“The situation got much worse tonight. I truly don’t think I’ll survive much longer. The cottage became quite dark as the sun went down. I wasn’t ready to sleep, although I hadn’t slept at all the night before, but I did want to read a bit more. Escape from the living hell.
“I switched on the bedside lamp. As soon as the light winked on, my thumb and forefinger started melting into the brass pull-chain. I screamed - Sweet Jesus, it hurt! My hand felt like it was on fire. I tried to pull my hand out from under the lampshade, but the finger and thumb were becoming intertwined with the chain. I could see my flesh starting to pool and drip onto the nightstand. With my other hand, I grabbed the wooden base of the lamp - it was still cool, thankfully - and smashed it against the wall. The lamp broke, shattering the light bulb, but I was still stuck to it. I was too scared to rip my hand away, so I just kept smashing the lamp against the wall until it was completely destroyed. The chain remained woven through my flesh, but I wasn’t going to try and get it out. What was the point? If the little bit of heat emanating from a light bulb was enough to start the melting, how the hell would I survive?
“I plunged my hand into the thawing bucket of ice I’d left on the nightstand, not caring if any shards from the lamp had gotten in it. I just wanted to stop the melting. It was a horrible feeling. My hand felt as if it were a glove that was being slowly removed. It looks as if something tried to flatten it with a meat mallet. It doesn’t hurt anymore, though. In fact, I can’t feel it at all. My hand is already dead - it’s just waiting for the rest of me to catch up. I can’t imagine what it will be like when my whole body melts.
“I don’t dare turn on any other light. I guess I’ll just try to sleep.”
Recorder clicks off, then clicks on again; sobbing is heard.
“The air conditioning is off! It’s like a fucking oven in here!”
More sobbing; incoherent words.
“Nobody will survive this. It’s the end of the world, I fucking know it! We need to be warm to survive. Dear God, even people in Alaska will die - or freeze to death if they don’t use heaters or fire to keep warm!”
More sobbing; terrified gibbering.
“Oh, shit. It’s happening! I’ve started to melt! I’m sticking to the bed sheets!”
Insane laughter, slowly trailing off into quiet crying.
“I can’t get off this bed. I’m going to die in a puddle on this goddamn bed!
A few moments of humming and quiet singing.
“What the fuck? What is that sound? No. Oh, no. Please, God, no! The air conditioner is back on! I forgot to set the switch to continual - the damn thing will run intermittently! It will take forever to completely melt - I can already feel myself solidifying!”
Unrelenting screams, eventually dying off to quiet sobbing.
Voice is almost unrecognizable; barely above a whisper.
“Help me…”
Afterword
Inspiration Provided by F. Paul Wilson
When I was a teenager back in the early 80s, it seemed as if the end of the world was imminent. The US had its collective finger on “THE BUTTON,” as did Russia. Sometimes the nearby fire department would test out its siren during the day when I was at school. It sounded just like an air-raid siren, and my heart would skip a beat until I realized we weren’t about to die.
As I grew older, and the world leaders came to their senses, ending the Cold War, the end of the world fascinated me more than scared me, at least when it came to fiction. I read everything I could get my hands on - Stephen King’s The Stand and Robert McCammon’s Swan Song tying for the lead as my favourites.
Then I picked up a paperback of short stories by an author I hadn’t yet heard of - F. Paul Wilson. The collection was called Soft and Others, and the writing just blew me away. All of the stories were great, but one stood out to me - the title story, “Soft.”
A virus causes people’s bones to turn to mush, but a man and his daughter think they have developed an immunity; their bone degeneration has stopped, which gives them hope. A friend who lives across the street seems to be immune as well, but when the man goes to see the friend, he makes a horrifying discovery.
This story completely messed with my mind and I would think of it from time to time over the years, and re-read it often. When I saw a call for submissions for apocalypse stories, this one came to mind, and I knew I wanted to write something as kind of a tribute to Dr. Wilson. Unfortunately, the anthology closed, as is common in the small press, but I’m proud and happy to have it included now in Ill at Ease II.
