Chapter Forty-Three
I powered up my phone for the first time in what felt like forever (but in all likelihood was probably just a couple of days). Jerry was kind enough to let me use the car’s phone charger. He filled the drive with lots of questions, most of which I didn’t have valid answers to. Like, “What kind of god is Brother Riley?” “Who is Roger and what’s his angle?” “What happens to the original bodies when people are replaced?” “Do foreskins grow back?”
I had to ask for some elaboration on that last one.
“Well, think about it. If the mimics grow back severed body parts, does that mean they automatically grow back everything? Like, would you grow back your leg and pinky? This could be a great way to check and see if someone is secretly replaced. Just ask for a picture of their penis from before, then compare it to now. If they regrew a foreskin, you know they’re a monster!”
“I hate how much sense that makes.”
“Or,” he added, “you could just check and see if they have belly buttons. Scars probably would go away as part of the regeneration process. Right? And a belly button is nothing but a fancy scar.”
I thought back to the last Benjamin I killed—the one with the scar under his eye, and hoped Jerry’s new theory was wrong.
As we pulled into the parking lot, I took a deep breath and asked, “You ready to do this?”
“Oh, actually, I have to go get some gas.”
“You what?!”
“Trust me. I know you, and I know Rosa. This needs to be a one-on-one kind of conversation. I’ll be nearby if you need me. Oh, and if you get the chance, try and seduce her.”
I sighed. “Why would I do that?”
“So you can see if she has a belly button. Duh!”
***
I hadn’t figured out exactly what I was going to say yet.
This, of course, was not the most urgent of my concerns. After all, there was probably a good number of monsters, demons, and serial killers who would be very curious to know why I had chosen now to finally leave my post at the gas station.
Interestingly, the fact that my heart was about to pound its way out of my chest had nothing to do with any of those things trying to kill me. It had everything to do with me figuring out what I was going to say. But what could I say that would make any sense? The truth? Not a great idea.
I took a breath and tried to center myself. Here I was, standing on the second floor of Rosa’s apartment complex, staring at her door and trying to work up the nerve to reach out and knock. But I didn’t want to do that until I knew what the hell I was going to say.
I could have stayed outside her door all day, but I was acutely aware that the more time I spent anywhere outside of the gas station, the greater my chances of another run-in with one of those things. I’d have to do this the hard way and improvise the conversation once Rosa let me inside where it was safe… that is, if she let me inside.
I rang her doorbell, knocked with my free hand, then waited. All around me were signs of life, which meant ever-present danger. A bird landed on the railing nearby and gave me a suspicious look, and I began to wonder if those things were capable of mimicking animals.
Wait a second. “Free hand”?!
I suddenly remembered that I was still holding the baseball bat turned murder weapon currently stained with the dried blood of several of my victims.
Crap! I can’t let her open the door and see me holding this!
I flung it to the side just in time. As the door cracked open, I formed an innocent smile… which disappeared about a second later.
“Can I help you?” asked the man standing on the other side of Rosa’s door. He was a little taller than me, about my age, dark eyes locked in untrusting-glare mode, and wearing a UFC t-shirt and red boxers. He smelled like expensive cologne and cheap marijuana, and I couldn’t help but feel like I’d discarded my weapon a little prematurely.
“Hi, I’m looking for my friend Rosa,” is what I meant to say right then... But for some reason, my brain misfired again and all I could get out was, “Who the fuck are you?!”
The guy jerked open the door and took a big step outside, forcing me to step back. With his chest thrust forward, he looked down at me and sneered, “You best check yourself, motherfucker. I’ll fuck you up.”
He wasn’t exactly a big guy. Bigger than me, sure. Faster than me, probably. Stronger than me, almost definitely. But not nearly as much of a threat as he was presenting. I mean, he was no Benjamin, and I’d already killed that guy tons of times. Still, though, I didn’t come here looking for a fight.
“Sorry!” I yelled, holding up my hands and shrinking away, trying to look as pathetic and nonthreatening as possible. “I didn’t mean anything. I’ve got Tourette’s real bad.”
“Oh,” the guy responded, softening his eyes and backing down. Apparently, that was all it took to defuse the situation. “Sorry, my dude. I didn’t realize.” He laughed.
“Hey, no worries. I didn’t—marbles!—mean to scare you. I’m actually here looking for my friend, Rosa. Is she around?”
“You from the restaurant?”
“Yep. The restaurant.” I’m still not a great liar, but this guy wasn’t exactly a professional interrogator. “I needed to ask her some restaurant-related things. You know, for work.”
The guy turned and yelled inside, “Hey Rosa!”
An annoyed voice came back from the end of the hallway, “What!?”
“You got a visitor!”
He walked inside, and I followed closely behind. As I closed the door for him, I took note of the pink canister of pepper spray hanging from the key holder on the wall.
Rosa yelled again from her bedroom, “What’d you say?”
The guy hopped over the back of the oversized sofa and fell into a well-worn spot on the cushion next to a bowl of chips and a 2-liter of off-brand green soda. He picked up an Xbox remote and headset. He put it on, and yelled one more time before turning all of his attention to the first-person shooter on the big screen, “I said you’ve got a visitor!”
