by Weston Ochse
“How is he sick?”
“He won’t stop puking. He came in from outside, drenched, and just fell down in the lobby, screaming and puking.”
“Gross.”
“I think it’s blood.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s puking blood.”
“What is he doing now?”
“I don’t know. He’s just lying on the floor, shaking and moaning.”
“Have you...have you tried to help him?”
“Do I look like a fucking doctor, Jose?”
“No, it’s just—”
“Every two seconds, another guest comes up and complains about the rain. Says they paid good money to stay here and they can’t even leave. Everybody wants refunds. Javier isn’t answering. It’s almost midnight. I shouldn’t even fucking be here.”
“I’m almost there.”
“Well, the keys are on the front desk. I’m fucking done. I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”
“Taylor, please, listen, I’m—OH SHIT!”
Jose dropped the phone and grabbed the wheel with both hands, attempting to keep the car straight as a gush of water smashed into the side of the car. Rain and thunder drowned out his screams as the road disappeared and a tree swallowed the car’s engine. Jose shot forward and headbutted the wheel, bounced back against the driver’s seat and just sat there for a moment, confused and aching. Behind him, glass cracked, slowly at first, then all at once as rainwater exploded through and made itself at home. Frantic, Jose unbuckled his seatbelt and tried to push open the door, but it held shut, barricaded by the rising water. Where the fuck was he—in a lake? Trees weren’t in lakes. No, this was just the side of the road, or what had once been a road, now it was something new, its own lake, its own monstrosity, newly born and hungry, starving, eager to grow up and be strong. He rolled down the window as his legs soaked in rising water and climbed out of the car moments before it disappeared in the murky depths of the flood.
Half-swimming, half-running, he escaped the flooded ditch and climbed back up on the road, where the current was still strong, but not deep enough to devour him whole. He ran without thinking, struggling to lift his legs as the road continued to be assaulted. He tried to continue his mantra of “fuck” but every time he opened his mouth he risked assassinating his lungs. Instead he reserved the song for inside his head.
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
He moved without sight, relying on memory of his surroundings. The water continued rising as the rain fell harder. Gunshots from the sky, puncturing the earth and infecting it with its misery. Like running through quicksand or upstairs in a dream, his legs turned to rubber and even tiptoeing forward proved excruciating. Lips opened to release a scream but instead released a stream of bloody bile. The water smelled, not like chlorine but like a junkyard, a rotting corpse, an orgy of maggots. All the dirt in town reanimating with the rain, standing up and shambling, on the hunt for prey. An orchestra of sewer-stank decomposition violated his senses and wiped his innards dry of its half-digested contents. He struggled forward, swimming in his own mess, not giving a shit, determined to reach the hotel before it was too late.
If he lived to tell this story, the first thing everybody would ask is: Why didn’t you just stay home? You knew how bad the weather was, knew roads were flooding, and you still went to work.
And Jose would tell them all the same answer, that he went to work because the next time Texas flooded, at least he’d still have a place to live, that he wouldn’t be face-down under some bridge. People in horror movies never had jobs. Jose wasn’t living a movie. He was just trying to survive.
Cramps shot through his legs. Something bit him, nibbled on his calves. He looked down but failed to penetrate the water’s filthy layers. Some kind of fish, maybe, brought in from the lake. He tried to kick as he moved, but the water barely allowed him to step forward. He reached down into the darkness and swiped around his leg, fingertips brushing against something thick and prickly, something made of scales. He grabbed at it and pulled, except the creature didn’t budge because it wasn’t a creature at all. He was holding his own leg.
what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck
He vomited again, not just from his mouth but also from the tiny holes in his neck.
The holes that he refused to admit looked like gills. Gills like from a fish. Gills like from the goddamn Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Blood and vomit poured out of his orifices like a broken dam and he collapsed to his knees, into the dirty water, letting the current drag him off the road and into the ditch, into the trees, into oblivion. He closed his eyes and waited for death to take him, but the rain wanted him more, claimed him, promised to take good care of him, whispered its eternal love with wet kisses and gentle caresses.
