u/BeeHistorical2758

Read Part 3 here.

She couldn’t move. I couldn’t move. Her leg looked broken. I was just freaked the hell out. It probably was shock for the both of us.

“I’m sorry,” I said, slowly getting to my feet. My legs felt like jelly wrapped around sticks stabbing into my stomach. I wanted to run, but wasn’t confident I could without throwing up.

I heard something. On any other night, I would’ve ignored it as normal night sounds. But anything piercing this complete quiet was noticeable. My ears perked and I turned my head.

Man, this would be so much easier to deal with if I were high.

It was the sound of approaching footsteps. Nice dress shoes, from the clacking sound and grit grinding underfoot.

A moment later, a man in a suit appeared on a walkway in the near distance. He was actually coming closer, not running away. There was light coming from that direction from a nearby building and I squinted to see him better.

He wasn’t wearing a suit, rather slacks with a matching sports jacket and a button-up shirt with the collar open. More alarm bells went off. My dad always said people who put on a sports jacket and a dress shirt without a tie were always pretending they were giving something away with one hand while digging for somebody’s wallet with the other.

He stopped next to the injured woman, bent, and ruffled her hair like she was a good dog. Then he straightened, fixed his eyes on me again, and closed the distance.

I took a step back, still wanting answers, but afraid of him. The way he moved wasn’t quite robotic, but neither was it natural.

He stopped with about six feet between us and held out his hand as if wanting to shake.

“Sulfur Askins,” he said.

It took a moment for me to understand he was introducing himself.

“Um, Simon Said.” I gave him a toodaloo wave like I was about to leave and that was exactly what I wanted to do.

He dropped his hand and took a deep breath.

“Some more meat,” he said.

“What?”

“A clogg-ed dog.” He rolled his eyes like he was mildly annoyed. “Post hole clearance. Dive in a box.”

“‘Scuse me?”

They were all words I understood, but if there were a context, I was at a loss.

“Cell phone tower, nose-picker!”

That had seemed like he was swearing in frustration. I didn’t say anything, afraid I might make him feel further antagonized.

Sulfur, if that was his name, held up a finger. I got that, he wanted me to wait. He dug into his inside jacket pocket, took out a small piece of paper, unfolded it, and read, moving his lips. He refolded the paper and tucked it back in his pocket.

He closed his eyes, his lips still moving. Like he was practicing.

He opened his eyes. “You’re wrong.”

“Come again?” I said.

“Ball subpoena!” He took out the paper again, looked at whatever was printed again, nodding as he read, then put it back.

“You.” He pointed at me. “Are wrong.”

“Okay. I’m wrong?”

He narrowed his eyes like he wasn’t sure, tucked in his lips as he looked thoughtfully, then nodded.

“Yes.”

“But how am I wrong? You’re the ones hiding. And I guess I can see why considering what’s going on with her--” I pointed at the woman just a few yards away-- “her face. And what did you guys do to Mrs. Carmody?”

Sulfur held up his hands as if to tell me to slow down. “Larry-Larry-Larry. Chop... missing... deodorant, buddy.”

If I had to guess, he was telling me to slow down.

I took several long breaths. As odd as Sulfur Askins was, it was comforting to finally be in the presence of another human being. Hell, anything living was welcome.

Except that woman. No, not her. Every time I looked at her face it felt like I had a half a stomach of spaghetti and the noodles were wriggling around.

Sulfur snapped his fingers as if to get my attention. He pointed at his eyes with his index and middle fingers.

“Colon.”

“Mrs. Carmody,” I said and pointed in the general direction of her house. Then I pointed at my head. “What... happened?”

He made a face and held out his hands like he had no idea what I was talking about. I got it, the language barrier was too thick when it was something he didn’t want to account for.

“You are wrong.” I pointed back at him. “Very wrong.”

He puffed his cheeks as he made a plosive exhalation. Then he made a long series of sounds that were definitely not words that terminated in a screech that sounded like something from a giant bird.

I think I’d pissed him off.

“Sorry. Sorry.” I lowered my eyes and held out my hands in supplication.

“Moon hour,” Sulfur said, pacing. “No right.”

Maybe I was starting to understand him or maybe those last two words were coincidental between our two languages, but I took him to mean that I’d been out of line. That didn’t seem fair considering I’d said the same thing as him. Unless ‘very’ had a much different meaning for him.

“Okay,” he said. “Lay down.”

I looked at him. He looked back. I didn’t move.

“Lay down.” He pointed at me and dragged his index over next to himself.

Did he want me to lay down on the ground next to him or was I missing his meaning?

He shook his head and crossed the last few feet between us. Sulfur stood directly in front of me and seized me by the upper arms. He was proper headbutting distance and I tensed up.

Instead of hitting my head with his head, though, he opened his mouth and coughed.

On me.

“Aw, yuck!” I said and tried to pull away. Sulfur held me in place. Despite looking about fifteen years older than me and a little shorter, he was strong. Okay, I might have been tall, but I had noodle arms. The last time I’d exercised was in my PE class in high school. My pregnant sister was probably stronger than me.

He leaned forward and coughed on me again. I felt cough-juice hit my face.

“Let me go. This is disgusting!”

“Wrong?” he asked. “Wrong? No okay?”

I finally broke his grip and wiped my face with a forearm. I think I understood it now. Something had happened to make everyone around me... off. Maybe it was transmittable and for whatever reason, I didn’t get sick.

Sulfur looked at me like he was trying to figure something out. 

“Very. Wrong,” I said. His face reddened. I wanted him to be offended. He went back to the woman lying on the ground. He scratched her behind the ear. This seemed to be more for him than her as he noticeably relaxed while she turned her head as if she didn't like it.

He turned toward me again. Sulfur took a few steps and stood directly in front of me. He clasped his hands together as if to make a prayer and bowed his head.

This I understood. He was apologizing.

I held one hand palm up and shook my head.

Now what?

He gave me a come on wave and began walking away. He looked over his shoulder a couple times to make sure I was following.

Sulfur led me a few blocks to the industrial area of the town. It was mostly under a bridge that connected Rodney Village to our downtown.

I stayed a good dozen or so feet behind him all the way. Occasionally, he’d stop like he was waiting for me. I stopped too and waited for him to continue. It was giving low-speed chase energy, except I didn’t know what I was supposed to do if I caught him.

Voices drifted in and out as we walked, too low to understand. I saw the random foot or hand, sometimes an eye as we went, but nobody came out.

Finally, we came to a weather-worn manufacturing building.

Sulfur stood on the sidewalk and gestured toward an open bay door.

It was lit in there, but that didn’t make it look not ominous.

“I’m not going in there,” I said.

Sulfur looked uncertain a moment, reached for his inside jacket pocket, then let his hand drop.

“Is good,” he said. It was odd to hear him speak accentless English while doing it so poorly.

I couldn’t trust him, could I?

He looked old. Like forties. I was thin, but I could run. Hell, I might even be able to beat him up if needed. It wasn’t like he’d tried anything. And the people we’d passed along the way had stayed in their hidey-holes.

The way I saw it, if they were going to do anything, they would’ve by now.

Right?

I slowly walked up the driveway, looking Sulfur in the eyes as I passed him. I hadn’t been in this part of town too often, but the occasional time I’d been here on my bike, there had always been constant manufacturing noises.

I stopped just before passing under the sliding bay door and looked back at him.

“Wh-what’s in there?”

The smile didn’t waver from his face.

“Is good.”

“Yeah, but what’s good?” I took a couple steps toward him and his smile dropped. I stared at him. Sulfur got teary-eyed. He opened his mouth to say something but got joked up. 

He tried and failed to speak several times before he finally said. “Mommy please.”

I thumbed over my shoulder.

“Your-your mommy’s in there?”

He smiled again, sad this time.

I had no reason to trust him. For all I knew, he was the cause of everyone's strange behavior and... that lady's face. 

I decided to stop thinking about it. If there was a chance to do something about it, I had to take it. If this wasn't it, I had no clue where to start.

I walked in.

Sulfur followed me. He stayed far enough behind that I wasn't creeped out. He pointed when I came to intersections in the building, guiding me deeper inside until we'd reached a giant furnace-looking thing.

He came up next to me while I was looking it over, surprising me.

His smile was as big as ever. He patted the big metal grate. 

“In,” he said and nodded.

“What?”

He said it again. Sulfur may as well have said it a hundred times. My brain refuses to process his meaning.

He took the bottom in both hands and with a mighty heave, lifted it, the thing groaning loud enough to echo off the walls. 

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” I said. I wanted to believe there was a mistranslation, but it was really obvious he wanted me to get in there.

I took a step back and really looked at the thing. What was this machine? It didn't seem to have a purpose. It definitely couldn't be used to hear this place, that big ass grate wouldn't do anything but leak carbon dioxide, monoxide, and a dozen other oxides if they actually lit fires in it.

I had to try something.

I pointed at the machine.

“Very wrong.”

Sulfur looked confused. His eyes went from me, my arm, and the furnace several times. It was like he didn't understand but was trying to.

I pointed to myself, the furnace, then flicked my fingers in the air and did my best imitation of fire noises then mock-screamed.

Sulfur's eyes went wide.

“Ohhhh!” he said then dug the folded up paper out of his jacket. He turned it upside down or right side up, knitting his forehead between his eyebrows as he concentrated.

His lips were moving as he story a good three minutes practicing whatever it was he was about to say.

Finally, he looked at me, a confident smile on his face.

“This machine does not produce fire. You have crossed into our world and this is how you go back. If you don't return, you will further damage our world like the woman you saw at the park. More of us will be changed, plants and animals already have been. Soon larger things, like buildings, water, air. We'll all die if you stay here and at some point you will, too. But your physical presence will continue to change things even after your death, but it will be too late for us.”

That was a lot.

I was curious and reached for the paper. He let me take it. To cash what he'd been reading chicken scratch would've been beyond generous. It was a row of loops, like he'd written the letter L in cursive about a dozen times and the hash marks beneath it.

That was it. 

I looked at the giant furnace. It looked like it would eat me and spit out my bones.

“Home?” I asked Sulfur.

He looked at me thoughtfully. 

“Home.” He said it like it was for the first time. “Home.” He nodded like it sounded right.

I just saw I mistakenly posted the newest installment of MWTIHFM with the wrong chapter number. It should have been 6 instead of 5. Sorry for the confusion. Please find part 6. here.

I just saw I mistakenly posted the newest installment of MWTIHFM with the wrong chapter number. It should have been 6 instead of 5. Sorry for the confusion. Please find part 6. here.

I just saw I mistakenly posted the newest installment of MWTIHFM with the wrong chapter number. It should have been 6 instead of 5. Sorry for the confusion. Please find part 6. here.

I just saw I mistakenly posted the newest installment of MWTIHFM with the wrong chapter number. It should have been 6 instead of 5. Sorry for the confusion. Please find part 6. here.

I just saw I mistakenly posted the newest installment of MWTIHFM with the wrong chapter number. It should have been 6 instead of 5. Sorry for the confusion. Please find part 6. here.

I just saw I mistakenly posted the newest installment of MWTIHFM with the wrong chapter number. It should have been 6 instead of 5. Sorry for the confusion. Please find part 6. here.

Read Part II here

I needed a sweater. It was really cold in here. The old-timey thermostat showed the temperature somewhere between sixty-nine and ice-age. It was hard to read. 

Mrs. Carmody wasn't downstairs from the looks of things. No lights were on. The lone light at the top of the stairs always stayed on as far as I knew.

The reason I knew her and her home as well as I did is embarrassing. I was a gig worker for a hot minute and I'd delivered a couple bottles of wine to her.

She'd been nice enough when she'd greeted me at the door with her walker. I was about to hand her the bottles but she asked me to bring them in and put them on the kitchen table.

No sooner had I placed the bottles then she was right behind me. Mrs. Carmody is really old. From the front door to the kitchen was a good fifteen feet. I didn't run but I'm pretty long-legged and I went straight from the front door, through the receiving room, and into the kitchen. 

I placed the bottles on the table and when I turned around, she was right there, smiling at me with dentures that looked a couple sizes too big and eyeballs swimming behind inch-thick lenses. She looked more like a muppet than a human being and, truth be told, I yipped a little in surprise because I was high.

“Oh, did I give you a startle?” she asked me. I had to lean against the counter to catch my breath.

Okay, I didn't yip, I screamed like I'd been set on fire. I scared easy when I was high, but an old lady who looked like she drank souls who'd just pierced my personal bubble was terrifying up close.

I waved her off like it wasn't a big deal but my heart could have swapped in for a drummer in a speed metal band.

“Can I get you some water?” she asked. And then slyly, “A glass of wine?”

My father may not have allowed alcohol in the house, but he had a beer or two when we went to restaurants. I'd been bold enough to order one once and he gave me a judgmental eyeball every time I took a sip.

But I'd had alcohol before. And the icky paired well with a smooth red.

“Pinot would be nice,” I said. It seemed like something I wasn’t to do, but it wasn’t like I'd asked.

I completed the order in the app and had two small glasses before I left. 

Later that night, I'd told my mom, thinking it was an interesting story.

“You did what?” My mom was incensed and I didn't understand why. 

“What?” I said.

She crossed her arms and just stared at me. I knew I'd done something wrong but she made me steep in it like a six foot tall tea bag.

Eventually, I was given the understanding that I had taken advantage of one of my customers. My mother made me replace the whole bottle of pinot at my own expense and take it to Mrs. Carmody the next morning.

I'd practiced my apology in front of my mom until it met her standard of what an apology should have been and then she sent me on my way.

Mrs. Carmody had opened the door for me after I'd knocked for the fiftieth time.

I immediately understood what I'd done wrong. This tiny old lady had opened the door for a complete stranger. I could tell she didn't recognize me even though I'd been here just yesterday.

“Ma'am, I'm sorry, but a bottle of wine was missing from your order yesterday. We just wanted to get a replacement to you as soon as possible.”

“Missing?” She looked confused. But she took the bottle and gave me one of those smiles like the elderly do when they're trying to smile through a moment they don't understand.

Of my own accord, I began visiting Mrs. Carmody and telling her she'd won bogus prizes like a free lawn mow, a kitchen cleaning, home-cooked dinner. I even posed as a would-be documentarian and listened for a half day while she told me her life story.

And every single time, it was like she had met me for the first time.

So, I didn't believe she would've participated in this game. Or at the most, she wouldn't remember she was supposed to be playing.

I made my way upstairs. In my many times coming here, I'd never been on this floor. I guessed her bedroom was the one next to the bathroom and confirmed a moment later. 

A brief moment of clarity came over me, then. I had no idea what I'd get from a senior citizen with Alzheimer's. There was no reason to think the hand would stop just because I'd found one person. And she more than likely wouldn't know anything. 

I was here, though, and I wasn't going to learn anything by doubting myself at every turn.

The bed was empty. Worse, it wasn't made. An old person's bed left unmade just didn't look right. It didn't seem like a thing they would do. 

My mamani had always made her bed when she got up at five in the morning. She'd lived with us the last three years of her life. I'd given up my room and made one with my dad in the basement. That had been the hardest I'd ever worked and he'd been proud of me when we were through. 

Maybe Mrs. Carmody had been hurt. Maybe someone had tried taking advantage of her. Had broken in or she'd let them in.

My mind raced. Calling 911 seemed like a good idea but then it didn't. I'd broken in and off somebody had done something to her, I'd get the baby and the bath water.

If she were hurt, I'd have to call. But there had to be a way to do it without throwing myself beneath the jail.

“M-Mrs. Carmody?” I said. All day long I'd been trying to catch another human being but right then I was hoping she wasn't home.

She wasn't in here but it was obviously her bedroom. It smelled like her perfume in here and that general old people smell had seeped into the walls. I'd gotten used to it but it was particularly strong in this room.

I thought it might be a good idea to check out the other rooms when I spotted the closet door was slightly open. And what looked like a foot was partially sticking out.

I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Carmody. It's me, Simon.” That wouldn't help but u was hoping a calm voice would keep her from being scared.

I approached slowly and pulled the door open. 

Mrs. Carmody was sitting on the floor, so, so still. I could only see her legs because the rest of her was behind hanging clothes. 

I turned on the closet light and pushed aside what looked like a wedding dress. My old friend had her eyes closed and her head turned to the side. The light was soft, so I couldn't make out a lot of detail, but her face looked slack.

She looked like she had passed and I knelt for a better look. I touched her chin to turn her face. Mrs. Carmody's skin was still warm, in fact it was feverishly hot. 

Maybe she wasn't dead and had just crawled in here, delirious with the flu. 

But the other side of her head removed any doubt. It had been smashed in. No, that wasn't right. I had to pull myself off the wall to look a second time. It was like her head had become as brittle as an egg shell and was caving in on itself.

Actively. 

A piece of her forehead just... fell into the fifty cent piece-sized hole. It looked dark and empty. I'd never seen inside a human head but whatever she had going on in hers wasn't right.

I was sweating and took a moment to slick the sweat off my forehead with my forearm and traced it out of the corner of my eyes as best I could with my fingertips. 

Mrs. Carmody's face wasn't just slack, it was essentially meat falling off the bone. Her lips hung down so low, she could have kissed her chest if she were alive. And her lower teeth were poking out of her mouth. It was like her lower face had turned to rubber while the top of her head had dried up and was crumbling.