Rosa’s door opened, and she stepped out of her room wearing her work uniform and a pair of thick glasses. “Well, who is it?” She saw me, then froze.
I waved and said, “Hey.” Her eyes looked past me, to the can of pepper spray on the wall. Right. That makes sense. I showed her my empty hands and asked, “Is it okay if we talk for a second?”
I fully expected her to dart back inside her room and lock me out, but instead, she walked slowly up the hallway towards me, eyes locked with mine until we were in the same room together. Then she turned to the couch and screamed, “Lee! What did I tell you about letting people in here?!”
“Calm down!” the guy (Lee, apparently) bellowed back. “He said he’s from your work.”
“Anyone can say that!”
“Hey, I’m not your bouncer. I’m not about to check his driver’s license! Besides, the game’s about to start.”
She sighed, then looked back to me. Her voice cracked as she asked, “What do you want?”
“I... well, it’s kinda awkward, but... I need to talk to you.”
She was very direct with her next question. “Are you going to try and kill me?”
“No, of course not!” I answered, hoping that was the truth.
Rosa looked at the ground for a moment. When she raised her eyes to mine, I could see that she was holding back tears. “Lee,” she said, “can you give us a second alone, please?”
He didn’t answer. He was engrossed in his video game, completely oblivious to either of us. She shook her head.
“I have to be at work in half an hour. If I don’t show up, people are going to start looking for me, and they’ll suspect you first.”
“That’s fair.”
“Do you want some coffee or something?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“You look awful.”
“I feel awful.”
“Good.”
Ouch.
“Do you mind if I sit?” I asked. “I haven’t climbed stairs in a while, and I’m a bit out of practice with the whole prolonged-standing thing.”
She gestured to the table nearby. The “dining room” shared an open space with the kitchen and living room, so I didn’t have far to go. Her place was small, to put it kindly—one of those economic efficiency apartments, where everything was crammed together and the walls were paper-thin.
I pulled out a chair and took my seat. Rosa immediately darted past me and grabbed the canister of pepper spray. I closed my eyes tightly and braced for the eye burn, but after a few seconds I heard the sound of the chair across from me scratching against the ground as she pulled it out. I opened one eye to see her sitting there with the spray in hand. Presumably, her weaponry was just a precautionary measure, and I got the message loud and clear. No funny stuff.
“Okay,” she started, “You wanted to talk. Go ahead and talk.”
I took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.
***
To her credit, Rosa didn’t interrupt or ask any questions or anything the whole time I was talking. It seemed quite out of character for her. To be fair, I didn’t tell her everything. I could get her the whole story eventually, but if I unleashed the entire thing right here and now, it might be too much. I did not mention the amateur graveyard behind the gas station. Nor did I mention any of the other mimics I’d eliminated since Calista. And I sure as hell didn’t mention the head in the box.
She waited patiently to make sure I was done talking before forming a response. “So, let me see if I follow. You have a mental disorder that causes you to hallucinate things.”
“That was your takeaway from all of this?”
“Let me finish. You hallucinate things. Right? And also—a pure coincidence—aliens or whatever are taking over the people in this town and turning them into monsters and the only thing they seem to want is your shitty little gas station?”
“Well, that’s a very generous use of ‘or whatever.’ But basically, yeah, I guess you have the gist of it.”
“And you knew Calista was a monster because…?”
“She told me so.”
“She told you… when? When nobody else was around but you, the guy with a long and well-documented history of hallucinations?”
“Well, these things are pretty clever.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Can you prove it?”
“Huh?”
“Where’s the proof, Jack? If you’re going to take things this far, surely you have a mountain of irrefutable evidence to back up your actions. Right? I mean, I had jury duty last year and we spent two weeks in deliberation over whether or not a guy robbed a bank, and we actually got to watch a video of him doing it. You were so certain that there’s a mass conspiracy out to get you that you went straight into execution mode. I think I’m going to need a little more to go on than just your word. But surely, if you’ve been fighting this battle for this long, you must be up to your eyeballs in evidence, right? Or is it just another bonkers coincidence that none of these monsters have ever shown up on a security camera?”
That was an excellent point. I couldn’t just ask her to just take a leap of faith this huge. If I wanted her to believe what I was saying, I’d need to put up the goods. But what could I show her?
Well, there are those bodies buried out back. No. That is the very definition of “bad idea.” But what else was there? In all my years of living in this town and working at that stupid gas station, is it really possible that I’ve never once gathered a single piece of evidence I could show her to prove that the crazy shit here is really real?
I was just starting to think that maybe Rosa had the right idea. Maybe I was crazy, and maybe I deserved to be locked up. Maybe I was a danger to myself and everyone around me. But then I remembered one thing.
“The Russian radio!” I exclaimed. Rosa gripped her pepper spray a little tighter. I elaborated, “That’s my proof right there! The Russian radio couldn’t be something I hallucinated because we got it on tape! I can play it for you. It’s got the names of people in town that were replaced and everything. How would that play into my complex mental delusion and still be real audio on tape?”
