《NeverMore》 The Soap Eater [Part 1] me. Across the table, Amanda laughed at something Jenny was saying before looking over at me. She had one of those 50s movie-star smiles. A slight smile of my own curled at the corner of my mouth. Guess I¡¯m just a lucky bastard then. She was wearing a new dress for tonight''s dinner, a dark red one with sleeves. She also had a new bracelet to match the dress. A gold chain with some red gems. I don''t remember getting it for her. But then again, bad memory. Maybe I''ll ask about it later. She doesn''t usually wear jewelry, so she must really like this one. Maybe I''ll get her something from the same brand for our upcoming anniversary. Oh. Well damn. That was it. I¡¯d promised Cameron that I¡¯ll finish proofreading the code before sending it over to him by tonight. Fuck. We were running on a tight schedule for this project, so I probably have to drop by the office tonight to finish everything. not again¡¯ looks in her eyes. Having been married for over a decade, she¡¯s long gotten used to my shenanigans. She got up too, to walk me to the door. Along the way, her eyes caught Jenny''s. There was an indecipherable question in Jenny''s gaze. Jenny''s husband, Darren, just snickered and shook his head. The Soap Eater [Part 2] crash! as something fell to the floor and broke. What''s going on?!! I was screaming internally, but on the outside it was as if my body had been turned into a plaster shell of myself. The only thing I could do was stand there and stare. You knew exactly what was going on. A nasty little voice cut through the din in my mind. You had it coming. It''s your fault for ignoring the signs. And oh god it was right. The late night text messages that she wouldn''t let me read, how differently she acts around Scotty, and the amount of time she spends getting ready every time he came over. The gifts ''from her coworkers'' that seem too fancy and too intimate for workplace friendships. The image of her in her new dress and that new bracelet surfaced, a mocking caricature in my mind taunting me with the truth I couldn''t bring myself to admit. I should''ve connected to dots a long, long time ago. But I didn''t. thwack! His head snapped back as he stumbled, tripping over the garbage can and cursing. The second on crunched against his nose, and to my satisfaction blood began to flow, dribbling down his chin. This pathetic bastard. Another punch and he went down, curled up on the floor and coughing. I drew my leg back and kicked, my foot planted itself into his flabby stomach. This. This was the son of a bitch that my wife cheated on me with. pushed. bang, and the doorknob jammed into my side, winding me. I also hit my head pretty hard, but I barely registered the pain stabbing into the back of my skull. Black dots swam in my vision and threatened to swallow my consciousness. What the fuck is wrong with him? The Soap Eater [Part 3] What the fuck is happening? What the fuck is happening? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? Scotty was puking acid. There was no better way to put it. As I watched, horrified, Scotty hunched over and gagged, his spine undulating with the effort as another wave of painful contortions wracked his body. The acid spewed out of his ruined mouth, clear and colorless, only when it hit the flesh of his face did it begin to bubble. The Soap Eater [Part 4/Final] Is there a way I could get a superpower too? Do you have a superhero name? I''d asked him, and Scotty had recoiled like he''d been shocked. He looked around as if seeking help. Just then, Amanda had found the two of us, and without hesitation she had placed her hands over my eyes. Come. The sound of the word was a hiss in my empty mind. Without hesitation, I obeyed, walking over to her in a trance. Was there an occasion that I was forgetting? Why were we going to my parent''s house? A Pretty Girl Who Ate Her Shoe My Ma used to tell me the story of a pretty girl who ate her shoe. She''d sing it in a lovely little ditty as she hung the laundry, or she''ll tell me the story at bedtime. The story about a lovely lass who liked to stray from home at night, a girl who found herself trapped in a scary, dark place. Ma used to say that good girls go to bed early, good girls don''t stay out after dark, and I believed her. The girl in the story wanted something to eat so badly that she took off her shoe and tried to fill her stomach with it, Ma would tell me. The girl spent days trying to chew the soft leather, bit by bit until she thought it was soft enough to swallow. But she was wrong. It was still too tough to eat. So she choked to death on it. This poor girl with the shoe stuck in her mouth. Nobody ever found her. Not even the dogs could sniff her out. Ma said she was a bad girl, and that bad girls get what''s coming for them. Ma said there''s a tailor-made hell for all of the bad girls, so I always thought if your feet took you where you''re not