“I shouldn't be in here,” I said. Before I could move, something gray bubbled up out of that hole and sighed as it popped, glazing down her elongated cheek that looked to have the consistency of melted and then hardened cheese. 

Some of whatever that was got on me and I stood up, walked out of the bedroom and started down the stairs. 

I was running by the time I got to the front door. And honestly, I was screaming, too. It was dark out except for the moon and the streetlights. I was so panicked I ran without orienting myself. I had no idea where I was headed except away from Mrs. Carmody's.

I wound up in the park. I ran past the swing set and planted my back against the side of the jungle gym next to the slide.

There was somebody sitting right next to me.

She was breathing because she was giggling. But it was slow, like she didn't exactly know how to laugh.

She had her head down, her hair covering her face. As long as she didn't have what Mrs. Carmody had had going on, I could deal.

“Hey, you okay?” Her knee looked wrong. Like she has twisted it badly. That made sense why she hadn't hidden from me. She couldn't get away. Or maybe even in the process of getting away, she'd fallen and hurt herself.

She held her head up and looked at me. 

“Oh!” I screamed, leaping sideways to get away from her. I tripped over something and went down, rolling once and landing on my back. I was wrong. I could not deal.

Her face was upside down.

Read Part 5. here

 

Dammit. I made things worse.

I didn’t think it through. I thought of them as animals. As things that just reacted to their environment. I didn’t think they could plan. I didn’t think they could manipulate.

But that was what they’d done. 

They’d blocked the furnace and I’d reacted. I’d thought to run outside thinking they’d made the mistake of leaving a gap wide enough for me to run through.

It never crossed my mind that that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do.

I stood outside of the building like a dumbass waiting for them to come out. After five minutes or so, they did, but I wasn’t prepared.

They came out together. Like, as one giant body.

A hand grabbed the lip of the garage door and ripped upward, tearing off the façade of the building.

I’d never used the word “gobsmacked” before in my life, but that was what I was in that moment, looking at a forty foot tall mass in the vague shape of a human. It was them, all mashed together into a monstrous thing.

The “head” turned toward me as it stood up straight (maybe it was more like fifty or sixty feet tall), the hollow knots where eyes would have gone seeming to lock onto me. The thing’s maw opened and instead of a single monstrous roar, I guess it was all the people it was made of screamed at me.

My sense of panic had been hotwired and directionless, I ran. I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. Its footfalls boomed behind me, so loud it was like I sensed it beyond hearing. I felt it in my bones, in the air stirring around me, my vision blurring with each rumbling step.

What would have made the most sense would have been to run in a circle and come back to the furnace. But that would have meant I had the ability to reason with myself. I was a rabbit that only knew to run from the danger.

I wound up on a street I didn’t know and ran onto the first porch I came to. The door was locked and I picked up a rocking chair and smashed the plate glass window. I heard the chorus of screams behind me and dropped the chair. 

I leapt the guard rail and ran into the backyard and hopped the fence. I have no idea how I had so much stamina to run. I might have looked in good shape, but exercise was antithetical to my lifestyle. 

I ran down the alley until I’d reached the next block and ran into the first lot I saw. There was a shed near the edge of the property and I tried the door. It was open and I went in.

I peeked outside. Even though I’d put some distance between me and them, it was much too close. And it looked like it might have been even bigger. My guess was it was still amalgamating more residents.

It swept its arms as it got closer. What looked like a car was spinning end over end as it hurtled in the air. I wanted to run, but the adrenalin flowing through me was making me tremble all over. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking enough to open the door of this shed.

I had to calm down and think.

I had to do something other than hide.

“Come and get me,” I said. I had no idea why, but I latched onto that thought. The original plan had been to lure it away from the furnace long enough I could get back in there and make it to the flame.

On the south side of the town was a crane where contractors had been in the process of installing a rooftop unit. I had never operated one of those, but maybe if I could get it going, I could level the playing field.

I took long, slow breaths. My mind kept telling me I was suffocating, but I kept it up until my heart rate slowed. I held my hand up in front of my face. It still trembled, although I felt like I had regained control of my body.

A quick glance outside and I saw it was closer, but going in the wrong direction. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a woman whose face looked like a sphincter. I didn’t panic, I was honestly awestruck. But then that sphincter began puckering and a sound came out, although I’m still at a complete loss to describe it. It was high-pitched?

It had the desired effect as a quick glance over my shoulder told me the amalgamation had heard and it was coming toward us. I shoved her down and ran up the back stairs of the house. I kicked the door in, thinking immediately after how dumb that had been. If I’d broken my foot, I would have been serving myself up on a plate.

I ran through the house, looking for a weapon of any kind. More residents may have been waiting in the wings to slow me down or signal to the amalgamation where I was.

“They’re not your residents,” I said aloud. I found one of those short baseball bats. Not a little leaguer one, but one that was about a foot long. 

I took it and went out the front door just as the amalgamation swept the back of the house off the foundation. I fell off the stairs, oblivious of if I’d been injured. I got to my feet and stumbled. It should have had me, but it tripped, falling through the remains of the house.

People fell off and they got up and leapt back onto the thing as it began standing.

It growled with five hundred voices as its giant head, no more than a dozen feet away, lifted off the ground.

It took a couple tries, but I was finally able to run. I ran across the street and up to the next block, finally recognizing where I was. Home was only a few blocks away and that was a good opportunity to put some distance between us.

The amalgamation was on my heels. There was no use trying to hide in another house. Residents were running past me, including a... person whose arms, legs, and head were all located on their back, but who was still waddling on the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

My legs pumped like pistons in a machine. I didn’t want to find out what that thing would do if it caught me.

I finally made it to my house with maybe a minute or two lead time. I went in through the back, the patio door still thankfully unlocked. I ran straight for the basement, hoping this place was close enough to my home that what I was looking for would be there.

It was still dark outside and I didn’t dare turn a light on for fear of revealing exactly where I was, so I did everything by feel. I barked my shin on my bed and crawled over it to dig on the other side by the wall. I didn’t feel what I was looking for and was about to hop off to look underneath when I spotted the khaki-colored bag on the chest at the foot of the bed.

I should have known something was wrong. I never left that bag out where anybody could have wandered down in and nosed into it. My parents would have hit the roof if they knew I had a flare gun. Because I had no reason to have a flare gun.

Except I did. Flare guns were fucking cool.

I could feel more of them nearby. The footfalls were getting louder.

I put the satchel over my shoulder and dashed up to the kitchen and then upstairs. It was approaching from the south, so I headed to the northside of the house.

This was my sister’s old room that my mother had converted into her office. I’d moved out once two years ago and my room had been kept exactly like I’d left it. My parents had had plans for my sister’s room even before she’d gotten married and moved out. It was like they had been expecting me to fall on my face.

Well, I had fallen on my face. Selling fiber optic cable to people whose internet was already working fine hadn’t been a good investment.

My mom had left the window open and jerked at the screen until it lifted. I crawled out onto the roof, staying low to not reveal myself.

It was next door less than thirty seconds later. It was a lot bigger than before, except it was more girthy than big. Like it could stand to lose three to four hundred people. It raised a fist threw a hook that collapsed at least two-thirds of the house, the last part sagging as if the load-bearing structures had been destroyed as well. Even though I’d committed, I was second-guessing my haphazard plan.

There wasn’t any turning back, though. I held onto the dormer as best I could and got my footing underneath me. I loaded a round into the flare gun and waited.

The amalgamation turned toward my house and roared with fifteen hundred voices. I ignored the feeling in my guts as best I could and held onto the contents of my bladder. It took a step in my direction and stumbled over something; maybe the neighbor’s pool, but by the time it reached my house, it was falling. It reached out with a hand and was tearing a chunk of roof.

Its head fell out of sight. I steeled myself, ready to shoot as soon as it popped up again. A long moment passed before it came into view.

The amalgamation reared back to punch through my house. I stood straight and aimed into its mouth, hanging open with arms and legs dangling like floppy stalactite and stalemate teeth.

I aimed for the foot with a Nike shoe on it. Saying something cool would have been appropriate.

“I'm at a loss for words,” I said and fired. The flare was the brightest thing around, so much so that I had to shield my own eyes.

It went right in, though. The amalgamation reared back like the flare had caught in its throat. It stumbled backward, putting a massive, three-fingered hand to its chest.

It stooped as it did something akin to coughing, two thousand voices retching in unison.

I should have been sliding down the gutter and making my escape. Instead, I struggled to keep my gorge down. 

I recovered before the amalgamation did, but I'd lost precious time. I was thinking I could have gotten enough time to figure out how to use the crane and then lie in wait to knock it over. 

But when it had fallen got me thinking. It was made up of residents. If I managed to knock it apart, they would either reform or just attack me separately. A better bet would be to run now for the furnace. If I got in there before it got me then they'd have to break apart to come after me.

I had to run for the furnace.

If this place had any hope of surviving after I left, I had to leave now. This place was getting visibly worse the longer I was here.

I had to wonder what this place was doing to me.

I carefully crawled onto the gutter and slid my way down. I scraped my ankle and just before I reached the bottom, caught my finger, extending the middle knuckle until it dislocated.

I stifled a scream, wondering how my sister had managed to not only shuffle down this thing but crawl back up again when she'd been sneaking out to see her very white boyfriends.

I ignored my throbbing digit, making a fist as I ran. There was a chorus of screams behind me. I thought I could smell burning flesh but didn't want to verify.

Footfalls boomed behind me and I realized one drawback to my attack. It was smaller and thus faster.

There was a bicycle on a lawn ahead of me. I slowed enough to scoop it up and keep running with it next to me. I threw my leg over the seat, hopped, and-- *miracle of all miracles--*both feet landed on the pedals.

I pumped my legs, feeling the distance spread between us. The wind in my face was refreshing. I closed my eyes a moment and coasted. 

Something smacked the ground in front of me and I opened my eyes on just enough time to avoid the smashed body rolling to a stop in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the amalgamation toss another resident high into the air. I didn't wait for them to land, riding up onto the sidewalk and turning hard at the corner. 

The amalgamation traveled well in straight lines. Let's see how it did with corners. I pedaled hard two blocks then turned left. I was going out of my way if I remembered right and made a left at the next block. I felt the amalgamation's steps in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief as they seemed to get farther away.

I got lost in the dark. It took me at least a half hour to find that industrial building with the façade and part of the roof ripped off.

I was reminded of the lesson I should have learned the first time. The amalgamation clomped from behind the building. Dammit, it had stopped trying to follow me because it knew where I was going.

If only I could communicate that I was trying to leave. To make them understand I didn't want to be here.

I hadn't gotten high in hours. If I'd had a jay, I would have known exactly what to do just then.

I got off the bike.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. The amalgamation was big and scary as hell. In the relative quiet, there was a susurrus I realized was the however many hundred residents mumbling that made up the amalgamation.

I stopped with about thirty feet between us. I held out my hands like Sulfur had done. It felt just as awkward on this end of the offered handshake.

The amalgamation lifted a mighty fist just as I sneezed. I wiped my nose and the back of my hand had a streak of blood.

The amalgamation screeched. It pressed against the remains of the building behind it, all the thousand plus voices screaming with panic. Where it had been cohesive before, moving as one body, individual minds all independent began asserting themselves, effectively tearing the thing apart.

It was hard not to see it as a single life form and the way it rendered itself in pieces was sickening. I double over, my guts swinging for the fences, although that may have had something to do with my sudden illness or allergic reaction to this place.

It began falling apart. Residents peeled from it like the rind from an orange. Some fell hard enough to audibly break bones, others just rolled off of the amalgamation until it was gone and there were several hundred people all around me.

They were disoriented, many so disfigured they barely seemed human. I walked amongst them until I spotted him. 

Sulfur.

He looked like he was in agony. I rushed to his side but thought better than to touch him. I was damaging everything with my presence, how much worse would physical contact be?

His mouth and nose were gone. I had no idea how he was breathing. His eyes were wild, like he was trying to talk to me still.

“I know, I know,” I said. “In.”

But then I noticed some of the residents were beginning to notice me. One uni-legged woman gave chase, hoping furiously toward me. A skinny, acne-faced teen whose back was so bowed backward his toes touched the top of his head turned to roll my way.

I ran for the furnace.

Read Part 5. here

 

Dammit. I made things worse.

I didn’t think it through. I thought of them as animals. As things that just reacted to their environment. I didn’t think they could plan. I didn’t think they could manipulate.

But that was what they’d done. 

They’d blocked the furnace and I’d reacted. I’d thought to run outside thinking they’d made the mistake of leaving a gap wide enough for me to run through.

It never crossed my mind that that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do.

I stood outside of the building like a dumbass waiting for them to come out. After five minutes or so, they did, but I wasn’t prepared.

They came out together. Like, as one giant body.

A hand grabbed the lip of the garage door and ripped upward, tearing off the façade of the building.

I’d never used the word “gobsmacked” before in my life, but that was what I was in that moment, looking at a forty foot tall mass in the vague shape of a human. It was them, all mashed together into a monstrous thing.

The “head” turned toward me as it stood up straight (maybe it was more like fifty or sixty feet tall), the hollow knots where eyes would have gone seeming to lock onto me. The thing’s maw opened and instead of a single monstrous roar, I guess it was all the people it was made of screamed at me.

My sense of panic had been hotwired and directionless, I ran. I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. Its footfalls boomed behind me, so loud it was like I sensed it beyond hearing. I felt it in my bones, in the air stirring around me, my vision blurring with each rumbling step.

What would have made the most sense would have been to run in a circle and come back to the furnace. But that would have meant I had the ability to reason with myself. I was a rabbit that only knew to run from the danger.

I wound up on a street I didn’t know and ran onto the first porch I came to. The door was locked and I picked up a rocking chair and smashed the plate glass window. I heard the chorus of screams behind me and dropped the chair. 

I leapt the guard rail and ran into the backyard and hopped the fence. I have no idea how I had so much stamina to run. I might have looked in good shape, but exercise was antithetical to my lifestyle. 

I ran down the alley until I’d reached the next block and ran into the first lot I saw. There was a shed near the edge of the property and I tried the door. It was open and I went in.

I peeked outside. Even though I’d put some distance between me and them, it was much too close. And it looked like it might have been even bigger. My guess was it was still amalgamating more residents.

It swept its arms as it got closer. What looked like a car was spinning end over end as it hurtled in the air. I wanted to run, but the adrenalin flowing through me was making me tremble all over. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking enough to open the door of this shed.

I had to calm down and think.

I had to do something other than hide.

“Come and get me,” I said. I had no idea why, but I latched onto that thought. The original plan had been to lure it away from the furnace long enough I could get back in there and make it to the flame.

On the south side of the town was a crane where contractors had been in the process of installing a rooftop unit. I had never operated one of those, but maybe if I could get it going, I could level the playing field.

I took long, slow breaths. My mind kept telling me I was suffocating, but I kept it up until my heart rate slowed. I held my hand up in front of my face. It still trembled, although I felt like I had regained control of my body.

A quick glance outside and I saw it was closer, but going in the wrong direction. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a woman whose face looked like a sphincter. I didn’t panic, I was honestly awestruck. But then that sphincter began puckering and a sound came out, although I’m still at a complete loss to describe it. It was high-pitched?

It had the desired effect as a quick glance over my shoulder told me the amalgamation had heard and it was coming toward us. I shoved her down and ran up the back stairs of the house. I kicked the door in, thinking immediately after how dumb that had been. If I’d broken my foot, I would have been serving myself up on a plate.

I ran through the house, looking for a weapon of any kind. More residents may have been waiting in the wings to slow me down or signal to the amalgamation where I was.

“They’re not your residents,” I said aloud. I found one of those short baseball bats. Not a little leaguer one, but one that was about a foot long. 

I took it and went out the front door just as the amalgamation swept the back of the house off the foundation. I fell off the stairs, oblivious of if I’d been injured. I got to my feet and stumbled. It should have had me, but it tripped, falling through the remains of the house.

People fell off and they got up and leapt back onto the thing as it began standing.

It growled with five hundred voices as its giant head, no more than a dozen feet away, lifted off the ground.

It took a couple tries, but I was finally able to run. I ran across the street and up to the next block, finally recognizing where I was. Home was only a few blocks away and that was a good opportunity to put some distance between us.

The amalgamation was on my heels. There was no use trying to hide in another house. Residents were running past me, including a... person whose arms, legs, and head were all located on their back, but who was still waddling on the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

My legs pumped like pistons in a machine. I didn’t want to find out what that thing would do if it caught me.

I finally made it to my house with maybe a minute or two lead time. I went in through the back, the patio door still thankfully unlocked. I ran straight for the basement, hoping this place was close enough to my home that what I was looking for would be there.

It was still dark outside and I didn’t dare turn a light on for fear of revealing exactly where I was, so I did everything by feel. I barked my shin on my bed and crawled over it to dig on the other side by the wall. I didn’t feel what I was looking for and was about to hop off to look underneath when I spotted the khaki-colored bag on the chest at the foot of the bed.

I should have known something was wrong. I never left that bag out where anybody could have wandered down in and nosed into it. My parents would have hit the roof if they knew I had a flare gun. Because I had no reason to have a flare gun.

Except I did. Flare guns were fucking cool.

I could feel more of them nearby. The footfalls were getting louder.

