I got back in the car and fired up the engine. All I needed to do was ditch my ride; then I’d be home free. A tiny, painful prick on my neck startled me, momentarily breaking my concentration. I reached back and snatched the little black bug that had bitten me, pinching it between my fingers. It tried to squirm away, but I crushed it’s body before it could, popping it like a pimple while I laughed maniacally at it’s plight like a super villain high on shrooms.
***
I left my car in the parking lot of a Carl’s Jr. about twenty minutes South East of my campus. I’m not really sure why I chose Carl’s Jr. I guess it just seemed like an appropriate place for Donald’s trail to run cold (one last Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger for the fat ass before his vanishing act).
The bus would be my ride back. My school was too far travel by foot so running was out of the question and I was concerned that calling a cab would be an easy way to get noticed in case the police came snooping around, looking for witnesses. I needed to stay as discreet as possible. My alibi would be a failure if someone like a cabbie, could pinpoint me in the general proximity of the car I planned on reporting stolen. Even though it was likely I would encounter people on the bus, I reasoned that since it was still early, no one would be interested in making conversation (or even eye contact) – especially not before the break of dawn.
I had studied the bus routes earlier. There was an express line I could catch that would drop me off near the school. The first bus was supposed to come by at 5:00 AM and only made a few stops before reaching the campus. I checked my watch. It was 4:30; with any luck my ride would be on time and I could make it back to the apartment before people started waking up. I took a seat on the bench and waited alone in the dark for the bus to arrive.
Just a few minutes later, a scruffy, old hobo hobbled up to the bus stop and popped a squat next to me. A pungent stench wafted through the air; I winced in the realization that I was sitting down wind from the homeless man’s foul fragrance – an awful combination of urine and rancid milk. I scooted over until one of my ass cheeks was hanging off of the edge of the bench, attempting to put as much distance between myself and the terrible funk as possible. The vagrant sat hunched over with his hands inside the pockets of his dirty, ragged sweatshirt while he mumbled something incoherently to himself. His hood was pulled up over his head, covering most of his face, but from what I could see, he looked as if he was in desperate need of some dental work.
He started to rock back and forth on the bench as the unintelligible garbles spewing from his mouth became louder and more frequent. Still, I couldn’t make out what the troubled man was saying. I checked my watch – it was only 4:37. I remember the time exactly because that’s when things began to get strange.
We were all alone at that bus stop. Aside from the occasional car zipping by there wasn’t another soul in sight. None of the stores around were open yet so there was no warm, safe place for me to duck into while I waited for the bus to show. The homeless man clenched his decaying, rotten teeth and began to violently shake his fists in the air. His ramblings had turned into a fit of angry shouting and I finally started to understand what he had been saying once the raving lunatic started barking into the dark morning sky.
“He’s dead! He’s dead! His own flesh and blood! His baby brother! Why!? Why, baby brother!?”
I shot up from the bench and stumbled backwards for a few steps. I told myself that he was just some maniac – that there was no way he could have known about Donald, but somewhere deep down inside me I couldn’t shake the feeling that all his hooting and hollering was directed towards me. I checked my watch again; it was only 4:43. Time was moving slower than an octogenarian wearing ankle weights.
He stood up from the bench and started shambling towards me like a zombie, all the while, continuing to shout out accusations out at the top of his lungs.
“Why, baby brother!? Murder! His own flesh and blood!”
I backed off into the street, but Nostrahomelss followed. A flash of light illuminated the dark road we were both now standing in. I turned my head to see the bus I had been waiting for about a block away, sitting at a red light. Salvation! I thought to myself. It had arrived early, but before I had the chance to rejoice the mad hobo lunged at me, grasping me around my wrists with both of his hands. He lifted his head and met my terrified gaze. For the first time I could see his entire face and I felt myself get woozy from the appalling sight staring back at me.
His lips were horribly chapped – so dry and cracked that blood began to trickle from their pussy sores as he smiled his rotten grin. The bizarre homeless man’s teeth were worse than I thought. The black and yellow giblets jutted out from the bum’s disease ridden gums in arbitrary directions, sometimes even overlapping each other. As he continued to squawk at me, I noticed an additional sound beginning to emanate from the homeless man’s mouth. It was a horrible low hiss, one that I had heard earlier that evening – in the tool shed right before the bugs began to spill from the mouth of my dead brother. I felt myself get sick at the mere thought of those things swarming me back at the lake house.
“He’s Dead!” he shouted. “Baby brother, why!? Murdered by his own flesh!”
I was too terrified to look away. The hiss became louder as bugs began to crawl out of the homeless man’s nose, scurrying down his face. I broke his grip, falling over backwards onto my rear end, and started to shuffle away on the ground as fast as I could. The light in the street got brighter and I realized the bus was advancing towards us. Seeing this, the deranged homeless man darted out of the road, leaving me sitting on the asphalt as the express line pulled up to the stop. The last thing I needed to do was miss my bus so I stood up, dusted myself off, and headed for the door.
