This Time of Night

by Jon F. Merz

“What?”

  “What was that thing you were saving?”

  “What thing?”

  “Your words of wisdom, idiot.”

  “Oh...I dunno.”

  “What?”

  “I forgot, man.”

  “Jesus Christ...”

  “Yes, my son?”

  “Fuck...”

  “Guys?”

  “What?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Fucking brilliant. Isn’t that brilliant, Davis?”

  “Fuck man, I trying to sleep over here.”

  “Don’t sleep, Davis! Stay awake!”

  “...fuck for, Gennaro? We going anyway...may as well get some shut eye an’ shit...”

  “He’s right, Gennaro. I’m tired, too.”

  “Guys?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Nothing.”

  Outside,

  above,

  and all around,

  the snow continued to fall.

  Tenant-At-Will

  Another dip into the gore pool, I wrote this for an extreme horror magazine whose name escapes me now. No matter, since they never published it anyway. The basis of the story comes from an urban legend I think, but it still have trouble eating bananas without chopping the tip off first.

  Bananas.

  It had to be the bananas.

  Kevin Brophy glanced across the kitchen at the bunch of greenish-hued ripening bananas on the counter top and frowned. There had to be a better way to store them.

  His hand came down with a resounding smack on the table top. He grimaced, lifted his hand, wet with the mushy entrails of his latest victim and walked himself into the bathroom.

  The tap water sputtered, but it was enough to wash away the thin membrane wings, dark viscous blood and smashed guts of the housefly. Kevin watched them swirl around the stained fringes of the sink and then vanish down the rusted drain. He sighed and reached for the liquid soap dispenser, hoping the antibacterial soap lived up to its name.

  The apartment was a steal at five hundred a month, utilities not included, and Kevin had been prepared to sacrifice a bit on the amenities. The bathroom was by far the worst of the two bedroom pad, with no ventilation system, blackened grout and mildew laden tiles, plus a toilet seat from hell (which Kevin had replaced immediately). But otherwise things seemed okay.

  Until the flies showed up.

  Kevin spent much of his first two weeks hanging fly strips around the apartment and chasing the annoying bugs around with a flyswatter. There seemed no reason for the flies to be there. At least none that Kevin could find.

  Not until he noticed the odor.

  He’d returned home from working his usual nine hour shift and noticed a peculiar scent in the apartment. His nostrils had cringed at the invasive aroma of what smelled like spoiled food or rotting garbage.

  He’d gone through the refrigerator twice, holding the meager contents aloft and sniffing them, trying to ascertain whether the culprit lurked within the confines of his Frigidaire. He came up empty.

  “It’s not like I haven’t looked all over this joint,” he told his friend Chuck later that night over Chinese take-out.

  “Better look again,” said Chuck. “Place stinks in here.” He fished another helping of lo-mein out of the container and slurped the writhing mass into his mouth. “And you know,” he said around gaping chews, “you’d better figure it out soon. There’s no way any girl’s gonna feel all nice and cozy like in a joint that reeks.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Chuck shrugged. “Hey, man, if she’s not comfortable, you don’t get laid. It’s that simple.”

  Kevin leaned back against the couch. “Thanks, Casanova.”

  “Least my pad doesn’t smell.”

  Kevin spent the better part of that weekend Lysoling the entire apartment into oblivion. Anywhere that even looked the slightest bit dirty, Kevin hosed down with varying amounts of Spring Rain, Fresh Garden, and even Potpourri scents. When he was done, he couldn’t smell a thing. His nose was fried from the constant intake of aerosol deodorizer.

  He went biking for two hours and returned, determined to cook himself a hearty dinner of Spam and pasta. He carried the bike up the front steps of the three-decker and then let himself into the apartment.

  The smell was still there.

  Kevin dropped the bike and grabbed the telephone. His landlord lived upstairs. It rang twice.

  “Yeah, hi, it’s Kevin from downstairs-how are you? Listen, I’m having a bit of a problem with a smell in my apartment that I can’t seem to get rid of. Can you come down and take a look? Thanks.”

