Bleed On Me

by McKenzie, Shane

  “Jesus Christ, how can you watch that-” Todd walked straight for the couch, the only place he ever found Chris, but it was empty, a large ass-shaped dip in the center of it. His head pulsated and he massaged his forehead, pointed toward the remote control resting between two cushions. “Pete…will you…”

  “Already on it, sir.” The driver cut the power off, tossed the remote away.

  The music rattled the floor, the bass tickling the bottoms of Todd’s feet. “This dumb fuck has enough money to get out of this shithole, get a decent place to live, and this is what he chooses.”

  His eyes roamed the apartment, then his nose told him something was rotting somewhere close by. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, the taste of tobacco only slightly covering up the putrid layer coating the inside of his mouth and nose.

  The bedroom door was shut, and Todd stomped his way across the living room, pounded the palm of his hand against the cold wood. “If you’re jerking your dick, better put it up. Cuz I’m coming in!”

  He entered the room like Kramer sliding into Jerry’s apartment, blew a stream of smoke into it like a dragon’s warning, but found himself greeted with mounds of dirty clothing, untied bags of trash, and a set of blankets lying on the floor.

  Jesus, he at least made an attempt to clean up in the living room.

  Todd turned back and inspected the room he’d just left; it was obvious Chris had cleaned up in a hurry, probably not a minute after their phone conversation. Dried-up and stale bits of food were embedded in the carpet along with dark stains and bits of paper and Styrofoam. Chris’s tool belt lay on the counter, each tool with drips of dried white paint here and there.

  “I don’t think he’s here,” Paul said.

  “You fucking think so? You’re amazing, Pete. Really you are.”

  The man smiled and Todd rolled his eyes, took another hit without offering the driver any. He glanced up at Paul and noted the antsy look in his eye, the licking of lips.

  “Sir…can I…uh…”

  “Can you what?” Todd enjoyed the drip as he tossed the cigarette into the kitchen sink and turned the water on for a quick second to extinguish it.

  What sounded like a scream exploded from the apartment beneath them. Even with the music booming endlessly, the scream sliced through it like a scalpel. And beneath that…

  Was that a roar?

  The lyrics of the song came through the floor, and Todd shook his head, wiped at his nose.

  “I’ll fuck you in the ass while I’m slitting your throat! Take yo’ mama to the river, see how far she can float!”

  Todd shuddered, and when he glanced at Paul, he caught just a hint of head-nodding. “Please don’t tell me you listen to this shit.”

  “No, I mean…no.”

  “Let’s go. If I have to stay here and listen to that any longer, I might slit my own throat.”

  ***

  After shoving two bookcases in front of the door, Chris and Spade pushed the bed until it was tight against the blockade they’d created.

  The door shook in its frame, and giggles, moans, and roars sounded off from the other side of it.

  “Spaaay-aaade. Come out and plaaay-aaay.”

  “The Master is coming for you, Spade. And before he’s through, the whole world will swim in blackness.”

  The voices of the demons continued as they whispered and sung their mocking comments through the door, some reaching fingers and claws into the space beneath it.

  Chris backed away from the bed, the comforter white with a black spade pattern. Spade stayed at his spot, stared at the door as his head shook slowly. He whimpered, buried his face into the bed.

  “Hey, man,” Chris said, grabbing Spade by the shoulder.

  Spade jumped, screamed, turned to face Chris with wide eyes and fistfuls of blanket. “Don’t fuckin’ sneak up on me…shit.”

  “I’m…I’m the only other motherfucker in the room! Why are these fucking satanic…demon…things after you? What did you do, man?” Chris looked around the room and didn’t see a way out: not even a window. The door slammed against the frame, over and over, the scraping of talons and nails and fangs sending tremors across his flesh. Fresh blood continued to leak from his palms and into the bandages.

  Spade collapsed to the floor. “I fucked up. I fucked up bad.”

  “You think so?”

  “I didn’t know that nigga was…I mean, how the fuck was I s’posed to know he was some kind of…”

  “Well that just fucking explains everything!”

