His shoe slid—just a bit—on the wet ceramic tile and a purely involuntary action sent him into fits. His hand touched the floor to keep him from falling. He mouthed a scream, but nothing came out. His body jerked to stand, rigid as a piece of dehydrated spaghetti. Reaching, as if for some imaginary ledge, he stared at his hand. Millions of crushed organisms coated the skin of his palm and millions of others swarmed the tiny carcasses and began to devour them. Then they began to divide. They multiplied and when they finished consuming their fallen brothers and sisters, they turned on Randy.
He looked at the water pouring from the faucet. They swam inside it. The soap was completely engulfed. The mirror was covered in spatters of miscellaneous liquid and fingerprints of the uneducated. Little monsters marched across its surface. Had they doubled their numbers since he’d entered the bathroom? Tripled?
Randy backed into the corner praying the door would open. If it did, he would rush to his desk and sanitize his hands, then go home to his pristine shower. No one came in. The creatures ate, growing larger, then dividing. So many he could feel them dancing across his skin, moving up his wrist to the flesh of his forearm, headed for center mass.
“No,” Randy whispered.
He started to shake, rubbing one hand over the other in an attempt to slough them off like an old skin. They grabbed his other hand, splitting and multiplying, covering him. “No,” he said in a voice that wavered like a goat’s.
He dug his fingernails into his palms, trying to scrape them off. Then into his forearms, peeling up curls of skin. The scratch marks filled slowly with blood, then dripped onto the tiles beneath. He watched the floor bubble with microbial excitement. Then, like tiny vampire ants, the mass crawled toward him, covering his shoes, then up under his pants legs to his socks, and onto the skin of his shins and calves. Randy screamed. “Get them off of me!”
He clawed at the flesh of his legs, pulling his pant legs up and scraping meat loose from his calves. He shrieked with fear, oblivious to the damage he had caused to his own body, blind to the blood and chunks of himself that he held in his own hands. He pulled at his cheeks, clawing at his eyeballs and penetrating one. One jagged fingernail stuck in his neck before Randy gave a vicious yank. His hand came free, but the nail stayed.
Ben entered the room in a rush just as Randy’s shrieks were dying down. Several others stood behind him. One dialed 9-1-1 while others screamed for help. Randy’s skin was pale. He glared at Ben with the eye that still worked. “Jesus, Randy, what happened? What’s going on?” Ben said.
Randy continued to dig hunks from his body. “Don’t touch me,” he said, croaking the words out like a bullfrog. “They’ll get on you. Don’t touch me.”
Ben stood in a daze while others rushed by and tried to help, but Randy swatted at them, slinging blood and bits of flesh onto their clothes, their faces. The small critters climbed into his mouth and covered his good eye until his sight was blurred. Then his vision darkened and he was blind.
“Don’t touch me,” Randy said again. “Filthy. The world is filthy.”
As blood drained from the wound in his neck, he muttered the word again and again. “Filthy.”
FROZEN
The ground was hard as granite and cold, the wetness seeped through his suit jacket. Eric stared up, through the leafless tree limbs of an unfamiliar forest. He couldn’t smell anything through his snot-filled nose and when he breathed in, his nostrils stuck together. He heard laughing in the distance, the crunching of feet through dead leaves. Someone was singing, but Eric’s head throbbed, and the details of the words were lost in the sound of his own heartbeat.
"Ya fucked up this time. Ya fucked up this time. You thought you'd get away, but ya fucked right up," a man was singing.
Eric was weak and his chest and arms hurt. He tried to move, but his legs, his arms, were stuck in what felt like concrete. His hands and feet were numb. He could wiggle his ass and move his head, but that was it. His heart rate quickened which sharpened his senses, but also doubled the pounding in his brain. It was cold, and he saw his own breath in the failing light.
The crunching steps closed in, and the voice grew louder. By the time the footsteps stopped, the words of the make-it-up-as-you-go song were clear. Eric stared into a shadowed face, the setting sun's rays bursting through the trees and gleaming around the man's head like a halo. The silhouette popped a cigarette into its mouth and suck started the thing with help from a Bic lighter.
