“I had this other uncle. He died, too. Before I was born. But, you know, people tell stories.”
“True stories?”
“Who’s to say?
“What do they say happened to this other uncle?”
“Choked on a multivitamin.”
Jeremy stopped pushing the box of oil and stood, giving her his full attention. “What?”
She smiled, one hand on her hip while the other gripped her UPC scanner. “Biggest health nut you ever met, I guess. Watched his calories, jogged on a daily basis, all that shit. One morning, he’s eating breakfast with his family, throws a multivitamin in his mouth just as his wife tells him a joke, and either she was one funny bitch or he was just trying to spare her feelings, because he burst out laughing, laughing so hard he must’ve forgotten about the pill, because that thick motherfucker fell down his throat and lodged there until a coroner pried it out of his cold, stiff corpse.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Multivitamins, man, they’ll fuckin’ kill ya.”
The intercom crackled and a voice spoke: “Jeremy, please report to customer service. Jeremy, please report to customer service.”
Amy patted him on the shoulder. “It was nice knowing ya.”
“Good luck getting all this done by yourself.”
Jeremy hung his UPC scanner on a hook and headed to the front of the store. He passed customers too tired to offer nods or smiles. The time only recently passed seven. Nobody shopping right now wanted to be awake, and they certainly didn’t want to talk to anybody. He kept his head down and avoided confrontation. When he lifted it back up, Eliza stood in front of him, leaning against the customer service counter. She marched toward where he seemed to be frozen next to a movie rental kiosk.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you.” She traced a finger against his cheek, her nail threatening to draw blood. “You haven’t been responding to my texts.”
“I told you, I haven’t been feeling well.” Instinct forced him to back up, but he only bumped into the movie kiosk.
Eliza stepped forward. “Have I done something wrong?”
“What? No. We’re fine. Everything’s fine.” Jeremy couldn’t stop staring at her mouth, couldn’t get the image of her lips around his cock out of his head, couldn’t stop hallucinating blood dripping down her chin. His blood. His disease. His poison.
“You sure? Because I get the feeling you’re hiding something. I’m very good, you know,” she winked, “at intuiting these kind of things.”
A spike of irritation penetrated him. He held up his hands, blocking her from getting any closer. In a different world, he screamed that she had hepatitis, that she was damaged goods, that he’d ruined her and every second they spent in the same room together was agony.
But in this world, he said, “You can’t interrupt me at work like this. I’ll lose my job if random people just start showing up wanting to chitchat. I’m sorry, but you have to leave.”
“Random people?” Her face scrunched, taking in a silent punch. “Excuse me, but since when is your girlfriend a random person?”
The customer service lady stared at them over her computer, pretending to be busy with whatever presented itself on the screen. He gave her an ugly look—I bet you can’t wait to snitch, you miserable troll—and grabbed Eliza’s shoulder, leading her around the kiosk, out of the eavesdropper’s vision. He narrowed his eyes on Eliza and tried to look reassuring. “You know what I mean.”
“All I know is you’re not telling me something, and I’m starting to panic.”
“There’s no reason to panic. I’ve just been sick, simple as that, okay?”
She pouted. “Will you come over tonight, at least?”
He hesitated.
“It’s just that,” she touched his cheek again, “I’m so used to spending every evening with you. It was weird to not see you yesterday. Scary, really.”
He sighed, defeated. “Okay.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be over later tonight.” He nodded at the kiosk. “I’ll rent a movie or something.”
Eliza smiled and embraced him in a hug, like a lion tackling its prey. She kissed his neck, then his ear, and whispered. “I’m going to make it so worth your while, baby.” She sucked on his ear, nibbling on the lobe.
When she broke away from him, she was still smiling, only now lines of bright, red blood streamed not only from her mouth, but also her nostrils and eye sockets. Nausea spread in his gut and threatened to spray her with vomit as he backpedaled down an empty checkout aisle. She waved then turned around, headed toward the exit. He paused by a shelf of candy and watched her leave, realizing he’d be perfectly content with never seeing her again.