“I don’t know; maybe it’s just some kind of elaborate hoax. This is a small town, you know. People here get bored. I one time watched a group of kids hit a tree with a golf club for half an hour. I don’t even know what’s more pathetic: them for doing it, or me for watching.”
“It mentions us all by name.”
“It also said I was ‘replaced,’ remember?” I really should have left that part out. “If you believe what the radio says, then doesn’t that mean you’d want to kill me before I hulk out?”
“No… No, of course not. Look, I know it sounds like—”
“Oh crap!” she interrupted. “What time is it? Crap! I’m going to be late again. Ugh, I have to go call and let them know I’m on my way.”
With that, she jumped up from her spot and ran down the hall into her bedroom.
I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going super great, but it certainly could have been much worse. At least she was listening to me. And I didn’t even have to resort to plan B yet. I reached into the inside pocket of my hoodie and wrapped my hand around the gun, just to make sure it was still there.
Yep. I’m still all set in case things go bad.
“You know, Jack,” said the guy on the couch, “I couldn’t help but overhear.”
I yanked my hand out of my pocket. “Oh! Hey. Lee, right? Sorry, I didn’t know you were listening. Actually, I totally forgot you were even there.”
He was on the other side of the couch, facing the television. The only thing I could see from where I was seated at the table was the back of his head, which he slowly started to turn around—very slowly—as he spoke. “I thought it was a really good story. Really entertaining to hear it all laid out like that.” At this point, I could see the side of his head, and the growing grin on his face. But somehow—this was really starting to creep me out—his head kept turning. “I’ve got to say, I read a bunch of comic books when I was a kid and that’s what this all reminds me of. Some of those comics. You know, the invasion stories. Where at the end, there’s a big, bloody battle and everyone gets replaced anyway. I always liked those stories, especially when the bad guy wins.” By now, his head had turned an unnatural amount. Nearly twisted an entire 180 degrees. His eyes met mine.
“Okay.”
“May I make a suggestion?” he asked.
I wanted to scream at him “How is your head twisted all the way around like that!?” But I didn’t want to be rude in case it was some kind of medical condition, so I acted like it wasn’t the freakiest thing I’d seen all day and said, “Sure, I’m open to suggestions.”
His eyebrows went high as he declared, “I think you should probably kill yourself.”
With that, he started turning his head back around to face the television…
Except…he wasn’t turning his head in the opposite direction.
He was twisting his head the same way, all the way around, a full 360 degrees, to the sound of bones crunching underneath the stretched wrinkles of neck skin tearing themselves into bloody ribbons until once again all I could see was the back of his head. He stared at the television screen and continued to play his game, as if nothing had happened.
A few seconds passed, and then Lee started to slide down into the couch, disappearing from my view altogether.
Well that’s not good.
I pulled the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at the floor. “Hey, Lee?”
No response.
I took a few deep breaths, stood up, and walked into the living room, circling the couch as carefully as I possibly could.
But he wasn’t there anymore. Now, there was nothing but an empty spot next to the bowl of chips. It was like he had vanished into thin air. I looked at the television screen to see that, wherever he was, he was still playing his game. I watched through the eyes of his character as he darted around the map fast enough to induce seizures, popping off headshots left and right. With each kill, the leaderboard at the top of the screen blinked and updated the stats of the first-place player, someone named “CruzMissile.”
I walked backwards until I felt the wall behind me. Wherever he was, if he wanted to sneak up on me, he was going to have to break through the wall to do it. Once I remembered that this was a very real possibility, I started moving, sidestepping into the hallway, keeping the wall at my back and the gun in my hand until I reached Rosa’s bedroom.
I didn’t bother knocking. No time for that. I just opened the door and stepped inside. Her room was about how I imagined it. Small. Way too much pink. A twin-sized bed in one corner with a load of laundry piled on top. And Rosa, with her back to me as she looked out the window and spoke into her phone.
“...I’ll see you in a few. Okay. Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
She ended her call and turned around, giving me just enough time to pull my gun hand behind my back before she could see it, but that was not enough to stop her from jumping and screaming at the sight of me.
I stuffed the weapon into my waistband, then held up both hands and tried to calm her down, “Rosa! Wait! Don’t freak out!”
She screamed at the top of her lungs, “GET OUT OF MY BEDROOM YOU MANIAC!”
“I will! I want to! Trust me! But we both need to get out of here!”
“You first!”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t understand!”
“What?”
She reached into her pocket, but the look on her face told me that she couldn’t find what she was looking for. Then her eyes got wide and she looked at the dresser where she had set down her pepper spray. The dresser that was right by the door. Right next to me.
She closed her eyes, smacked herself on the forehead and muttered, “Stupid Rosa.”
I went ahead and took the pepper spray and stuffed it into my pocket. “Look, I know this looks bad, but I need to ask you about that guy out there. Lee.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m pretty sure he’s one of them. And I’m just now realizing that he was listening to me the whole time. And I’ve got a really bad sneaking suspicion that he’s probably about to kill us.”