"Comfy?" the silhouette said. "Couldn't be, it's maybe…twenty degrees out here." The man roared with laughter. Eric struggled to move, then watched as the man walked around him and poured water from of a bucket onto something Eric couldn't quite comprehend. Until it groaned. It groaned in a female voice before it spoke. "I hate you," she said, then repeated, "I hate you." It sounded like a wheeze, no strength left in the words.
The man chuckled again and stepped aside. The nude woman lay on her back in an unnatural position, maybe ten feet from Eric. Her legs were bent and below her knees, the feet seemed to disappear into the earth. Her arms were missing, also buried under the ground… her face was unmistakably beautiful, and familiar. It was Beth. Eric bucked, pulling his waist off the ground and thrashing his head back and forth. A guttural roar escaped him, then quickly disappeared in the woods.
The shadowed man knelt beside him, and the light from the moon told him what he already knew. It was Beth's husband, Daniel, staring at him, laughing at him. Daniel’s eyes were rimmed in red from tears or whiskey, or both…and they were round, wild and angry. "Yep, Eric. Ya fucked up and got caught."
Daniel waited a beat, then looked over his shoulder, where Eric was looking. Beth was breathing heavy, her naked body glistening as if she was covered in diamonds. He could hear her teeth chattering. Her eyes pleading with them, either one of them.
"I thought she'd make a nice ice sculpture. It’d be a fucking shame to waste all that beauty, but I can't touch her no more. I can't bear the thought of it. See, she's a whore," Daniel said, never looking back at Eric. "You, my friend, are something worse. You took a man's most precious thing in the world…and stuck your dick in it."
Eric growled. Tears filled his eyes and he shook his head to get rid of them. "Let her go you sick bastard. Let her go," he whispered.
"I have. I let her go a long time ago, buddy. Yesterday, I drugged the wine, and when you two animals passed out, I brought you out here. I poured the concrete about midnight, and I started icing her a couple hours ago. I’m surprised she lasted this long," Daniel said, his breath coming in puffs of smoke and steam.
Eric strained to look at her, the muscles in his neck tightening, his head still throbbing. Daniel stood up and carried the bucket back over to his wife, pouring another layer across her.
"Stop it!" Eric shouted. "Stop it!"
"Too late for all that. Have to amputate her arms and legs at this point. Plus she's got frostbite all over her body, even down in that special place you’re so damned fond of. I don’t blame you getting all worked up over a pretty little thing like her, but she ain’t yours, Eric. And now, trust me, you wouldn't want her. Yeah, you were both naked when I found ya. I left her that way. I got you dressed so you'd last a bit longer. I didn’t want you to miss anything."
Daniel dumped a little more water on Beth’s head. Her hair was frozen in place. It held her head still, looking toward the men. The light was slipping, but short bursts of steam still escaped her mouth, and Eric saw her eyes still darting from him to Daniel and back.
"I love you," Eric said to her.
"Shut your filthy mouth," Daniel hissed. He jogged back toward Eric, kicking him in the ribs like he was kicking a field goal. Bone snapped and Eric coughed hard.
"You don't say that to her. Not yet," Daniel said. "She was mine. Till death do us part. Once she’s dead, she ain’t my concern no more." Then he laughed, an uncomfortable laugh. "Won't be long, now. Then you can have her." Daniel knelt down and stuffed a han
dful of dirty, wet leaves into Eric's mouth, smearing them over his face. "Oh, I know you've already had her. Many times over the past year, maybe longer. I even watched once or twice after I found out. She thought I was at work, but I was watching. I set up a camera when I first thought something was goin' on. Watching made me sick. It made me vomit. But it also made me angry, Eric. It took me a few months to come up with this end for the both of you. I sure hope you enjoyed those few months," Daniel said. “I hope they were worth it.”
Eric spit the leaves out, scraping his tongue across his teeth and spitting again, trying to rid himself of the rotted, muddy flavor. He shook his head. Daniel was back beside Beth, trickling the last of the water from the bucket over her head. Her teeth weren't chattering anymore, and her eyes were locked on Eric.