I put the satchel over my shoulder and dashed up to the kitchen and then upstairs. It was approaching from the south, so I headed to the northside of the house.

This was my sister’s old room that my mother had converted into her office. I’d moved out once two years ago and my room had been kept exactly like I’d left it. My parents had had plans for my sister’s room even before she’d gotten married and moved out. It was like they had been expecting me to fall on my face.

Well, I had fallen on my face. Selling fiber optic cable to people whose internet was already working fine hadn’t been a good investment.

My mom had left the window open and jerked at the screen until it lifted. I crawled out onto the roof, staying low to not reveal myself.

It was next door less than thirty seconds later. It was a lot bigger than before, except it was more girthy than big. Like it could stand to lose three to four hundred people. It raised a fist threw a hook that collapsed at least two-thirds of the house, the last part sagging as if the load-bearing structures had been destroyed as well. Even though I’d committed, I was second-guessing my haphazard plan.

There wasn’t any turning back, though. I held onto the dormer as best I could and got my footing underneath me. I loaded a round into the flare gun and waited.

The amalgamation turned toward my house and roared with fifteen hundred voices. I ignored the feeling in my guts as best I could and held onto the contents of my bladder. It took a step in my direction and stumbled over something; maybe the neighbor’s pool, but by the time it reached my house, it was falling. It reached out with a hand and was tearing a chunk of roof.

Its head fell out of sight. I steeled myself, ready to shoot as soon as it popped up again. A long moment passed before it came into view.

The amalgamation reared back to punch through my house. I stood straight and aimed into its mouth, hanging open with arms and legs dangling like floppy stalactite and stalemate teeth.

I aimed for the foot with a Nike shoe on it. Saying something cool would have been appropriate.

“I'm at a loss for words,” I said and fired. The flare was the brightest thing around, so much so that I had to shield my own eyes.

It went right in, though. The amalgamation reared back like the flare had caught in its throat. It stumbled backward, putting a massive, three-fingered hand to its chest.

It stooped as it did something akin to coughing, two thousand voices retching in unison.

I should have been sliding down the gutter and making my escape. Instead, I struggled to keep my gorge down. 

I recovered before the amalgamation did, but I'd lost precious time. I was thinking I could have gotten enough time to figure out how to use the crane and then lie in wait to knock it over. 

But when it had fallen got me thinking. It was made up of residents. If I managed to knock it apart, they would either reform or just attack me separately. A better bet would be to run now for the furnace. If I got in there before it got me then they'd have to break apart to come after me.

I had to run for the furnace.

If this place had any hope of surviving after I left, I had to leave now. This place was getting visibly worse the longer I was here.

I had to wonder what this place was doing to me.

I carefully crawled onto the gutter and slid my way down. I scraped my ankle and just before I reached the bottom, caught my finger, extending the middle knuckle until it dislocated.

I stifled a scream, wondering how my sister had managed to not only shuffle down this thing but crawl back up again when she'd been sneaking out to see her very white boyfriends.

I ignored my throbbing digit, making a fist as I ran. There was a chorus of screams behind me. I thought I could smell burning flesh but didn't want to verify.

Footfalls boomed behind me and I realized one drawback to my attack. It was smaller and thus faster.

There was a bicycle on a lawn ahead of me. I slowed enough to scoop it up and keep running with it next to me. I threw my leg over the seat, hopped, and-- *miracle of all miracles--*both feet landed on the pedals.

I pumped my legs, feeling the distance spread between us. The wind in my face was refreshing. I closed my eyes a moment and coasted. 

Something smacked the ground in front of me and I opened my eyes on just enough time to avoid the smashed body rolling to a stop in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the amalgamation toss another resident high into the air. I didn't wait for them to land, riding up onto the sidewalk and turning hard at the corner. 

The amalgamation traveled well in straight lines. Let's see how it did with corners. I pedaled hard two blocks then turned left. I was going out of my way if I remembered right and made a left at the next block. I felt the amalgamation's steps in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief as they seemed to get farther away.

I got lost in the dark. It took me at least a half hour to find that industrial building with the façade and part of the roof ripped off.

I was reminded of the lesson I should have learned the first time. The amalgamation clomped from behind the building. Dammit, it had stopped trying to follow me because it knew where I was going.

If only I could communicate that I was trying to leave. To make them understand I didn't want to be here.

I hadn't gotten high in hours. If I'd had a jay, I would have known exactly what to do just then.

I got off the bike.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. The amalgamation was big and scary as hell. In the relative quiet, there was a susurrus I realized was the however many hundred residents mumbling that made up the amalgamation.

I stopped with about thirty feet between us. I held out my hands like Sulfur had done. It felt just as awkward on this end of the offered handshake.

The amalgamation lifted a mighty fist just as I sneezed. I wiped my nose and the back of my hand had a streak of blood.

The amalgamation screeched. It pressed against the remains of the building behind it, all the thousand plus voices screaming with panic. Where it had been cohesive before, moving as one body, individual minds all independent began asserting themselves, effectively tearing the thing apart.

It was hard not to see it as a single life form and the way it rendered itself in pieces was sickening. I double over, my guts swinging for the fences, although that may have had something to do with my sudden illness or allergic reaction to this place.

It began falling apart. Residents peeled from it like the rind from an orange. Some fell hard enough to audibly break bones, others just rolled off of the amalgamation until it was gone and there were several hundred people all around me.

They were disoriented, many so disfigured they barely seemed human. I walked amongst them until I spotted him. 

Sulfur.

He looked like he was in agony. I rushed to his side but thought better than to touch him. I was damaging everything with my presence, how much worse would physical contact be?

His mouth and nose were gone. I had no idea how he was breathing. His eyes were wild, like he was trying to talk to me still.

“I know, I know,” I said. “In.”

But then I noticed some of the residents were beginning to notice me. One uni-legged woman gave chase, hoping furiously toward me. A skinny, acne-faced teen whose back was so bowed backward his toes touched the top of his head turned to roll my way.

I ran for the furnace.

Read Part 5. here

 

Dammit. I made things worse.

I didn’t think it through. I thought of them as animals. As things that just reacted to their environment. I didn’t think they could plan. I didn’t think they could manipulate.

But that was what they’d done. 

They’d blocked the furnace and I’d reacted. I’d thought to run outside thinking they’d made the mistake of leaving a gap wide enough for me to run through.

It never crossed my mind that that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do.

I stood outside of the building like a dumbass waiting for them to come out. After five minutes or so, they did, but I wasn’t prepared.

They came out together. Like, as one giant body.

A hand grabbed the lip of the garage door and ripped upward, tearing off the façade of the building.

I’d never used the word “gobsmacked” before in my life, but that was what I was in that moment, looking at a forty foot tall mass in the vague shape of a human. It was them, all mashed together into a monstrous thing.

The “head” turned toward me as it stood up straight (maybe it was more like fifty or sixty feet tall), the hollow knots where eyes would have gone seeming to lock onto me. The thing’s maw opened and instead of a single monstrous roar, I guess it was all the people it was made of screamed at me.

My sense of panic had been hotwired and directionless, I ran. I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. Its footfalls boomed behind me, so loud it was like I sensed it beyond hearing. I felt it in my bones, in the air stirring around me, my vision blurring with each rumbling step.

What would have made the most sense would have been to run in a circle and come back to the furnace. But that would have meant I had the ability to reason with myself. I was a rabbit that only knew to run from the danger.

I wound up on a street I didn’t know and ran onto the first porch I came to. The door was locked and I picked up a rocking chair and smashed the plate glass window. I heard the chorus of screams behind me and dropped the chair. 

I leapt the guard rail and ran into the backyard and hopped the fence. I have no idea how I had so much stamina to run. I might have looked in good shape, but exercise was antithetical to my lifestyle. 

I ran down the alley until I’d reached the next block and ran into the first lot I saw. There was a shed near the edge of the property and I tried the door. It was open and I went in.

I peeked outside. Even though I’d put some distance between me and them, it was much too close. And it looked like it might have been even bigger. My guess was it was still amalgamating more residents.

It swept its arms as it got closer. What looked like a car was spinning end over end as it hurtled in the air. I wanted to run, but the adrenalin flowing through me was making me tremble all over. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking enough to open the door of this shed.

I had to calm down and think.

I had to do something other than hide.

“Come and get me,” I said. I had no idea why, but I latched onto that thought. The original plan had been to lure it away from the furnace long enough I could get back in there and make it to the flame.

On the south side of the town was a crane where contractors had been in the process of installing a rooftop unit. I had never operated one of those, but maybe if I could get it going, I could level the playing field.

I took long, slow breaths. My mind kept telling me I was suffocating, but I kept it up until my heart rate slowed. I held my hand up in front of my face. It still trembled, although I felt like I had regained control of my body.

A quick glance outside and I saw it was closer, but going in the wrong direction. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a woman whose face looked like a sphincter. I didn’t panic, I was honestly awestruck. But then that sphincter began puckering and a sound came out, although I’m still at a complete loss to describe it. It was high-pitched?

It had the desired effect as a quick glance over my shoulder told me the amalgamation had heard and it was coming toward us. I shoved her down and ran up the back stairs of the house. I kicked the door in, thinking immediately after how dumb that had been. If I’d broken my foot, I would have been serving myself up on a plate.

I ran through the house, looking for a weapon of any kind. More residents may have been waiting in the wings to slow me down or signal to the amalgamation where I was.

“They’re not your residents,” I said aloud. I found one of those short baseball bats. Not a little leaguer one, but one that was about a foot long. 

I took it and went out the front door just as the amalgamation swept the back of the house off the foundation. I fell off the stairs, oblivious of if I’d been injured. I got to my feet and stumbled. It should have had me, but it tripped, falling through the remains of the house.

People fell off and they got up and leapt back onto the thing as it began standing.

It growled with five hundred voices as its giant head, no more than a dozen feet away, lifted off the ground.

It took a couple tries, but I was finally able to run. I ran across the street and up to the next block, finally recognizing where I was. Home was only a few blocks away and that was a good opportunity to put some distance between us.

The amalgamation was on my heels. There was no use trying to hide in another house. Residents were running past me, including a... person whose arms, legs, and head were all located on their back, but who was still waddling on the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

My legs pumped like pistons in a machine. I didn’t want to find out what that thing would do if it caught me.

I finally made it to my house with maybe a minute or two lead time. I went in through the back, the patio door still thankfully unlocked. I ran straight for the basement, hoping this place was close enough to my home that what I was looking for would be there.

It was still dark outside and I didn’t dare turn a light on for fear of revealing exactly where I was, so I did everything by feel. I barked my shin on my bed and crawled over it to dig on the other side by the wall. I didn’t feel what I was looking for and was about to hop off to look underneath when I spotted the khaki-colored bag on the chest at the foot of the bed.

I should have known something was wrong. I never left that bag out where anybody could have wandered down in and nosed into it. My parents would have hit the roof if they knew I had a flare gun. Because I had no reason to have a flare gun.

Except I did. Flare guns were fucking cool.

I could feel more of them nearby. The footfalls were getting louder.

I put the satchel over my shoulder and dashed up to the kitchen and then upstairs. It was approaching from the south, so I headed to the northside of the house.

This was my sister’s old room that my mother had converted into her office. I’d moved out once two years ago and my room had been kept exactly like I’d left it. My parents had had plans for my sister’s room even before she’d gotten married and moved out. It was like they had been expecting me to fall on my face.

Well, I had fallen on my face. Selling fiber optic cable to people whose internet was already working fine hadn’t been a good investment.

My mom had left the window open and jerked at the screen until it lifted. I crawled out onto the roof, staying low to not reveal myself.

It was next door less than thirty seconds later. It was a lot bigger than before, except it was more girthy than big. Like it could stand to lose three to four hundred people. It raised a fist threw a hook that collapsed at least two-thirds of the house, the last part sagging as if the load-bearing structures had been destroyed as well. Even though I’d committed, I was second-guessing my haphazard plan.

There wasn’t any turning back, though. I held onto the dormer as best I could and got my footing underneath me. I loaded a round into the flare gun and waited.

The amalgamation turned toward my house and roared with fifteen hundred voices. I ignored the feeling in my guts as best I could and held onto the contents of my bladder. It took a step in my direction and stumbled over something; maybe the neighbor’s pool, but by the time it reached my house, it was falling. It reached out with a hand and was tearing a chunk of roof.

Its head fell out of sight. I steeled myself, ready to shoot as soon as it popped up again. A long moment passed before it came into view.

The amalgamation reared back to punch through my house. I stood straight and aimed into its mouth, hanging open with arms and legs dangling like floppy stalactite and stalemate teeth.

I aimed for the foot with a Nike shoe on it. Saying something cool would have been appropriate.

“I'm at a loss for words,” I said and fired. The flare was the brightest thing around, so much so that I had to shield my own eyes.

It went right in, though. The amalgamation reared back like the flare had caught in its throat. It stumbled backward, putting a massive, three-fingered hand to its chest.

It stooped as it did something akin to coughing, two thousand voices retching in unison.

I should have been sliding down the gutter and making my escape. Instead, I struggled to keep my gorge down. 

I recovered before the amalgamation did, but I'd lost precious time. I was thinking I could have gotten enough time to figure out how to use the crane and then lie in wait to knock it over. 

But when it had fallen got me thinking. It was made up of residents. If I managed to knock it apart, they would either reform or just attack me separately. A better bet would be to run now for the furnace. If I got in there before it got me then they'd have to break apart to come after me.

I had to run for the furnace.

If this place had any hope of surviving after I left, I had to leave now. This place was getting visibly worse the longer I was here.

I had to wonder what this place was doing to me.

I carefully crawled onto the gutter and slid my way down. I scraped my ankle and just before I reached the bottom, caught my finger, extending the middle knuckle until it dislocated.

I stifled a scream, wondering how my sister had managed to not only shuffle down this thing but crawl back up again when she'd been sneaking out to see her very white boyfriends.

I ignored my throbbing digit, making a fist as I ran. There was a chorus of screams behind me. I thought I could smell burning flesh but didn't want to verify.

Footfalls boomed behind me and I realized one drawback to my attack. It was smaller and thus faster.

There was a bicycle on a lawn ahead of me. I slowed enough to scoop it up and keep running with it next to me. I threw my leg over the seat, hopped, and-- *miracle of all miracles--*both feet landed on the pedals.

I pumped my legs, feeling the distance spread between us. The wind in my face was refreshing. I closed my eyes a moment and coasted. 

Something smacked the ground in front of me and I opened my eyes on just enough time to avoid the smashed body rolling to a stop in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the amalgamation toss another resident high into the air. I didn't wait for them to land, riding up onto the sidewalk and turning hard at the corner. 

The amalgamation traveled well in straight lines. Let's see how it did with corners. I pedaled hard two blocks then turned left. I was going out of my way if I remembered right and made a left at the next block. I felt the amalgamation's steps in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief as they seemed to get farther away.

I got lost in the dark. It took me at least a half hour to find that industrial building with the façade and part of the roof ripped off.

I was reminded of the lesson I should have learned the first time. The amalgamation clomped from behind the building. Dammit, it had stopped trying to follow me because it knew where I was going.

If only I could communicate that I was trying to leave. To make them understand I didn't want to be here.

I hadn't gotten high in hours. If I'd had a jay, I would have known exactly what to do just then.

I got off the bike.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. The amalgamation was big and scary as hell. In the relative quiet, there was a susurrus I realized was the however many hundred residents mumbling that made up the amalgamation.

I stopped with about thirty feet between us. I held out my hands like Sulfur had done. It felt just as awkward on this end of the offered handshake.

The amalgamation lifted a mighty fist just as I sneezed. I wiped my nose and the back of my hand had a streak of blood.

The amalgamation screeched. It pressed against the remains of the building behind it, all the thousand plus voices screaming with panic. Where it had been cohesive before, moving as one body, individual minds all independent began asserting themselves, effectively tearing the thing apart.

It was hard not to see it as a single life form and the way it rendered itself in pieces was sickening. I double over, my guts swinging for the fences, although that may have had something to do with my sudden illness or allergic reaction to this place.

It began falling apart. Residents peeled from it like the rind from an orange. Some fell hard enough to audibly break bones, others just rolled off of the amalgamation until it was gone and there were several hundred people all around me.

They were disoriented, many so disfigured they barely seemed human. I walked amongst them until I spotted him. 

Sulfur.

He looked like he was in agony. I rushed to his side but thought better than to touch him. I was damaging everything with my presence, how much worse would physical contact be?

His mouth and nose were gone. I had no idea how he was breathing. His eyes were wild, like he was trying to talk to me still.

“I know, I know,” I said. “In.”

But then I noticed some of the residents were beginning to notice me. One uni-legged woman gave chase, hoping furiously toward me. A skinny, acne-faced teen whose back was so bowed backward his toes touched the top of his head turned to roll my way.

I ran for the furnace.

Read Part 5. here

 

Dammit. I made things worse.

I didn’t think it through. I thought of them as animals. As things that just reacted to their environment. I didn’t think they could plan. I didn’t think they could manipulate.

But that was what they’d done. 

They’d blocked the furnace and I’d reacted. I’d thought to run outside thinking they’d made the mistake of leaving a gap wide enough for me to run through.

It never crossed my mind that that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do.