Then it spat him out.
Jose sat up, emerged from the flood in the hotel parking lot. The rain had brought him here, somehow had known his destination, traded thoughts with his subconscious. He stuck his tongue out and expressed his gratitude with quick licks of the falling droplets. He didn’t understand what was happening but he knew, somehow, the rain was responsible. The rain had birthed something inside of him, and it was hatching. His body was changing, his thoughts mutating into foreign concepts. He no longer feared the rain. He loved the rain. He did not understand this feeling, this desire to live forever in this dirty, disgusting, beautiful flood, but he could not deny it.
It was real and he could not run away from it.
Instead of standing, Jose crawled through the water. The automatic sliding front doors of the hotel were stuck open, the electricity in the building long dead. The lobby was dark and quiet save for the sound of water splashing as he crawled. He passed bodies floating facedown in the lobby. Guests who would never check out, trapped in this hotel until something came to eat them up. Jose tried to ignore his stomach grumbling, but it wasn’t an easy feat. Up ahead, a body convulsed against the lobby wall in a sitting position. He recognized the woman from another life. He was supposed to relieve her tonight.
“Taylor?” The word left his mouth in a guttural voice alien from his usual tone, yet it felt right, like a baseball glove broken in from a previous generation.
She lifted her head and revealed a face mutated into something disgusting, something beautiful. Wide gills expanded from her cheeks. The skin on her face had been replaced by a layer of green scales. Jose wondered if his face looked the same. Judging by the way she stared at him, he didn’t have to guess.
She opened her mouth to speak and blood poured down her chin. “What’s going on? Why…why is this happening?”
“The rain.” Jose moved closer, laid his head on her lap, content. “The rain, the rain.”
“But…but how?”
“Showing us…showing us the truth.”
“I don’t understand.”
“WHERE DOES THE RAIN GO?” a voice screamed behind them, and shot up, saw a man sitting on the front desk, naked and covered in scales, covered in blood.
The guest, the drunkard who’d harassed him the previous night. Jose couldn’t fucking believe it.
“It must go somewhere, right?” he cried, rocking back and forth. “It must go somewhere!”
Nausea overwhelmed Jose and he collapsed back in Taylor’s lap. She caressed his head, dug her nails into his cheeks.
On the front desk, the guest screamed, “WHERE DOES THE RAIN GO WHERE DOES THE RAIN GO WHERE DOES THE RAIN GO WHERE DOES THE RAIN GO,” and he didn’t stop, not even as the bodies facedown in the water started to moan, not even as the water in the lobby rose and swallowed them whole.
For the Seafood Lover in You
Joshua Chaplinsky
300 million years ago, family cymothoidae ruled the shallow seas of the carboniferous. Long after their oniscidean cousins took to dry land, they continued to resist evolution’s pull, resulting in their relegation to the bathypelagic depths as a relict population. Hypotheses
abound concerning these and other “alien” inhabitants of the ocean floor, but there is little evidence of their origin being panspermian in nature.
In March of 1969, two entrepreneurs pooled their resources and opened a seafood restaurant in Lakelove, Florida. Two years later, a multinational corporation acquired the establishment and implemented a campaign of rapid expansion, one which would continue unabated for the better part of the next forty years. Despite multiple class-action lawsuits due to food poisoning and parasitic infection, as well as unsubstantiated rumors of fatality, the popularity of the restaurant remains at an all-time high.
Chitin split with a satisfying crack, sending a spray of lobstery water into Rayburn’s good eye, the one he had jokingly referred to as his “seein’ eye.” Jolene emitted a panicked yelp and reached for her napkin, dabbed it at his face in an attempt to undo the damage. She couldn’t help sneaking a look at the deflated orb next to the healthy one as she did. As offputting as the eye was, she had a good feeling about Rayburn. After a string of disappointing dates, he was her first potential keeper.
