by David Wong
A trailer—this trailer—was on the screen.
Small, as if being seen from a distance.
But getting bigger.
The viewer moving closer.
Somebody’s point of view, heading this direction. If the feed was live, just a minute away.
I turned, stepped forward, fell flat on my face. The lantern crashed to the floor, rolling, sending light and shadow dancing over every surface. It gave me a quick, strobe-light view of the huge slug thing I had tripped over, which was now resting under my splayed legs. It had moved out to the center of the room with startling speed.
I could feel the thing warmly pulsing and quivering under me, its soft mass giving under my legs. I kicked off of it, pushing backward on my ass, saw the thing squish its way after me. The lantern went out, casting me into a darkness broken only by the soft glow of the mutant television and a shaft of yellow light from the bathroom above.
I could hear the thing sliming around me, felt it near my face. I stumbled to my feet, slipped in the huge pool of shit in the center of the room, back onto my ass, bouncing my head off the hard ground. I got up on my hands just as a heavy weight like a canvas bag filled with meat landed on my chest.
The fucking thing had jumped on me.
Pinned me.
A hundred-pound bag of slime compressing my lungs.
I waited for it to bite my face off.
A few seconds later, the low, rattly sound resumed.
After a long moment I realized that it had gone to sleep. I gently rolled the snoring creature onto the floor, careful not to wake it. I very quietly stood and jumped halfway up the ladder. In ten seconds I had my palms down on the sticky bathroom floor, shoulders brown with what was hopefully mud, pants stained with shit. I decided right then I would leave and go home and watch some TV and drink a—
Thump.
I almost pissed myself. It was a faint sound, from the other end of the trailer. The kitchen end. I stepped into the hall, expecting to see a flame-shooting vampire, a hybrid squid/clown, the Devil himself.
Nothing. Probably just wind. A micro-earthquake. Sudden termite migration.
THUMP.
A heavy sound, violent. Adrenaline set my muscles on fire and, like a dumbass, I moved toward the sound. Definitely from the kitchen. In seven steps I crossed the Robert Marley estate.
My shoes hit linoleum. I looked around the counter, floor and appliances. No elves, no gremlins, no nothing. Not yet.
Dead silence. I realized I was holding my breath. I realized I was not holding a weapon. I glanced around for something like a knife—
THUMP.
The refrigerator.
THUMP.
No. The freezer section at the top. The little door up there rattled with the sound, like it was bumped—
THUMP.
—from the inside.
Get out. Get out, David. Go. Go. Go. Go. GO. GO. GO!
With one last thump, the freezer door flew open.
A round, frosty lump the size of a coffee can tumbled out of the freezer, fell to the floor, rolled to a stop two feet away from me. I stared at it, stared into the open, empty freezer. I steeled my courage—
—then turned and ran my ass off.
I stomped toward the exit, made it in three flying strides. A half second before my hand would have ripped the knob off the front door, I happened to glance out the window and see a sedan parked out there where none had been before. Plain white, but too many antennas.
Cop car.
Somebody getting out.
Fucking Morgan Freeman.
He walked toward the front door, ten feet away from me. I spun around, searching for a back exit. Even if there was one, it would mean stepping over the possessed jar or whatever had rolled out of the freezer, which was now sitting on the tile, rocking back and forth, steaming faintly. I saw now the thing was a bundle of duct tape, something wrapped in layer after layer of the stuff.
No thanks.
A look back outside. My cop friend was coming this way, pausing to turn and look back over his shoulder at something I couldn’t see. What would I say when he came in? I can usually cobble together a pretty good lie if I have a couple of hours to plan—
Pock!
A hollow snapping sound, from the freezer jar. The thing hopped an inch off the floor and so did I when I heard that sound.
It did it again, jumped higher.
Shit, like something trying to punch its way out from inside—
Snap. Ka-chunk.
