This is my entry for the writing contest. I need to proofread it and edit it! Thanks for reading! Also, sorry for the duplicate post. I also had to put this up on another site for a school project!
The air was thick with the dense midwest humidity and the unmistakable smell of grease. It wasn’t the burning smell of engine oil, nor the thick greasiness associated with garages. Instead it was the rancid stench of used cooking oil and every other possible tang associated with being in a shitty run-of-the-mill diner in rural Indiana. The stench was thick and heavy, and you had to swim through it to get to your seat. It was the kind of smell that would stay in your clothes even after several washings, a trophy to remind you of the time you subjected yourself to a slimy wad of fat and meat slapped between two starchy pieces of grease-soaked bread in a wretched little diner off of the main highway.
I sighed as I stared down at myself. “Christ. I’ll have to burn these clothes,” I thought to myself, “Or maybe I’ll just save them. They can be my official Diner Outfit”.
The waitress walked up to the table and reached for the remnants of my burger, she winked at me as she pulled the plate from the table. I was pretty sure she was somewhere around my age, though I was also sure that a steady diet of Jim Beam and cigarettes had prematurely aged her by an unknown number of years. She smiled her yellow nicotine-stained smile. I nodded. I smiled a sort of uncomfortable half-smile, and was reminded of what pushed me away from rural Indiana. The Small Town Trap.
Every rural town was the same exact town that existed in multiple points at once. A multitude of portals that open into the same god-forsaken shitty little town. The same greasy diners, the same smoky bars, the same sad people caught in the same small town trap. Everything was always the same, and it was both the appeal and the repulsion. No wonder suicide rates were higher here.
I grabbed my keys from the table, tossed a twenty down and waded through the thick air. The outside wasn’t any less oppressive than the air inside. The sweet smell of mint hung in the air, and was one of the few redeeming memories I had of this place, though the aromatic undertones were hints of manure, crushed dreams, and crippling depression.
The drive to the old farmhouse started off quiet and lonely. My blue cord bounced and swayed on my rearview mirror as I guided my car down the secluded gravel road that led to the old house. I thought back to my youth and how I used to fly down these roads despite the loose gravel and deep slime-filled irrigation ditches that flanked the road. Age and wisdom tempered my speed, and I drove a bit more cautiously than I would have in my youth.
Up ahead I saw the farmhouse, a two-story relic from a time long gone. Its old windows were cracked and boarded up, old rotten wood sagged from the nails that stapled it to the decaying window frame. Fragments of siding hung precariously from dilapidated framing and various spots around the house’s skeleton had sheets of plastic stapled to them. The house was a leper, long cast out by the community and sent to wither and die alone with nothing but its sad memories to keep it company.
The old farmhouse was getting closer and gently brought my already cautious speed down a little more. I glanced into my rearview mirror and a faint hint of movement caught my eye. The cloud of dust that had kicked up from the wheels of my car seemed to have been shifting and moving. It had a certain corpulence to it. I blinked my eyes a few times, shook my head and rolled my neck a bit. Too much time on the road. I glanced back in the mirror. I couldn’t help it. The corpulence started to push through the dust and grotesque fleshy shapes formed from the gaseous lines that crept through the billowing clouds of dust that followed me down the gravel road. I couldn’t take my eyes from the mirror at this point, whatever was chasing me down this dusty gravel road was malformed and unnatural.
The world around me slowly disappeared. I could feel my vision shrink and narrow so that all I could see was the rearview mirror. The sounds of the world slowly faded so that all I could hear was the heart I was choking on. The faint smell of mint in the air slowly faded so that the only scent in my nostrils was the dust kicking up from behind the car, and slowly the dust faded as the monster took on its hideous form.
Dirt and dust coalesced into a mass of putrid amorphous flesh. The fleshy mound grew larger and larger as the central mass writhed and wriggled after me. It grew large fleshy tentacle-like feelers that darted out of its central mass and reached out for the car. All I could do was watch in terrified amazement as the befouled behemoth lumbered toward the rear of my car. It lacked legs, instead large masses of its bulk seemed to ooze forward, pulling the rest of its mass slowly along.