There Shall We Ever Be
Neil Williams
There was no sign of him now and he had started to doubt if he had been here at all. Perhaps finishing off that last drop of whisky hadn’t been such a smart idea after all. But had it not been for the old man, real or imagined, Mark wouldn’t have been where he was. The question as to whether it was wise for him to be here like this hung over his head, especially at this late hour. Anyone seeing him creeping around as he was would assume he was up to no good..
Something orange sparked in his peripheral vision: he cast a nervous glance to where a portly figure leant against a waiting cab, drawing on a cigarette. He told himself to calm down — it was only a taxi driver who showed no interest in anyone who wasn’t a potential customer. For a moment he had imagined that the tiny flash of colour was something else entirely. He watched as the man exhaled, the glow of the burning tobacco receding to nothing but a speck. Still it was the only colour and warmth in an otherwise cold, overcast night. Even the lights dotted around the station appeared to paint all they touched in the most pallid of tones. It was late and he was dog-tired from the journey. He knew he should be asleep by now. Instead, here he was creeping around Bank Quay train station in the dead of night. He imagined that he would have attracted some attention from the station staff and kept anticipating a hand on his shoulder at any minute. But no one appeared to notice him as he walked right past the entrance and slipped out of sight.
To the side of the station, where the gleaming modern façade ended and the taxi rank curved back to the main road, were several large refuse bins. But it was not these that commanded his interest, nor was it the small rectangular sign that read:
“CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION IS IN OPERATION AT THIS STATION.”
No, it wasn’t the sign that had drawn his eye but the surface onto which it had been fixed. It was not like the monotone brickwork supporting the station’s platforms or against which the newly renovated entrance now nestled. Before him was a rough patchwork of wooden panels occupying an area some twelve feet high by fourteen wide. Within this mismatch of blistered paintwork and decaying timber were occasional narrow slashes of impenetrable black where panels had either slipped or been prised aside.
So this was one of the old man’s lost places, forgotten now and boarded over. More than ever he felt a curious desire to see what lay beyond the decaying wood. Once a road had run through here, but now all that remained of it was locked away. How many of the people who passed by knew of its existence? He suddenly felt he understood what the old man had been trying to say. Up this close he could sense the vast emptiness waiting behind the thin veneer of wood and paint. It was like the feeling of standing over a dizzying height, where every fibre of one’s being cries out to step away from the edge, yet there still remained an urge to jump. It was with some disappointment that Mark found the entrance heavily padlocked. The panels, too, proved to be more securely fixed than he had hoped. There would be no forcing his way in there. He cast an eye up at the steps rising adjacent to the tunnel entrance. It was hardly a way in but it might make for a useful vantage point. Before the disinterested gaze of the taxi driver Mark placed a foot on the first step.
***
He’d first caught the eye of the elderly man as he’d been waiting to board a coach outside Crewe railway station. Had it not been for engineering work on the line ahead he might have made it undisturbed to his final
destination. But no, as the weary passengers jostled around the coaches brought in to ferry them to the next station, he must have nodded some friendly greeting to the man who had stood nearest to him. That was all it took, this simple sign of common courtesy, an acknowledgment that they were all in it together. The country’s dearly-held traditions of queuing and a crumbling infrastructure proved to be the perfect opportunity for conversation. By the time he’d pushed his way along the aisle of the coach, carefully trying not to hit any of the already-seated passengers with his overnight bag, he knew there would be no escape.
He had considered dumping the bag on the seat beside him and thereby forcing the old fool to sit elsewhere. Instead he hoisted it into the overhead shelf and then slumped into the empty seat.
“You wouldn’t mind if I sat here, would you?”
He turned to face the old man and offered a weak smile of resignation. “Not at all,” he said.
He had placed the man in his late sixties, but apart from his wrinkled face there was little to go on. He was certainly tall and wore a heavy grey coat buttoned all the way up. Black shoes with decorative patterns punched into the polished leather. And he wore a hat.