That’s how I spell the sound of a doorknob turning. Morgan was just two feet away from me now, on the other side of a door-shaped piece of imitation wood, coming in. I ducked down, looked at the jar now with hope that the leprechaun or demon or whatever jumped out of it would distract the cop from asking the rather obvious question of why the hell I was here after walking out on my interrogation. I braced myself for what was sure to be one of the more awkward moments of my life.
The doorknob snapped back into place, released from the other side. I risked a look through a living room window and saw Morgan looking away, toward the gravel driveway and this time saw what he saw: a white van pulling in, parking next to his cruiser. Big logo on the side. CHANNEL 5 NEWS. A guy stepped out of the driver’s seat, hauling out a camera and a folded tripod, and a pretty reporter emerged from the passenger side. Not only was I about to be discovered lurking around a restricted crime scene, but my arrest for said offense was about to be broadcast on live television. It would literally be the worst job of secretly sneaking into a restricted area in recorded history.
POCK! POCK!! POCK!!!
There was a bulge now on the side of the jar or whatever it was, strands of duct tape fibers popping out in the center, giving under the strain. All of a sudden being arrested didn’t seem so bad and I should have ducked outside with my hands raised high in surrender. But fear kept my ass Velcroed to the carpet. The jar convulsed, and again I wished I had a weapon, preferably a flamethrower.
Outside, I could barely hear cop and reporter having a terse forced-politeness contest.
“Hi, I’m Kathy Bortz, Channel Five—”
“—All inquiries go through the captain, you’ve got the number. It’s all cleaned up in there anyway, you missed the really good pictures by a few hours—”
She may have missed the story, Morgan, but I bet she’d be pleased to capture a live shot of whatever was about to happen to me.
Here’s exclusive Channel 5 video of a local man having his brain eaten by a winged gremlin. Local gremlin experts warn that—
FOONT!
The jar erupted, ejaculated, gave birth in a cloud of stringy tape bits. A shotgun hole blew out from the guts of the can and a little blur of an object zipped out and bounced off the paneled wall above me. The offspring fell to the carpet, bounced and landed next to my shoe.
A little shiny metal canister, the size of a pill bottle. Not moving or growling or glowing. Just sitting.
Waiting.
I stared dully, then forced myself to crane my neck up and around to see the scene outside, the cop turned right toward me, gesturing. I threw my head back down out of the way, sat down hard on the carpet with my back against the wall.
He saw you. Did you see the flicker of surprise on his face? He caught a glimpse of your head looking out from the trailer window. Dumbass.
I looked at the little metal vial, scooted back from it. Are those footsteps I hear outside? I raised my foot to kick the vial away, then reconsidered.
You know what’s in there, right?
Nope. No idea.
You know Robert had a stash of the shit that infected John . . .
Faint voices, from outside.
“What part of ‘no comment’ do you not fucking understand?”
Closer than before?
. . . and if he had a stash, he couldn’t just cram it under his bed. That black shit moves. It has a will, an attitude. It bites.
And then I realized, al
l at once, what I had come here for. John led me here, of course. When I was on the stuff, the little hit in my bloodstream I got when it attacked my thigh, I could communicate with—
(the dead)
—with John. When it wore off, I could not. My one chance to save him lay inside the bottle, wicked as it apparently was.
I picked up the bottle, cold as an ice cube. I found a seam and twisted the top half off, expected black oil to ooze out.
Instead, out tumbled two tiny, cold pebbles. Perfect and black in my palm, like two coal-flavored Tic Tacs. The same stuff, I figured, in convenient capsule form for those who are afraid of needles.
You’re afraid of needles.
So?
If it had been a hypodermic, you wouldn’t have even considered putting it inside you. How convenient.
I closed my eyes, steeled myself like the first time I did a shot of whiskey.
It knew. And what is it you’re doing, exactly? For all you know, this stuff oozed out of a crashed meteor. You’ve found it in the home of a dead man, after following a trail of dead bodies to get here. So go ahead, put it right in your mouth, dipshit.
I hesitated, felt an itching in my palm where the capsules sat. I could hear nothing from outside, which fed a little sprout of hope that maybe everybody had just left.
If you do this, there ain’t no turning back. Somehow you know that.