“Jeremy!”
He nearly screamed, he’d been so lost in a trance. He spun around and found one of the cashiers holding two cans of chicken noodle soup. She held them out to him, waiting.
“Uh, yeah?”
She raised her thin eyebrow at him, annoyed. “I asked if you could take these back where they belong. Someone’s credit card declined, so they left without paying.”
“A credit card declined on two cans of soup?”
She shrugged. “Times are rough. You gonna take the soup or not?”
Aisle three: canned goods. Beans, vegetables, and yes, even soup. Enough soup to feed an entire village of people afflicted with the flu. The aisle was empty as he walked down it, slowly, lost in thought. The soup section had recently been stocked and zoned—meaning, the night shift had straightened and properly stacked each can atop each other, forming pretty little walls lacking empty spaces. Except for the chicken soup. Two rows, each missing a single can, disrupting order and planting seeds of total chaos.
He stared at the black void in the center of the cans and wondered what would be the point of filling it. Another customer would ruin the job within the hour, anyway. Nothing good ever lasted. Walls were built to fall. Order was designed to fail.
Something scuttled behind the wall of soup and Jeremy gasped, holding back a scream. A rat? It wouldn’t be the first one he found in this building. It wouldn’t even be the fifth.
Jeremy leaned forward, pushing his left eye against the gap between cans. He saw only darkness, but that didn’t mean a rodent wasn’t in there somewhere, preparing to lash out at his retina. The scuttling continued, this time quieter, as if farther away.
He turned his head and pressed his ear against the wall of cans, closing his eyes and concentrating. Scuttling, yes, but much more. A sound like water flowing, not like a leaky pipe but like an ocean drowning a city. But where? Not even three feet separated the shelf from the wall. An impossible sound, but present all the same.
Then, almost hidden in the water, a voice, deep and cancerous:
“Succumb...to...the...forever.”
He yanked his head away and dropped the chicken noodle cans. They bounced off the floor and rolled down the aisle. He spun around, prepared to flee not just the store but the state, the whole goddamn country, and ran into a customer.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, vision blurry, head dizzy.
“You’ve done worse,” the customer said, grinning, and Jeremy blinked hard and fast, unable to ascertain if he was hallucinating Nick Malerman in front of him or if he was really standing there.
“Ni-Nick?”
“The one and only.”
“Wh-what—how did you—what—”
“Just doing some shopping, brother.” He held up a can of sliced peaches. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
“But why—why are you shopping here?”
Nick scanned the aisle. “Is there something wrong with this Walmart?”
“No, no, it’s just—you don’t live around—”
“We haven’t talked in years. You have no idea where I live.”
“But I just saw you downtown.”
“Yeah, and I saw you downtown, too. So what?”
Jeremy stared at him, wide-eyed, unable to accuse Nick of what he really suspected, that he’d followed Jeremy to the urologist appointment, then to his apartment, and now to his work. Jesus Christ, how long had he been watching him?
Nick nodded at the soup shelf. “Anything up with the chicken noodle I should know about?”
“What? No. There’s nothing...up.” Jeremy frantically collected the fallen cans of soup and shoved them into the void. “I gotta get back to work or my boss is going to have my ass. It was, uh, good seeing you again, man.”
“What time do you get off?”
“What?”
“Why don’t we hang out after your shift? You said you wanted to, remember? Catch up and all that.”
“I don’t know. Today’s not really a good day.”
“You act like I’m gonna hurt you or something.”
“I gotta go.”
“What did they say?”
“What did who say?”
He nodded at the cans again. “You were listening to them, like they were talking.”
“They didn’t—no, that’s not what I—”
(succumb to the forever)
“—I’m sorry—I really have to go.”
Jeremy turned around and raced to the stockroom, Nick’s gaze burning into the back of his skull.
7.