She took a second to respond. “And why would you think that?”
I wanted to tell her about what I’d just witnessed in the living room. Lee twisting his own head around. The sound of bones cracking and tendons snapping still fresh in my mind. But even I could see that the optics here were bad. Once again, the monsters had shown off just for me, and if I told anyone else what had happened, I ran the risk of widening this credibility divide even further, and if I wanted Rosa to trust me, I needed to slow down with the bombshells.
“Oh. No reason.” Not surprisingly, she wasn’t buying it. She crossed her arms and glared as I continued, “But real quick, can you tell me if Lee has done or said anything weird or suspicious lately?”
“You’re one to talk about weird and suspicious! No, he’s just like any other shitty roommate. He smokes too much weed and spends all day playing video games and filling up the apartment with farts, but I can’t do anything about it because I don’t make enough to afford the rent on my own.” Her voice got softer and her eyes drifted to the side as she added, “Although…”
I waited for her to continue, but she seemed to be lost in memory.
“Although what?”
She turned her attention back to me. “It’s probably nothing.”
“What’s probably nothing?”
“Well, a couple months ago, he got sick. Like, really sick. Out of nowhere. One second, he’s fine, eating pizza and watching football. Then the next, he’s on all fours throwing up. Like, really throwing up. Like, firehose-pressure, all over the living room. And guess who had to clean it up? Only, the thing is, it looked like his throw up was all blood. Gallons of it. More blood than a human should probably have in them.”
Something about this sounded way too familiar.
“Did you call an ambulance?”
“You think if we could afford an ambulance, we’d be living here?”
“Good point.”
“I tried to take him to urgent care, but he wouldn’t let me. He just pushed me down and ran into his bedroom and locked me out. Ten minutes later, he walks back into the living room where I’m cleaning up his mess and announces he’s feeling much better. And it was like nothing ever happened. I didn’t know what to think. I just assumed he’d eaten a bunch of Tide pods and now that they’d worked their way out of his system, he was too embarrassed to admit it.”
“You didn’t follow up?”
“I wanted to! But Leland is even more secretive than you are. It’s not like he was going to say ‘Hey, I drank a bunch of spoiled blood an hour ago just to see what would happen.’ Besides, even if he did—”
“Wait.” I had to interrupt her. My mind had just latched onto something important. With a single word from Rosa, one of the bigger pieces to this puzzle finally fell into place.
Leland. His name was Leland.
Plus CruzMissile… Leland Cruz?
I’d heard his name so many times and never could understand why the Russian radio would mention him in such close proximity to the rest of us. It was because he was physically in such close proximity to the rest of us.
The radio was talking about the man living in Rosa’s apartment this whole time, trying to warn us, and I kept it to myself until it was too late to do anything about it.
“What is it?” she asked.
Before I had a chance to answer, the lights cut out.
***
“Does your window open?” I asked.
“Yeah, but we’re on the second story.”
“Open it.”
I turned around and reached for the lock on her door, but my hand went right through the spot where the knob should have been. The thought registered a moment too late. The bedroom door is wide open!
“Jack!”
Her voice was barely a squeak. When I looked back, my heart sank.
Leland was standing right behind her, his hands resting gently on both of her shoulders. He glared at me as he said in an even tone. “Is this guy bothering you, Rosa?”
“Um, actually,” fear had crept back into her voice, “is it okay if we all leave my room, please? I didn’t know anyone was going to see it, so I didn’t have time to clean. Plus I didn’t invite either of you in here, and I’m getting a little bit freaked out.”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Jack, why don’t you go first? We’ll be right behind you.”
Rosa was staring straight ahead at me, which meant that she couldn’t see the smattering of half-dried blood caked all around his neck and the collar of his shirt. Apparently, the wounds caused by going full Exorcist on me had already healed themselves, confirming what I already knew. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was turn my back on them.
I screamed, “Casper Van Dien!”
The still silence that followed only lasted a few seconds, but those seconds felt agonizingly long. That’s when I learned that no matter how crazy the situation is, no matter how dangerous or life-threatening the moment, it is always possible to embarrass yourself.
Leland chuckled softly and said, “Bless you.” As luck would have it, I had already established a cover story before ever coming into their apartment. He thought I had some exaggerated movie-world-version of Tourette’s Syndrome. It made sense that he wouldn’t suspect I was desperately trying to send Rosa a message.
A moment later, she shouted, “Oh!” Well, better late than never. “Oh, sorry! I get it now! Do it again!”
The confusion was evident in Leland’s voice. “What?”
“No, the moment’s passed,” I explained. “You missed it.”
She insisted, “No really! I’m ready now! Do it again!”
He repeated himself, a little more aggressively this time. “What?”
I yelled, “Casper Van Dien!” As soon as I got the words out, Rosa hit the floor. While Leland was still trying to figure out what was happening, I reached into my pocket, grabbed the pink canister of pepper spray, yanked it out, and hurled it as fast and hard as I could. It flew through the air and met its mark, smacking Leland right in the face.
He staggered back, put a hand over his eyes, and yelled, “OW! Fuck! Really, Jack?”