In panic I gripped the wheel, my knuckles turned a ghostly white, and my foot sank hard on the gas pedal. The engine growled as it lapped up fuel from the tank. The writhing tentacles had started to reach toward the back of my car like a mighty Kraken dragging a ship down to its watery grave. In the mirror I had gotten an even closer look at each appendage as it wriggled its way through the air. Each one was covered in countless eyes and mouths that seemed to writhe and flow with the being’s every movement. The mouths were lined in jagged teeth that shifted and flowed within the squirming maws. Nothing on the beast was static, and it was equally putrid and terrifying. As the horror oozed closer to me I stomped on the gas with both feet in an attempt to run it straight through the floorboards. My legs were rigid poles, unbending in the stress, my eyes wide and lidless bulging out of my skull. The gibbering mass was the only thing visible in my mirror at this point, and a hoarse voiceless scream was the only sound that echoed in my ears.
The tires broke loose and the rear of the car began swinging wildly. Without thinking I lumbered my pole-like legs to the brake pedal. The wheels locked instantly and the car started to slide all over the soft rocky road. The car slipped immediately from my control. The outside world blurred by me and the only thing my vision could focus on was the now-gaping central maw of this terrible beast as its slimy flesh tentacles pulled itself quickly in my direction. The central maw was a massive and terrible sight. Pitted teeth were constantly shifting around, and massive strings of sticky spittle slowly seeped down from its fetid mouth. A giant tongue, pitted and rotten rubbed against its mountain-like teeth and I could almost see its fog of rancid breath.
A Sudden and distinct crunching noise was followed by the smack of my head against the steering wheel. The tiny window I had been viewing the world through had shut suddenly and the curtains were drawn down. I only saw the swimming blackness of those heavy curtains, though a few seconds later they slowly lifted again and everything came back into focus. I nearly fell out of the car as my adrenaline surged. It was fueling my thoughts and my actions, and in that moment I was running purely on instinct. I leaned against the car heaving as I pulled myself off of the gravel and onto my feet, the world around me still swaying back and forth. I struggled to land legs back and soon I felt the grease-soaked burger and fries immediately eject itself from my stomach and onto the road.
I stood there shaking, looking nervously in every direction. All was still. I could hear birds chirping and the warm breeze blew through fields of mint, forcing its sweet smell into my nostrils once again. There was no sign of the enormous monster that had just previously reached for my car as if to drag it deep into an aether sea. I looked around and my vision steadied again. The crunching noise was the car stopping as it decapitated the mailbox that once stood in front of the old farmhouse. The metal pole the box was once attached to still stood, concrete filled, and part of my car’s quarter panel had wrapped slightly around it, leaving a head-sized dent.
What the hell? Where is it? I thought. I really didn’t want to know, I just wanted to know that it was gone. I patted myself down, checking for breaks and bleeding, once I decided that I wasn’t injured beyond a headache and what would likely be a lump later on I left my car at the side of the street, still embracing the thick pipe that stood headless at the end of the driveway.
I cautiously made my way toward the house, walking with deliberate intention. One foot in front of the other. With every step I found my head shifting to the left and right, constantly alert for any danger that could be lurking.
I felt my mind racing back through the last few hours of my life and it kept going back to the same question, “What the hell was in that burger?”
I reached for the remnants of a makeshift screen door, the rotted wood dangled from rusted hinges that creaked under the pressure of the light breeze. The screen swayed lazily as I pulled the rickety door open, and I raised my hand to knock on the grayed and swollen front door. I paused, the magnitude of what had just happened collided with the force of seeing Senior for the first time in at least 15 years. We hadn’t spoken since I enlisted and shipped to basic, occasionally one of us tried to reach out, only to have it end in biting words and stinging sorrow. We hadn’t spoken in almost three years, but after three peaceful years I had received a voicemail from him.
A few tears ran down my cheek, my arm hung frozen in the air as I prepared for the knock. I sucked in a deep breath and sighed it out. I needed to get centered. Calm. I was ready. Ready to see my father, though I still call him Senior, dad as a word and a concept fit like a cheap suit, accentuating all of the negative features, never flattering at all. I was not, however, ready for what I was about to see on the other side of the door.