His lunch consisted only of a Monster, which he downed in a flat twenty seconds. The energy drink burned his stomach like acid and did little to cure the fatigue devouring him like a vampire. The break room was empty save for his presence. Everybody else had likely escaped to the McDonald’s connected to the front of the building. He buried his head into his arms, told himself he’d close his eyes only for a couple minutes, then get up and force himself to eat something.
When he sat up, he discovered he’d somehow transported from the break room to the couch in his apartment. A can of chicken noodle soup on the end-table played music from tiny speaker holes within the can’s logo. He didn’t recognize the sound, but acknowledged it was meant to be sexy, considering the way Eliza danced in front of him, rubbing her bare ass against his crotch. He reached out and caressed her cheeks, squeezing them with an insane hunger. His cock hardened, swollen, pleading to explode. But he resisted. Fought back. Thought of sidewalks, wet concrete, lampposts. God and Satan and the whole damn gang.
Eliza turned around and grabbed him and squeezed, not even trying to be gentle and him not wanting her to be. He wanted her to rip it off and eat it, devour it. He wanted her to bathe in a shower of his blood, to drink it and worship it. She put it in her mouth, running her tongue over the head and sucking. Breath hot with madness. She bobbed up and down as he ruffled his fingers through her hair before finally pushing her farther down, arching his back up to touch the back of her throat, trying to cut through her flesh and create a doorway to another world. But she didn’t gag, instead pushing her face down even more, impossibly so, taking in his balls, taking everything, and she sucked hard and wet and he couldn’t fucking stand it anymore, he couldn’t continue fighting because it was useless, this battle he was destined to lose and even thinking he had a chance of winning was to live in delusion.
He came harder than he’d ever come in his life, so hard he died and reanimated, then died again.
And when he looked down, Eliza gazed up at him, smiling, blood dripping down either corner of her lips. Then she opened her mouth, and a sea of angry, black spiders poured out, crawling upon her face, dropping onto his wet, bloody, limp cock, forcing their way through his urethra and biting at him from inside his shaft, and he screamed so loud the universe imploded.
“Spiders are my favorite,” Eliza’s voice echoed in the eternal void. “So many people are terrified of them. Maybe that’s why I love them so much.”
He jolted awake and lifted his head from the break room table, the surface now covered in drool. His arms felt numb and half-asleep and his teeth stabbed into gums, aching like they were on the verge of falling out. Something wet soaked his crotch and he feared he’d pissed himself. He looked down and the front of his pants were dark.
The break room was no longer empty. A group of cashiers sat at a table next to him, lost in speculation over who was currently having affairs with other coworkers. Jeremy scooped up an abandoned newspaper and pressed it against his crotch as he crept into the bathroom. He held a handful of paper towels under the sink before finding sanctuary in a toilet stall, then pulled down his pants and sat down on the seat without bothering to check its cleanliness, preparing for the worst and receiving it.
Blood.
So much goddamn blood.
Everything.
His cock, his balls, his thighs. He couldn’t even make out the original pigmentation of his skin. Everything red. Everything blood.
“Oh my God. Oh my fucking God.”
Gagging, he wiped himself with the towels, and when they quickly became too soggy he tossed them into the bowl underneath him and ripped off longer sheets of toilet paper. Whenever his hand brushed against his cock, another spurt of blood would escape from the tip.
What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.
He wiped harder, frantic and horrified. His whole body cramped and for a moment he was paralyzed, every ounce of him overcome with immobilizing pain. Then, within a blink, all the pain directed itself back to the source of all his misery. He stared, wide-eyed, at his cock and witnessed it stiffen like a deflated hose introduced to a fresh water flow. He’d never seen it so big before. Abnormal and terrifying. Numerous small lumps moved from the base of his genitals and up his veiny shaft, then up to the head. His urethra widened, at first only by a little, then wider than he thought possible. He screamed, cried, pleaded for the nightmare to end, gripping the handrails on either side of the toilet. He couldn’t stop watching, couldn’t stop screaming.