“Think you made it worse.” Rayburn gently brushed her hand away, grin-squinting across the table. “There was more juice on that napkin than in the whole damn claw.”
Jolene looked from his face to her napkin and back.
“I’ll grab the waitress.”
She went to raise her hand. Rayburn intercepted it, brought it back to the table and gave it a lingering pat.
“Really, it’s fine.”
Her concern transformed into a smile. A smile she proceeded to stuff with a hot Cheddar Cove biscuit. Rayburn smiled right back at her. In his experience, a well-fed woman was more inclined to spread her legs. He dipped his spoon into his lobster bisque, transferred its contents to his mouth with a slurp. Orange-pink droplets clung to his mustache.
“Here, let me get that.”
She was a quick draw with the napkin. Rayburn pulled back, out of reach. Dragged a sleeve across his upper lip.
“Sorry,” Jolene said. “It’s the mother in me.”
Rayburn stiffened, arm suspended mid-air.
“Your profile didn’t say anything about kids.”
“Not yet. But someday.” She said it with the perfect combination of hope and wistfulness. Rayburn responded by letting his good eye wander across the nautical themed decor of the restaurant. Jolene could tell she was losing him. She mustered up as much sexy as she could.
“You sure you don’t want a bite of mine?” She motioned to her plate with a miniature fork. The beady eyes and furry mandibles canceled out any effect the clumsy innuendo might have had.
“I don’t dine on bottom feeding shit-eaters.” Rayburn maintained wary eye contact with the creature as he said it. “Too many parasites.”
Jolene frowned. Looked at his bowl of soup.
“What do you think’s in that lobster bisque? Fried chicken?”
Rayburn scoffed.
“Everyone knows that bisque lobster ain’t real lobster.”
“It’s not?” Jolene raised a skeptical eyebrow, defiant in its arch.
“Nope. Made out of something called poh-lahk. Like those folks they make all the jokes about? Much safer than shellfish.”
Jolene stuck a walking leg in her mouth and sucked at a stubborn morsel of meat. She didn’t care for racial humor. But like her momma always told her, if you wanted to catch yourself a Florida man, you had to make some concessions. She pushed the comment out of her mind as Rayburn dipped his spoon back into his bowl. Brought the utensil up to his lips.
Slurped.
Chewed.
Roared.
“God dammit!” He clamped a hand over his mouth. Jolene’s eyes went wide as his spoon clattered to the table.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sink I vit mah kung.”
“What?”
“MAH KUNG.”
It took a few seconds before it clicked.
“Oooh, your tongue. Let me see.”
Jolene leaned across the table. Rayburn tilted his head back and opened his mouth.
“Aaaaaah…”
Jolene grimaced. It was like that old joke—Do you like see-food? Vinyl squeaked as she sat back in her seat. Her dream date was going south fast.
“Looks like you bit yourself but good.”
Rayburn hunched over, drooling blood and bisque into his napkin. He forced a cough to shake loose any solid bits still in his mouth, then used a finger to inspect the contents.
“Wah ta huck es sat?”
He held out the napkin for Jolene to see.
“Oh god.” Her cheeks ballooned. It was her turn to clamp hand to mouth.
“Wah?”
“I think it’s a piece of your tongue.”
They contemplated the lump of meat. It looked like a chewed up eraser. The kind you stick on the end of a pencil that doesn’t have one.
“I think we should get the check,” Jolene said.
“Huck dat. Ah nah thaying ha dis meal. Wayther!”
Rayburn raised the bloody napkin in the air.
The waiter, who quickly realized he was in over his pay-grade, deferred to the manager, who in turn ushered Rayburn and Jolene through the kitchen and into his office—which just so happened to be in the alley behind the restaurant. That’s where Rayburn pled his case, in front of Jolene and God—and two men in hip-waders unloading 50 gallon drums of biscuit mix off an unmarked truck. The men paid the argument little mind, engrossed in the business of batter conveyance.