I knocked on the door, light taps that had a soft wed thumping noise when my knuckles made contact. I took another deep breath and closed my eyes anxiously waiting. I shifted nervously from one foot to the other but no response came. I didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been 10 seconds or a minute, it all felt the same in the moment, so I knocked again. Thump. Thump. Thump. Some more nervous shifting and waiting.
“It’s me!” I said loudly, “I’m coming in!” I announced my presence and reached for the corroded door knob, I could feel its insides grinding crumbling as it protested against the motion.
The door creaked and groaned as I pushed it on its rusty hinges. It was an old wooden exterior door, the type with a single large window that sits about shoulder high. The window looked like a network of spiderwebs that was ready to spill from the frame at any minute. Behind that was a dingy coffee-colored curtain, though I’m certain it was supposed to be a sandy color. Once the door had swung open I got a good look at the inside, which was exactly as I imagined it.
“Senior?” I called out, my eyes scanned through the mess as I did.
The first thing I noticed as I stepped into the room was the smell. A thick haze of decay hung in the air, and I had to claw my way through it just to get in the door. Everything in the room, from the tattered cloth couch to the rickety homemade coffee table seemed stained from the fog of rot. Plates of moldy and rotted food sat on the makeshift table while flies danced merrily around them, and a cup of what looked to be coffee sat next to the plates, the corpses of many flies floated near the surface.
“Fucking nasty”, I had thought to myself as I forced down a gagging sensation. My nose was burning from the overstimulation and I desperately wanted to turn around and leave, forgetting in that moment the terrifying experience I had had as soon as I got here. I had always envisioned Senior to be a filthy derelict, but this didn’t seem right. I couldn’t imagine that he had let himself sink to this level of neglectfulness.
“Senior”, I called again as I pushed through the living room and into the kitchen.
The kitchen was worse than the living room. The appliances within were at least 60 years old, and the refrigerator was so ancient that you could smell the radiation oozing from it. A shoddy stove sat next to it, a lone pan on one of the gas burners. I peered inside, cringing at what I might find. Dirty hot dog water, with one sad and lonely tube of meat bloated and floating in it filled the pan. It didn’t look old, at least it didn’t have the same level of rot and disgust most of the other remnants had. The table behind me was littered with more dishes, and a phone. It was an old cordless phone, whose base clung to the filth-stained wall for its life, understanding that any form of pressure would cause it to fall and break. Next to the phone was a pad of paper and a pen, as well as a half-drank cup of coffee that also became the final resting place for a plethora of bugs. Both the pad and the coffee cup were relatively clean compared to the rest of junk strewn about.
The rest of the table was a landfill. Sifting through it I found a two-day old newspaper, the remnants of a stale doughnut, and various other pieces of debris. The whole house was covered in dust, but most of the actual filth seemed to be relatively new. I didn’t know what I had expected, but I hadn’t expected this when I got the call.
“The call!” I thought to myself. Senior had sounded frantic. He spoke of Sam, and had said they had found something.
“We had barely spoken in the last fifteen years, and the only time you call is to tell me you found something? Good talk, old man. It was easier when you were dead to me.”
Like the god-damn idiot I am, I rushed out immediately. Not because I cared about Sam, nor because I believed that they had actually found anything. Simply because no matter how much animosity there was between us I was eager to move on. I wanted true peace, and I thought that just maybe I’d get it if I could just drag my dumb ass out to see him. At some point one of us had to be an adult.
I moved around the kitchen, poking through every nook and cranny I could find. The cabinets were surprisingly organized when compared to the refuse pile that had accumulated on every horizontal surface outside of them. Silence draped over the room like a heavy blanket, it felt unnaturally heavy and I barely noticed my own footsteps as I moved from cabinet to cabinet. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I assumed that I would know as soon as I saw it. Dust particles floated through the air, swirling around as I continued my search. The eerie silence was overbearing. Each noise was a distorted echo of what it should be. The birds that chirped their happy sing-song sounded a deep and melancholic warbling, the breeze sounded harsh and wet. Every noise that passed through my ears sounded deep, wet, and distorted.