  “Fuck you, man. You don’t know shit. You don’t know what it’s like in the game. Gotta keep an image, can’t let nobody fuck with you. Niggas was tellin’ me about a dude slangin’ in my territory, I had to check his ass.”

  “A dude? You’re real hard, huh?”

  Spade sat with his knees up, elbows resting on them. He glared up at Chris, pointed the pistol at him. “I’m havin’ a real bad night, dawg. Real bad. Watch your fuckin’ mouth, aight?”

  Chris put his bleeding hands up. “Come on, you think my night’s any better? We need to work together here.” He frowned, nodded toward Spade. “How’s your shoulder?”

  Spade seemed to have forgotten about his wound during their hurry to block the door. “You know what? It’s numb. Can’t feel shit.” He patted the black and red stain on his shoulder, snickered nervously.

  Chris didn’t think that was necessarily a good thing, especially since they didn’t know what that black shit was that leaked into it, but he just smiled and nodded.

  “Anyway, this nigga Red. Word on the street was he had a new drug, somethin’ ain’t nobody ever seen before. Better than ecstasy, better than heroin. Say you see God when you take the shit. So…I wanted it. Tired of slangin’ weed, was ready to step my game up.”

  “A new drug? So what…you robbed him?”

  “That’s the game, man! If he woulda stayed off my block, wouldn’t have been no shit. But he…aw shit, man. I was just gonna scare him. Just…aim the gun, say some tough shit, he gives me his stash, runs off, that’s it. I’ve done it a million fucking times before!”

  “You…you killed him?”

  “Not me. It was George. That nigga was always crazy. Got into that white girl, got his head all fucked up.”

  “Which white girl?”

  “No not…the shit ain’t important. George got hot, shot that nigga, scooped up the stash, and we broke out. Red…that motherfucker had a smile the whole time, like…I don’t know, shit creeped me out. I won’t ever forget-”

  Something slammed against the door hard, splintered the wood. Spade screamed, jumped to his feet, ran and stumbled toward Chris. A purple bit of intestine forced its way through the crack, molested and patted the door like an elephant’s truck searching for a peanut.

  “Aw fuck, what now?” Chris said.

  “Come on…we can get out through the window.” Spade ran across the room, pulled a framed, oversized Ace of Spades from the wall. A window revealed the moonlit night. “Oh, shit. Hold up real quick.” He ran back across the room and into a closet, walked back out of it with a black duffel bag.

  Chris slapped himself on the forehead. “You mean to tell me…you’re telling me you had a fucking window the whole time? And we were just sitting in here?”

  Spade pulled the window up, the cords in his neck straining. “Whatever, man. I’m fuckin’ scared, aight. Ain’t thinkin’ straight. We goin’ or what?” He tossed the bag through, climbed out, held out his hand for Chris.

  “Yeah…yeah, okay.” Chris took Spade’s hand, and just as he was being pulled, the door exploded inward behind him, showering wooden shrapnel all over the bedroom.

  Chris turned his head in time to see the woman with the throat eye scuttle over the barricade. She aimed the oversized eyeball toward them which peered at them and blinked. “Boo.”

  “Oh, fuck!” Chris clambered to get through the window, the fat padding his torso weighing him down, scraping against the me
tal window frame.

  “Come on, man. What the fuck’re you doin’?” Spade continued to pull, leaning back into it, but only managed to hurt Chris more.

  “Ow! I’m tryin’, goddamnit!” With a surge of adrenaline, he pushed his way through, tearing the flesh of his right love handle over the thin metal. “Ahh! Shit!”

  He dropped headfirst from the window, plopped down onto the concrete of the hallway kicking his legs and grimacing. Blood stained his shirt, and some of it had splashed over the metal window frame.

  “You all right?” Spade grabbed him by the armpits and hoisted him up.

  Chris winced, bared his teeth. “Fucking…nghhh, cut myself. But I’m fine…let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  A wave of hellish flesh poured into the bedroom from the shattered door, and as Chris gave it one last glance, Eye Throat poked her upside-down head into the window, bared her mouthful of razors at him.