supposed to be -- especially at night -- you''re gonna wind up so lost and so hungry that you''d have to eat your shoe. When I got older, I began to piece together the horrible truth. When Ma first began telling the story, our whole town was also covered with picture-posters of the sheriff''s pretty daughter. Louise, her name was, written in large large under the word ''Missing'', which was written in even larger letters. At the same time, Pa also started drinking deep into the night, and going out to wander during the day as if he was searching for something. Before that, Pa was almost never home at night, and Ma used to cry a lot too. Back then, Ma used to tell me that there''s nothing in the world more disgusting than breakin'' a promise, and I believed her. But when Ma started telling the story about the girl who ate her shoe, the tears were gone. Instead, Ma started smiling all the time. She smiled so much and so wide that it scared me sometimes. Ma told me I don''t need to worry. She''ll make sure I grew up right, into a good girl. I was going to ask Ma why I had to grow up and be a good girl when I was a little boy right now. But Ma was smiling back then, and something about the look in her eyes shut me right up When I got older, I thought about how Ma never told the story when Pa was around and sober. I thought about Ma''s best friend shaking her head with a strange and sad look in her eyes. She was the teacher at our local school, which was also used as a church on Sundays. Missus Greene was extra nice to me when I was little. She''d drop by the house sometimes with gumdrop candies, and when Ma wasn''t around Missus Green would tell me that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" like it was a secret just between the two of us. I think I understand now, what Missus Greene was trying to say. But Missus Greene was no longer around for me to ask her. Missus Greene was visiting her Gran one day and came back too late. So Ma got her. Just like how Ma got Pa, and the neighbor too. Ma told me it was because they snooped into another person''s secrets. And good girls don''t peek at other people''s secrets. I think- I think Ma wants everybody to be a good girl. The townfolk are saying it''s coyotes actin'' up at night. And they''re saying that a few good bullets would do the trick and scare the coyotes off. But I don''t think it''s the coyotes. I think I know what -- who''s been killing off the townfolk one by one. Ma said good girls know how to keep a secret, but I don''t think I want to be good anymore. Everythings Better with a Little Background Music
They say everything''s better with a little background music. Well if a bit of music is going to make this shit-show feel any better, then why not. My fingers tapped at the cracked screen of my phone as I put on a cute little playlist I used to listen to way back when before this mess started. I''m hiding in the cellar right how, but it''s not like there''s any wifi signal anyways, so my choices were limited to the playlists that I downloaded. The slow, smoky voice of some pop singer filled the silence. The sound of piano made the dust dancing in the light look like a scene from an artsy, romantic film. They''re right, a song does add something else to the air. But a breakup song? Nah. Not in the mood. I settled for a playlist named ''nostalgia'' before letting my arms slump at my side. Apparently even choosing a playlist costs more energy than I can afford right now. A different song played, it was from one of the bands I used to listen to all the time. The slow beat of the drums, the lazy guitar, and the voice of a singer that held the finest tint of melancholy. Hmm, not bad. A song about the end of youth. Maybe that was why I named it ''nostalgia''. It was catchy, but a little bit sad. It held the same emotion as an old photo album. Or an eulogy for someone who died young and stupid. I turned my head with great effort to look at the teddy bear besides me. "Well, it''s just you and me now buddy." My voice echoed in the empty cellar. As if in reply, the tattered teddy bear''s head drooped as it tilted forward and began to fall. I reached out and caught it, righting the poor teddy bear ¡ª Toto, my sister used to call him ¡ª so that he sat with his back against the cold stone wall. I don''t even know why I kept him. Maybe I''m more sentimental than I thought, towing my sister''s favorite stuffed animal for months while I tried to get away from this hellhole. This whole city''s been quarantined, and it''s not like anyone would care whether there are survivors left. So here I am once more, back at our family''s house. Except it''s much more different without them. Some times I wonder where they are, if they''ve been eaten alive, or if they''ve been Turned, the parasitic worms wriggling in the network of their nervous system, making their brain into a hatchery of slimy yellowish eggs. Yeah, I''ve seen some. I''ve