One solid crack to the head with the tank lid while he's sleeping, then while he's stunned, slip the cord around his neck and pull it tight till his eyes bulge.
Paulo walked in, threw the car keys on the little round table by the air-conditioner.
“I parked the car in backwards, just in case we have to make a quick getaway. The back bumper's almost to the door,” said Paulo, untying his bow tie and working at the top button of his shirt.
“Wow, you think of everything.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Asked Paulo.
Alene told herself to tread lightly here. Don't piss him off. “The credit card. You used the old man's credit card to get this room.”
“So what?”
“So,” said Alene, “we killed him and put his head in the trunk of our car, is what.”
“Oh shit,” said Paulo, “we forgot to get rid of his head. Remind me to do that tomorrow, his hands, too.”
“You're not listening,” Alene was getting frustrated. “They're gonna trace the card to this motel and the night clerk's gonna identify us.”
“Alright,” said Paulo, yawning. “I'll kill him, too then. Tomorrow. He said he'd come by with towels.”
“Why don't you just kill him now?”
“And do what with his body? Leave it in here. With us? I ain't sleeping with no dead people. Use your fuckin' head.”
“Fine, whatever,” Alene said. “I just think we're leaving a lot up to chance.” She thought of the fat cop, lying dead in the road. Somebody would have seen him by now. Police were probably already searching for them.
“Well, who the fuck asked you to think?” Said Paulo. “You don't have to worry about what's happened or what's gonna happen. This whole,” he paused searching for a word, “...thing, is me, okay? You're just like a witness.”
“Accomplice.”
“Yeah, you're just an accomplice. Did you see where the ice machine was?”
“It's just around the corner,” said Alene.
“Cool. Take your panties off,” Paulo said, coming up behind her, running his hands over her stomach through dress, letting them drop lower.
“What?” Said Alene, turning around to face him.
Paulo grabbed her shoulders and turned her back around. “You heard me. Take your panties off. Bend over and lay your hands on the bed.”
“No. I don't want to do this right now.”
'Why? You scared of me?” Asked Paulo, touching her again, reaching down between her legs.
“No,” (yes) said Alene. She reached up under her skirt and grabbed the waistband of her underwear, pulled them down, “Just hurry up, okay?”
Paulo pushed her over the bed. She could feel his bare legs pressed up against her, cold and clammy from his wet pants. And then the pressure of his cock as he worked to slide it in. “What's the rush? You got somewhere to be?” Asked Paulo.
A few minutes later Alene was bent over the bed with her head crushed into the bedspread, listening to the bed springs squeak and Paulo's Cro-Magnon grunting behind her.
“Stop,” she said in a harsh whisper, and stood up, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Paulo said, breathing heavily, a sheen of stinking sweat glistening on his body. “I didn't hear nothing.”
Alene pushed the skirt of her dress back down around her thighs, “Well I just sure-as-shit heard something coming from the door.”
“The door?” Said Paulo.
“Yes. I heard something, like somebody leaning up against it.”
Paulo walked over to the door and put his face against the peephole. He stood like that for a long time.
The police, Alene thought. They already know where we are. That fucking credit card. Why the fuck didn't I stop him?”
“There's nobody out there,” Paulo said at last.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I'm sure. Now where were we?” He got behind her again, lifted the back of her skirt.
There was a loud bang from the door; one solid thud like a heavy fist smashing against it. They both heard it this time. Paulo sprang across the bed and threw the door open.
Nothing. Just the darkness; the almost-empty parking lot and the fading drizzle of rain.
“What the fuck do you want, huh?” Paulo screamed into the night. “You wanna fuck with me? It'll be the last thing you do. Touch this door again, I dare you. I dare all you motherfuckers, so come on, do it. I got the fuckin' blood lust and I'm ready to kill, so just give me a reason!”
Paulo slammed the door as hard as he possibly could but it wasn't nearly satisfying enough.
Alene was lying on the bed, holding her stomach, looking bothered.
“What's wrong with you?” Paulo asked. “There ain't nobody out there.”
“No. It's not that. I just feel... funny. Like did you... uh,” she let out a slight groan of disgust, “did you leave a condom inside of me?”
Paulo's face lit up in a cocky grin, “I haven't used a condom since I was like nine, and fuckin' whores in Paraguay.”
“You're a class-act all the way, man. Do you know that?” Alene leaned forward and reached a hand under her dress. Paulo watched, curious as an exploratory finger disappeared inside of her.
She felt something. Alene slowly drew her finger out of her vagina. She stared, wide-eyed, in a mixture of shock and revulsion at the cottonwood beetle she had just extracted from her pussy.
“I think I'm gonna be sick,” she whined.
Paulo was just as surprised, “That came out of your pussy? Shit, this is bad. Quick, we need the phone book,” he said searching the little hotel room in a frenzy.
“A phone book? Why do you need the phone book? Who are you calling?” Alene asked, worried.
Paulo stopped looking and turned to her, gravely, “'I'm calling an exterminator, 'cause you got bugs in your pussy!” Paulo threw his head back and bellowed laughter.