I felt the itch again, a crawling sensation on my palm. I looked down and saw the capsules sitting innocently and then—I saw them move. Wriggling in my hand like a couple of fat, black maggots. I flung them to the carpet, flailing my hand around like it was on fire. I stumbled to my feet. The things twisted, changed, grew tiny little black limbs.
Two flat appendages grew out of one of the capsules, began to twitch, move, flap. A blur now. Wings. The black blob made a terrible, insectile fluttering sound against the carpet. Then, the Tic Tac launched itself at me, a faint, dark streak.
I didn’t realize my mouth was hanging open until that moment and if I had known I would have closed it, I assure you. In an instant the thing was skipping off my tongue and landing as a horrible, twitching tickle on the back of my throat. I coughed, hacked, convulsed. The soy sauce insect crawled down my esophagus. I felt its little tingly legs all the way down to my gut.
I opened my eyes, looked desperately for the other one. Hard to spot on the dark carpet—
There.
It buzzed, it flew. So fast it vanished from my sight. I clamped my lips shut, slapped my hand over my mouth for good measure. The thing landed on my left cheek and without thinking I brought up my other hand and swatted it like a mosquito.
Pain. An acidic burn, an iron from the fire, jammed into the soft skin under my eye. I suppressed a scream, brought my hand away from my face and found it bloody.
The stab of agony in my cheek became a bright, broad ache that seemed to radiate down to my toes. A pain so big my mind couldn’t wrap itself around it, mixed with a weird, buzzing itch that comes specifically with tearing flesh, the feel of whole nerve endings torn from their roots and tossed aside.
I tasted the copper flow of blood in my mouth, felt something moving over there . . .
OH SON OF A MOTHERFUCK THE FUCKING SOY SAUCE IS DIGGING A FUCKING HOLE INTO MY FUCKING FACE.
I fell flat on the floor, thrashing and rolling like a seizure. I forgot where I was, who I was, everything in my mind vaporized by a hydrogen bomb of panic.
OH THIS HURTS THIS HURTS THIS HURTS I CAN FEEL THE THING CRAWLING ACROSS MY TEETH NOW OH SHIIIIIIITTTT.
My face and shirt were wet and sticky with blood. I felt the second intruder crawl across my tongue and down my throat, felt my stomach wrench with disgust. I heard footsteps just outside the door now, felt relieved, knew I would throw myself at Officer Freeman and beg him to take me to the emergency room, to pump my stomach, to bring in an exorcist, to call in the Air Force to bomb this whole town into radioactive dust and bury it under sixty feet of concrete.
And then, calm.
Almost Zen.
I again felt that sensation from the police station, the radiating energy pulsing from the chest out like that first swallow of hot, spiked coffee while standing outside in the dead of winter. The soy sauce high.
The doorknob began to turn. Morgan was coming. Hell, Morgan was here. I wanted to run, to duck, to act. Frustrating. The body is slow, so slow—
And just like that, I was outside my body.
Time stopped.
It was so easy for me, I almost laughed. Why hadn’t I caught on before? I had a full 1.78 seconds before the detective would step through the door. The only reason we would normally perceive that span as being a short amount of time is because the wet mechanism of our bodies simply can’t accomplish very much in that span. But a supercomputer can do over a trillion mathematical equations in one second. To that machine, one second is a lifetime, an eternity. Speed up how much thinking you can do in two seconds and two seconds becomes two minutes, or two hours or two trillion years.
1.74 seconds until confrontation time now, my body and the body of my nemesis frozen in the moment, on opposite sides of the door, he with his hand on the knob, me on hands and knees in suspended agony.
Okay. I needed a plan. I took a moment to mentally step back, to assess my situation. Think.