My vision began to slowly narrow as the world around me tightened its grip. I immediately lumbered for the table, planting my palms on its grime-filled surface. A plate clattered as my hands slapped down, and I heard it hit the floor shattering. The broken glass created a deep wave of sound that hung in the air, and I found myself taking deep breaths. My vision began to twist and swirl as I steadied myself, and mentally I was walking through the motions of getting this under control.
My first thought was that I was having some sort of after-effect from my head bouncing off of the steering wheel. I had experienced a concussion before and knew all too well what this sensation was like. This felt different somehow, though. My feet no longer felt attached to the floor, and my body took on a weightless feeling. I could feel my stomach begin twisting in knots and I instantly thought of how I had already thrown my lunch up, and now found myself thankful for it.
A distant noise began echoing in my head. It had a distinct ringing, but it was low-pitched and had a hollow quality to it. I closed my eyes tightly, doing everything I could to push these feelings away and regain control of myself. My fingers curled into tight fists that turned my knuckles white. I took a slow deep breath. The noise stopped briefly, but then started again. It had a rhythm to it, so I latched onto that rhythmic tone and used it to focus my attention.
Slowly the wetness faded. The deep infernal warbling of the birds outside slowly returned to their cherubic chirping. The breeze lost its wicked and wet qualities and now sounded once again like a normal summer day, and the rhythmic echoes that I had honed in on to steady myself slowly eroded to the shrill tones of the cordless phone on the table before me. It had been ringing incessantly, but I had felt so detached from the world that I was unable to recognize it for what it was.
I stared at the phone as the world around me started to return. The blinders that were narrowing my vision were being slowly removed, and the swirling motions steadied themselves
One ring
My stomach calmed and I noticed the broken plate. It hadn’t shattered, but had broken in half instead. The remnants of food scattered over the dirt covered floor. Large ants and other bugs had already started breaking it apart to carry off to their unholy lairs.
Another ring
I turned my head back to the table, my eyes looking over my hands. No blood, thankfully. When I heard the plate I had been worried that I might have cut myself. My next thought went to the deplorable state of my surroundings, and how a minor scrape could have led to some sort of wicked infection that would have left me hospitalized.
Another ring
At this point I noticed the cordless phone in front of me. I knew it had been ringing, but for how long? How long had I been struggling with whatever the hell that was? At least once? Twice? Was it ringing when I first came in?
Another ring.
Slowly I loosened the tense grip of my fists, and flexed my rigid fingers to allow the blood to flow back through them. The world was now steady and stable, my land legs had returned and the world around me had steadied to its normal stationary state.
Another ring
“Fuuuuuuck,” I thought, “Doesn’t this guy have an answering machine?” The incessant ringing was now wearing on me, and I could feel my anger rise with every shrill chirp of its tone. I reached a hand out and grabbed the receiver. Instant regret washed over me as my fingers felt something sticky on the underside. I hoped it was just old soda, though then my mind went to the carpet of insects that had covered the scraps that hit the floor from the broken plate.
Another ring
Before I even pulled the receiver to my head I hit the talk button. That was enough of that. The ear piece slowly found its way to the side of my head, and damp static filled my ear.
“Hello.” I said shortly.
No response. Just the crackling of static.
“Hello?” I said again, this time a question.
I strained to listen for anything besides the static. I was hearing faint noises beneath it, or was I? I wasn’t sure. My ear struggled to hear, and I stopped breathing in an effort to cut out as much background noise as I could.
A few seconds went by, I was about to hang up but then my ears caught it. I thought I had heard faint noises, but now I was sure. I was definitely hearing them. It was labored breathing. It had the dampness of a lifetime smoker that was struggling with emphysema. A wet wheezing that was strained, as if the person was exhausted by the mere concept of breathing. I kept listening, and I strained to not make a single noise. Soon I heard more. A smacking noise accompanied the breathing. Not like hands slapping into each other, but lips and tongues, the sloppy wetness of chewing that comes when you are sick and your head is so thick with congestion and infection that the only choice you have is a perpetual state of mouth-breathing.
The dank sloppy breathing slowly poured from the phone, giving my ear a cold dampness. I recoiled at the feeling of the fluid seeping from the receiver’s tiny ear holes, jerking the old cordless phone away from my head. I stared down at it in disbelief, and watched as a small puddle of what I could have only hoped was water collected in the recess where my ear once was. I had pulled the receiver from my head to see what was wet, but the horrific soft squelching still hung in the air as if the phone still clung to the side of my face.