I stood outside of the building like a dumbass waiting for them to come out. After five minutes or so, they did, but I wasn’t prepared.

They came out together. Like, as one giant body.

A hand grabbed the lip of the garage door and ripped upward, tearing off the façade of the building.

I’d never used the word “gobsmacked” before in my life, but that was what I was in that moment, looking at a forty foot tall mass in the vague shape of a human. It was them, all mashed together into a monstrous thing.

The “head” turned toward me as it stood up straight (maybe it was more like fifty or sixty feet tall), the hollow knots where eyes would have gone seeming to lock onto me. The thing’s maw opened and instead of a single monstrous roar, I guess it was all the people it was made of screamed at me.

My sense of panic had been hotwired and directionless, I ran. I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. Its footfalls boomed behind me, so loud it was like I sensed it beyond hearing. I felt it in my bones, in the air stirring around me, my vision blurring with each rumbling step.

What would have made the most sense would have been to run in a circle and come back to the furnace. But that would have meant I had the ability to reason with myself. I was a rabbit that only knew to run from the danger.

I wound up on a street I didn’t know and ran onto the first porch I came to. The door was locked and I picked up a rocking chair and smashed the plate glass window. I heard the chorus of screams behind me and dropped the chair. 

I leapt the guard rail and ran into the backyard and hopped the fence. I have no idea how I had so much stamina to run. I might have looked in good shape, but exercise was antithetical to my lifestyle. 

I ran down the alley until I’d reached the next block and ran into the first lot I saw. There was a shed near the edge of the property and I tried the door. It was open and I went in.

I peeked outside. Even though I’d put some distance between me and them, it was much too close. And it looked like it might have been even bigger. My guess was it was still amalgamating more residents.

It swept its arms as it got closer. What looked like a car was spinning end over end as it hurtled in the air. I wanted to run, but the adrenalin flowing through me was making me tremble all over. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking enough to open the door of this shed.

I had to calm down and think.

I had to do something other than hide.

“Come and get me,” I said. I had no idea why, but I latched onto that thought. The original plan had been to lure it away from the furnace long enough I could get back in there and make it to the flame.

On the south side of the town was a crane where contractors had been in the process of installing a rooftop unit. I had never operated one of those, but maybe if I could get it going, I could level the playing field.

I took long, slow breaths. My mind kept telling me I was suffocating, but I kept it up until my heart rate slowed. I held my hand up in front of my face. It still trembled, although I felt like I had regained control of my body.

A quick glance outside and I saw it was closer, but going in the wrong direction. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a woman whose face looked like a sphincter. I didn’t panic, I was honestly awestruck. But then that sphincter began puckering and a sound came out, although I’m still at a complete loss to describe it. It was high-pitched?

It had the desired effect as a quick glance over my shoulder told me the amalgamation had heard and it was coming toward us. I shoved her down and ran up the back stairs of the house. I kicked the door in, thinking immediately after how dumb that had been. If I’d broken my foot, I would have been serving myself up on a plate.

I ran through the house, looking for a weapon of any kind. More residents may have been waiting in the wings to slow me down or signal to the amalgamation where I was.

“They’re not your residents,” I said aloud. I found one of those short baseball bats. Not a little leaguer one, but one that was about a foot long. 

I took it and went out the front door just as the amalgamation swept the back of the house off the foundation. I fell off the stairs, oblivious of if I’d been injured. I got to my feet and stumbled. It should have had me, but it tripped, falling through the remains of the house.

People fell off and they got up and leapt back onto the thing as it began standing.

It growled with five hundred voices as its giant head, no more than a dozen feet away, lifted off the ground.

It took a couple tries, but I was finally able to run. I ran across the street and up to the next block, finally recognizing where I was. Home was only a few blocks away and that was a good opportunity to put some distance between us.

The amalgamation was on my heels. There was no use trying to hide in another house. Residents were running past me, including a... person whose arms, legs, and head were all located on their back, but who was still waddling on the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

My legs pumped like pistons in a machine. I didn’t want to find out what that thing would do if it caught me.

I finally made it to my house with maybe a minute or two lead time. I went in through the back, the patio door still thankfully unlocked. I ran straight for the basement, hoping this place was close enough to my home that what I was looking for would be there.

It was still dark outside and I didn’t dare turn a light on for fear of revealing exactly where I was, so I did everything by feel. I barked my shin on my bed and crawled over it to dig on the other side by the wall. I didn’t feel what I was looking for and was about to hop off to look underneath when I spotted the khaki-colored bag on the chest at the foot of the bed.

I should have known something was wrong. I never left that bag out where anybody could have wandered down in and nosed into it. My parents would have hit the roof if they knew I had a flare gun. Because I had no reason to have a flare gun.

Except I did. Flare guns were fucking cool.

I could feel more of them nearby. The footfalls were getting louder.

I put the satchel over my shoulder and dashed up to the kitchen and then upstairs. It was approaching from the south, so I headed to the northside of the house.

This was my sister’s old room that my mother had converted into her office. I’d moved out once two years ago and my room had been kept exactly like I’d left it. My parents had had plans for my sister’s room even before she’d gotten married and moved out. It was like they had been expecting me to fall on my face.

Well, I had fallen on my face. Selling fiber optic cable to people whose internet was already working fine hadn’t been a good investment.

My mom had left the window open and jerked at the screen until it lifted. I crawled out onto the roof, staying low to not reveal myself.

It was next door less than thirty seconds later. It was a lot bigger than before, except it was more girthy than big. Like it could stand to lose three to four hundred people. It raised a fist threw a hook that collapsed at least two-thirds of the house, the last part sagging as if the load-bearing structures had been destroyed as well. Even though I’d committed, I was second-guessing my haphazard plan.

There wasn’t any turning back, though. I held onto the dormer as best I could and got my footing underneath me. I loaded a round into the flare gun and waited.

The amalgamation turned toward my house and roared with fifteen hundred voices. I ignored the feeling in my guts as best I could and held onto the contents of my bladder. It took a step in my direction and stumbled over something; maybe the neighbor’s pool, but by the time it reached my house, it was falling. It reached out with a hand and was tearing a chunk of roof.

Its head fell out of sight. I steeled myself, ready to shoot as soon as it popped up again. A long moment passed before it came into view.

The amalgamation reared back to punch through my house. I stood straight and aimed into its mouth, hanging open with arms and legs dangling like floppy stalactite and stalemate teeth.

I aimed for the foot with a Nike shoe on it. Saying something cool would have been appropriate.

“I'm at a loss for words,” I said and fired. The flare was the brightest thing around, so much so that I had to shield my own eyes.

It went right in, though. The amalgamation reared back like the flare had caught in its throat. It stumbled backward, putting a massive, three-fingered hand to its chest.

It stooped as it did something akin to coughing, two thousand voices retching in unison.

I should have been sliding down the gutter and making my escape. Instead, I struggled to keep my gorge down. 

I recovered before the amalgamation did, but I'd lost precious time. I was thinking I could have gotten enough time to figure out how to use the crane and then lie in wait to knock it over. 

But when it had fallen got me thinking. It was made up of residents. If I managed to knock it apart, they would either reform or just attack me separately. A better bet would be to run now for the furnace. If I got in there before it got me then they'd have to break apart to come after me.

I had to run for the furnace.

If this place had any hope of surviving after I left, I had to leave now. This place was getting visibly worse the longer I was here.

I had to wonder what this place was doing to me.

I carefully crawled onto the gutter and slid my way down. I scraped my ankle and just before I reached the bottom, caught my finger, extending the middle knuckle until it dislocated.

I stifled a scream, wondering how my sister had managed to not only shuffle down this thing but crawl back up again when she'd been sneaking out to see her very white boyfriends.

I ignored my throbbing digit, making a fist as I ran. There was a chorus of screams behind me. I thought I could smell burning flesh but didn't want to verify.

Footfalls boomed behind me and I realized one drawback to my attack. It was smaller and thus faster.

There was a bicycle on a lawn ahead of me. I slowed enough to scoop it up and keep running with it next to me. I threw my leg over the seat, hopped, and-- *miracle of all miracles--*both feet landed on the pedals.

I pumped my legs, feeling the distance spread between us. The wind in my face was refreshing. I closed my eyes a moment and coasted. 

Something smacked the ground in front of me and I opened my eyes on just enough time to avoid the smashed body rolling to a stop in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the amalgamation toss another resident high into the air. I didn't wait for them to land, riding up onto the sidewalk and turning hard at the corner. 

The amalgamation traveled well in straight lines. Let's see how it did with corners. I pedaled hard two blocks then turned left. I was going out of my way if I remembered right and made a left at the next block. I felt the amalgamation's steps in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief as they seemed to get farther away.

I got lost in the dark. It took me at least a half hour to find that industrial building with the façade and part of the roof ripped off.

I was reminded of the lesson I should have learned the first time. The amalgamation clomped from behind the building. Dammit, it had stopped trying to follow me because it knew where I was going.

If only I could communicate that I was trying to leave. To make them understand I didn't want to be here.

I hadn't gotten high in hours. If I'd had a jay, I would have known exactly what to do just then.

I got off the bike.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. The amalgamation was big and scary as hell. In the relative quiet, there was a susurrus I realized was the however many hundred residents mumbling that made up the amalgamation.

I stopped with about thirty feet between us. I held out my hands like Sulfur had done. It felt just as awkward on this end of the offered handshake.

The amalgamation lifted a mighty fist just as I sneezed. I wiped my nose and the back of my hand had a streak of blood.

The amalgamation screeched. It pressed against the remains of the building behind it, all the thousand plus voices screaming with panic. Where it had been cohesive before, moving as one body, individual minds all independent began asserting themselves, effectively tearing the thing apart.

It was hard not to see it as a single life form and the way it rendered itself in pieces was sickening. I double over, my guts swinging for the fences, although that may have had something to do with my sudden illness or allergic reaction to this place.

It began falling apart. Residents peeled from it like the rind from an orange. Some fell hard enough to audibly break bones, others just rolled off of the amalgamation until it was gone and there were several hundred people all around me.

They were disoriented, many so disfigured they barely seemed human. I walked amongst them until I spotted him. 

Sulfur.

He looked like he was in agony. I rushed to his side but thought better than to touch him. I was damaging everything with my presence, how much worse would physical contact be?

His mouth and nose were gone. I had no idea how he was breathing. His eyes were wild, like he was trying to talk to me still.

“I know, I know,” I said. “In.”

But then I noticed some of the residents were beginning to notice me. One uni-legged woman gave chase, hoping furiously toward me. A skinny, acne-faced teen whose back was so bowed backward his toes touched the top of his head turned to roll my way.

I ran for the furnace.

Read Part 5. here

 

Dammit. I made things worse.

I didn’t think it through. I thought of them as animals. As things that just reacted to their environment. I didn’t think they could plan. I didn’t think they could manipulate.

But that was what they’d done. 

They’d blocked the furnace and I’d reacted. I’d thought to run outside thinking they’d made the mistake of leaving a gap wide enough for me to run through.

It never crossed my mind that that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do.

I stood outside of the building like a dumbass waiting for them to come out. After five minutes or so, they did, but I wasn’t prepared.

They came out together. Like, as one giant body.

A hand grabbed the lip of the garage door and ripped upward, tearing off the façade of the building.

I’d never used the word “gobsmacked” before in my life, but that was what I was in that moment, looking at a forty foot tall mass in the vague shape of a human. It was them, all mashed together into a monstrous thing.

The “head” turned toward me as it stood up straight (maybe it was more like fifty or sixty feet tall), the hollow knots where eyes would have gone seeming to lock onto me. The thing’s maw opened and instead of a single monstrous roar, I guess it was all the people it was made of screamed at me.

My sense of panic had been hotwired and directionless, I ran. I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. Its footfalls boomed behind me, so loud it was like I sensed it beyond hearing. I felt it in my bones, in the air stirring around me, my vision blurring with each rumbling step.

What would have made the most sense would have been to run in a circle and come back to the furnace. But that would have meant I had the ability to reason with myself. I was a rabbit that only knew to run from the danger.

I wound up on a street I didn’t know and ran onto the first porch I came to. The door was locked and I picked up a rocking chair and smashed the plate glass window. I heard the chorus of screams behind me and dropped the chair. 

I leapt the guard rail and ran into the backyard and hopped the fence. I have no idea how I had so much stamina to run. I might have looked in good shape, but exercise was antithetical to my lifestyle. 

I ran down the alley until I’d reached the next block and ran into the first lot I saw. There was a shed near the edge of the property and I tried the door. It was open and I went in.

I peeked outside. Even though I’d put some distance between me and them, it was much too close. And it looked like it might have been even bigger. My guess was it was still amalgamating more residents.

It swept its arms as it got closer. What looked like a car was spinning end over end as it hurtled in the air. I wanted to run, but the adrenalin flowing through me was making me tremble all over. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking enough to open the door of this shed.

I had to calm down and think.

I had to do something other than hide.

“Come and get me,” I said. I had no idea why, but I latched onto that thought. The original plan had been to lure it away from the furnace long enough I could get back in there and make it to the flame.

On the south side of the town was a crane where contractors had been in the process of installing a rooftop unit. I had never operated one of those, but maybe if I could get it going, I could level the playing field.

I took long, slow breaths. My mind kept telling me I was suffocating, but I kept it up until my heart rate slowed. I held my hand up in front of my face. It still trembled, although I felt like I had regained control of my body.

A quick glance outside and I saw it was closer, but going in the wrong direction. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a woman whose face looked like a sphincter. I didn’t panic, I was honestly awestruck. But then that sphincter began puckering and a sound came out, although I’m still at a complete loss to describe it. It was high-pitched?

It had the desired effect as a quick glance over my shoulder told me the amalgamation had heard and it was coming toward us. I shoved her down and ran up the back stairs of the house. I kicked the door in, thinking immediately after how dumb that had been. If I’d broken my foot, I would have been serving myself up on a plate.

I ran through the house, looking for a weapon of any kind. More residents may have been waiting in the wings to slow me down or signal to the amalgamation where I was.

“They’re not your residents,” I said aloud. I found one of those short baseball bats. Not a little leaguer one, but one that was about a foot long. 

I took it and went out the front door just as the amalgamation swept the back of the house off the foundation. I fell off the stairs, oblivious of if I’d been injured. I got to my feet and stumbled. It should have had me, but it tripped, falling through the remains of the house.

People fell off and they got up and leapt back onto the thing as it began standing.

It growled with five hundred voices as its giant head, no more than a dozen feet away, lifted off the ground.

It took a couple tries, but I was finally able to run. I ran across the street and up to the next block, finally recognizing where I was. Home was only a few blocks away and that was a good opportunity to put some distance between us.

The amalgamation was on my heels. There was no use trying to hide in another house. Residents were running past me, including a... person whose arms, legs, and head were all located on their back, but who was still waddling on the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

My legs pumped like pistons in a machine. I didn’t want to find out what that thing would do if it caught me.

I finally made it to my house with maybe a minute or two lead time. I went in through the back, the patio door still thankfully unlocked. I ran straight for the basement, hoping this place was close enough to my home that what I was looking for would be there.

It was still dark outside and I didn’t dare turn a light on for fear of revealing exactly where I was, so I did everything by feel. I barked my shin on my bed and crawled over it to dig on the other side by the wall. I didn’t feel what I was looking for and was about to hop off to look underneath when I spotted the khaki-colored bag on the chest at the foot of the bed.

I should have known something was wrong. I never left that bag out where anybody could have wandered down in and nosed into it. My parents would have hit the roof if they knew I had a flare gun. Because I had no reason to have a flare gun.

Except I did. Flare guns were fucking cool.

I could feel more of them nearby. The footfalls were getting louder.

I put the satchel over my shoulder and dashed up to the kitchen and then upstairs. It was approaching from the south, so I headed to the northside of the house.

This was my sister’s old room that my mother had converted into her office. I’d moved out once two years ago and my room had been kept exactly like I’d left it. My parents had had plans for my sister’s room even before she’d gotten married and moved out. It was like they had been expecting me to fall on my face.

Well, I had fallen on my face. Selling fiber optic cable to people whose internet was already working fine hadn’t been a good investment.

My mom had left the window open and jerked at the screen until it lifted. I crawled out onto the roof, staying low to not reveal myself.

It was next door less than thirty seconds later. It was a lot bigger than before, except it was more girthy than big. Like it could stand to lose three to four hundred people. It raised a fist threw a hook that collapsed at least two-thirds of the house, the last part sagging as if the load-bearing structures had been destroyed as well. Even though I’d committed, I was second-guessing my haphazard plan.

There wasn’t any turning back, though. I held onto the dormer as best I could and got my footing underneath me. I loaded a round into the flare gun and waited.

The amalgamation turned toward my house and roared with fifteen hundred voices. I ignored the feeling in my guts as best I could and held onto the contents of my bladder. It took a step in my direction and stumbled over something; maybe the neighbor’s pool, but by the time it reached my house, it was falling. It reached out with a hand and was tearing a chunk of roof.

Its head fell out of sight. I steeled myself, ready to shoot as soon as it popped up again. A long moment passed before it came into view.

The amalgamation reared back to punch through my house. I stood straight and aimed into its mouth, hanging open with arms and legs dangling like floppy stalactite and stalemate teeth.