  “There is no escape from the Master. There is only-” The creature shrieked then, smoke rising from her backwards hands on the windowsill. There was a sizzling sound like eggs on a frying pan, and the woman’s baritone voice slowly transformed into a feminine squeal. The eyeball in her throat spun wildly, then bulged out, rolled out of the ragged wound and plopped to the cement like a gelatinous bowling ball. Black liquid poured from it as it deflated. The woman’s body fell limp in the window, the gash in her throat ripping wider as her head hung backward. The sharp and jagged teeth fell from her mouth and tinkled to the ground like broken glass, leaving bleeding gaps and holes in her gums.

  “What the fuck…” Chris could only stare, and he saw that the demons behind her could only do the same, reluctant to make their way through the same window. Their red eyes ignited the bedroom.

  “Come on, nigga. Let’s get the fuck outta Dodge!”

  Spade grabbed Chris by the shoulder, and though his side ached and joined his hands in oozing blood, he allowed the man to pull him away and they stumbled down the hall toward the parking lot.

  ***

  “What in the fuck…” Todd stood at the top of the stairwell, staring down at Paul who had paused midstride. The driver turned his neck slowly, eyes perfect circles in his head, and glanced at Todd.

  “I don’t know…you think someone’s in trouble or something?”

  Why did I hire this guy again?

  The noise was clearly a woman screaming, but there was something else, a sort of deep growl-like sound that Todd couldn’t pinpoint. Like a bear pissing out a kidney stone.

  Now all he could hear was a wet sizzling sound, and he thought about just jumping back into Chris’s apartment and locking the door.

  “Why don’t you go check it out?”

  “Fuck that…sir. That shit doesn’t sound right, man.” Paul was already on his way back up the stairs to join Todd.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Todd pulled his coke vial out, noted it was close to empty-which wasn’t a problem since he still had an ounce at home-and tapped some powder into his pinkie nail. “Here, sniff some courage into your face.”

  Paul bit his lip, eyed Todd’s finger, then turned and looked down the stairs, then back at the coke-filled nail. He sighed, trotted up the stairs, took his hit, slapped himself on both cheeks, and headed toward the noise. His face turned toward Todd just as he reached the bottom floor. “If I’m not back in-”

  “Will you just hurry the fuck up!”

  Paul nodded, wiped his nose, and walked toward the sound.

  Todd took a couple more hits, then tiptoed to the middle of the stairwell, just enough so he could get a peek.

  Paul crept across the hallway, the music a constant blare. He stared at the door where it blasted from for a moment before continuing on, then turned the corner and out of Todd’s line of vision.

  “Oh…oh shit!”

  “What? What is it?” Todd said.

  “It’s…a woman. She’s dead, man. Blood all over the place. And…I don’t know, like a jellyfish laying next to her. Ugh, it’s melting…”

  “What?” Todd stepped down a few more steps. “Just hurry back over here. Let’s get the fuck out of this place, call the cops once we’re down the street or something.” Todd could just make out Paul now, standing at the end of the hallway and peering at the bloody scene he had described with a wrinkled nose and a hand rubbing the top of his head. Todd had no desire to see it. He stomped his foot, waved his hands in the air. “Paul. Hurry the fuck up!”

  “Fuck, man. Her neck…eesh.” Paul shivered his body, then turned and started down the hallway.

  The music just about split Todd’s head open at this point; the quicker he got out of that complex the better. He didn’t know if it was the rap music or the murder that bothered him more.

  Paul hurried across the hall, still rubbing his head. “I’m gonna need another hit after that sh-”

  The apartment door just to Paul’s right exploded open, the music filling the air in an instant with its bass, treble, and gruff lyrics. And immediately following that was a horde of what Todd could only describe as monsters.

  The things knocked Paul to the ground, and as he shrieked, called for help, Todd turned tail and ran back up the stairs.

  “Please…oh fucking Jesus! Please fucking…ahhhh!”

  Wet splashing and deep growls followed, and Paul didn’t yell for help anymore. As Todd neared the apartment door, he heard clicking footsteps hurrying up the staircase behind him; a scream shotgunned from his throat and trumpeted into the air. Just as his hand wrapped around the doorknob, he glanced toward the stairs.