The driver didn’t even look twice at me as I boarded. I’m sure she’s seen her fair share of crazy working that route. I was thankful for it too. As far as I was concerned, the less people that could pick me out of a lineup the better. There were only two other riders on the bus and both of them looked half asleep. I took a seat in the very back and tried to catch my breath.
Could he have really known about Donald?
No, I told myself. Something like that just doesn’t make sense. It would be completely illogical to assume that the stinking schizoid had any knowledge of what happened between my brother and I. I was able to eventually reason that he must have been talking about someone else. You see? A sensible person can always come up with a rational explanation for things.
I sat in a daze for the rest of the ride back to campus, trying to erase the mental image of those bugs moving about the homeless man’s face. I still see it when I close my eyes. I still hear them hissing too – only I know that’s not in my head.
***
I stumbled into my apartment before daybreak. I had forgotten how messy the place was before I left. It was ok though, I took great pleasure in fixing up the place knowing it would be the last time I ever had to clean one of my brother’s messes. Fatigue settled in by the time I was wrapping up and I collapsed on my bed where I fell asleep for hours. By the time I woke up, the sun was already making its descent from the sky. Every single one of my muscles ached and the joints in my arms and legs burned as if they were on fire. I realized that the night had taken a greater toll on my body than I originally anticipated. All I wanted to do was lie in bed and not move until the pain went away, but I knew my job wasn’t done yet. I had to pad my alibi.
I called the police and reported my car stolen. After about an hour of waiting, an incredibly bored looking cop came by and took down my information. He seemed even less impressed when I divulged to him that my brother was the most likely culprit. The expression on the officer’s face told me he’d much rather have been at the doughnut shop, sipping coffee and talking football with the rest of the boys than dealing with me. Nevertheless, I put on an act for him that even Lawrence Olivier would have been jealous of.
“Oh please officer, tell me if you hear anythin
g!? Honestly, I’m more worried about Donald than my car. I think he may have finally lost it!”
The cop nodded his head, reassured me that everything would probably be alright, and drove off in his squad car, presumably to get back to his busy day of consuming coffee and chowing down on bear claws while debating Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning with the rest of his overweight, mustached compatriots. I was confident my performance would be enough to throw the police off my trail. Excluding the psychopath at the bus stop and the hiccup with the bugs in the tool shed, everything was going exactly as I had envisioned. It wasn’t until later that evening when my plan would begin to fall apart – and fall apart it did! I remember the exact point things started going haywire. How could I forget? My life has become a case of situational irony akin to that of a Shakespearian comedy. And how appropriate is it that the catalyst – the very thing that got the ball rolling, was an all too familiar prick on the back of my neck?
***
I was sitting at the desk in my room when it happened. Disposing of my brother’s body had cost me a lot of very valuable study time and I was trying to take advantage of every minute I had left before my midterm exams by burying myself in my coursework.
The sting of the insect’s bite took me surprise, snapping my attention away from the textbook I was reading. I let out a yelp and twisted in my chair, attempting to swat the irritating little nuisance off of me, but paused, suddenly stricken with fear when I took notice of a sound that had begun to infiltrate the room – one I was starting to become far too acquainted with. A low hiss seeping through the walls – the hiss of those little black bugs.
The noise seemed to be loudest coming from the wall on the opposite end of my room near the foot of my bed. I approached what appeared to be its origin cautiously and ran my fingers along the wall. Terror’s dark hand gripped me tight as the vibrating stucco sent tiny tremors up my fingers when I touched it. I could feel them moving, crawling, even squirming over top of each other, just behind the thin plaster barricade between us. The thought made the contents of my stomach rise halfway up my throat.
The hiss begun to get so loud it became deafening. I jerked my hand back from the wall as the terrible noise persisted to increase in intensity. The bedroom wall was throbbing now, just like Donald’s chest in my father’s tool shed one night prior. I feared that any moment the bugs would come bursting through the wall like puss spurting from the center of a ripe zit.
I barely had time to cringe in fear from the terrible sight before the hiss began to change, mutating and warping itself into something that sounded like words. The voice was inhuman – unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Almost as if it was speaking to me through the sound of flesh sizzling over an open flame.
“He’s dead! He’s dead! Why baby brother!? Why!?”
The words pervaded my ears and burrowed themselves into my brain like a parasite. I turned to run, but toppled over the ataman, jamming my left wrist when I put my hands out in front of me to break my fall. I looked towards the wall again, where the hiss had originated; it was moving as if half of my bedroom had begun breathing.
“You killed him! Why!?”
The wall continued to swell up and down like the waves of an angry sea. I began to prepare myself for the worst. I was certain that death would be riding into my room in next to no time – a six-eyed horsemen with the mandibles of an arthropod, ready to drag my soul to hell.
“He was ours, now you’ll be too! You’ll be ours or we’ll ruin you!”