I was very proud of the throw for all of about half a second before I realized what I did wrong. But rather than waste precious time worrying about should-haves, I sprang into action. I reached out and grabbed Rosa by the arm, and in an instant we were flying out the doorway into the dark hall.
The living room was on the other end. Enough natural light from the front windows gave us a clear view of where we were running. Escape was in sight. We were more than halfway there when the world fell out from under me. My face hit the carpet, blood rushed to my head, and everything went dark again.
“Not so fast!” Lee’s voice was in front of me now. “That was a nice try. But we can’t let you leave.”
I tried to move. I kicked and thrashed and realized that I was upside down. Something had grabbed and pulled me back into the dark hallway, turned me around, and now it was dangling me in the air by my bad leg.
“Rosa!” I screamed desperately. “Run! Go without me, I’m right behind you!”
I pulled myself up and reached for the shuttle lock to detach my leg, but my hand pressed into the warm, wet, sticky tendrils covering my prosthetic, squirming, crawling, squeezing tightly around my thigh and wrapping circles further up my body towards much more tender real estate. Another tendril caught me by the wrists and started pulling me in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, my bottom half stayed locked in place.
I needed to do something before that thing ran out of slack and tore off my arms. In the dark, I could barely make out a small fixture protruding from the ceiling nearby. Without thinking, I used my free leg and gave it a wild kick.
Immediately, the fixture let off a loud HISSSSSS alongside icy cold torrents of pressurized water spewing out in every direction. I was completely soaked before I even hit the ground.
I coughed and spat and wiped the water from my eyes. Once I realized I was free, I tried to sit up. Only then did I feel the strangely delayed reaction. An incredible amount of pain reverberated all the way up my spine. The water must have startled the creature long enough for him to drop me onto the floor, where I landed right on top of the handgun that was tucked into the back of my pants.
Ohhh… That’s right. I still have a gun!
I rolled over onto my side, forcing the pain out of my mind long enough to retrieve the weapon. Maybe I had the upper hand this time. Maybe Leland was just as blind in the dark as I was. Maybe the water had distracted him. Maybe he was confused. Maybe he didn’t even know I was armed, and he wouldn’t see this coming.
That was a hell of a lot of maybe, but maybe was all I had, so I clung to the hope, closed my eyes, and listened for movement. But instead of the monster, I heard something else. Something that scared me far worse than any monster or demon could have.
It was Rosa’s voice.
“Jack! Where are you?”
She’d come back. And she was right next to me.
“What are you doing?!” I screamed.
“I can’t see anything!”
I reached out and felt her hand. She pulled me to my feet and we tried running again.
“I told you to run!”
“I know, but—”
She froze, then screamed, “Casper Van Dien!”
It was him. Leland. Standing in front of the front door, blocking our only safe exit. He was just a dark shadow in the room, but I could feel his smile on me.
This monster was different. He was faster than Aggie. Stronger than Benjamin. And his reach was game-breakingly overpowered. There was no way we were going to get past him.
“Bathroom!” I yelled, grabbing onto her arm and pulling her with me.
We fell into the small, dark deathtrap of a room. I slammed the door shut and locked it. Well, I thought to myself. That may have bought us an extra second or two.
We were now in complete pitch blackness. There were no windows in here. The bathroom was small, even by efficiency-apartment standards. Rosa climbed into the tub. I sat on the floor between her and the toilet.
The only sounds were our heavy breathing and the simulated rainfall from the destroyed sprinkler system just outside. As much as I wanted to take a breather, this was not the time. That thing out there was fast. Too fast. And there was a very real chance he could have slipped inside the bathroom with us before I closed the door.
I dug the phone out of my wet pants pocket. Before I turned it on and shattered our possible illusion of safety, I took a moment to say what I might never get another chance to say.
“Hey, Rosa?”
“Yeah, Jack?”
“I’m sorry I got you involved in all of this.”
A beat passed, then she responded, “It’s okay. I mean, I don’t really know what’s going on right now. But I want you to know I trust you.”
“Really?”
“Well, mostly. Like, let’s say eighty percent.”
Despite the fact that we were probably both about to die, I couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks. That means a lot.”
With that, I flicked on the phone’s screen, illuminating the cramped space and revealing that she and I were, in fact, alone. Still, that flimsy wooden door and the cheap bathroom lock wouldn’t be enough to keep out a determined child, much less a fully-grown homicidal monster. We couldn’t wait here forever.
I turned my attention to the phone’s cracked screen long enough to type out a text message and hit send. The message was short, but it conveyed all the urgency of Casper Van Dien in only three letters: “SOS.”
Next, I turned the phone into a flashlight, leaned up, and set it onto the sink below the mirror, giving the room enough light that I could plainly see the fear on Rosa’s tear-stricken face.
“WHAT THE FRICK?!” she screamed. “IS THAT ANOTHER GUN?!”
I totally forgot that I had a gun in my hand. And now, unfortunately, Leland knew that I was armed. So much for the surprise.
“I can explain.”
“You’re down to seventy percent, now!”