It took quite a bit of gesticulating and some translation on Jolene’s part, but they managed to get 20% off the bill. Pretty good, all things considered, although Rayburn contested it was insufficient compensation for losing of a quarter inch of “pussy-licker.” Jolene didn’t appreciate his crassness, but decided to overlook it on account of the circumstances.
They walked across the parking lot arm in arm, Rayburn pressing a napkin against his tongue. Jolene made a mental checklist of pros and cons, comparing the night’s events to previous dates, thinking how things couldn’t get any worse, when all of a sudden they were awash in headlights. A voice cut across the parking lot.
“Rayburn Buckwalder, is that you?”
Rayburn stopped dead in his tracks.
“Huck.”
“What is it?” Jolene dug her nails into his arm.
“Mah hucking wythe.”
Jolene’s stomach dropped.
A bottle blond emerged from the car and strode towards them, eyes green with jealousy.
“You sonofabitch. I didn’t want to believe it when Katie-Anne called me...”
Rayburn swallowed with an audible gulp.
“How could you go to Crimson Crustacean without me?”
Jolene looked confused. Rayburn just stood there. Ten more steps and the blond would be on them. Nine, eight, seven...
Her ankle turned on six, sending her face-first into the pavement. Rayburn and Jolene winced in unison.
“I’m okay!” The blond bounced back like a Bumble. Rayburn shook his head in embarrassment.
“Ah you dunk?”
“Maybe.” The blond jabbed a finger at Rayburn’s chest. “But not on lobster.” She turned to face Jolene, put out a hand.” I’m Sandy, by the way. Rayburn’s Mrs.”
“Jolene,” Jolene said in a soft voice, taking Sandy’s hand. Sandy looked her up and down.
“She’s cute,” she said to her husband.
“Taught you wah at yah thister’s baby thower.”
“She called it off.” Sandy brushed specks of errant gravel off her blouse.
“Taught it wath a supithe?”
“Not the shower, dumbass—the baby.”
“Oh.”
Rayburn went silent. Jolene looked out across the parking lot, trying to give them some semblance of privacy. She didn’t believe in abortion under any circumstances, but this was none of her business. She noticed the two men from the biscuit truck had finished loading and were watc
hing them.
“Why do you have a napkin in your mouth?” Sandy asked.
“He bit his tongue,” Jolene said over her shoulder, still watching the men watching them. They weren’t being very subtle about it.
“Oh, you poor thing.” Sandy hooked her arm around Rayburn’s. “Let’s get you home.”
“What about me?” Jolene said, turning her attention back to the couple.
“We’ll drop you off.”
“Wat abaht yah cah?” Rayburn said.
Sandy waved him off with a limp, bangled wrist.
“I can’t drive, I’m drunk.”
Rayburn squinted at the high beams of his wife’s car.
***
Before Jolene knew it, she found herself in Rayburn’s pickup, squished between him and his wife, speeding down the interstate.
“You sure you didn’t burn it?” Sandy said.
Rayburn nodded. Sandy turned to Jolene.
“He probably just burned it. Wait until it cools, I always tell him, but no—”
“Ith not a thucking burn!”
Sandy rolled her eyes for Jolene’s benefit. Looked back at her husband.
“I’ll be the judge of that. Let me see.”
“Ahm diving.”
“You telling me you can’t drive and use your tongue at the same time? Remember who bailed you out when Sheriff Johnson pulled you over for having Misty Evans’ legs wrapped around your face.”
Rayburn glared at his wife.
“Come on, then. Stick it out.”
Rayburn dutifully obeyed. Sandy leaned across Jolene to see. Recoiled.
“Ugh, that smells awful. Turn on the light, I can’t see a goddamn thing.”
Rayburn flicked on the interior light. Stuck out his tongue.
Sandy and Jolene screamed in unison. Almost as if they’d been screaming the entire ride. Limbs flailed as they attempted to put some distance between themselves and Rayburn.
“Wah da thuck?!?!”
Headlights blinded them as the truck swerved into oncoming traffic. Rayburn yanked the wheel in the opposite direction. The pickup fishtailed all over the road.