I aimed for the foot with a Nike shoe on it. Saying something cool would have been appropriate.

“I'm at a loss for words,” I said and fired. The flare was the brightest thing around, so much so that I had to shield my own eyes.

It went right in, though. The amalgamation reared back like the flare had caught in its throat. It stumbled backward, putting a massive, three-fingered hand to its chest.

It stooped as it did something akin to coughing, two thousand voices retching in unison.

I should have been sliding down the gutter and making my escape. Instead, I struggled to keep my gorge down. 

I recovered before the amalgamation did, but I'd lost precious time. I was thinking I could have gotten enough time to figure out how to use the crane and then lie in wait to knock it over. 

But when it had fallen got me thinking. It was made up of residents. If I managed to knock it apart, they would either reform or just attack me separately. A better bet would be to run now for the furnace. If I got in there before it got me then they'd have to break apart to come after me.

I had to run for the furnace.

If this place had any hope of surviving after I left, I had to leave now. This place was getting visibly worse the longer I was here.

I had to wonder what this place was doing to me.

I carefully crawled onto the gutter and slid my way down. I scraped my ankle and just before I reached the bottom, caught my finger, extending the middle knuckle until it dislocated.

I stifled a scream, wondering how my sister had managed to not only shuffle down this thing but crawl back up again when she'd been sneaking out to see her very white boyfriends.

I ignored my throbbing digit, making a fist as I ran. There was a chorus of screams behind me. I thought I could smell burning flesh but didn't want to verify.

Footfalls boomed behind me and I realized one drawback to my attack. It was smaller and thus faster.

There was a bicycle on a lawn ahead of me. I slowed enough to scoop it up and keep running with it next to me. I threw my leg over the seat, hopped, and-- *miracle of all miracles--*both feet landed on the pedals.

I pumped my legs, feeling the distance spread between us. The wind in my face was refreshing. I closed my eyes a moment and coasted. 

Something smacked the ground in front of me and I opened my eyes on just enough time to avoid the smashed body rolling to a stop in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the amalgamation toss another resident high into the air. I didn't wait for them to land, riding up onto the sidewalk and turning hard at the corner. 

The amalgamation traveled well in straight lines. Let's see how it did with corners. I pedaled hard two blocks then turned left. I was going out of my way if I remembered right and made a left at the next block. I felt the amalgamation's steps in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief as they seemed to get farther away.

I got lost in the dark. It took me at least a half hour to find that industrial building with the façade and part of the roof ripped off.

I was reminded of the lesson I should have learned the first time. The amalgamation clomped from behind the building. Dammit, it had stopped trying to follow me because it knew where I was going.

If only I could communicate that I was trying to leave. To make them understand I didn't want to be here.

I hadn't gotten high in hours. If I'd had a jay, I would have known exactly what to do just then.

I got off the bike.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. The amalgamation was big and scary as hell. In the relative quiet, there was a susurrus I realized was the however many hundred residents mumbling that made up the amalgamation.

I stopped with about thirty feet between us. I held out my hands like Sulfur had done. It felt just as awkward on this end of the offered handshake.

The amalgamation lifted a mighty fist just as I sneezed. I wiped my nose and the back of my hand had a streak of blood.

The amalgamation screeched. It pressed against the remains of the building behind it, all the thousand plus voices screaming with panic. Where it had been cohesive before, moving as one body, individual minds all independent began asserting themselves, effectively tearing the thing apart.

It was hard not to see it as a single life form and the way it rendered itself in pieces was sickening. I double over, my guts swinging for the fences, although that may have had something to do with my sudden illness or allergic reaction to this place.

It began falling apart. Residents peeled from it like the rind from an orange. Some fell hard enough to audibly break bones, others just rolled off of the amalgamation until it was gone and there were several hundred people all around me.

They were disoriented, many so disfigured they barely seemed human. I walked amongst them until I spotted him. 

Sulfur.

He looked like he was in agony. I rushed to his side but thought better than to touch him. I was damaging everything with my presence, how much worse would physical contact be?

His mouth and nose were gone. I had no idea how he was breathing. His eyes were wild, like he was trying to talk to me still.

“I know, I know,” I said. “In.”

But then I noticed some of the residents were beginning to notice me. One uni-legged woman gave chase, hoping furiously toward me. A skinny, acne-faced teen whose back was so bowed backward his toes touched the top of his head turned to roll my way.

I ran for the furnace.

Read Part 5. here

 

Dammit. I made things worse.

I didn’t think it through. I thought of them as animals. As things that just reacted to their environment. I didn’t think they could plan. I didn’t think they could manipulate.

But that was what they’d done. 

They’d blocked the furnace and I’d reacted. I’d thought to run outside thinking they’d made the mistake of leaving a gap wide enough for me to run through.

It never crossed my mind that that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do.

I stood outside of the building like a dumbass waiting for them to come out. After five minutes or so, they did, but I wasn’t prepared.

They came out together. Like, as one giant body.

A hand grabbed the lip of the garage door and ripped upward, tearing off the façade of the building.

I’d never used the word “gobsmacked” before in my life, but that was what I was in that moment, looking at a forty foot tall mass in the vague shape of a human. It was them, all mashed together into a monstrous thing.

The “head” turned toward me as it stood up straight (maybe it was more like fifty or sixty feet tall), the hollow knots where eyes would have gone seeming to lock onto me. The thing’s maw opened and instead of a single monstrous roar, I guess it was all the people it was made of screamed at me.

My sense of panic had been hotwired and directionless, I ran. I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. Its footfalls boomed behind me, so loud it was like I sensed it beyond hearing. I felt it in my bones, in the air stirring around me, my vision blurring with each rumbling step.

What would have made the most sense would have been to run in a circle and come back to the furnace. But that would have meant I had the ability to reason with myself. I was a rabbit that only knew to run from the danger.

I wound up on a street I didn’t know and ran onto the first porch I came to. The door was locked and I picked up a rocking chair and smashed the plate glass window. I heard the chorus of screams behind me and dropped the chair. 

I leapt the guard rail and ran into the backyard and hopped the fence. I have no idea how I had so much stamina to run. I might have looked in good shape, but exercise was antithetical to my lifestyle. 

I ran down the alley until I’d reached the next block and ran into the first lot I saw. There was a shed near the edge of the property and I tried the door. It was open and I went in.

I peeked outside. Even though I’d put some distance between me and them, it was much too close. And it looked like it might have been even bigger. My guess was it was still amalgamating more residents.

It swept its arms as it got closer. What looked like a car was spinning end over end as it hurtled in the air. I wanted to run, but the adrenalin flowing through me was making me tremble all over. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking enough to open the door of this shed.

I had to calm down and think.

I had to do something other than hide.

“Come and get me,” I said. I had no idea why, but I latched onto that thought. The original plan had been to lure it away from the furnace long enough I could get back in there and make it to the flame.

On the south side of the town was a crane where contractors had been in the process of installing a rooftop unit. I had never operated one of those, but maybe if I could get it going, I could level the playing field.

I took long, slow breaths. My mind kept telling me I was suffocating, but I kept it up until my heart rate slowed. I held my hand up in front of my face. It still trembled, although I felt like I had regained control of my body.

A quick glance outside and I saw it was closer, but going in the wrong direction. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a woman whose face looked like a sphincter. I didn’t panic, I was honestly awestruck. But then that sphincter began puckering and a sound came out, although I’m still at a complete loss to describe it. It was high-pitched?

It had the desired effect as a quick glance over my shoulder told me the amalgamation had heard and it was coming toward us. I shoved her down and ran up the back stairs of the house. I kicked the door in, thinking immediately after how dumb that had been. If I’d broken my foot, I would have been serving myself up on a plate.

I ran through the house, looking for a weapon of any kind. More residents may have been waiting in the wings to slow me down or signal to the amalgamation where I was.

“They’re not your residents,” I said aloud. I found one of those short baseball bats. Not a little leaguer one, but one that was about a foot long. 

I took it and went out the front door just as the amalgamation swept the back of the house off the foundation. I fell off the stairs, oblivious of if I’d been injured. I got to my feet and stumbled. It should have had me, but it tripped, falling through the remains of the house.

People fell off and they got up and leapt back onto the thing as it began standing.

It growled with five hundred voices as its giant head, no more than a dozen feet away, lifted off the ground.

It took a couple tries, but I was finally able to run. I ran across the street and up to the next block, finally recognizing where I was. Home was only a few blocks away and that was a good opportunity to put some distance between us.

The amalgamation was on my heels. There was no use trying to hide in another house. Residents were running past me, including a... person whose arms, legs, and head were all located on their back, but who was still waddling on the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

My legs pumped like pistons in a machine. I didn’t want to find out what that thing would do if it caught me.

I finally made it to my house with maybe a minute or two lead time. I went in through the back, the patio door still thankfully unlocked. I ran straight for the basement, hoping this place was close enough to my home that what I was looking for would be there.

It was still dark outside and I didn’t dare turn a light on for fear of revealing exactly where I was, so I did everything by feel. I barked my shin on my bed and crawled over it to dig on the other side by the wall. I didn’t feel what I was looking for and was about to hop off to look underneath when I spotted the khaki-colored bag on the chest at the foot of the bed.

I should have known something was wrong. I never left that bag out where anybody could have wandered down in and nosed into it. My parents would have hit the roof if they knew I had a flare gun. Because I had no reason to have a flare gun.

Except I did. Flare guns were fucking cool.

I could feel more of them nearby. The footfalls were getting louder.

I put the satchel over my shoulder and dashed up to the kitchen and then upstairs. It was approaching from the south, so I headed to the northside of the house.

This was my sister’s old room that my mother had converted into her office. I’d moved out once two years ago and my room had been kept exactly like I’d left it. My parents had had plans for my sister’s room even before she’d gotten married and moved out. It was like they had been expecting me to fall on my face.

Well, I had fallen on my face. Selling fiber optic cable to people whose internet was already working fine hadn’t been a good investment.

My mom had left the window open and jerked at the screen until it lifted. I crawled out onto the roof, staying low to not reveal myself.

It was next door less than thirty seconds later. It was a lot bigger than before, except it was more girthy than big. Like it could stand to lose three to four hundred people. It raised a fist threw a hook that collapsed at least two-thirds of the house, the last part sagging as if the load-bearing structures had been destroyed as well. Even though I’d committed, I was second-guessing my haphazard plan.

There wasn’t any turning back, though. I held onto the dormer as best I could and got my footing underneath me. I loaded a round into the flare gun and waited.

The amalgamation turned toward my house and roared with fifteen hundred voices. I ignored the feeling in my guts as best I could and held onto the contents of my bladder. It took a step in my direction and stumbled over something; maybe the neighbor’s pool, but by the time it reached my house, it was falling. It reached out with a hand and was tearing a chunk of roof.

Its head fell out of sight. I steeled myself, ready to shoot as soon as it popped up again. A long moment passed before it came into view.

The amalgamation reared back to punch through my house. I stood straight and aimed into its mouth, hanging open with arms and legs dangling like floppy stalactite and stalemate teeth.

I aimed for the foot with a Nike shoe on it. Saying something cool would have been appropriate.

“I'm at a loss for words,” I said and fired. The flare was the brightest thing around, so much so that I had to shield my own eyes.

It went right in, though. The amalgamation reared back like the flare had caught in its throat. It stumbled backward, putting a massive, three-fingered hand to its chest.

It stooped as it did something akin to coughing, two thousand voices retching in unison.

I should have been sliding down the gutter and making my escape. Instead, I struggled to keep my gorge down. 

I recovered before the amalgamation did, but I'd lost precious time. I was thinking I could have gotten enough time to figure out how to use the crane and then lie in wait to knock it over. 

But when it had fallen got me thinking. It was made up of residents. If I managed to knock it apart, they would either reform or just attack me separately. A better bet would be to run now for the furnace. If I got in there before it got me then they'd have to break apart to come after me.

I had to run for the furnace.

If this place had any hope of surviving after I left, I had to leave now. This place was getting visibly worse the longer I was here.

I had to wonder what this place was doing to me.

I carefully crawled onto the gutter and slid my way down. I scraped my ankle and just before I reached the bottom, caught my finger, extending the middle knuckle until it dislocated.

I stifled a scream, wondering how my sister had managed to not only shuffle down this thing but crawl back up again when she'd been sneaking out to see her very white boyfriends.

I ignored my throbbing digit, making a fist as I ran. There was a chorus of screams behind me. I thought I could smell burning flesh but didn't want to verify.

Footfalls boomed behind me and I realized one drawback to my attack. It was smaller and thus faster.

There was a bicycle on a lawn ahead of me. I slowed enough to scoop it up and keep running with it next to me. I threw my leg over the seat, hopped, and-- *miracle of all miracles--*both feet landed on the pedals.

I pumped my legs, feeling the distance spread between us. The wind in my face was refreshing. I closed my eyes a moment and coasted. 

Something smacked the ground in front of me and I opened my eyes on just enough time to avoid the smashed body rolling to a stop in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the amalgamation toss another resident high into the air. I didn't wait for them to land, riding up onto the sidewalk and turning hard at the corner. 

The amalgamation traveled well in straight lines. Let's see how it did with corners. I pedaled hard two blocks then turned left. I was going out of my way if I remembered right and made a left at the next block. I felt the amalgamation's steps in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief as they seemed to get farther away.

I got lost in the dark. It took me at least a half hour to find that industrial building with the façade and part of the roof ripped off.

I was reminded of the lesson I should have learned the first time. The amalgamation clomped from behind the building. Dammit, it had stopped trying to follow me because it knew where I was going.

If only I could communicate that I was trying to leave. To make them understand I didn't want to be here.

I hadn't gotten high in hours. If I'd had a jay, I would have known exactly what to do just then.

I got off the bike.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. The amalgamation was big and scary as hell. In the relative quiet, there was a susurrus I realized was the however many hundred residents mumbling that made up the amalgamation.

I stopped with about thirty feet between us. I held out my hands like Sulfur had done. It felt just as awkward on this end of the offered handshake.

The amalgamation lifted a mighty fist just as I sneezed. I wiped my nose and the back of my hand had a streak of blood.

The amalgamation screeched. It pressed against the remains of the building behind it, all the thousand plus voices screaming with panic. Where it had been cohesive before, moving as one body, individual minds all independent began asserting themselves, effectively tearing the thing apart.

It was hard not to see it as a single life form and the way it rendered itself in pieces was sickening. I double over, my guts swinging for the fences, although that may have had something to do with my sudden illness or allergic reaction to this place.

It began falling apart. Residents peeled from it like the rind from an orange. Some fell hard enough to audibly break bones, others just rolled off of the amalgamation until it was gone and there were several hundred people all around me.

They were disoriented, many so disfigured they barely seemed human. I walked amongst them until I spotted him. 

Sulfur.

He looked like he was in agony. I rushed to his side but thought better than to touch him. I was damaging everything with my presence, how much worse would physical contact be?

His mouth and nose were gone. I had no idea how he was breathing. His eyes were wild, like he was trying to talk to me still.

“I know, I know,” I said. “In.”

But then I noticed some of the residents were beginning to notice me. One uni-legged woman gave chase, hoping furiously toward me. A skinny, acne-faced teen whose back was so bowed backward his toes touched the top of his head turned to roll my way.

I ran for the furnace.

Read Part 5. here

 

Dammit. I made things worse.

I didn’t think it through. I thought of them as animals. As things that just reacted to their environment. I didn’t think they could plan. I didn’t think they could manipulate.

But that was what they’d done. 

They’d blocked the furnace and I’d reacted. I’d thought to run outside thinking they’d made the mistake of leaving a gap wide enough for me to run through.

It never crossed my mind that that was exactly what they’d wanted me to do.

I stood outside of the building like a dumbass waiting for them to come out. After five minutes or so, they did, but I wasn’t prepared.

They came out together. Like, as one giant body.

A hand grabbed the lip of the garage door and ripped upward, tearing off the façade of the building.

I’d never used the word “gobsmacked” before in my life, but that was what I was in that moment, looking at a forty foot tall mass in the vague shape of a human. It was them, all mashed together into a monstrous thing.

The “head” turned toward me as it stood up straight (maybe it was more like fifty or sixty feet tall), the hollow knots where eyes would have gone seeming to lock onto me. The thing’s maw opened and instead of a single monstrous roar, I guess it was all the people it was made of screamed at me.

My sense of panic had been hotwired and directionless, I ran. I couldn’t think about anything except getting away. Its footfalls boomed behind me, so loud it was like I sensed it beyond hearing. I felt it in my bones, in the air stirring around me, my vision blurring with each rumbling step.

What would have made the most sense would have been to run in a circle and come back to the furnace. But that would have meant I had the ability to reason with myself. I was a rabbit that only knew to run from the danger.

I wound up on a street I didn’t know and ran onto the first porch I came to. The door was locked and I picked up a rocking chair and smashed the plate glass window. I heard the chorus of screams behind me and dropped the chair. 

I leapt the guard rail and ran into the backyard and hopped the fence. I have no idea how I had so much stamina to run. I might have looked in good shape, but exercise was antithetical to my lifestyle. 

I ran down the alley until I’d reached the next block and ran into the first lot I saw. There was a shed near the edge of the property and I tried the door. It was open and I went in.

I peeked outside. Even though I’d put some distance between me and them, it was much too close. And it looked like it might have been even bigger. My guess was it was still amalgamating more residents.