  He replaced the phone and sighed. This was his first place. Kevin was three months out of college with a not-so-marketable degree in alternative religions, and two weeks out of his parents’ house across town. This was supposed to be the best time of his life.

  When the knock came on his door, Kevin opened it up.

  “What’s the problem?”

  Kevin stepped back to let the oversized girth of his landlord waddle into the apartment. “Take a whiff.”

  Mr. Hicksen, the landlord, scrunched his face up into a lurid mass of wrinkles, extra chins and flaring, hairy nostrils tinged with remnants of flaky mucous. The air he sucked into his heaving chest was shallow and he exhaled even quicker.

  “Smells like spoiled food.”

  Kevin nodded. “That’s what I thought, too. Nothing in my fridge is spoiled.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  Hicksen nodded and ambled into the living room. He clutched a black flashlight in one meaty paw while the other one rested across his shelf-like stomach in sweaty repose. He glanced at the walls and tapped one of them with the end of his flashlight before turning back to Kevin.

  “Damned if I know, kid.”

  “That’s it?” Kevin frowned. “You can’t do anything?”

  “What am I supposed to do, kid? You say you got no spoiled food, that’s what it smells like to me. You say you don’t know what’s making the smell, neither do I. What do you want me to do?”

  “Get someone in here, for crying out loud. Figure out what the hell the problem is. I’m paying you rent. I’ve got rights.”

  Hicksen regarded him for a moment. “Listen to me kid: You pay five bills a month for this dump. That’s a fucking steal. You think you got rights? You got shit. Go ahead and complain. Try the Housing Authority, I don’t care. By the time they get around to your case about some silly old smell, I’ll have evicted your sorry ass from this place and be charging another fool six bills a month.” He snorted and chewed a wad of mucous in his mouth before swallowing it. “Now, listen, you figure this out, maybe I can help you then, all right? ‘Til then, just try to live with it.”

  “Great,” said Kevin. “Thanks for the help.”

  Hicksen waddled back to the door. “Hey, what are landlords for, huh? Now, don’t bother me anymore, I was in the middle of eating.”

  Kevin closed the door behind him and locked the deadbolt. Hicksen was right, of course. The Housing Authority wouldn’t get to Kevin for months.

  He meandered into the living room again. No luck with the landlord, what could he do now? He’d checked everything he could think of. Frankly, he was becoming extremely pissed off.

  However, his stomach had to be satisfied now or else he’d pass out from hunger. He got the large pot from underneath the freestanding cart next to the stove and filled it up with lukewarm water from the tap before placing it over the gas flame. From the pantry he recovered the compact blue tin and yanked the ring up.

  “Food of the Gods,” he said to himself.

  As the sealed metal came undone, Kevin imagined the wet, hissing sound of escaping air. He tipped the tin over and watched the meat product slide out with the clear gelatinous afterbirth still clinging to the new born food stuff. Kevin dipped his finger into the midst of the slime and then suckled his fingertip, feeling the gooey liquid meld with his spit. He licked hi
s lips and brought the plate over to the stove top.

  He diced the Spam into chunks and put them into a smaller pot to simmer. From the pantry he got the jar of tomato sauce and poured the contents into the pot with the sizzling chunks of Spam. He swirled the mass around and sniffed at his creation.

  “Yum.”

  He dumped the rigatoni into the pot, minding the spray of scalding water and watched the pasta hiss into submission. After five minutes of constant stirring, he grabbed the oven mitt and carried the pot over to the sink. He placed the pot lid on top and cracked it just a smidgen to allow the water to run out.

  I’ve really got to get a strainer, Kevin thought.

  Back at the stove, he turned off the Spam sauce and poured a pile over the larger pile of rigatoni on his plate. From the fridge he got a beer and settled himself outside in front of the television set.

  “This,” he said smiling as he flipped through the channels, “is living.”

  He polished the meal off in record time and then leaned back into his used couch, content to pass the rest of the evening hours by flipping through the channels and farting.