busted more skulls than I could count in the past few months, all to survive. It''s not so hard after the first one honestly. But the site of those eggs gets me every time. It looks like rice spilling out of the cracked container of the cranium. Except more disgusting, because the eggs are slimy, and translucent enough to see a vague dark spot where the black head of the baby worms are. There''s just so much of them. Sometimes they wouldn''t even stay in the cranium properly, and would slip out of every orifice on the human head. There''d be white, beady little eggs, mixed with pink flecks of brain, slowly running down the undead''s nose like snot. Or the horrendous mix will slip out of their ears, their eye sockets, run down the side of their face and plop on the ground as they stumble about. I remember puking until I nearly passed out the first time I saw it. I still get nauseous sometimes, especially when it''s really bad. But you do what you have to do to survive.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. That''s what my mom used to say all the time while she was still alive. At the start of all this, we''d done what everyone else with common sense had done. Having been through covid, we all know the drill. Stay in, keep an eye on the news, only go out when it''s necessary, limit contact with other people, blah blah blah. To be honest we didn''t even know what was really going on at first. It was a distant idea at the time, a growing alarm intermixed with speculation. It didn''t sound too serious, but we still did everything we know to prevent this. They still got my mom and my sister anyways. Crashed through the window and snatched them right out. We didn''t know that the parasites were capable of doing that. Reanimating a dead corpse like something straight out of a horror movie. But by the time we found out, it was too late. The last thing I saw of my family was my sister. Her wide eyed look of panic, and gosh I think she was screaming my name right before the throng of undead pounced on her, obscuring the rest from my view. She must''ve been so terrified and so confused. I think, I''m being punished for being a coward. I should''ve just died with them that night. Maybe that''s why I came back here. I wonder if deep down, there''s something under all this numbness, there''s still some piece left of me. They say the undead are no longer human, but honestly I haven''t felt human and sane in a long, long time. The old me felt like a fever dream, as if life before all of this was made up, and this is the only reality that existed. The life of a dorky college student now feels paper-thin to me. Gosh can you believe it? My biggest worry used to be whether the girl I liked, liked me back. And now I don''t even remember her name. Heck, I might have bashed her head in with a crowbar last week for all I care. But if there''s still humanity left in this tired body, then it''s probably the reason I''m here. There''s something poetic in returning to the place where my family died. As if dying here, in the same place but at a different time, somehow reaches across the divide and connects me to them. Maybe it''s just fanciful thinking on my part, but I gotta have something to hold on to. My memories, and Toto too, apparently. Toto slumped down against the wall. Just like me. His fuzzy exterior was tattered. The cream color was stained with the brown of dirt and the rust color of my sister''s blood. One of his button eyes was missing, so there''s only a black thread hanging loosely from where his right eye used to be. He''s a little battered, and there were several gashes on his stomach where his stuffing was falling out. Just like me. I leaned my head back against the wall and heaved a sigh, stirring the dank air. The cellar door was thick enough to muffle but not completely drown out the chaos on the streets. The sound of blood-curdling screams is now so tame to my ears that I treat it just as any other noise of the night. Yep. Just a normal ¡ª Saturday now, was it? My thumb found the power button on my banged-up phone. I pressed it, wincing at the sudden flare of bring light. I lifted a rubbery arm with great effort, like there were lead weights tied to my elbows. I cracked open my eyes and squinted at the screen. Wow, what a coincidence. 11:59 PM Sat, Dec 31 My dry lips cracked into a ghost of a smile. Happy New Year to me.
Sour Patch Baby those dreams, I thought. The type where you wake up but you haven''t really woken up. I felt hungry for some reason -- again, probably because it''s a dream. So I picked up the candy. It was looking more and more appetizing, even though sweets aren''t really my thing. But the smiling face of the gummy stared back at me, enticing me to take a bite. The Actor, the Audience, the Mirror
I know everything about you. And I can guess every thought that flitters through your despicable head. Because sometimes my thoughts slip through to you.