A snowflake fell, then another. In seconds, it was quietly coming down in light, fairy specks. Daniel disappeared, crunching away in the woods. Eric squinted to see Beth. "Beth?" he said. "Beth, can you hear me?" There was no answer. No chattering teeth, nothing. It was absolutely silent. Not even a breeze. Flakes landed on his face, he turned his head to keep them out of his eyes. He watched her until the night had fallen. Everything was black. Not even a star in the overcast sky. He struggled again, but it was useless.
***
Eric had existed in silence for a long time—maybe an hour—when the crunching noise came back, growing louder and louder, then stopping. He looked toward the noise, waited for the cold water to splash on his face and body, but it didn't. There was the sound of humming. A hymn he remembered from church. He caught a whiff of gasoline. Then the snap of a lighter's flint and the rushing whoosh of a fire starting. He braced for heat and pain, but there was none.
When he opened his eyes, he saw yellow light dancing on the trees around him, the snow still falling lightly. He raised his head and saw a campfire, just beyond Beth's bent knees. His eyes found her face. She looked like a glass figurine, frozen in a thin layer of ice, her eyes still open and staring, her skin an odd color in the orange, flickering glow. The snow had dusted her in the darkness, covering her nudity like a long t-shirt.
"It looks like God's gonna do it for me, son. Like he's on my side."
Eric snapped his head back to see Daniel's face looking down on him. "Fuck you," he said, forcing the words out through numb cold lips and cheeks. His ears ached, and his lungs ached as he took shallow sips of the frigid air. Snowflakes twirled and floated down from the sky, larger flakes, and more frequent. Daniel ignored his words, but settled onto a camping chair next to the fire. He popped open a whiskey bottle and took a swig.
"Yep, I was all about making you suffer, but it looks like God's gonna meet me half way. He’s seen fit to give us eight or ten inches of the stuff tonight. I thought I’d just watch him work."
"Fuck you," Eric repeated.
"Those would be your last words," Daniel said and took another drink of whiskey.
The snowflakes grew larger, coating the ground around them. Falling, unrelenting, silent, as they wove a pristine blanket across the Midwest, smothering all they touched.
Daniel hummed the same hymn again as the night grew colder.
I FEAR NOTHING
It nagged at him as he brushed his teeth. The shower curtain, halfway open—halfway closed. There was nothing back there, really. He knew it. I’m a grown-ass man, he thought, spitting the toothpaste out and rinsing his mouth. He brushed his hair. I’m a grown-ass man. Still, he couldn’t help but turn and check. He couldn’t help walking over and pulling the curtain back to see the nothing.
It was the child, his daughter who was ten. The child was in his bedroom every night with nightmares, afraid of something in the house…in the walls…in her room. She would run in panting and beg to stay with him. She would beg and hold onto him and shiver. He was frustrated and hadn’t slept in days because of her dreams. There was no consoling her. No convincing her it was in her head. No taking the dreams away…and even when he carried her peaceful body back to her bed and tucked her in for the second time—third time—fourth time—she always found her way back as soon as sleep set in and the horrible dreams came.
He turned the bathroom light off and dressed. The room was dark. His child lay in his bed, finally asleep. His wife would be home from her shift at the hospital soon and she could get the little one off to school before going to sleep herself. He resented his wife for that, for not having to deal with the nightmares. He also scolded himself for that resentment. Then he scolded himself again for being short with his daughter. For telling her she had nothing to be afraid of, she was being silly and would she please go to blankety-blank sleep.
Childish.
Down the steps to the first floor, he felt eyes on him, something watching, looming, stalking. It was on him. He whirled to find that nothing again, hovering there. Colorless, odorless nothing. He turned the corner and went through the living room to the kitchen, not noticing the couch. Not noticing anything. Focused. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out his lunch. He’d made it the night before and placed the Tupperware container in the same location so he wouldn’t forget. He put that container into a bag and poured himself a cup of coffee from the single cup brewer before adding a little sugar, a drop of creamer. Something still loomed.