A wriggling movement pulled my attention from the confusion within my hands, and I found myself turning my head.
“What the hell?” I thought as I pulled my eyes from the weeping receiver and back to the rest of the house.
Everything was different. It was the same ramshackle house with filth-covered boards and rusty nails keeping its patchwork frame together, but details had become slightly off. Slightly skewed. The doorway was no longer a rectangle, but instead seemed skewed into an unnatural trapezoidal shape that stretched up into nothingness. Large particles hung in the air, They had the look of giant dust balls, roughly head-sized, and they hung lazily in the air. I squinted my eyes to try to get a better look at them, but their already vague and hazy appearance just became more unfocused the harder I tried to see them.
The inside of the house darkened. The sunlight that spilled in from cracked boards and naked windows dimmed at some point while I had taken the phone call. I moved to the window, attempting to dodge the murky spheres on the way. It was an impossible task, but I soon found out that I moved right through them. They didn’t displace, they didn’t sway or move, they simply hung in the air unnaturally. I glanced outside to see the once sunny farmland that had surrounded the house was now a twisted hellscape mockery of itself.
The normally fertile dirt that was lined in soft rows was now dry, barren, and cracked. The once green crops that sprouted were now crooked and bent like arthritic fingers twisting from the ground. My grip tightened around the receiver, though I didn’t really notice it. My jaw tightened and I could feel my heartrate start to spike. The loose gravel road looked more like a river, the rocks and dirt flowing and rolling over each other as it made its way past the house.
I put my other hand on the counter in front of the window to steady myself and I breathed in slowly and deeply. I looked down at the phone. The water had stopped pouring out but was still pooled into the tiny ear-hole. The wet breathing was still there, consistent and wheezing. It started to take on a different quality. Sharp short breaths barked out of the phone and bubbles of air burst from the water with each staccato breath. Was it coughing? No. Laughing.
It was laughing. At me. I glanced around looking for anything I could find that could be used as a weapon. I didn’t know why, I only knew I felt threatened. I was naked and vulnerable and needed something to make me feel protected.
More movement. A slithering in the corner of my eye, but this time I saw it. It had the appearance of a large pipe, but it was soft looking and had the yellowish hue of sickly flesh. I followed it with my eyes, and as I looked at it I realized it was constantly moving. It had the peristaltic motions of a worm, or intestines. At one end it exited the house through one of the many holes that had rotted into the walls, but the other end trailed through the house.
I followed it as it twisted and wriggled through corridor after corridor. My stomach knotted as I moved deeper into the labyrinthine maze that the house had suddenly transformed into. Through stretching doorways and slanted halls that left one off balance I followed this writhing fleshy mass as it twitched and wriggled. We twisted and turned through another set of doors, and it occurred to me that without this tentacle guiding me I’d soon be lost. Deeper we went, and we had made countless twists and turns until we came upon a simple white door that sat neatly in its frame. A hole in the dirty stained drywall allowed the flesh tube to enter. I looked around and realized I was back in the kitchen. I had been walking for what seemed like ages. I twisted through myriad halls and doors, yet here I stood. The dust balls still clung to the air and the sun was still dim, but here I stood back in the Goddamned kitchen!
“Son!” a voice yelled. It sounded vacant, tinny. There was a certain static quality to it.
I looked around, confused, “Dad?” I asked out loud. It turns out that when you’re terrified it doesn’t matter how cheaply words fit.
“Son! I’m here!” the voice responded. It had a familiar wetness to it, and I realized it was coming from the phone.
I raised the phone, staring in confusion. The husky breathing was replaced by the sound of my father’s voice. He didn’t have a cell, so how could he call himself?
“Where are you?” I asked. I swallowed, and pushed a lump of fear down my throat. I’d been in terrifying situations before, and learned by way of Uncle Sam that extreme violence overcomes fear almost every time. I glanced around again, looking for a weapon. I was taking stock of everything around me.
“Son. I’m in the basement! I’ve got something down here to show you! A birthday present!”