Who wears a hat these days?
It was this that had intrigued Mark the most; it reminded him of the hat his grandfather had worn when alive. The hat was a similar colour to the coat and sported a small bright orange feather in the band.
The man removed his headwear as he sat down and placed it squarely in his lap. This made it easier for Mark to observe it more closely. It did indeed look just like the one he and his cousin used to fight over when they pretended to be cowboys. He hadn’t thought about it for years, and it seemed strange that he should do so now. What had become of it, he wondered.
“Well I suppose we’ll be home soon enough now,” said the man settling into his seat.
“It’s not my home.”
“Oh, a business trip then? You can’t possibly be going there for the sights?”
Mark was increasingly annoyed by the line of enquiry, but also keen to put him straight. “I’m here for a funeral.”
“Ah, my condolences,” his fellow passenger said. Had the hat not already been removed he imagined the man would have done so at this moment. “I do apologise, I didn’t wish to pry.”
He was surprised by the old man’s sudden change. Did he now not wish to know more?
As the coach swung out of the station and it became clear that no further questions were forthcoming, Mark volunteered a response to the unasked question, “I was born in Warrington, but I haven’t been back there for nearly twenty years.”
The old man turned to him and smiled, “So, it is a homecoming of sorts then?”
Mark didn’t answer him. He settled his head back and watched the hypnotic display of passing streetlights through the greasy window, all the while listening to the unhappy murmur of the other passengers. A couple seated behind him seemed to be complaining about the sorry state of the rail network, elsewhere a child started to cry before being shushed into silence by its mother. Mark had first been notified of the disruption as he’d boarded the train at Euston. It hadn’t troubled him as much as it had some of the other passengers, though he did regret that his first view of his hometown in so many years would not be from the elevated platforms of Bank Quay station. He attempted to scrape together an image of how he thought it would appear from fragments of memory. The drab grey platforms with their yawning concrete stairways descending to street level. Towering above all the twisted steel structure of the soap factory, whose gleaming chimney wrought a white smoke weal across the similarly burnished grey sky. He had a vague memory of a time when the factory pumped out so much detergent that it had fallen on the town like a snowstorm. Just thinking about it, he imagined he could smell, even taste, the soap powder-laced fug that held the whole town in a suffocating embrace.
“Breathe deeply, this is good fresh Warrington air,” his grandfather had said when the smoke was at its thickest and the river Mersey foamed white. “Nothing in it but clean, healthy steam.”
He died of pneumonia when Mark was still quite young. He’d spent his final years battling emphysema with each hard won breath. Black Lung he’d always called it, though he’d never worked down the pits himself. Smoking too many of those coffin nails since he was an apprentice with Locker — before the war he’d worked for one of the larger wire manufacturers in the town. Well those regular doses of clean Warrington air, between puffs on a fag, didn’t save him.
His most vivid memory of his grandfather was when his mother took him, along with his brother and cousins, to the hospital. Perhaps mindful of the disruption the boys might have caused on the ward, she had led them to an outside window and pointed to where Grandad lay amongst the row of beds. Mark remembered the oxygen cylinder, the mass of pale plastic tubes feeding into the withered figure on one of them and the oxygen mask obscuring his face. Behind this device rheumy eyes had wrinkled into what Mark imagined must have signified a smile, as the line of children peeping over the windowsill waved their final goodbyes.
Breathe deep, indeed.
He was distracted from his thoughts by the chiming of his phone. He fumbled irritably for it in his jacket pocket and by the time he had a hold of it the ringing had stopped. It was his brother again. This had been the third call since he’d left London, yet another attempt to convince him to change his plans. But Mark had already made up his mind. He’d be there for the service, he’d promised them that much. No matter how much David pleaded he wasn’t planning on staying any longer. He knew that once he met up with the rest of the family they would try to strong-arm him into staying on afterwards. Mark wasn’t about to let that happen. The main reason for staying at the hotel was to keep them all at arm’s length for as long as possible. Sure, he’d have to face them en masse at the crematorium, but that would be neutral territory. They would stand less chance of getting the upper hand and he’d be able to slip away quietly. With any luck he’d be gone from their lives again and on the next train to the capital before his mother’s ashes had started to cool.