Upon turning, he saw the human form on the couch and it startled him. He set his coffee mug down, rattling its bottom on the counter before it settled. He flipped on the kitchen light. It was a blanket he saw. A pink blanket with princesses on it. It was twisted up on the couch in a bundle that peaked in the shape of a small person’s head. She was up. She was either hiding from him, ashamed to be scared, or she was toying with him and playful giggles would erupt from the blanket at any moment. A grin spread across his face.
“You got me,” he said.
The bundle of blanket didn’t move. It was still, rock solid in fact. He approached it slowly. Fifteen steps away. Twelve steps away. Eight steps away. Then it was within arm’s reach. He examined it more closely. There was a perfectly formed bulb on top that her head had made under many a blanket fort when it fell down on her…or when she played ghost with him…or when she wrapped up because she was cold and only her eyes and dot of a nose poked out. It fanned out like a pyramid and the hint of criss-crossed legs appeared beneath the base of that pyramid.
“You sleepin’ under there?” he asked.
It still didn’t move. He reached a hand out to pat her on the head and when he touched the blanket, ever-so-gently, it collapsed. He gasped and jerked the blanket up revealing again the nothing. Did something chuckle behind him? He spun around, eyes wide but stern. More nothing. There was nothing haunting that house. Nothing stalking. Nothing evil.
“Get a grip. You’re a grown-ass man,” he said and walked back to his coffee.
The garage door opened, its mechanical drone obvious in the quiet morning. His wife was home. He opened the door to the garage and watched as she pulled in. He waved. His wife waved back and grinned. Leaving the door standing open, he went back and grabbed his lunch, then checked his inventory: food, wallet, keys, sunglasses, briefcase, fully dressed. Good to go.
The pair exchanged an awkward hug and kiss as they passed in the doorway.
“She okay?” the wife asked.
“More nightmares. She’s asleep now. I’m beat,” he said.
“I’m sorry. She’ll grow out of this you know.”
“Yeah. We keep saying that.”
“Hey. I love you,” she said.
“Love you, too,” he replied.
One more peck on the cheek and she let the door shut behind him. Still unable to shake the feeling of being watched, he flipped the overhead light on in the garage and walked to his car. She would turn that light off later, or he’d do it after work. After work, when the sun was up and the spookies were gone from his spine. It took effort for him not to look back at the door. He knew nothing was there.
In the car, he situated his lunch, his briefc
ase and his self. He fumbled the keys from his pocket and cranked the motor. Don’t look at the door. Don’t look at the door. Don’t look at the door. The car rolled backwards slowly as he fiddled with the radio, finding a station that had music instead of commercials. Once out of the garage, he pressed the button to close the big door. It was then that he risked a glance at the smaller door. It was then that he heard the screaming. It was then that he saw the torso of the thing…the nothing…in the smaller doorway, now open. It was covered in blood, its face a skeleton’s grin. The door closed, groaning on its wheels and chain-driven motor, his view disappearing behind it. The thing vanishing as he watched, unable to move. Blood covered chest, hips, thighs, ankles. The screaming quieted to a muffled, high-pitched hum.
He was afraid to go back in. Afraid the nothing would be there. Afraid it had his family and that they too would become nothing. Afraid. A grown-ass man.
MELIAE
The ash tree stood high on the hill, a singular arm reaching up toward heaven. She, a small woman, thin and pale, with milky blue eyes and long hair, stared up at it. It was her tree. The sun brought a patch of freckles to the surface of the skin on her nose. Wind blew and rattled the thick leaves in her tree and she closed her eyes and felt the warm breeze embrace her.
When the air was again still, she opened her eyes, and blinking looked down the path she had walked up to get where she was. A young man, one of the boys from the neighboring farm, was watching her. He waved. She did not reciprocate. He shook his head and a charming smile beamed from his face. As he walked toward her, she sighed, and then looked back up at her tree.
It took a full two minutes for him to reach her. Only paces away, he paused and looked at her tree with wonder. “Ma’am, I’ve been studying you for a bit…and I just can’t seem to figure what is so interesting about that tree,” he said.
Her eyes flicked toward him for only a moment, then found the old ash again.
“Yes, I see you watching me. You and your younger brothers. I imagine you all have a good bit of fun at my expense,” she said.