It swept its arms as it got closer. What looked like a car was spinning end over end as it hurtled in the air. I wanted to run, but the adrenalin flowing through me was making me tremble all over. I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking enough to open the door of this shed.

I had to calm down and think.

I had to do something other than hide.

“Come and get me,” I said. I had no idea why, but I latched onto that thought. The original plan had been to lure it away from the furnace long enough I could get back in there and make it to the flame.

On the south side of the town was a crane where contractors had been in the process of installing a rooftop unit. I had never operated one of those, but maybe if I could get it going, I could level the playing field.

I took long, slow breaths. My mind kept telling me I was suffocating, but I kept it up until my heart rate slowed. I held my hand up in front of my face. It still trembled, although I felt like I had regained control of my body.

A quick glance outside and I saw it was closer, but going in the wrong direction. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a woman whose face looked like a sphincter. I didn’t panic, I was honestly awestruck. But then that sphincter began puckering and a sound came out, although I’m still at a complete loss to describe it. It was high-pitched?

It had the desired effect as a quick glance over my shoulder told me the amalgamation had heard and it was coming toward us. I shoved her down and ran up the back stairs of the house. I kicked the door in, thinking immediately after how dumb that had been. If I’d broken my foot, I would have been serving myself up on a plate.

I ran through the house, looking for a weapon of any kind. More residents may have been waiting in the wings to slow me down or signal to the amalgamation where I was.

“They’re not your residents,” I said aloud. I found one of those short baseball bats. Not a little leaguer one, but one that was about a foot long. 

I took it and went out the front door just as the amalgamation swept the back of the house off the foundation. I fell off the stairs, oblivious of if I’d been injured. I got to my feet and stumbled. It should have had me, but it tripped, falling through the remains of the house.

People fell off and they got up and leapt back onto the thing as it began standing.

It growled with five hundred voices as its giant head, no more than a dozen feet away, lifted off the ground.

It took a couple tries, but I was finally able to run. I ran across the street and up to the next block, finally recognizing where I was. Home was only a few blocks away and that was a good opportunity to put some distance between us.

The amalgamation was on my heels. There was no use trying to hide in another house. Residents were running past me, including a... person whose arms, legs, and head were all located on their back, but who was still waddling on the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

My legs pumped like pistons in a machine. I didn’t want to find out what that thing would do if it caught me.

I finally made it to my house with maybe a minute or two lead time. I went in through the back, the patio door still thankfully unlocked. I ran straight for the basement, hoping this place was close enough to my home that what I was looking for would be there.

It was still dark outside and I didn’t dare turn a light on for fear of revealing exactly where I was, so I did everything by feel. I barked my shin on my bed and crawled over it to dig on the other side by the wall. I didn’t feel what I was looking for and was about to hop off to look underneath when I spotted the khaki-colored bag on the chest at the foot of the bed.

I should have known something was wrong. I never left that bag out where anybody could have wandered down in and nosed into it. My parents would have hit the roof if they knew I had a flare gun. Because I had no reason to have a flare gun.

Except I did. Flare guns were fucking cool.

I could feel more of them nearby. The footfalls were getting louder.

I put the satchel over my shoulder and dashed up to the kitchen and then upstairs. It was approaching from the south, so I headed to the northside of the house.

This was my sister’s old room that my mother had converted into her office. I’d moved out once two years ago and my room had been kept exactly like I’d left it. My parents had had plans for my sister’s room even before she’d gotten married and moved out. It was like they had been expecting me to fall on my face.

Well, I had fallen on my face. Selling fiber optic cable to people whose internet was already working fine hadn’t been a good investment.

My mom had left the window open and jerked at the screen until it lifted. I crawled out onto the roof, staying low to not reveal myself.

It was next door less than thirty seconds later. It was a lot bigger than before, except it was more girthy than big. Like it could stand to lose three to four hundred people. It raised a fist threw a hook that collapsed at least two-thirds of the house, the last part sagging as if the load-bearing structures had been destroyed as well. Even though I’d committed, I was second-guessing my haphazard plan.

There wasn’t any turning back, though. I held onto the dormer as best I could and got my footing underneath me. I loaded a round into the flare gun and waited.

The amalgamation turned toward my house and roared with fifteen hundred voices. I ignored the feeling in my guts as best I could and held onto the contents of my bladder. It took a step in my direction and stumbled over something; maybe the neighbor’s pool, but by the time it reached my house, it was falling. It reached out with a hand and was tearing a chunk of roof.

Its head fell out of sight. I steeled myself, ready to shoot as soon as it popped up again. A long moment passed before it came into view.

The amalgamation reared back to punch through my house. I stood straight and aimed into its mouth, hanging open with arms and legs dangling like floppy stalactite and stalemate teeth.

I aimed for the foot with a Nike shoe on it. Saying something cool would have been appropriate.

“I'm at a loss for words,” I said and fired. The flare was the brightest thing around, so much so that I had to shield my own eyes.

It went right in, though. The amalgamation reared back like the flare had caught in its throat. It stumbled backward, putting a massive, three-fingered hand to its chest.

It stooped as it did something akin to coughing, two thousand voices retching in unison.

I should have been sliding down the gutter and making my escape. Instead, I struggled to keep my gorge down. 

I recovered before the amalgamation did, but I'd lost precious time. I was thinking I could have gotten enough time to figure out how to use the crane and then lie in wait to knock it over. 

But when it had fallen got me thinking. It was made up of residents. If I managed to knock it apart, they would either reform or just attack me separately. A better bet would be to run now for the furnace. If I got in there before it got me then they'd have to break apart to come after me.

I had to run for the furnace.

If this place had any hope of surviving after I left, I had to leave now. This place was getting visibly worse the longer I was here.

I had to wonder what this place was doing to me.

I carefully crawled onto the gutter and slid my way down. I scraped my ankle and just before I reached the bottom, caught my finger, extending the middle knuckle until it dislocated.

I stifled a scream, wondering how my sister had managed to not only shuffle down this thing but crawl back up again when she'd been sneaking out to see her very white boyfriends.

I ignored my throbbing digit, making a fist as I ran. There was a chorus of screams behind me. I thought I could smell burning flesh but didn't want to verify.

Footfalls boomed behind me and I realized one drawback to my attack. It was smaller and thus faster.

There was a bicycle on a lawn ahead of me. I slowed enough to scoop it up and keep running with it next to me. I threw my leg over the seat, hopped, and-- *miracle of all miracles--*both feet landed on the pedals.

I pumped my legs, feeling the distance spread between us. The wind in my face was refreshing. I closed my eyes a moment and coasted. 

Something smacked the ground in front of me and I opened my eyes on just enough time to avoid the smashed body rolling to a stop in front of me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the amalgamation toss another resident high into the air. I didn't wait for them to land, riding up onto the sidewalk and turning hard at the corner. 

The amalgamation traveled well in straight lines. Let's see how it did with corners. I pedaled hard two blocks then turned left. I was going out of my way if I remembered right and made a left at the next block. I felt the amalgamation's steps in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief as they seemed to get farther away.

I got lost in the dark. It took me at least a half hour to find that industrial building with the façade and part of the roof ripped off.

I was reminded of the lesson I should have learned the first time. The amalgamation clomped from behind the building. Dammit, it had stopped trying to follow me because it knew where I was going.

If only I could communicate that I was trying to leave. To make them understand I didn't want to be here.

I hadn't gotten high in hours. If I'd had a jay, I would have known exactly what to do just then.

I got off the bike.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. The amalgamation was big and scary as hell. In the relative quiet, there was a susurrus I realized was the however many hundred residents mumbling that made up the amalgamation.

I stopped with about thirty feet between us. I held out my hands like Sulfur had done. It felt just as awkward on this end of the offered handshake.

The amalgamation lifted a mighty fist just as I sneezed. I wiped my nose and the back of my hand had a streak of blood.

The amalgamation screeched. It pressed against the remains of the building behind it, all the thousand plus voices screaming with panic. Where it had been cohesive before, moving as one body, individual minds all independent began asserting themselves, effectively tearing the thing apart.

It was hard not to see it as a single life form and the way it rendered itself in pieces was sickening. I double over, my guts swinging for the fences, although that may have had something to do with my sudden illness or allergic reaction to this place.

It began falling apart. Residents peeled from it like the rind from an orange. Some fell hard enough to audibly break bones, others just rolled off of the amalgamation until it was gone and there were several hundred people all around me.

They were disoriented, many so disfigured they barely seemed human. I walked amongst them until I spotted him. 

Sulfur.

He looked like he was in agony. I rushed to his side but thought better than to touch him. I was damaging everything with my presence, how much worse would physical contact be?

His mouth and nose were gone. I had no idea how he was breathing. His eyes were wild, like he was trying to talk to me still.

“I know, I know,” I said. “In.”

But then I noticed some of the residents were beginning to notice me. One uni-legged woman gave chase, hoping furiously toward me. A skinny, acne-faced teen whose back was so bowed backward his toes touched the top of his head turned to roll my way.

I ran for the furnace.

Read Part I here:

 

I figured the urgent care had to have people in it. Nobody was going to play this game with a broken finger or a fever. It was a block over and about a five-minute walk.

I was still high. It was an effort to not dial in on any one thing and try to pay attention to the environment around me.

I kept looking skyward. As I rounded the corner, narrowly avoiding a stroller in the middle of the sidewalk, it hit me that I couldn’t hear any birds. I looked around me. In fact, there weren’t any squirrels or chipmunks. It was as if every living thing was actively being where I wasn’t.

Honestly, it hurt my feelings a little bit.

I looked into the windows of a few of the businesses I passed. The Dairy-O, Ronnie’s Accounting, Rena's Pet Grooming.

I passed by Luck o’ the Laundry and backed up. People might leave their laundry while they ran an errand or got a bite to eat, but they didn't bail in the middle of emptying the dryer.

I was tempted to go inside. Someone had to be in there, hiding behind a machine.

But I was still high and diverging from a plan I thought was iron was a sure-fire way to diverge from any plan at all.

The idea of catching somebody begged the question: what then? Would the game be over? Would I have to shake the person and yell for them to stop it?

I'd wandered onto the grass by the time I'd come out of my half-daydream. I'd walked a few spaces past the urgent care and had to orient myself.

I walked back and pushed into the atrium of the urgent care. I could see before entering the space proper that there was nobody in the lobby, including behind the front desk.

I remembered why I came in here now. We were going to play a game of chicken. Doctors’ offices had drugs. Let's see if they were willing to keep this hiding thing up at the expense of their jobs and freedom.

My brain hadn't appreciated at that time that some of those consequences would spooge me in the chest, too. Probably because I was expecting somebody to open a door and say, “Okay, this has gone on far enough.”

I realized what I was really looking for was an adult-in-charge. The dynamic as it was meant that was me and I wasn't for it. I still felt like I was a Toys-R-Us kid.

I expected to have to climb over the counter and was surprised that the door to the treatment rooms wasn't locked. I thought it was a buzz-open situation when a nurse didn't open it to call the next patient.

It felt like I was doing something wrong as I passed the scale that also measured height. There was a desk with samples of gentle facial cleansers and vitamins. I grabbed a fistful of the vitamins. They tasted kind of like chalkier Flintstones Chewables and I really dug those.

I was standing in the threshold of a treatment room when I remembered I wasn't here for treatment. To save face--at least in my own head--I went in and raided the cabinets for tongue depressors and those long cotton swabs in the wrappers.

My hoodie pocket was getting fuller than I'd intended without the actual drugs. But this was how chicken was played, a gradual escalation. They could stop me anytime. 

I went back to that desk and tried to hop it. I banged my knee and fell on my butt hard. Both hurt, but I had to triage the pain, ignoring my crushed tailbone to focus on what had to have been a dislocated knee. It hurt so bad and in combination with my high I was willing my spirit to leave my body. There was no luck in my favor and I just had to sit in my agony and pray for the affected nerve endings to die.

I heard something like a stifled chuckle. I had tears in my eyes as I tried to see where the voice came from. As best I could tell, there was someone over by the treatment rooms on the other side of this desk. But both flesh and spirit were weak and I couldn't get up.

I opened my mouth to say something but the sound that came out of me was like a human version of a dog whimpering. 

My sister was right. I was a loser.

Maybe five minutes later, I was finally able to stand. My legs were shaky and I definitely couldn't have chased after whoever that had been. I wasn't as injured as my drug-induced brain had been telling me and the more I walked around, the better I felt. 

I poked my head into all the examining rooms. There was a lollipop on the counter in one room, a curved needle with thread atop a tray with a needle in another, and one other room with a pair of pants accordioned in the middle of the floor like someone had dropped trou and stepped out of them.

My head was starting to hurt. People weren’t supposed to think this hard when they were high. All I wanted was to go home and lay all this out for my mom to figure out.

I searched around halfheartedly, finding only the syringe in the room with the curved needle and thread.

I held it up in the middle of the area. Maybe there were cameras. I mean, I’m sure there were cameras here, but maybe there were cameras generally. Like around the town. It wouldn’t have been that hard to do. Just about everybody had a camera on their doorbell. My neighbor next door had a drone, that probably had a camera, too. Every cell phone was a camera.

I nodded like I’d made some grand revelation. We all were being watched, but right now it was probably just me.

“Okay!” I said. “I get it now.” I held the syringe up to my face. It was Novocain or whatever. The only thing I was going to do with this was get numb. I tossed it on the floor and headed back to the front.

I really did want my mom. I mean, she wouldn’t be in on whatever this was. I could tell her all about it and even though she wouldn’t believe me, she’d still listen. She’d rub my head and make me a toddy with the brandy she kept hidden under the sink. We weren’t practicing in any meaningful way, but my dad didn’t allow alcohol in the house.

I jogged until I was out of the downtown area. The urgent care was on the edge, so that hadn’t been very far. But I did get a stitch in my side that forced me to walk the next block or so. I rounded onto my block and now I did notice the lack of joggers, dog-walkers, and construction workers. There should have been non-stop lawn mowers in the distance, too, but everything was just quiet.

I’ve gone for walks at two in the morning, when the world was asleep, and it wasn’t this quiet. No birds, not even an occasional bee or fly. It was like everything and everyone had gone someplace I wasn’t.

That really hurt.

I finally made it home and went in through the side door. Mom’s car was still parked in the driveway. I think it had been there when I left.

“Mom?” I said before underhanding my keys onto the kitchen island. “Mom?”

It was just as quiet in here.

I opened the basement door and listened. Sometimes she raided my stash. Then I walked the house, opening every door until I verified there was nobody home but me. My high kicked into the worst possible gear: sadness.

I cleaned my scraped hand and put a couple band-aids on it before winding back in the kitchen.

“Where the fuck are you guys?”

Swearing was a big no-no. I’d done it on purpose. I would’ve taken a scolding right then. As if in answer, the refrigerator clicked on and scared the hell out of me. But nobody came rushing in, wagging a finger at me.

Nobody cared.

I slowly raided the fridge.

I ate the leftover pizza my parents had. Olives were disgusting, but I had the munchies. There were some pickles at the back and a half empty bag of shredded cheese. I finished the first and was eating directly out of the bag when I finally closed the refrigerator.

I sat down and turned on the television.

The news should have been on, but a blue screen with, “WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES,” was printed in bold white letters. I flipped the channel to some old black-and-white court drama. Whatever they were saying wasn’t important; I just wanted to see people.

I should have gotten my phone from my room, but I was weighed down by self-loathing and that extra sharp cheddar was really good.

Before long, I’d drifted off to sleep, but I came awake suddenly.

I wasn’t disoriented. I felt sharp, focused. I had a tingling at the back of my skull like someone was in the house. Or more succinctly, someone was very close to me right now.

The TV was off. I turned and spilled shredded cheese all over the couch. The patio door was open.

It was getting dusky outside. According to the clock on the microwave, I’d been asleep over six hours. Dad should have been home, but I didn’t call out. If this game was still ongoing, I didn’t want to tip them off that I was awake.

I rolled onto the floor and began walking on all fours like a creature that was somewhere between man and ape. That got tiring pretty quick and I went down on hands and knees. I was quiet. If there were somebody in the house, I should have been able to find them.

I crawled upstairs. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, one in my parents’ room. If somebody were up here, they might run by me if I picked wrong. 

I’d made a choice and was reaching for a doorknob when the front door slammed shut.

I flipped over and scooched down the stairs until I got my feet and ran down the last few. I ran outside and ran in a direction. It could have been wrong, but I had to commit if I were going to catch them.

I ran out of gas pretty quickly. As I hung my head and gripped my knees, sucking air, I scanned all around. I noticed what I didn’t have the wits to see before. People were here. They were here right now.

They were hiding from me.

I stood and pointed at a bush.

“I see you!”

I began walking slowly toward it.

Someone child-sized popped up from behind a car and ran. I was not going to catch them and didn’t try. I looked back at the bush, and it had stopped trembling. There was a flood light from a house on it and at this angle, I could see there was nobody behind it.

It seemed like all the people who’d been near before had retreated. I searched anyway, getting in the down push-up position to check underneath cars, looking on the other side of fenced-in lots, peeking in windows of houses.

Then I remembered Mrs. Carmody.

Wheelchair bound and elderly. There was no way she was participating in this. And her house was the next block over.