  A woman on her back, naked, something sticking out of her tits, her face pointed toward him with eyes as red as cherry sno-cone syrup. What looked like crab legs sprouted out from under her, carried her quickly across the hallway toward him. The child-like giggle that seeped from her lips made Todd scream again before he finally got the door open and slammed it shut behind him, turning the lock and backing away from it.

  Something scraped against the door, and Todd imagined the woman’s impossible appendages thrashing on the other side.

  He shook his head, grabbed fistfuls of hair and pulled. Before he had turned and ran off, before he saw Paul being clawed at and bitten by something that looked like it had mouths covering its head, he saw things that threatened to shatter his mind, send him swirling into an endless abyss of madness.

  Monsters that couldn’t possibly exist in this world.

  But I saw them. There’s a fucking caterpillar crab woman outside of this door right fucking now!

  More scraping, then pounding. Soft giggles like a child with a secret.

  Where the fuck is Chris?

  Probably dead, he thought. His eyes landed on a framed photograph of Chris and Tanya sitting on the entertainment center, both of them younger, maybe a couple of years before Todd and Tanya had become serious.

  “I’m sorry…” He heard himself say it, though it wasn’t intentional. Then something heavy slammed against the front door, and he shrieked again. The door rattled hard in its frame, and something roared from the other side.

  Todd brought out his cocaine in shaky, unsteady hands, snorted the rest of it in one big stinging, eye-pinching sniff.

  ***

  “Where the fuck are we going?” Chris huffed as he followed Spade into the parking lot.

  “I don’t know. Just, just come on!”

  Chris’s side hurt both from the wound and from exertion. He hadn’t run in years, and his body was reminding him of that now.

  Jesus Christ, we only ran to the parking lot and I’m already winded.

  God, if you get me out of this, I swear to you I’ll change, Chris thought. But his thoughts quickly returned to the woman hanging from the window. It was as if the evil just rotted off of her, returned her to her dead, corpse self. He wondered if maybe these creatures were unable to leave the apartment. Maybe their evil was trapped within those walls for some reason, and if they tried to leave, the evil inside the dead bodies
was exorcised.

  “Can’t you just…I don’t know, hot wire a car or something?” Chris stopped, leaned up against a maroon van and tried to catch his breath.

  Spade stopped in his tracks, looking over Chris’s shoulder with worried eyes, his duffel bag swinging from his grasp. “What, cuz I’m black? Are you fuckin’ serious, man?” He grabbed Chris by the shoulder. “Why the fuck you stoppin’ for? Let’s go!”

  “Just give me…give me a minute.” Chris looked back across the parking lot. They were on the other side of the complex now, but he could still see their building, could still make out the dimly lit hallway where Spade’s hell-filled apartment lay. He squinted.

  Is that Todd’s beamer?

  It was hard to tell from the distance, but he was pretty sure it was. That same douchebag yellow color.

  “What about you, man? You don’t have a ride somewhere out here?”

  “No…don’t leave the complex much,” Chris said through clenched teeth. “And you?”

  Spade shook his head, jaw muscles rippling. “Keys are in George’s pocket.”

  Chris thought he saw some movement toward their building, and he stood up straighter and stared. He didn’t see any of the creatures, hoped they were still inside of the apartment.

  Is that Paul?

  It was hard to make the man out, but Todd always made the driver wear that ridiculous driver’s uniform. Paul was an idiot, but Chris always felt sorry for the guy.

  Chris took a few steps forward, but was caught by a tight grip from behind him.

  “Where the fuck you goin’? That’s the direction where the motherfuckin’ monsters are, remember?”

  “If that’s Paul, we have a ride out of here. I can’t run much more, man. This shit is killing me.” He gripped his side where his shirt was soaked with blood.

  Spade glared at the wound for a moment. “That bitch…at the window. That was your blood that did that shit, man. I saw it. Who…who the fuck are you?”

  Chris shook his head. “My blood? No, it was…it was your apartment. The…demons…your friends, they can’t leave the apart…there’s no time for this. Just follow me.”