“This isn't funny, you asshole,” said Alene, feeling an odd pressure swell inside of her. “Oh my God, I think there's more.”
Paulo fell to his knees laughing. Alene heard his manic howl turn into a hacking, breathless wheeze as his mottled, gray face deepened to a dark crimson. He put one hand on the floor and the other went to his throat. She had a brief moment to register that he was choking, before a monstrous cramp tore something apart inside of her. It felt like someone was twisting a knife into her guts. And somewhere far away, on the other side of the room, she was vaguely away that the pounding had returned at the door. It's the police. They're breaking down the door with one of those battering ram thingies, a clear thought bubbled up in the midst of pain.
Paulo's face appeared at the edge of the bed. He was pulling himself up with handfuls of the bedspread. His head jerked as he hacked and retched and finally, he expelled a dozen roaches onto the bed, squirming in a viscous pool of his stomach acid. He tried to catch his breath, chest and shoulder's heaving. He grimaced and paused, reaching into his mouth with two fingers and pulled out a stray roach that had lodged itself between his teeth, a dangling thread of saliva and bile connected him to it like an umbilical cord.
Alene was doubled over in agony. Seeing Paulo vomit up bugs rocked her with a wave of nausea. All the while, the pounding was threatening to smash the door to splinters.
Alene leaned over the bed and released a torrent of sick into the cheap motel carpet. A thousand insects, too numerous to catalog, spilled out of her mouth in a black purge. What came out of her piled on the floor, moving, alive, all their legs struggling, wings flapping in the placenta of her vomit.
Paulo lay on the floor, hands pressing to his bloated stomach; crying and screaming at the same time.
And then the door blew in, and behind it, a solid wall of vegetation. It crept into the room on vines, stretching, grass sprouted from the walls and ceiling, and massive flowers bloomed all around, petals unfolding like in time-lapse video. The floor became a dusky tangle of roots from which plants sprang up with thick gree
n leaves the size of children.
Paulo heaved a spray of insect-laden vomit out into the new jungle surrounding him.
The temperature shot up and the air was like steam from a boiling pot.
Alene stood, her gut swollen like a pregnant woman's, attempting to run, searching for any way to escape, but there was no exit. Paulo rose to stand beside her, his own gut distended, seemingly about to burst. He clung to Alene in fear.
“What's happening. What the fuck is happening?!” He cried. Alene looked at him and saw that his face was swarming with maggots. They were digging into the rotten flesh, exposing raw and bleeding tissue beneath. “What's happening,” he cried again, his vision a field of wriggling white as the maggots squirmed across his eyes and worked themselves under the lids.
And in the center of the room, a pod sprouted upward from the tangle of vines. It was bright green, tinged with purple and layered like a cabbage, but oblong. It split apart and a yellow steam drifted out with a foul, septic smell. The layers unfurled and drooped down, and there in the middle of it, like a pearl, covered in a thick mold and barely recognizable, was the old man's pulverized head. His eyes, dull, faded to a cloudy yellow, opened to look at Alene, “You buried me in the garden, you bitch. You fed me to the ground, to the pestilence in its roots. And now, like Herod, like my body, shall you be eaten of worms! Eaten of worms! Eaten! Of worms!”
Alene opened her mouth to scream and a cloud of flies spewed up from her throat and took flight, immediately turning back on her and enveloping her head in a black cloud of filthy, buzzing wings. She swatted at them as they stung her, and she fell back onto the bed.
Eaten of worms! Eaten of worms!
Paulo tore into his face in a crazed attempt to get at the burrowing maggots. His skin had gone soft and peeled away in thin flakes, like old paint that fluttered to the ground in bleeding chunks. He felt the pressure increase in his stomach as his gut bulged outward. He looked like a man with a garbage bag half-filled with sand hanging from his waist.
Eaten of worms! Eaten of worms!
Lying back on the bed, feeling her insides swell, Alene looked over at Paulo peeling layers of skin off his face, working his way down to the muscle. And then the bulging sac of his stomach burst open and a horde of myriad insects fell out of him, glistening with the soggy membrane of his liquified organs. Alene didn't know how Paulo could still be standing; she could see into the curtain of torn flesh that used to be his abdomen and there was nothing inside of him any more, just a hollow cavity, picked clean like the inside of a jack-o-lantern.
Eaten of Worms! Eaten of worms!
And then Paulo fell to his knees, into the pile of insects he had erupted. They swarmed him, converged and devoured him within seconds, not even leaving bones behind.
Eaten of worms! Eaten of worms!
The pressure was building inside of her and she could see mounds of flesh rise on her stomach as something shifted within her. She drew her knees up, spread them apart wide and began to push. She led out a wild scream as she tried to force the intruder out of her body. She felt ripped in two as the bones of her pelvis drifted apart to make room for whatever was coming out of her. She was splayed on the bed, cords standing out on her neck. She struggled to push harder, feeling the alien presence move through her. It moved lower, she had twin wads of bedspread clutched in her iron grasp. She felt something release as a massive discharge of blood spurted out of her vagina.
It was coming.