I swift-walked to her place, wishing I’d grabbed my phone. And a bottle of water. And a bottle of mouthwash. This cheese breath was atrocious.

Mrs. Carmody had one of those wraparound porches. I bounced up the three stairs and raised a hand at the door.

To knock or not to knock?

If she were playing, she wouldn’t answer. If she weren’t playing, I’d scare the hell out of her if I broke in. Going to jail wasn’t on the agenda. I knocked.

After a good thirty seconds, I knocked again. When she still didn’t answer, I decided that meant she was playing or that she wasn’t and was perhaps lying at the bottom of her stairs, hoping someone like me would come along to save her.

She could have been asleep, and I’d have to figure out plausible deniability, but I was going in.

I tried twisting the knob, but it was locked. She had big pane windows and stones lining her lawn. I went back and grabbed one and hefted it into the window before I could think my way out of not doing it.

A quick look around confirmed that nobody was going to stop me. The stone had punched a big, jagged hole in the window and I was not about to try to step through. It would be just my luck to step gingerly through, exposing the length of my inner thigh to be slashed by a big shard of glass and then bleeding today on the carpet of her sitting room.

I went back for another stone and noticed one didn’t look like the others. I nudged it and it lifted easily. I picked it up and saw it was fake and had a key in a little compartment in the bottom.

I opened one of the mini-packs of the non-Flintstones chewable vitamins, went back to the door, and let myself in.

“My name is Simon Said.” I make sure to say that to myself in the mirror every morning. Nobody talks to me anymore. 

That's more of a side effect of a larger problem. Everyone in my town has been hiding from me for the last month.

It started on a morning pretty much the same as this one. An afternoon. An afternoon pretty much like this morning.

My mother wanted me to go back to school. My father wanted me to get a job. They both wanted me to get out of their basement. Even down there, the walls were thin enough for me to hear their “renewal” for one another.

My parents were both Iranian, but my mother was born here. My father came over when he was twenty and had completely abandoned the old ways. He'd learned English from episodes of the original People's Court and Jerry Springer.

My younger sister was already married and pregnant with her first. She was the hardest on me.

“What kind of uncle are you?” she'd said to me one night. She'd taken on some sort of Persian accent like she hadn't been born in Michigan just like me. Neither of us spoke whatever Persian language they spoke over there. Well, maybe she spoke some. Her husband was from Karaj. She even wore a hijab. I seriously doubted it was for any reason other than she wanted to, although I tossed that grenade when I was otherwise defenseless.

I was getting close to pulling the pin then.

“I'm not an uncle yet,” I said.

She said something Persian and tossed her hand over her head.

“Jesus, speak English already.” I was being a jerk and I knew it. But it kept her from focusing on me being a loser. She narrowed her eyes at me.

I really wanted to smoke a bowl in that moment, but retreating to the one corner in the backyard where I could reasonably get away with it felt like a check mark for her argument against me. I could wait a little longer.

My mom smoked with me sometimes. I didn't have a lot of money and hated sharing. Not that I hated sharing with my mom. I'd smoke with her every day if I had a million dollars. But I didn't have a job and the only money I really had was the couple dollars or so my dad gave me for gas when I was out “job hunting.”

That first afternoon had seemed normal. I had set up a rough bathroom in the basement and I brushed my teeth right after using the toilet. I've always done those two things. I think my dad might have been jealous of my regularity.

I took my time before going upstairs even though my dad had left for work hours ago. My mom worked from home. Something with permits, I didn't understand it. But it was related to what my dad did; he was a licensed plumber.

I tried sneaking up the stairs, but they groaned loudly enough to tell on me. I entered the kitchen, ready to hear my mother call my name. Even if I did make it all the way up here quietly, she still knew when I emerged from my cave.

But this day was different. No mom chastising me for getting up late. No mom asking if I'd been to the yard yet.

I was relieved.

I had a habit of shoving my hands down my pockets when I was nervous and it occurred to me as I did it in that moment that when I came out of the basement for the first time was peak anxiety for me. Either I was coming out like now when the day was already “half over,” with no job or I was “looking for breakfast,” with no job. It was appreciably worse if my sister was here. Sometimes, Noor went in so deep on me, my parents didn't need to say anything. 

I took my hands out of my pockets and came up with an edible. It was hard as rock candy but I didn't care. I popped it in my mouth and sucked on it like a mint while I raided the fridge.

I could cook okay but decided to have a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Both my parents were raised Muslim but they didn't keep a halal kitchen. Some bacon would have gone nice with the sweet but I didn't feel like cooking any. And I especially didn't want my mom on my back about not cleaning the pan.

I finished a second bowl and dropped it in the sink with the spoon. I should have taken a shower and driven to Chicken King to beg the manager for the job my dad wanted me to get, but I decided to go for a walk. My edible would start hitting in ten minutes or so and I wanted some fresh air.

Usually, I ran into my neighbor, Phyllis, doing something in her yard. She wasn't there, but that might've meant that she'd already finished for the day or maybe she was having lunch. She was always good for an ego boost because she usually said something flirty. It was harmless, at least I hoped so. She was older than my mom.

I kept walking, turning left instead of right at the end of the block, headed toward our little downtown. It was also in the direction of where I got my weed from the Venga brothers.

Venga wasn't their last name. It was just what I called them in my head. They were always saying “venga” this and “venga” that. I could have looked up the word, but every time it crossed my mind I never had my phone with me and I forgot a moment later.

That was alright because my edible was starting up. It was like relaxing my shoulders when I hadn't even been aware how tense I had been a moment before. I became intensely focused on the dividing lines of the sidewalk. The lack of joggers, dog-walkers, or construction workers wasn't anything I noticed consciously.

That might have been the reason I wandered as long as I did, though. The combination of being high and in silence at first gave me a feeling of intense calm. I closed my eyes and lifted my face into a breeze and walked for a good two minutes. Even high I knew this wasn't a smart idea but it felt good. My brain felt like it was on a solo roller coaster ride around the perimeter of the inside of my skull and I had this up and down wave thing going on in my insides. 

I stumbled off the curb because of course I couldn't color this feeling in a straight line. I went down and scraped my palm, but I didn't care. Even the pain felt nice.

I sat up and examined the heel of my palm. I held it about an inch or two from my face, my skin looked like tire treads as I watched the blood well up from the abrasions.

Eventually, I got up. Downtown was closer than home and my coffee shop probably had band-aids. 

I passed by St. Rita Rectory and was still repeating the name and enjoying the mouth-feel when I got to the Bean and Leaf.

I'd been holding my hand up and noticed the blood trailing down to my elbow when I opened the door. Embarrassment cut through my high like asphalt through the skin on my hand. I didn't want to make a scene or for anybody to point and scream.

I flew like an arrow to the restroom. It didn't take long to clean up, but I did notice a couple spots on my shirt.

I wadded some TP into my hand and stepped out. I had my order already and went straight to the counter. Cindy, my café girlfriend, wasn't on the other side. We had a little thing going on. I just hadn't worked up the nerve to ask her out for real.

She wasn't there. I peered behind the counter and saw Gladys wasn't either. Gladys reminded me of both my parents rolled into one weed-smoking, judgmental package. I didn't understand how a sister-in-arms could hold me in such low regard. I mean, she'd never actually said anything, but I could tell from the eyes.

“Hello?” I said after a few seconds. Maybe they were in the back or something. After a quick glance around, I noticed there wasn't anyone else out here. So everyone was either in the women's room or the break room.

“Hello?” My high was starting to kick into another gear: paranoia. “Anybody here?”

I leaned over the counter to see if there was anyone hiding behind the cash register. The power wasn't off and it was the middle of the day. Maybe it was one in the morning instead of the afternoon. That would make sense if I could explain why the sun was out.

I stepped outside and shielded my eyes from the sun and looked skyward. I didn't know how to tell time from any constellation.

The one time I didn't bring my phone...

Chicken King was right next door and maybe that was a sign. I needed reassurance that something weird wasn't happening and stepped inside.

Instead, my paranoia ramped up. I didn't remember until I walked in that Chicken King typically had a line out the door during the lunch rush and there was nobody inside.

Lunch rush was the main reason I didn't want a job here. I didn't want to work that hard. Oops. I guess I just caught myself in a lie. The manager had asked how soon could I start. I was putting off returning his call.

Every table in here had food on trays. It was like everyone had been eating and just gotten up and left.

“Was it something I said?” I asked the room. The thought crossed my mind seriously a second later. Could it have been me?

That didn't make sense, though. What could I have possibly done to make everybody run away?

I was gradually floating back to earth from my paranoia when I heard someone shove open the back door near the restrooms. 

“Hee-hee-hee.” The giggling part was weird. Like they were playing some kind of game.

“Like hide-and-seek,” I said aloud. “No, that's stupid.” I was high, but not high enough to believe that. I quick-walked to the rear door, intent on catching up to whoever that was. 

“What the hell is going on?” I said. “Where is everybody?” I frequently practiced what I wanted to say when I had to talk to people. I didn't like speaking out loud when I wasn't suffused with THC and whatever was going on was killing my vibe. 

I strolled out into the parking lot and looked around for a moving vehicle or at least a person behind the wheel. I spotted a Ford Tempo with exhaustion puttering from the tailpipe and jogged over.

Nobody was behind the wheel.

Something scraped across the pavement. It sounded like somebody dragging themselves from underneath a car.

I walked backward to the center of the lot. Whoever it was had to show face to get out of here.

A long thirty seconds passed before I saw someone's back as they ducked between a row of arbor vitae. My brain took a couple tries before my legs started. I pursued but it was too late.

I tripped over my feet and almost caught my balance before stumbling over the curb and really grinding my shin on it. The pain was all I cared about while I sat and rocked on my butt making a sound with my mouth that sounded like shuffling a deck of cards. 

When I was finally able to stand, I realized I was still high but for the first time I didn't want to be. It felt like everyone was picking on me. The only thing left in my humiliation would have been people throwing trash at me from their hidey holes.

Wait. Was that it? Were people hiding from me? I'd thought it as a joke, but maybe that had been the right track.

I had to test it.

Read Part 4 here.

 

I believed him.

As stupid as that definitely was, it sounded like the truth.

They didn't want me here any more than I wanted to be with them. And if my physical body were the reason life here had gone sideways then there was no reason to believe they didn't want to deposit me right back where I belonged.

I climbed in. I had to hold Sulfur's hand to step over the lip. There was ash--no, not ash. It was more like burnt chips, but of what I have no idea. I stepped in the chips ankle deep and had to duck to keep from hitting my head on the blackened ceiling.

Sulfur pulled the gate down and latched it.

“Fuck off,” he said with a big smile. I had a small knot of panic for a quick moment until I realized that hadn’t been what he’d actually meant. It probably meant ‘thank you’ or something like that.

“Gobble,” Sulfur said and pointed behind me. There was a small point of light somewhere way back when I looked.

“You sure about this?” I said to him. He blinked, his expression unchanging. “Guess that’s my answer.”

I began making my way. It was easier to crawl rather than walking stooped over, although those chips hurt my hands and knees. That was more tolerable and I found it wasn’t as painful if I kind of worked my hands into the chips to flatten them as I went.

It was slow-going and the burnt smell was so thick it was leaving a layer on the back of my tongue and throat. I had a coughing fit so bad I almost hurled, but finally was able to settle my gorge.

One last look over my shoulder and there was Sulfur, far enough away that I couldn’t see his expression, but it was definitely still him. A guess put me about midway between that point of fire and him.

I pushed on and it got easier, the burnt chips gradually replaced with smaller bits, then grains the consistency of sand. That point of light ahead was enough illumination that I could see my hands and I saw they were blackened up to my wrist. I made a mental note not to touch my face.

Once I reached some sort of inner chamber, I poked my head in. The point of light was a flame. I was already sweating from the heat, but inside this part, it was a lot hotter.

I took a deep breath and climbed through, managing to scrape my upper back because I was being overly careful with my legs. For a moment, I thought I was okay, but then the pain dialed all the way up. I was bold enough to touch it after a minute or two and my fingertips were wet with dark red.

Tetanus shot, here I come.

I was able to stand up in here. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do and didn’t want to take the ten plus minutes to crawl back and try in vain to ask Sulfur. I had to be a big boy and figure this out on my own.

But in here, the black sand had been replaced with what looked like palm-sized shaped whitish rocks. I knelt and scooped one up. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen and I dropped it and picked up another.

This one was even stranger-looking because it was familiar. It had two kind of bulbous structures on one end that seemed to descend into a column that had been broken off. 

“Huh. Looks like a piece of a bone--oh my god.”

I let it tumble from my hand as I suddenly recognized it and all the other pieces around me. They were all bones.

My body prickled with new perspiration in addition to the sweat on my forehead and stinging my back where I’d scraped the hell out of myself. 

Sulfur had convinced me into walking into a retort of a crematorium.

I’d had a dog die last year and had it cremated. That retort had been a lot smaller. But here in Backwards Land, all kinds of things were done differently.

The floor dropped underneath me on an angle. I fell on my butt and slid toward the open flame. It had been about two feet high, but was about seven now and was wide as two of me. I slid, catching my legs on bone pieces that had been fused to the metal surface.

My forward momentum was stopped when a stack of bones perfectly aligned into a column beneath one foot. It didn’t feel stable and I wouldn’t have long before it collapsed and I slid the rest of the way into the pillar of fire.

I chanted, “Stupid,” as I flailed my hands for anything to grab onto. I latched onto one of those bones that had fused to the metal floor. It seemed stable enough and I turned carefully onto my stomach, swiping my other hand around until I’d located another handhold.

It was slow work, but I gradually pulled myself up. I’d never worked so hard in my life. The handholds were slippery in my grasp, but I moved slowly until I was almost to the threshold to this room.

My hand slipped and for one almost weightless moment, I thought I was going to fall. I squeezed the other handhold like I was trying to juice it. The heat was all of a sudden cooking me, boiling the sweat off of every exposed inch of skin. It must have been the adrenalin because the one-handed chin-up I did was my very first one. 

I found the chunk of bone again and pulled. The next time I reached, my fingers latched onto the lip of the threshold and I jostled some excess ash into my face. It burned my eyes, but I didn’t care if my fingers dislocated from my body weight, I wasn’t going to let go.

It took a tremendous amount of effort, but I dragged myself up and through. I lay there minutes, until my lungs stopped burning and my limbs stopped throbbing. I crawled my way back, not sure what I was headed back to. I didn’t know if Sulfur had nearly sent me to my doom intentionally. I had to play it as if he had.

The chips were cutting into my hands. It hurt but I ignored it. The grate was ahead, but I didn’t see Sulfur. That made sense in either situation. I was gone because I’d gone back to where I belonged or I was gone because I’d been roasted to ash.

I finally reached the grate. I grasped the bars and gave them a shake. There had been a latch when Sulfur had closed it. I hadn’t been looking to see where it had been and reached between the bars to feel around for it.

As if on queue, Sulfur emerged from around a squat-looking, round machine. He looked at me and his eyes bugged. He ran over to me and grasped the bars.

“Change alone!” he said. “Hair comb drinks.”

I didn’t know what the words meant, but I understood the tone. Sulfur was asking me what I was doing here.

“Fire!” I said. “There’s a fire back there.”

He nodded like he understood. I gripped the bars and gave them a shake.

“Get me outta here!”

Sulfur shook his head and tripped the latch. We lifted the grate together and he helped me out.

He spoke rapidly and even though it was all English, I didn’t catch a word. He finally put the heels of his hands together and flicked his fingers like I had before. He was mimicking flames. Then he took one hand and put it through the other, between his fingers and thumb.

“Through... the fire?” I said. I mimicked his hand gesture. “Through.”

He smiled and nodded. He pointed back to the furnace.

“In.”

“I don’t think... I can.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I thought I was about to die in there.”

I don’t know if he understood, but he looked exasperated.

Wait, that wasn’t right. He looked ill.

How I’d missed it before was a mystery. Maybe he had eaten something while I had been in the furnace. It didn’t look like food poisoning. Food poisoning didn’t make your eyes droop and mouth slant to the side of your head.

Looking at him this close was giving me that spaghetti-worm sensation again.

“Sulfur, what’s wrong with you?”

He looked at me and he took a couple steps away.

“In.” Sulfur’s breathing was labored.

I looked back at the furnace. I had to try.

Before I could climb in, rapid footsteps came from behind me. I turned in time for somebody to run me over.

I rolled over onto my back and looked up at my attacker. A hulk of a man stared down at me, his eyes fire-filled, large, and lidless. He was shirtless, something about his chest not looking right. It looked like he had a third pectoral, right in the middle. And his skin was dripping off him. He took a step

His torso was too big. He reached toward Sulfur and I got a look at his back. It looked like he was carrying two children. I kicked his shin and he howled.

It hadn’t been that hard, but his too-big eyes swiveled to me and he opened a mouth big enough for me to fit both my fists in. He scuttled like a crab away from me and lunged for Sulfur again. 

The smaller man looked even sicker now. I was seeing in real time what my presence here was doing. The big man was changing as well. He was lower, more hunched over. It was like they were both coming apart. Except the big man was doing something about it, I think.

He was absorbing other people.

I wasn’t going to let him get Sulfur. Those two kids looked alive and in agony.

