at the thought of going inside with her. When I heard her make a yelping sound from inside, when she began to wail, I walked quickly to the trunk of my car and found my crowbar and a flashlight.
Walking up to the cabin, I used the crowbar to push the door open while I shined the light inside the front room. Amidst the overturned rotting furniture, the flashlight beam made the pink mass of flesh on top of Sarah glisten. I had the impression of a body, perhaps the size of a morbidly obese person, covered with pulpy growths and fleshy tubes which sprouted seemingly at random all over its form, writhing and oozing discharge. I saw Sarah underneath the slimy hulk, her limbs flailing, trying to scream despite the tubes probing at and into her mouth.
I hooked the bent end of the crowbar in the vague crevice of what I guessed to be the neck of Sarah’s assailant. I tried to use the crowbar to drag the thing off of her, but the metal simply tore free of the soft flesh.
Swinging the tool down, I began slashing at the creatures back. It shifted its weight around as I did so- enough that Sarah was able to slide out from under it. Her shorts and panties were around her ankles, and she kicked these free before running out of the house.
I swung at her assailant a few times before turning and running out the door, slamming the cabin door shut behind me. I saw Sarah at the car with the rear door open.
“Shut the fucking door and get in the car!” I screamed at her, not understanding what she was doing. I realized then that she was dragging Rebecca out of the car, sliding her out onto the ground. Rebecca flopped to the ground and rolled with a subdued bellowing sound. Sarah jumped into the front passenger side and screamed as she pointed behind me.
I didn’t turn around, but sprinted towards the car as Sarah slid over to the wheel and started the engine.
I dove into the passenger seat as Sarah stomped on the gas. Something pushed the car door shut behind me, and I turned to see the pink fleshy mass sliding along the side of the car as we pulled away from it. I watched the nauseatingly similar shapes of Rebecca and the creature diminish as we accelerated away from the cabin.

We continued to drive around the dirt and gravel roads in silence, lost, not finding any other houses. Nor would we have been inclined to stop at any of them. Neither of us spoke when we found ourselves, at dusk, back at the Henry farm. If Sarah was surprised, she showed no emotion.
We pulled into the old carriage house and, as Sarah parked the car, I noticed how low the fuel gauge read. I wondered how much gas was in Sarah’s car, but then realized that it didn’t matter. We got out of the car and walked toward the house. Sarah’s face was blank, her eyes hollow. She had lost a sneaker back at the cabin, and she now took the other one off, discarding it on the driveway. She was either oblivious or uncaring of the fact that she wore nothing but her socks and a filthy t-shirt. Dirt and slime smeared her exposed skin.
There was a shape underneath the oak tree, silhouetted against the gray sky. I believe that I wept when I realized that it was Joseph, hanging from a noose fashioned from strong, hemp rope. A tall stepladder lay kicked over on the grass below him. I found rain-soaked photographs of his sister, his mother, and his father, dropped on the ground underneath him.
Sarah just stared for a long time before she came back inside and went into her bedroom.

It’s been a week since I first came here, I think. I’ve built a lattice over my bedroom window for the times when I can sleep. The bellowing, and the sounds of wet flesh slapping against Sarah’s door- which I have nailed shut and barricaded- usually keeps me awake. I dread walking past her room, as she seems to sense my presence.
I use the front door when I go outside, because if I use the back door I have to walk past the thing that used to be my friend, writhing at the end of the stout rope underneath the oak tree.
I still can’t figure out how to use the phone, but I listen to the radio and sometimes, I think I can make out what the voice is screaming about.

THE END