  At eleven o’clock, he decided to call it a night and rose from the couch, feeling the effects of seven beers take their toll. He ambled into the bathroom and tugged down his zipper, retrieving his flaccid member and pissing off what felt like three gallons of alcohol.

  He threw some water on his hands, stumbled out of the bathroom and pawed his way toward the kitchen and beyond to his bedroom.

  The smell hit him like a Lincoln Continental going eighty.

  “Jesus Christ,” Kevin’s eyes were almost watering from the overpowering nauseating stench. “What the fuck is that?”

  The odor hung in the air like a putrid fog of decay. Kevin dropped to his knees and searched the stove in case some Spam had fallen down behind and was rotting into food stuff oblivion. He found nothing.

  He rose to his feet and saw the bananas across the room.

  Bananas.

  It had to be the bananas.

  The previously yellow skin on the six pieces of fruit had succumbed to a growing expanse of blackened ripening gone bad. No longer edible, the bananas had begun to rot, and as Kevin crossed the room, the odor assailing his nostrils increased. Kevin gagged.

  The banana closest to him was the blackest of the bunch and through the mass of rot, dribbles of banana juice or some other by-product of fruit rot, seeped out of micro-fissures in the skin and oozed on to the counter top, linking the bananas together via plasmic residue.

  They had to be junked.

  Kevin reached out and hooked his fingers around the tops of the bananas and lifted. There was a strange sound and then the tops ripped off. The remainder of the bunch crashed down and spilled open, spraying yellow pus and rind across the table, splashing Kevin with a thick syrupy coat of rotten gel.

  “Oh, Christ.” Kevin retched and vomited tomato puree and Spam chunks all over himself and the floor. He continued to retch until his stomach could project no more and then wiped his hands across his sweaty face, desperately trying to regain his breathing.

  He stumbled to the kitchen sink, slurped water into his mouth and spat it back out, watching the smaller chunks of vomitus spill down into the drain. The sour taste of bile stung his throat.

  He glanced up at the counter and at the bananas.

  Something was wrong.

  -moving.

  Moving?

  Kevin blinked his eyes and looked again, not believing it. Thick furry legs undulated under the mass of banana skin, tugging and groping for purchase on the table top.

  Kevin drew closer to the table and saw more of them. More legs, thick with wet fur and…pincers.

  Tarantula.

  “Jesus,” said Kevin. “They’re spiders.”

  That would explain the presence of flies. They must have been drawn by the presence of the spider eggs and had fed off of them. By the look of it, Kevin must have killed the flies before they could eat many of the spiders.

  There were a lot of them. They weren’t very big, but as they acclimated to their new environment, they zipped across the table. Several of the furry arachnids dropped to the floor and moved toward the puddles of Kevin’s vomit still splashed across the kitchen floor. Others scampered elsewhere.

  There was a sound then, like Kevin had only heard when his father’s dog Hero came back from a day outside and lapped furiously at his water bowl for fifteen minutes.

  They were eating Kevin’s vomit.

  More spiders crept out of the banana skin. Kevin backed toward the door recalling the article he’d read somewhere in college about how tarantula lay their eggs in the tops of bananas. The whole bunch must have been infected.

  A shoe. Kevin needed a shoe. He’d crush every one of these ugly motherfuckers.

  He reached down and felt for his boot. The smell in the kitchen was debilitating and mixed with the stench of undigested Spam and tomato, it was even worse.

  Kevin found his boots and yanked one of them up.

  Something fell out of it onto his hand.

  Kevin looked down and then felt the sharp bite of pincers from the small tarantula that had landed on him. He yelped and brushed the spider off, sending it to the floor. With his good hand, Kevin grabbed the boot and smashed the spider into tiny mashed bits of juicy pulp, watching the entrails squirt out under the sides of the boot.

  “Goddamned spider!”

  He reached for the phone. He’d need an ambulance for sure now. Tarantulas were poisonous, weren’t they?

  The line was dead.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Kevin slumping against the side of the wall. His breathing felt stressed. He tried to walk to the front door, padding across the tiles in his bare feet, but he only made it as far as the living room when he saw more spiders in the front room. They weren’t moving, only sitting motionless.