“Look, all things considered, I think it was pretty smart of me to bring this thing. We may have to shoot our way out of here.”
“The walls are air-thin. I can hear my neighbors when they chew loudly. If you shoot that gun, the bullet is going to go through ten people’s apartments! People here have children, Jack! And pets!”
“Oh,” I said, looking at the gun. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so smart for bringing it with me. “Well, let’s hope we don’t have to use it. If all hell breaks loose, this can be the backup plan.”
“Oh, ‘backup plan’?!” she asked somewhat sarcastically. “So you’re saying you actually have a plan-plan this time?”
“More or less.”
“Well that’s progress.”
Without any warning, the lights cut back on. Rosa sat up and grabbed a shampoo bottle, clutching it like a weapon. I pulled myself into a standing position, keeping the gun aimed at the door. I didn’t know what the creature was planning, but I knew he wasn’t about to give up and leave. These things were clever.
I was expecting something big. A fire. Explosion. Thousands of leech-like tentacles smashing through the wall and tearing me to shreds. What I wasn’t expecting was a gentle knocking at the door.
Tap tap tap.
“Hey, is somebody in there?” It was something using Leland’s voice. It sounded confused, but these things were excellent actors.
I responded, “Go away. I’m naked.”
“Dude, Jack, right? Hey man, I don’t know what happened but the sprinkler is going off out here in the hallway.”
“You don’t say.” From the sound of his voice, he was standing right there on the other side of the door, a matter of mere inches from the barrel of my gun.
“Yeah, man, the water is destroying everything! Do you know how to turn it off? I’m kinda freaking out because we don’t have renters insurance. Do you know where Rosa went? I can’t find her anywhere.”
I grabbed my phone off the sink, turned off the flashlight, and read the text message that had just appeared on the screen. A response to my distress call. Just as communicative in just as many letters: “OMW.”
“Come on, ‘Leland.’ Why are we playing games?” Help was coming. All I had to do was keep him talking and run out the clock. “We all know what’s going on here.”
“I don’t know what’s happening!” He sounded genuinely offended. “Look, man, the last thing I remember is letting you inside and going back to playing video games. I must have blacked out or something. Next thing I know, the apartment is flooded. Did I miss something?”
So that’s the play he’s going with, I thought to myself. He’s trying to trick us into thinking he overcame the demons long enough. Make us believe we have a shot at getting to the front door. It was an okay plan, but something about it just didn’t add up.
“It’s pouring out here,” he continued. “Quit being weird. Open the door so I can get some towels already!”
I looked towards Rosa to see if she was buying any of this, but as soon as I turned to face her, I realized what was really going on. Leland wasn’t trying to trick us into opening the door. He was trying to distract us so we didn’t see the long, black, slimy tentacles snaking their way down the wall from the open air vent.
There were four of them stretching in jagged lines towards the bathtub. The closest one was just a few inches away from Rosa, creeping out from the wall, extending towards the back of her head. I didn’t have time to hesitate. I pointed the gun at the vent and fired.
I’m pretty sure I hit at least one of them, but I’ll never know for certain. As soon as the shot rang out, Leland went full Kool-Aid man, crashing through the bathroom door like it was made out of Legos. His arms wrapped around my waist and I was pulled into the hallway before I had a chance to scream. He slammed me into a wall with enough force for it to break under me. As soon as I hit the ground, he was flinging me again. I crashed flat against the wall on the opposite side, leaving another Jack-sized hole upon impact.
Luckily, the walls in this cheap apartment were barely more than painted drywall. Had Rosa lived in a building where the surfaces didn’t have the structural integrity of wet graham crackers, I might not be alive right now. As it stood, these collisions were doing more damage to the apartment than to me. It didn’t quite hurt, but what came next sure as hell did.
Before I could cough up all the wall crumbs caught in my throat, I felt myself flying through the air with no memory of becoming airborne in the first place. I landed on my back in the living room, just a few feet from the exit, hard enough to knock all of the wind out of me... or so I thought, but then the creature landed on top of my chest and squeezed the very last bit of air I didn’t know I had from my lungs like a spent tube of toothpaste.
“Damn, Jack!” he howled. “You almost got away that time, didn’t you?”
His ass was square on my chest, his knees pressing into my arms just above the elbows, pinning me in place as the oxygen deprivation filled the air around me with sparkly dots. It was a pointless question. I couldn’t answer him without air, and his heavy ass wasn’t about to let me have any of that.
I tried thrashing and kicking and squirming, but none of that was going to work. I didn’t even know when or where I’d lost the gun. I was at the mercy of the moment, and it felt terribly hopeless. But, as I’ve learned time and time again, things can always get worse.
Leland leaned in close to my face, and for a brief moment I thought he was going to kiss me. But then his face went blank, and his eyes rolled back into his head. Far enough to expose all white, then lines of red. His eyes kept rolling back more and more until all the veins ripped open, and soon I was looking at bloody protruding eye muscles prolapsing from either socket. As if that weren’t enough, he opened his mouth wide enough for me to hear the pop of his jaw unhinging. I watched as a giant glob of slimy black matter welled up from his throat. It wiggled out past his teeth like a sentient water balloon and then stretched down from his lips, slowly inching closer and closer to my face.