I screamed. The wall was writhing and twisting in ways that defied physics. The entire room looked like a bad acid trip.
“You’ll be ours or nothing!”
It was madness. If I didn’t know for sure that my mind was so healthy and sound, I might have believed that I was losing it (Of course a crazy person would never acknowledge that kind of complete and utter insanity to be anything out of the norm. I however, was well aware of the implausible situation I had found myself in, thus proving the lucidity of my mental state of being).
I curled up into a ball and shut my eyes, cradling my head in my hands (reverting back to the most primal of self-defense mechanisms). The walls were closing in on me and the hiss had reached an unbearable pitch, but just when I thought certain doom was upon me, another noise filled the apartment – a knock on the front door.
It took me a minute for me to gather myself, but eventually I noticed that the walls had returned back to normal and that the hiss had vanished almost as soon as the knocking had begun. Another knock brought me to my feet and I proceeded to the door (albeit still shakily). To my surprise Chuck Volderschmidt and Elizabeth were standing in front of me when I opened it.
Chuck was shirtless, although his pasty white chest and sun burned forearms made him look like he was wearing a t-shirt. Elizabeth (looking as stunning as ever) was wearing nothing but an oversized G-Unit football jersey – the kind of shirt you might find bundled up on the floor at Burlington Coat Factory or Nordstrom Rack. I winced a bit once I came to the realization that it was most likely Chuck’s.
“Bro,” said the turd. “We thought we heard a scream! Is everything ok or were you just watching porn with the speaker turned up too loud…cause I do that some times.”
“Umm, no Chuck. Thanks for your concern, but I just tripped over the ataman in my room and sprained my wrist.”
“Ouch!” said Elizabeth. And it was that moment that I decided that the G in G-Unit must have stood for Goddess. “Do you need a doctor?”
I shook my head and forced a laugh, “No, no. Just startled myself. I guess I should watch where I’m going.”
“Fucking-A you should,” chimed Chuck. “Next time I hear a scream like that from this apartment it better be because you have a hot biatch in here! L-O-L.” He actually said “LOL”. Chuck grabbed a handful of Elizabeth’s magnificent rump. “Come on babe. Let’s get back to your apartment.” He turned towards me and mouthed something that rhymes with meeting that wussy when she wasn’t looking while thrusting his pelvis in the air and flicking his tongue between the peace sign he was making with his fingers as they walked away.
I shut the door behind me and leaned against the wall, trying to get a grasp on everything that had just occurred. Part of me was still terrified that the hiss would begin anew and my six-legged tormentors would pick up where they left off, but deep down inside, I knew they wanted me alive. The bugs were actually speaking to me. Not just speaking, but delivering a message – a warning.
Now you’ll be ours too! You’ll be ours or we’ll ruin you.
I understood what they meant. Those little bastards were the only witnesses to Donald’s murder. The bugs loved my older brother. He was like a benevolent god to them! They gorged themselves on the heaping piles of garbage he left lying around the apartment. The place was like a paradise for those terrible things and then I moved in and took it all away. Now they wanted me to take his place – to maintain the status quo and continue showering them with gifts. It was a threat – become as foul and nasty as my older brother, return their home to paradise or somehow they would “ruin” me.
Well, if it was a god they wanted, then it was a god they were going to get, but not the kind they were asking for. I was about to go Old Testament on those little black bugs.
***
It’s the police who keep knocking at my door. They won’t say they’re the cops. Actually, they won’t say much of anything. It doesn’t really matter though; I know it’s them. They must be here to arrest me for what I did to Donald. I’m sure the smug sons of bitches are going to pat themselves on the back for breaking the case. The idiots. I was careful. They never would have known if it wasn’t for those goddamned bugs.
I purchased a fogger at Home Depot the following day. I don’t know much about exterminating so I let the guy at the store convince me to splurge on the most expensive one they had. It came in a canister that looked like an old Soviet warhead. On the side of it was a picture of a mushroom clo
ud with the words “BIG BUG BOMB” written in a bold yellow font that told me it meant business.
When I got back to the apartment, I set it up in my bedroom (the sight of my earlier run-in with the little pests). The instructions on the container said that the fogger released a cloud of poisonous gas capable of reaching a radius of 2,500 square feet, which is a distance that’s easily more than twice the size of my humble living accommodations. All I had to do was pull the tab, leave the apartment for a couple hours, and let the gas do the work.
I was positive the bugs would mount an attack and come gushing through the walls in an effort to thwart me, but it never happened. I set off the bomb just like the instructions said, placed the fogger down on my desk, and escaped with zero resistance.
I thought that I’d be able to forget about everything that had taken place while I was at school that day, but unfortunately my midterm exams weren’t even enough to help me ignore the constant reminders. I would look into my study materials, doing my damndest to take my mind off of the recent horrors I had experienced, but no matter how much I tried to clear my mind, terrible memories still plagued me.
Dark Tales: 13 New Authors, One Twisted Anthology Page 8