My grip tightened on the phone. I could feel tears as they welled in my eyes. I was slowly coming to the realization that whatever I was talking to wasn’t my father. Or maybe it was, but he wasn’t talking like him. He hadn’t called me son since I was a boy. Every conversation we had as an adult started with our christian names, but always ended with much fouler words.
He sounded normal, like the sky didn’t look like a burned out husk of itself. The gnarled claws that the crops had transformed into would have been visible from the basement windows, so surely he could see what had happened.
“You haven’t gotten me a present since I was a kid.” I responded.
There was a brief silence that was followed by the sharp barking wheeze. It was laughing.
“Come on down. I’m a new man. I’ve got all of your presents.” The voice was still his, but it was different. It took on that wet pneumonic quality that the breathing had.
I wanted to leave. I wanted to turn around and go, but I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to. I knew I was back in the kitchen, but the endless walk through the empty hollow halls that put me here had my head in a mess.
“Dad,” I said quietly, “I love you, but I need to go.” The tears were flowing freely now. I wished I knew what had happened. I wished I understood what was going on around me, but the more I tried to think about it the harder it was to wrap my head around it.
I let my arm fall to my side, and the receiver slowly dropped to the floor. The sounds of the languid wet breathing still popped like bubbles in the phone. I turned away from the basement door and started to walk. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I knew that anything would be better than whatever I was going to find in the basement.
The scent of smoke filled my nostrils, burning them with its odor. I turned. I shouldn’t have. I should have just kept walking, but instead I stopped and I turned.
My eyes widened in terror when I looked back at the basement door. A shapeless mass of flesh and tissue slowly oozed from the door, its great bulk strained against the frame. Tumorous growths populated the surface of the creature, and patches of it burned and smoldered, creating the foul burning stench that had invaded my senses. Strands of scar tissue stretched over large patches of its bulbous formless body, and wiry specks of hair dotted the surface of the beast.
It ducked its head beneath the top of the door frame. I watched as the head sunk into the blob, only to extend back out once it was through the door.
Its face was blackened flesh filled with malignant growths, and its lipless mouth was lined with white teeth.
“Come back. I have a gift… A present… for you…” It said.
The dread of realization crashed into me like a semi. I was staggered at the impact and felt my legs wobble.
“Dad?” I whispered, horrified at what I was seeing.
It laboriously lumbered towards me, sparks of flame appearing at random on unburned patches of flesh. I stepped backwards away from it slowly. I didn’t need to rush or run. It had the speed of water in a pond.
“I need to give you your present.” it whispered in its wet hoarseness. I could see bubbles of fluid popping from its burned out mouth as it spoke.
“I need to give you…” it trailed off. Its movement was slow, and every time it lumbered closer to me it seemed to be over exerting itself to exhaustion. I just kept slowly backing away.
“I need you…” It said, and this I believed.
Another patch of fire sprouted up, cooking unscarred bits of its fleshy bulk. Slowly it was becoming a walking inferno. Nearby wallpaper began to peel from the heat and the rickety wooden furniture began to catch fire as the flames danced all around it.
I no longer backed away slowly, and instead turned to run.
“Don’t… Leave… I have so much for you!” it called after me.
I pushed through the table, shoving it to one side and sending rotted food and plates crashing to the floor. I stumbled through the crooked doorway and into the living room. Burning flesh filled the air and the kitchen was soon enveloped in scorching flames.
“We can grow together!” It yelled after me. Its voice was loud and raspy, filled with the sound of boiling water.
I tripped into the door, breaking it off of its hinges. I fell on top of it and spilled out into the sunshine. The light burned my eyes as I squinted. The twisted corn and mint was now lush and green, the flowing river of mud and rock was once again a gravel road, and the sky was a brilliant blue with perfect white marshmallow clouds that hung high above.
I rubbed my eyes and looked back inside the house. It was dark, and the gloom threatened to spill out into the world. The creature inside was no longer making words, but instead crying in agony. I pulled myself up and staggered to my car, where I sat exhausted on the edge of the hood. There I sat and watched my childhood memories evaporate as they became food for the fire. I watched as the terrible monster that had consumed and taken over my father slowly writhed and burned until it was a smoking heap of charred fat and bone. I watched until there was nothing left of anything but the ash that rained down from the sky.