Of all the ways I thought I might die, being smothered to death by monster-loogie had never even crossed my mind before now.
Rosa screamed like a banshee and flung herself onto his back, somehow hitting him hard enough to break him free from monster mode. His eyes unwound to normal, and the black blob sucked its way back into his throat with a sickening “Ffffwopt!” Once his face had returned to human, he stood up, allowing me a chance to breathe. I gulped up as much air as my lungs would allow before I had to cough up drywall and water and blood onto the carpet next to me.
Leland turned around to look at Rosa, revealing the real reason he’d abandoned me mid-murder. Rosa hadn’t just hit him with her fists. She’d buried an eight-inch kitchen knife into his spine halfway to the hilt. He reached behind himself to grab it, but couldn’t quite get there with either hand. In a truly impressive display, she’d nailed him right in the center of his back in the one place where he couldn’t reach.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said as he stepped towards her. She took two steps back before falling on her ass.
I rolled over and forced myself back up. Everything ached, but I was already accustomed to that. I could live with the pain. What I couldn’t live with was seeing this monster hurt Rosa.
“Hey!” I yelled.
But he didn’t turn around. He kept moving towards her. She tried to crab walk backwards away from him, but he was much faster than her.
“HEY! LELAND!” He still didn’t look at me. He was focused. Closing the distance between them. Reaching out to grab her.
The engine revved to life right outside the front door. Finally, Leland stopped going for Rosa, and shifted his attention back in my direction. The words escaped my mouth as soon as I realized what that noise was.
“Oh nooo…”
The blade of the chainsaw ate through the front door, cutting an angular line from above the handle to the frame. Then it pulled away and came back in at another angle, slicing a nice, clean wedge into the door right around the locks. The engine grumbled and went silent, and then Jerry kicked the remainder of the door inwards. It slammed against the wall as he marched inside with the chainsaw dangling from one hand, a katana sheathed on his back, and an insane smile on his face.
He surveyed the scene in front of him, nodded, then said, “Alright, now which one of you three is the monster?”
Rosa screamed, “Why did you do that to our door!? It was unlocked!”
Jerry was quick to reply, “And now it never won’t be.” With that, he dropped the chainsaw onto the ground by my feet and winked.
Leland sized him up before taking a large step in his direction, saying, “What the hell do you want, bitch?”
Jerry took an equally large step towards him, answering, “I came here today to eat birthday cake and kick ass.” He drew his sword, squinted his eyes, then added, “And you guys didn’t save me any cake.”
Leland held up his hands and tried to play innocent. “Look man, put down the sword, okay? I don’t know what drugs you guys are on right now, but there are no monsters here.”
“There’s not?!” Jerry responded. “Well that’s a relief. But how embarrassing, I already drew my blade, and the Samurai code states that I cannot put it away until it has tasted the blood of my enemy.”
“The head, Jerry! You have to cut off the head!”
“Okie-dokie!”
Jerry swung the katana without hesitation, but Leland jumped back at the last second. There was a barely audible thwack as the sword connected with something, causing Leland to scream and fall over onto the ground.
“Dude!” Jerry yelled, turning to me with a smile. “Did you see that? I got his fingers!”
“Look out!” I screamed a moment too late. Leland had already lept up and tackled Jerry to the ground, knocking the weapon across the room. He was on top of him now, squeezing the life out of Jerry the same way he’d done to me. I picked up the chainsaw, pulled the starter, and ran up to them as the engine rumbled to life. Leland saw me coming and held up two fingerless hands to protect himself. I closed my eyes and swung.
The blade connected. I kept it running, held it in place as warm liquid sprayed out. I kept it running until I felt it eat through to the other side. Then I let go. The engine shut off instantly. I heard the sound of the machine hitting the ground. A loud clack! Next, I heard something else hit the ground. This one made more of a wet splat! I didn’t have to look to know that it was the top section of Rosa’s newly pluralized roommate.
But I did look. Because I needed to see if he was really dead. Thankfully, all signs pointed to the affirmative. The thing that had nearly killed me was now nothing more than a head, shoulders, and two long arms.
Rosa screamed.
“It’s okay!” Jerry assured her as he sat up. “No reason to scream. I’m fine.” His words were at direct odds with his appearance, his face coated in blood and a heap of Leland’s innards rolling down his chin. “Hey, did you guys see where my sword ended up?”
Rosa pressed herself against the wall as she walked into the living room on her tiptoes.
She managed to get out the question, “Is… Is he… Is he... dead?”
Jerry answered, “God, I sure as hell hope so.”
Rosa fell to her knees with tears pouring down her face. Or, at least I think they were tears. To be honest, the sprinkler system was making it really hard to tell. “I don’t believe it. Why did this happen? He was a huge asshole, but nobody deserves this. You guys just killed him? And for what? I mean really? That’s a serious question. What was he trying to do? I am so confused right now!”