The coach hissed through the rain onto the motorway and, as a quiet despondency settled over the weary travellers, Mark found himself staring at the hat still resting on the old man’s lap. The hat’s owner appeared to be asleep, eyes closed, his head tipped back against the headrest and nodding gently to the undulating motion of the carriageway. The feather was like a dancing flame in the hatband. It seemed to be such a ridiculous affectation that he could hardly believe he would see another hat so like his grandfather’s. He wanted to pick it up and examine it more closely, look for some distinguishing feature that might connect the two. He raised a hand and reached out towards the brim.
“You can try it on if you like.”
Mark pulled back his arm and turned to see the man looking at him, an amused smile playing across the thin lips.
“My grandad used to have a hat just like it,” the words blurted out too fast and too loud and Mark cringed.
“Well, he obviously had excellent taste in hats,” said the man, ignoring Mark’s embarrassment.
“I did wonder if it might be the same one,” he regretted saying it even as he uttered the words.
“Indeed,” the elderly gentleman picked up the hat and turned it over with gnarled, arthritic hands, “Though I have owned it a very long time.”
He paused as if expecting a reaction then continued, “If you wish to inspect it, you’re more than welcome.”
He proffered the hat to Mark, who raised a hand declining the offer. His bluff had been called and he felt ashamed. Even if it was the same hat and it had somehow come into his possession it was of no concern to him now. “It just reminded me of…”
“Home?”
“My childhood,” replied Mark.
“The same thing, I think,” said the old man, “Is it not he that has brought you back here?”
“Ha, God no! He died when I was about nine.
I probably remember that hat better than him. Most of my memories of are of him as a dying man or from what my mother told me much later. I think I was frightened of him, even though I had no reason to be. I remember how Mum used to tell me that when she was a child he told her that on the first day of every year, by the old market gate in town, there stood a man with as many noses on his face as there are days in the year. You can’t imagine how frightened by this I was at the time. Ridiculous now, but then like Mum before me, I tried to imagine that there was someone walking around the town centre with a face full of noses!”
“I’ve heard about that one before,” smiled the old man, “He’s called ‘The Man of the Noses’ I believe.”
“It’s strange that I should think of that now, after all these years,” said Mark. “It’s all the fault of that.” And he nodded to the object in the old man’s hands then immediately turned away as old memories jostled for attention. Outside, the traffic hissed by, the glare of their headlights hurting his tired eyes until he had to close them.
The Holy Trinity Church appears as a black block against the bright morning sky of a brand new year. It is cloudless and very cold, but the sky is more silver than blue and it hurts Mark’s eyes when he tries to look directly at it. He is alone, but he doesn’t know why. The streets are not quite deserted; disparate figures saunter by, but they are little more than fleeting shadows against the cold winter sun. He looks through these crisscrossing silhouettes and sees that someone is standing in the shade offered by the rusticated sandstone of the church. Mark thinks he looks like a spy waiting to unburden himself of stolen secrets. The man is wearing a long dark Macintosh and is topped with a hat tilted down on the equally downturned head so that the face is hidden completely. He’s standing at the end on a low stone plinth that juts out from the base of the edifice. No passing child can resist the temptation to walk along its full length and jump off the end, but today they would find their path blocked. Mark wonders if he’s there for the specific reason of keeping the children at bay. The more he observes him the more Mark thinks that the long coat and hat seem to give the figure an almost priestly aspect. Then he spots something, a spark of recognition and he starts to call to the waiting man. He suddenly realises that he is much closer, though he does not remember taking a single step. A doubt claws at him and he wrestles back the shout before it leaves his lips.
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