This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.
Something thin and black poked out through the tip of his cock. Something moving. Then another, and another, and it dawned on him that these were legs. Little itty bitty legs, freeing themselves from his genitals. But all legs lead to something much larger, don’t they? Especially when there were eight of them. Eight tiny black legs.
Eight.
One after another, the spiders emerged from his swollen cock, crawled down his thigh, his leg, then dropped to the floor, scattering who-the-fuck-knew-where, and all he could do was sit there and watch, helpless, petrified, fucking devastated, praying to all the gods in the world to stop his heart, to puncture it dead and terminate this worthless fucking life once and for all, because this time there was no waking up covered in drool, this wasn’t a dream, this wasn’t fake, this was real and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.
Jeremy yanked his pants back on and ran out of the bathroom, leaping over clusters of spiders, terrified of what would happen if he stepped on one. The cashiers in the break room stared at him with confused amusement as he fled, screaming, out the door and into the shopping area. Customers sidestepped out of his way as he headed toward the exit. He had no idea what time it was and he didn’t care. He got in his car and drove, no intention of ever returning. Fuck it. Fuck it all. Sobriety wasn’t worth this. Reality was far scarier than the alternative. He’d given it a chance and it just wasn’t for him. So fuck it. Nobody could claim he hadn’t tried.
As he drove, his pants continued to soak the blood sporadically evicting itself from his genitals.
8.
Jeremy approached the merry-go-round. His hands trembled in his jean pockets and his knees threatened to buckle with every step. A boy no older than thirteen sat at the edge of the metal saucer, shoes dragging in the dirt as he screwed around on a cell phone. He raised one eye up from the screen at Jeremy’s arrival, viewing his presence with as much interest as one would give a fast food wrapper blowing in the wind.
Jeremy had seen this kid sitting out here practically every day on his way home from work. Som
etimes, if he got the craving for fast food in the middle of the night, he’d see him still sitting out here, on his cell phone. Sure, it’d been a few years since he shot up, but Jeremy could still recognize a dealer when he saw one. He’d seen younger.
“Uh, hi.”
The kid didn’t respond, stopped looking at him altogether and returned his attention to the cell phone.
Jeremy cleared his throat. He hadn’t done this in a while and he felt rusty. He was also very conscious of the wet stain on his crotch. “I’m...um...looking. You know. Do you...?”
Not looking away from the cell phone, the kid held out a business card. Jeremy glanced around the park before accepting it. A phone number scribbled with black ink on a white background.
“So, I just call this and...?”
The kid sneered. “Fuck off, mister.”
“Right. Okay.”
He returned to his car and sat behind the wheel, panting, heart racing. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed the number on the card, held it to his ear, then hung up and bit his knuckles. A minute passed and he redialed.
A woman picked up on the third ring. “Yes?”
“Uh. A kid gave me a card with this number on it.”
“No shit. You after something or what?”
In the background, a man shouted, “Goddammit, Rhonda, stop being such a bitch to the clientele!”
The phone rustled, like she lowered it from her face. Her voice came back distant, directed at the man: “Don’t use my fucking name while I’m on the phone!” A pause, then she returned to the phone. “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay.” Jeremy licked his lips and swallowed dry skin. “I’m looking for...uh...China.”
“We got China.”
“Okay. Where?”
She told him an address. “You know it?”
“Yeah.”
“Be there in twenty.”
He was there in less than ten. Thirty minutes later, a teenager in a black turtleneck ran up to the car and exchanged a bag of dope for Jeremy’s sweaty cash he’d had cupped in his palm since leaving Walmart and sprinting through the parking lot like the police were hot on his trail. Nobody followed him. Jeremy drove away, trying to act casual and not freak out about what he’d just stored in his glove compartment. His knees shook and he could barely control his hands around the steering wheel. He hadn’t been this giddy since childhood.
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