You are standing on the thin, cool crust of a gigantic ball of molten rock hurtling through frozen space at 496,105 miles an hour. There are 62,284,523,196,522,717, 995,422,922,727,752,433,961,225,994,352,284,523,196,571,657,791,521,592, 192,954,221,592,175,243,396,122,599,435,291,541,293,739,852,734,657,229 subatomic particles in the universe, each set into outward motion at the moment of the Big Bang. Thus, whether or not you move your right arm now, or nod your head, or choose to eat Fruity Pebbles or Corn Flakes next Thursday morning, was all decided at the moment the universe crashed into existence seventeen billion years ago because of the motion and trajectory of those particles at the first millisecond of physical existence. Thus it is physically impossible for you to deviate—
I never finished this thought.
I was no longer in the trailer.
Sun. Sand. A desert.
Was I dead?
I looked around, saw nothing of interest except brown and brown and brown, spanning from horizon to horizon. God’s sandbox. What now? I thought of John’s ramblings his first hours on the sauce, saying he kept falling out of the time stream, everything overlapping.
I saw movement at my feet. A beetle, trundling along in the sand. I figured this might mean something, so I watched it, followed it as it inched along the desert floor. This went on for approximately two hours, the bug heading steadily in one direction. I had begun to form a theory that this beetle was some kind of Indian-vision spirit guide meant to lead me to my destiny—then it stopped. It stayed in one spot for about half an hour, then turned around and began crawling back the other direction.
In a blink, I was somewhere else.
A chain-link fence.
Brown, dead grass.
People around me, in rags like refugees.
This was getting ridiculous. I stood there for a moment, baffled. I remembered John again and was determined to keep my head, to hang on until the stuff wore off. I looked down and saw I was holding a fork, my hand stained with a gray dust, like ash.
A little girl approached me. She was deformed, filthy, a good chunk of her face missing. One eye. She studied me, then ran up, kneed me in the groin and wrenched the fork from my hand. She ran off with it, and when I looked up—
White walls.
Industrial sounds.
Machines.
I was in a large building, very clean, and a man stood in front of me wearing a blue uniform, watching a small computer screen on what had to be an assembly line. To my left I saw a massive red sign that said NO SMOKING OR OPEN FLAME ON THE PRODUCTION FLOOR, with a cartoon explosion underneath it.
I stepped forward, noticed the guy had one of those Far Side flip
calendars next to him. It was badly out of date, the current page a couple of years old.
I had to stop this, somehow. I felt like I was a swimmer, getting tossed downstream by white-water rapids. I knew somehow that if I didn’t get ahold of myself, I would drift like this, forever.
Not expecting to get a response, I said, “Uh, hey.”
The guy stirred, turned. For just a moment I thought I saw his eyes meet mine, but then his gaze swept around the room, seeing nothing. The man apparently decided he had imagined it and turned back to his monitor.
The room was full of people at various machines. It was obvious no one could see me. I was here, but I was not here. I looked down and, sure enough, could not see my feet.
My feet, I knew, were still in a trailer in Undisclosed, on a Saturday afternoon. I focused all my concentration on getting back there, to that spot, to that time, to my body. And in a blink, I was back in the trailer, on the floor. Pain in my face, stench of shit on my pant legs.
I breathed a sigh of relief, tried to remember what I had been doing, when Morgan Freeman stepped through the door and stopped cold at the sight of me.
Damn. I suck at this.
I looked up, climbed awkwardly to my feet with my hand on my bloody face, my pants stinking of Robert Marley’s feces.
The detective looked me over.
He had two red plastic gasoline cans with him.
He’s gonna burn this place down, I realized with perfect clarity.
And he’s gonna burn me with it.
Morgan sat the gas cans at his feet, then lit a cigarette. He smoked in silence for a moment, looking off into space as if he had suddenly forgotten I was there.
“So,” I began, figuring I would remind him, “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”
He shook his head slightly. “Same as everybody. You’re trying to figure out what in the name of Elvis is going on. Everybody ’cept me. Me, I don’t even wanna know no more. I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing with these here gas cans.”
“I think I know. And I don’t think Robert’s landlord would approve at all.”
He studied my bleeding face, then reached into his pocket and handed me a handkerchief. I pressed it to my cheek.
“Thank you. I, uh, fell. On a . . . drill.”