She sensed something dangling from her, and with one final push the thing slid out completely. She threw her head back and screamed in the final culmination of pain as her vagina split apart.
She lay back, soaked in sweat and exhausted, hemorrhaging blood onto the wrinkled bedspread beneath her.
She was too exhausted to scream again when the slick, black insect, as big as a dog, rose up from between her legs and lunged at her to the demented refrain of the old man's severed head screaming:
Eaten of worms! Eaten of worms!
And as dawn broke the next morning, flooding the parking lot with sunlight. One door in a long row of motel doors, indistinguishable save for the numbers on each one, hung open. There was a BMW parked out front with the trunk lid flipped up. Inside the motel room the air was hot, a vastly different temperature from the cool atmosphere outside. The room's tenants were nowhere to be seen, and all that remained of their presence was a small stain of dried blood on the twisted-up bedspread, and a few brown leaves lingering with the motes of dust floating in the sunshine.
THE THRONE
Willard Leigh had to shit. He lay awake in his bed listening to the groan of his stomach as his bowels cramped. He imagined the machinery of his intestines as an antique and rusted vat churning his waste into a fetid sludge and sending it out through a complex series of tubes before, having nowhere to be released, returning to the vat where the process started over again.
Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and he clenched his cheeks together. He looked at the alarm clock on his night table. It was 3:19 A.M.
If I could just make it a couple more hours, he thought, I could use the bathroom at the coffee shop around the corner. They're always open early. Or I'll have to use a plastic grocery bag again.
Willard hadn't been inside his bathroom for four days, and if he could help it, would never go in again.
He had been washing himself from his kitchen sink. He used the toilet at work when he had to, or if he was home, the coffee shop men's room, although he preferred to wait until it was an absolute necessity before resorting to that.
He watched the digital numbers on his alarm clock change over to 3:24. He imagined his internal machinery shaking and lurching as screws popped off and flew like bullets, steam bellowed from busted gaskets. He wasn't going to make it.
He got up carefully and hurried down his hallway, past the closed bathroom door and into the kitchen. He needed a pot or a pan or something. His stomach groaned. Something big. He flung open the cabinets and discovered that all his cookware was too small for the task at hand. The only object he found large enough was a colander. What a mess that would make, he thought.
He found a stainless steel crock pot he didn't even know he had, shoved into the back of a cabinet. It would have to do.
Willard drug it out and set it on the floor. He tore down his briefs and squatted over the pot...
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window.
He saw a small, middle-aged man in an over-sized white t-shirt, hunched over a crock pot with his tighty-whitieys pulled down to his knees.
It was not a pretty sight.
In fact, it was downright ridiculous. The reflection looking back at him from the dark glass was so miserable that he forbade himself to follow through. This, he thought, has gone far enough. I won't allow myself to be terrorized by my imagination. I can't close rooms of my own home off to myself because I though I saw... whatever it was. A brief specter of memory flashed inside his mind, images from four nights earlier: waking up in the middle of the night, walking into the bathroom, calmly lifting the toilet lid and then standing pale and terror-frozen over the toilet bowl, slamming the lid, running down the hall and jumping into bed, lying awake all night in a paralyzed cold sweat with the blankets pulled over his head.
Willard yanked up his briefs and, despite the roiling in his bowels, sedately walked back down the hallway and stopped in front of the bathroom door. He grabbed the knob and turned it slowly, opening the door just enough to stick an arm inside to feel along the wall for the light switch. He found the switch and flicked it on. He pushed the door open a little wider and peeked his head in. He saw... nothing.
His bathroom was just the way he'd left it four nights ago, with nothing out of place. He stepped inside. He looked over the clean, white tiles, the rack with the nice guest towels that hung above the sink. The little wire tray of decorative soaps that sat on top of an old PEOPLE magazine. The toilet. It looked harmless with the fuzzy bl
ue toilet seat cover attached to the lid.
Willard sighed. I don't know what I expected, he thought. Something out of a horror movie, maybe?
Willard's bowels had relaxed considerably, but he still had business to take care of. He slid the PEOPLE magazine out from under the soap dish and reached for the toiled lid. He hesitated for a split-second before just flipping the lid up in a casual defiance of his fears.
What he saw below made his blood run cold.
He stared down into the toilet in disbelief. The bowl was impossibly deep, and wider than the exterior suggested. It had become a sheer and endless pit, plunging down into unknown depths. A dank growth of mold clung to the sides and hung like oozing moss. The pit exhaled a reek that had festered with bleak eons of decay. A tenor-like wailing rose up from the blackness; a moaning that called to him. He peered deeper into the depths, transfixed.
The moaning grew louder and seemed to rise, echoing off the filthy walls.
Something was coming. Whatever dwelt at the bottom of this feculent trench was climbing to meet him.
He had shown it the light. He had shown it the way out.
Willard screamed and slammed the lid shut. He scrambled to the door in blind terror and threw the full weight of his body against it. He tore down the hallway and back into the kitchen. He lingered just long enough to grab the biggest knife he could find, and, of course, the crock pot, before racing back to his room and locking the door.
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