I moved over to her and knelt down so that we shared our eye level. This was a delicate moment. This was going to be the memory that replayed over and over in her mind for the rest of her life as she struggled with the inevitable PTSD. Anything I said in this instant would never be forgotten, so for once I needed to be certain I didn’t fuck it all up.
“Rosa, listen to me. That collection of blood and body parts, that isn’t Leland. That was never Leland. It was a monster pretending to be him, and if we didn’t do what we did, it would have killed us all. You saved my life, and I am eternally grateful for your strength and courage.”
That’s what I wanted to say. That’s what I wish I had said. It sure would have been a comforting memory to add on to the end of this clusterfuck of a nightmare. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t get the chance. Before I could say the first word, Jerry blurted out “Aw, gross, I got that dude’s guts all up in my hair! Oh, shit! Some of it ended up in my mouth. Ah, fuck me right in the ass. Gross! It tastes sweet. You guys, his blood tastes like syrup and energy drinks. Was this guy diabetic or something? Fuck a duck, this is messed up. Hey, Jack, help me take off his pants so I can test out my theory about their foreskins. By the way, Rosa, you may want to put on a dry shirt because I can totally see your bra right now.”
I sighed, telling myself that it could have been a lot worse.
Right then, it got a lot worse.
Leland’s eyes shot open to the sound of a repetitive wet gagging.
Jerry jumped away from him. “Oh snap! He ain’t dead.”
Like something from a bad science fiction film, the top half of Leland slammed his hands onto the ground and pushed himself up, then—using his arms as legs—he skittered around to the other side of the couch. I knew I couldn’t let him out of my sight or he might start to regenerate or slip through a crack in the wall or something, so I sprang into action. I reached for the closest weapon, the knife sticking out of Leland’s back, and yanked it free before running and diving over the back of the couch.
I landed right on top of the head-and-shoulders creature, and wasted no time stabbing and cutting and breaking him into chunks. With each cut, tiny slugs emerged from the knife wounds, trying to rebind the flesh, but the more I stabbed, the slower they appeared, until finally, they weren’t there anymore. The skull broke easier than I was expecting, exposing an inky black brain covered in the sticky goo. Next, I went for the neck...
Hey, you know what? You don’t need to know all the details. Let’s leave it at this: When I was done, there wasn’t a single piece of him left that was big enough to pose any threat.
I stood up and turned back to the others, somewhat startled to see that they were both right there, watching me from behind the couch. Rosa lost all color in her face and barfed onto the couch cushions.
Jerry broke the silence, “Oh, check it out. This is Rosa’s first time witnessing something paranormal. Let’s see how she reacts.”
Very much in line with my expectations, Rosa fainted. Jerry moved to catch her, but he was a little too slow and missed her completely, so she hit the ground at a weird angle. After we checked to make sure she was still breathing, we came up with a plan. A bad plan. But given the current situation, it was the only plan that made any sense. We needed to get her to someplace safe. Which meant we needed to carry her out to the car.
There is something about the sound of gunfire, chainsaws, and blood-curdling screams that really brings the bored tenants of a small apartment complex together. I assume every single person who lived there had come outside to see what all the fuss was about.
By the time we had carried her out to the stairs, Jerry with his arms hooked under her armpits and me holding up her legs, at least half of her neighbors had their cell phones out filming. I would assume this was the first time most of them had seen two men drenched in blood carrying an unconscious woman out of the apartment. Thankfully, nobody made any effort to stop us, but that might have had something to do with the fact that Jerry had a freaking katana strapped to his back. As we made our way to the car, the crowd of people slowly followed us from a safe distance.
Jerry kept a big, innocent smile on his face and announced as we walked, “Don’t worry everybody. Nothing to see here. We’re her doctors. She’s having a bad reaction to gluten, and now we have to take her to the hospital. You can all go back to what you were doing.”
As soon as we reached the vehicle, her eyes popped open, and for a second, I felt a sense of relief. But then something happened that made all the relief vanish. Rosa was not at all a heavy person. Of all the human bodies I’ve ever had to move, hers was the easiest, by far. But out of nowhere, she had become even lighter. Too much lighter. I could see from Jerry’s face that he was noticing it, too.
The center of her body began to rise into the air. We were no longer holding her up. Now, we were holding her down. I knew that the second we let go, she would start floating again.
Her eyes rolled back and she started to speak in a voice that wasn’t hers. “Do not open the door. You mustn’t allow him to find your world. The god of suffering is unquenchable. The agony of untold numbers will be your fault alone. An inconceivable hell waits for all who fall beneath his unholy gaze.”
Jerry opened the back door. I went in first, pulling her into the backseat with me while he screamed at the crowd of people gathering around us, “It’s the devil’s drug, I tell ya! Let this be a lesson to all of you. Never do gluten. Not even once!” With that, he hopped into the front seat and drove the car out of there like a maniac, speeding us away from that place as fast as possible. Rosa kept on for another ten minutes or so, vowing her prophecy of unimaginable horrors while lying flat against the roof of the car. And then, quite abruptly, it all ended and she fell back down onto the seat and woke up screaming.