It made more sense for me to just crawl back in the furnace and make my way back to the flame. I just couldn’t leave him, though. If only I could get him someplace safe then I’d make my way back here.

“In... in...” Sulfur’s breathing was horrible now. Maybe I should just go. For all I knew, he was dying right in front of me.

But a can bounced off my head before I could move. It didn’t hurt, it just stopped me from moving. I looked over at a woman with eyes on either side of her head instead of where they were supposed to be. She laughed like she’d won a prize, gripping the other can she held like she was preparing to throw it.

More of them emerged. All of them disfigured in some manner. I could have tried to make it into the furnace, but if they came after me, I wouldn’t make it. I had to lead them away.

I had to leave Sulfur behind.

He seemed to understand the same.

“Go,” Sulfur said.

They had a wide enough opening between them in the direction from where we’d come in.

I ran, giving them the middle finger the whole way. I hoped I wasn’t complimenting their shoes or something.

And I hoped I wasn’t making things worse.

Read Part 4 here.

 

I believed him.

As stupid as that definitely was, it sounded like the truth.

They didn't want me here any more than I wanted to be with them. And if my physical body were the reason life here had gone sideways then there was no reason to believe they didn't want to deposit me right back where I belonged.

I climbed in. I had to hold Sulfur's hand to step over the lip. There was ash--no, not ash. It was more like burnt chips, but of what I have no idea. I stepped in the chips ankle deep and had to duck to keep from hitting my head on the blackened ceiling.

Sulfur pulled the gate down and latched it.

“Fuck off,” he said with a big smile. I had a small knot of panic for a quick moment until I realized that hadn’t been what he’d actually meant. It probably meant ‘thank you’ or something like that.

“Gobble,” Sulfur said and pointed behind me. There was a small point of light somewhere way back when I looked.

“You sure about this?” I said to him. He blinked, his expression unchanging. “Guess that’s my answer.”

I began making my way. It was easier to crawl rather than walking stooped over, although those chips hurt my hands and knees. That was more tolerable and I found it wasn’t as painful if I kind of worked my hands into the chips to flatten them as I went.

It was slow-going and the burnt smell was so thick it was leaving a layer on the back of my tongue and throat. I had a coughing fit so bad I almost hurled, but finally was able to settle my gorge.

One last look over my shoulder and there was Sulfur, far enough away that I couldn’t see his expression, but it was definitely still him. A guess put me about midway between that point of fire and him.

I pushed on and it got easier, the burnt chips gradually replaced with smaller bits, then grains the consistency of sand. That point of light ahead was enough illumination that I could see my hands and I saw they were blackened up to my wrist. I made a mental note not to touch my face.

Once I reached some sort of inner chamber, I poked my head in. The point of light was a flame. I was already sweating from the heat, but inside this part, it was a lot hotter.

I took a deep breath and climbed through, managing to scrape my upper back because I was being overly careful with my legs. For a moment, I thought I was okay, but then the pain dialed all the way up. I was bold enough to touch it after a minute or two and my fingertips were wet with dark red.

Tetanus shot, here I come.

I was able to stand up in here. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do and didn’t want to take the ten plus minutes to crawl back and try in vain to ask Sulfur. I had to be a big boy and figure this out on my own.

But in here, the black sand had been replaced with what looked like palm-sized shaped whitish rocks. I knelt and scooped one up. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen and I dropped it and picked up another.

This one was even stranger-looking because it was familiar. It had two kind of bulbous structures on one end that seemed to descend into a column that had been broken off. 

“Huh. Looks like a piece of a bone--oh my god.”

I let it tumble from my hand as I suddenly recognized it and all the other pieces around me. They were all bones.

My body prickled with new perspiration in addition to the sweat on my forehead and stinging my back where I’d scraped the hell out of myself. 

Sulfur had convinced me into walking into a retort of a crematorium.

I’d had a dog die last year and had it cremated. That retort had been a lot smaller. But here in Backwards Land, all kinds of things were done differently.

The floor dropped underneath me on an angle. I fell on my butt and slid toward the open flame. It had been about two feet high, but was about seven now and was wide as two of me. I slid, catching my legs on bone pieces that had been fused to the metal surface.

My forward momentum was stopped when a stack of bones perfectly aligned into a column beneath one foot. It didn’t feel stable and I wouldn’t have long before it collapsed and I slid the rest of the way into the pillar of fire.

I chanted, “Stupid,” as I flailed my hands for anything to grab onto. I latched onto one of those bones that had fused to the metal floor. It seemed stable enough and I turned carefully onto my stomach, swiping my other hand around until I’d located another handhold.

It was slow work, but I gradually pulled myself up. I’d never worked so hard in my life. The handholds were slippery in my grasp, but I moved slowly until I was almost to the threshold to this room.

My hand slipped and for one almost weightless moment, I thought I was going to fall. I squeezed the other handhold like I was trying to juice it. The heat was all of a sudden cooking me, boiling the sweat off of every exposed inch of skin. It must have been the adrenalin because the one-handed chin-up I did was my very first one. 

I found the chunk of bone again and pulled. The next time I reached, my fingers latched onto the lip of the threshold and I jostled some excess ash into my face. It burned my eyes, but I didn’t care if my fingers dislocated from my body weight, I wasn’t going to let go.

It took a tremendous amount of effort, but I dragged myself up and through. I lay there minutes, until my lungs stopped burning and my limbs stopped throbbing. I crawled my way back, not sure what I was headed back to. I didn’t know if Sulfur had nearly sent me to my doom intentionally. I had to play it as if he had.

The chips were cutting into my hands. It hurt but I ignored it. The grate was ahead, but I didn’t see Sulfur. That made sense in either situation. I was gone because I’d gone back to where I belonged or I was gone because I’d been roasted to ash.

I finally reached the grate. I grasped the bars and gave them a shake. There had been a latch when Sulfur had closed it. I hadn’t been looking to see where it had been and reached between the bars to feel around for it.

As if on queue, Sulfur emerged from around a squat-looking, round machine. He looked at me and his eyes bugged. He ran over to me and grasped the bars.

“Change alone!” he said. “Hair comb drinks.”

I didn’t know what the words meant, but I understood the tone. Sulfur was asking me what I was doing here.

“Fire!” I said. “There’s a fire back there.”

He nodded like he understood. I gripped the bars and gave them a shake.

“Get me outta here!”

Sulfur shook his head and tripped the latch. We lifted the grate together and he helped me out.

He spoke rapidly and even though it was all English, I didn’t catch a word. He finally put the heels of his hands together and flicked his fingers like I had before. He was mimicking flames. Then he took one hand and put it through the other, between his fingers and thumb.

“Through... the fire?” I said. I mimicked his hand gesture. “Through.”

He smiled and nodded. He pointed back to the furnace.

“In.”

“I don’t think... I can.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I thought I was about to die in there.”

I don’t know if he understood, but he looked exasperated.

Wait, that wasn’t right. He looked ill.

How I’d missed it before was a mystery. Maybe he had eaten something while I had been in the furnace. It didn’t look like food poisoning. Food poisoning didn’t make your eyes droop and mouth slant to the side of your head.

Looking at him this close was giving me that spaghetti-worm sensation again.

“Sulfur, what’s wrong with you?”

He looked at me and he took a couple steps away.

“In.” Sulfur’s breathing was labored.

I looked back at the furnace. I had to try.

Before I could climb in, rapid footsteps came from behind me. I turned in time for somebody to run me over.

I rolled over onto my back and looked up at my attacker. A hulk of a man stared down at me, his eyes fire-filled, large, and lidless. He was shirtless, something about his chest not looking right. It looked like he had a third pectoral, right in the middle. And his skin was dripping off him. He took a step

His torso was too big. He reached toward Sulfur and I got a look at his back. It looked like he was carrying two children. I kicked his shin and he howled.

It hadn’t been that hard, but his too-big eyes swiveled to me and he opened a mouth big enough for me to fit both my fists in. He scuttled like a crab away from me and lunged for Sulfur again. 

The smaller man looked even sicker now. I was seeing in real time what my presence here was doing. The big man was changing as well. He was lower, more hunched over. It was like they were both coming apart. Except the big man was doing something about it, I think.

He was absorbing other people.

I wasn’t going to let him get Sulfur. Those two kids looked alive and in agony.

It made more sense for me to just crawl back in the furnace and make my way back to the flame. I just couldn’t leave him, though. If only I could get him someplace safe then I’d make my way back here.

“In... in...” Sulfur’s breathing was horrible now. Maybe I should just go. For all I knew, he was dying right in front of me.

But a can bounced off my head before I could move. It didn’t hurt, it just stopped me from moving. I looked over at a woman with eyes on either side of her head instead of where they were supposed to be. She laughed like she’d won a prize, gripping the other can she held like she was preparing to throw it.

More of them emerged. All of them disfigured in some manner. I could have tried to make it into the furnace, but if they came after me, I wouldn’t make it. I had to lead them away.

I had to leave Sulfur behind.

He seemed to understand the same.

“Go,” Sulfur said.

They had a wide enough opening between them in the direction from where we’d come in.

I ran, giving them the middle finger the whole way. I hoped I wasn’t complimenting their shoes or something.

And I hoped I wasn’t making things worse.

Read Part 4 here.

 

I believed him.

As stupid as that definitely was, it sounded like the truth.

They didn't want me here any more than I wanted to be with them. And if my physical body were the reason life here had gone sideways then there was no reason to believe they didn't want to deposit me right back where I belonged.

I climbed in. I had to hold Sulfur's hand to step over the lip. There was ash--no, not ash. It was more like burnt chips, but of what I have no idea. I stepped in the chips ankle deep and had to duck to keep from hitting my head on the blackened ceiling.

Sulfur pulled the gate down and latched it.

“Fuck off,” he said with a big smile. I had a small knot of panic for a quick moment until I realized that hadn’t been what he’d actually meant. It probably meant ‘thank you’ or something like that.

“Gobble,” Sulfur said and pointed behind me. There was a small point of light somewhere way back when I looked.

“You sure about this?” I said to him. He blinked, his expression unchanging. “Guess that’s my answer.”

I began making my way. It was easier to crawl rather than walking stooped over, although those chips hurt my hands and knees. That was more tolerable and I found it wasn’t as painful if I kind of worked my hands into the chips to flatten them as I went.

It was slow-going and the burnt smell was so thick it was leaving a layer on the back of my tongue and throat. I had a coughing fit so bad I almost hurled, but finally was able to settle my gorge.

One last look over my shoulder and there was Sulfur, far enough away that I couldn’t see his expression, but it was definitely still him. A guess put me about midway between that point of fire and him.

I pushed on and it got easier, the burnt chips gradually replaced with smaller bits, then grains the consistency of sand. That point of light ahead was enough illumination that I could see my hands and I saw they were blackened up to my wrist. I made a mental note not to touch my face.

Once I reached some sort of inner chamber, I poked my head in. The point of light was a flame. I was already sweating from the heat, but inside this part, it was a lot hotter.

I took a deep breath and climbed through, managing to scrape my upper back because I was being overly careful with my legs. For a moment, I thought I was okay, but then the pain dialed all the way up. I was bold enough to touch it after a minute or two and my fingertips were wet with dark red.

Tetanus shot, here I come.

I was able to stand up in here. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do and didn’t want to take the ten plus minutes to crawl back and try in vain to ask Sulfur. I had to be a big boy and figure this out on my own.

But in here, the black sand had been replaced with what looked like palm-sized shaped whitish rocks. I knelt and scooped one up. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen and I dropped it and picked up another.

This one was even stranger-looking because it was familiar. It had two kind of bulbous structures on one end that seemed to descend into a column that had been broken off. 

“Huh. Looks like a piece of a bone--oh my god.”

I let it tumble from my hand as I suddenly recognized it and all the other pieces around me. They were all bones.

My body prickled with new perspiration in addition to the sweat on my forehead and stinging my back where I’d scraped the hell out of myself. 

Sulfur had convinced me into walking into a retort of a crematorium.

I’d had a dog die last year and had it cremated. That retort had been a lot smaller. But here in Backwards Land, all kinds of things were done differently.

The floor dropped underneath me on an angle. I fell on my butt and slid toward the open flame. It had been about two feet high, but was about seven now and was wide as two of me. I slid, catching my legs on bone pieces that had been fused to the metal surface.

My forward momentum was stopped when a stack of bones perfectly aligned into a column beneath one foot. It didn’t feel stable and I wouldn’t have long before it collapsed and I slid the rest of the way into the pillar of fire.

I chanted, “Stupid,” as I flailed my hands for anything to grab onto. I latched onto one of those bones that had fused to the metal floor. It seemed stable enough and I turned carefully onto my stomach, swiping my other hand around until I’d located another handhold.

It was slow work, but I gradually pulled myself up. I’d never worked so hard in my life. The handholds were slippery in my grasp, but I moved slowly until I was almost to the threshold to this room.

My hand slipped and for one almost weightless moment, I thought I was going to fall. I squeezed the other handhold like I was trying to juice it. The heat was all of a sudden cooking me, boiling the sweat off of every exposed inch of skin. It must have been the adrenalin because the one-handed chin-up I did was my very first one. 

I found the chunk of bone again and pulled. The next time I reached, my fingers latched onto the lip of the threshold and I jostled some excess ash into my face. It burned my eyes, but I didn’t care if my fingers dislocated from my body weight, I wasn’t going to let go.

It took a tremendous amount of effort, but I dragged myself up and through. I lay there minutes, until my lungs stopped burning and my limbs stopped throbbing. I crawled my way back, not sure what I was headed back to. I didn’t know if Sulfur had nearly sent me to my doom intentionally. I had to play it as if he had.

The chips were cutting into my hands. It hurt but I ignored it. The grate was ahead, but I didn’t see Sulfur. That made sense in either situation. I was gone because I’d gone back to where I belonged or I was gone because I’d been roasted to ash.

I finally reached the grate. I grasped the bars and gave them a shake. There had been a latch when Sulfur had closed it. I hadn’t been looking to see where it had been and reached between the bars to feel around for it.

As if on queue, Sulfur emerged from around a squat-looking, round machine. He looked at me and his eyes bugged. He ran over to me and grasped the bars.

“Change alone!” he said. “Hair comb drinks.”

I didn’t know what the words meant, but I understood the tone. Sulfur was asking me what I was doing here.

“Fire!” I said. “There’s a fire back there.”

He nodded like he understood. I gripped the bars and gave them a shake.

“Get me outta here!”

Sulfur shook his head and tripped the latch. We lifted the grate together and he helped me out.

He spoke rapidly and even though it was all English, I didn’t catch a word. He finally put the heels of his hands together and flicked his fingers like I had before. He was mimicking flames. Then he took one hand and put it through the other, between his fingers and thumb.

“Through... the fire?” I said. I mimicked his hand gesture. “Through.”

He smiled and nodded. He pointed back to the furnace.

“In.”

“I don’t think... I can.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I thought I was about to die in there.”

I don’t know if he understood, but he looked exasperated.

Wait, that wasn’t right. He looked ill.

How I’d missed it before was a mystery. Maybe he had eaten something while I had been in the furnace. It didn’t look like food poisoning. Food poisoning didn’t make your eyes droop and mouth slant to the side of your head.

Looking at him this close was giving me that spaghetti-worm sensation again.

“Sulfur, what’s wrong with you?”

He looked at me and he took a couple steps away.

“In.” Sulfur’s breathing was labored.

I looked back at the furnace. I had to try.

Before I could climb in, rapid footsteps came from behind me. I turned in time for somebody to run me over.

I rolled over onto my back and looked up at my attacker. A hulk of a man stared down at me, his eyes fire-filled, large, and lidless. He was shirtless, something about his chest not looking right. It looked like he had a third pectoral, right in the middle. And his skin was dripping off him. He took a step

His torso was too big. He reached toward Sulfur and I got a look at his back. It looked like he was carrying two children. I kicked his shin and he howled.

It hadn’t been that hard, but his too-big eyes swiveled to me and he opened a mouth big enough for me to fit both my fists in. He scuttled like a crab away from me and lunged for Sulfur again. 

The smaller man looked even sicker now. I was seeing in real time what my presence here was doing. The big man was changing as well. He was lower, more hunched over. It was like they were both coming apart. Except the big man was doing something about it, I think.

He was absorbing other people.

I wasn’t going to let him get Sulfur. Those two kids looked alive and in agony.

It made more sense for me to just crawl back in the furnace and make my way back to the flame. I just couldn’t leave him, though. If only I could get him someplace safe then I’d make my way back here.

“In... in...” Sulfur’s breathing was horrible now. Maybe I should just go. For all I knew, he was dying right in front of me.

But a can bounced off my head before I could move. It didn’t hurt, it just stopped me from moving. I looked over at a woman with eyes on either side of her head instead of where they were supposed to be. She laughed like she’d won a prize, gripping the other can she held like she was preparing to throw it.

More of them emerged. All of them disfigured in some manner. I could have tried to make it into the furnace, but if they came after me, I wouldn’t make it. I had to lead them away.

I had to leave Sulfur behind.

He seemed to understand the same.

“Go,” Sulfur said.

They had a wide enough opening between them in the direction from where we’d come in.

I ran, giving them the middle finger the whole way. I hoped I wasn’t complimenting their shoes or something.

And I hoped I wasn’t making things worse.