  Watching him.

  Kevin backed up, but felt something beneath his heel as his weight came back down on top of it and smooshed into a puddle of spider guts. Kevin wheeled around and yelped.

  More spiders blocked his path into the kitchen.

  Where had they all come from? There was no way this many of them could have hatched out of the bananas-no way they could have grown this big in such little time-

  They moved closer.

  Kevin glanced around the room searching for the highest point. There wasn’t much. A weight bench, a bookcase and that was it. Kevin was still accumulating furniture.

  He scrambled on to the weight bench as the spiders reached him. One of them scurried up on to Kevin’s pants leg and then disappeared under the cuff.

  Kevin screamed, feeling the furry mass scamper up the inside of his leg until it reached his scrotum. Kevin shoved his hands down his pants and tried to wrench the spider off his groin but it evaded him and sank pincers into his testicles.

  Kevin fell off the weight bench and onto the floor. He screamed and tried to fight off the mass of furry bodies running across his body and face. It felt like a million little teeth were gnawing on him. More and more of them ran across his face and as Kevin screamed, one of them ran into his mouth.

  He retched again and bit down reflexively, spraying blood and pus across his mouth. Bits of furry leg dribbled out of his mouth and his cries became choked sobs.

  Couldn’t Hicksen hear him? Oh, God, it hurt so much.

  Another spider perched above Kevin’s left eye and then bit down on his eyelid, piercing the thin layer of skin and then his moist eyeball.

  Kevin screeched and clawed at his eye. Blood erupted from the socket.

  More spiders bit into Kevin’s neck and face. They were on him like a swirling mass of black grass atop a writhing soil bed. Kevin fought to brush them off, but the more the poison filled him, the less he could do.

  His visions of sensual bachelorhood dissolved under the onslaught of the arachnid feeding frenzy.

  ***

  Some time later, Hicksen entered
the apartment and stared for a long time at the bloated, puffy corpse laying in the middle room. There were dark puddles of crusty, coagulated blood surrounded by a moat of urine and the fecal remains of Kevin Brophy’s last meals. Around Kevin’s mouth, more blood flaked off in small pieces, while small strips of skin lay askew from the voracious attacks on his face, eyes, and throat. As Hicksen watched, there was movement on Kevin’s face and a set of furry legs poked out of his mouth, followed by the rest of a bloated-looking tarantula.

  “Come here, little one.”

  Hicksen bent down and watched the spider amble over to him. Hicksen caught it up and held it close, stroking the fur on its back. Small eyes peered into his. Hicksen smiled. “I hope you saved some for me.”

  He placed the spider back on the floor. “Run along, now. It’s time for you to sleep.”

  Hicksen watched the spider scurry away, disappearing back into the kitchen. He chewed on a toothpick and considered the scene around him. His spiders had returned to their places of slumber in the honeycombed walls of the house, content by the quantity of food Kevin Brophy had offered them. They’d sleep for a long time now. Perhaps a month before they’d get the urge to mate again, lay their eggs, and eat.

  Hicksen hefted Kevin’s corpse and slung him over one shoulder. The coppery smell of blood mixed with feces and urine tickled Hicksen’s nostrils while a dribble of the same liquids trickled down his back and arm. He smiled, sniffed, and licked his lips. Wedging himself through the front door again, Hicksen carried Kevin’s corpse back upstairs. It would take a while to cook this one, but the tarantula poison would marinate the flesh even longer producing the tangy juiciness Hicksen craved in his meat.

  There’d be questions. There always were. But the great thing about renting to such young people was they always led party lives. It’d be no great task to convince the police Kevin Brophy had gone missing after drinking downtown and stumbling across misfortune.

  And then in a week, after Kevin’s parents cleaned out the meager belongings, Hicksen could rent the place again. Maybe this time he’d rent it to a cute coed. Maybe he’d even install some cameras in the bedroom so he could beat off a little before he called his pets out to finish her off.