When Yoni first walks in, she thinks the floor is moving. Looking closer, she realizes it’s just cockroaches—thousands and thousands of cockroaches. Her flashlight illuminates a fruit stand infested with maggots, and the stench of rot sucker punches her. She gets the old one-two: first to her nose, then her stomach flips and vomit comes spewing out. There’s not even any time to pull down her N95—it just goes crashing to the floor along with last night’s dinner.
One of the others, some ginger with a man-bun, laughs. Slapping him sounds nice, but she’s got to get her strength back before she loses control and spews chunks again. She rushes through a grounding exercise to gain composure.
She can see the roaches.
She can hear the maggots writhing in the fruit.
She can smell mold all around her.
She can feel her hands on her knees as she catches her breath.
And she can still taste the vomit in her mouth even though it’s on the floor in front of her.
“You need to go home?” Man-Bun chuckles.
A woman bends down and rubs Yoni’s back. They look each other in the eye, and the woman’s frown lines pull to the side. Everyone else is wearing a face mask except for her. She’s trying to make some sympathetic expression which really just comes off as an awkward attempt to comfort a stranger. Yoni can’t blame her, she’s grateful that this lady was kind enough to try. It’s probably just not her style.
“Have you seen anything like this before?” The woman’s voice is silk, much better than the sound of maggots digging into rotten produce.
When she was young, her grandma asked her to take care of a rat that had died in the basement. Yoni was ten and completely unfamiliar with animal carcasses, still is really. She took a plastic sack in one hand and tried to scrape the critter into it with a spatula, but its stomach burst. Thick, white larvae floundered out, fresh air upon its flesh for the first time. She kind of thought that experience would have prepared her for this, but she’d feel silly saying that to the woman now. Instead, she just shakes her head.
“What’s your background?” The woman asks.
“Housekeeping.” The job pays peanuts, Yoni wants to add. If she did, more vomit breath would leak out into this poor woman’s nose. “You?” is the only other word she pushes out.
“We’re crime scene cleanup,” the woman says.
“City should have just called us,” Man-Bun says. “No one else showed up except for Upchuck here.”
The woman shoots Man-Bun a stern look and he cowers. Yoni chuckles, takes a regretfully deep breath of the rotting odor, and straightens her back; however, part of her thinks he might be right. Off the top of her head, not a single other occupation in the world would prepare someone for this. Garbage man, maybe?
When the rot had flooded the neighborhood, not a corner or alley offering refuge from the smell, officials were bombarded with calls to do something. It wasn’t long before the culprit was pinned down: Freddy’s Supermarket. The place just couldn’t keep up with the prices that the big chains offered and eventually went out of business. Turns out, old Freddy didn’t bother to clean the store up or get rid of the stock before high tailing it to who-the-fuck-knows. All the deli meat, the cheese, the fruits and veggies that used to look garden fresh made a breeding ground for mold and an ocean of bugs.
As soon as they could, city officials put out an ad for people to help clean the mess. It came with a good, government paycheck. Wasn’t enough to get anyone to apply except for Yoni and these guys, apparently.
“Steve and I are going to check out the mess in the frozen foods section,” The woman says. “Whenever you feel ready, j-”
“I am ready,” Yoni interrupts the woman. She rolls her hands into tight fists to keep from covering her mouth. Grandma always said it was rude to cut someone off.
“Then you two can start cleaning at the deli. We’ll all keep working from there, then meet in the middle. Sound good?”
Everyone else nods. Clearly, they’re used to taking orders from her, and Yoni has no reason to disagree. Cockroaches crunch under their feet as they each head their separate directions.
In one hand, Ruby carries two litter sticks. They’re the kind with the claws—smart. If they were just stabbing into things, some of the rotten fruit would slide right off. Ruby pulls out a face mask, one of the good ones that the painters use, and offers it to Yoni along with the second litter stick.
“Brought extras,” She says.
“Thanks.” Yoni puts the mask on, which fills up with the smell of her own puke breath. Anything was better than the stench of the market, though. The rot is a thousand times worse in here than it had been out in the neighborhood. It smells the way she imagined when learning about the potter's fields during the huey cocoliztli.
Darkness consumes the supermarket. If it weren’t for their flashlights and a weak stream of sunlight from the glass doors up front, it would be pitch black. “Nice of the city to turn the power on while we clean up this shit.”
Ruby chortles. “If they did that, they couldn’t afford to add spikes to the benches.”
Underneath the cacophony of writhing maggots, rhythm growls. She almost doesn’t hear it, but there’s something familiar to that sound which catches her. She turns her ear toward it, makes eyes at Ruby to ask if it’s all in her head. Her companion’s eyebrows tell her that, whatever the hell that sound is, it’s real. Their steps slow down. A roach climbs onto Yoni’s work boot, but the thing’s so thick she can’t feel it. Until now, she would take the occasional glance to make sure none of the bugs got on her, but she can’t be bothered anymore since this haunting dirge is filling the air.
Slowly, they creep toward the deli. glass stands reveal moldy cheeses crawling with all sorts of disgusting things. Rats stuff rotting meat into their mouths, beady eyes unblinking as they watch the intruders approach. On top of the stand sits an old boombox. Now that they’re closer, Yoni realizes why the song sounds so familiar. It’s a distorted version of Mungo Jerry’s ‘In The Summertime.’
“Batteries must be dying,” Yoni says.
“How long has that been sitting there?” Ruby asks. “Surely it would have died already if it were here when the store closed.”
All the hair on Yoni’s arm rises. She reaches out her hand and turns the dial on the boombox. A small click signals that it’s off, and if it weren’t for the maggots all throughout the dark store gorging themselves on whatever they can find, the two would hear nothing.
“Should we tell them?” Yoni says. “There could be squatters.”
Ruby looks away in the direction their fellow workers ought to be. “No, it wouldn’t do any good. Some kids probably left it.”
“Doesn’t seem like a place kids would come,” Yoni says.
“Sure they would.” Ruby’s eyebrows raise, her voice trembling despite her words. “Kids dare each other to do stupid stuff all the time.” She pulls a couple of trash bags from her back pocket and tosses one to Yoni. “Let’s get this cleaned as soon as we can.”
Yoni flaps the trash bag into the air to expand it. Even though the bugs still crunch under their feet, though the maggots writhe and the rats chew, Ruby working in silence puts Yoni off. She walks behind the deli stand and opens it. As she reaches her litter stick in to pick up deteriorating food—the pieces without vermin on it first—she realizes that she’s never been on this side of the counter before. Since she graduated high school, she’s been working at hotels cleaning up the messes that people leave behind. It’s never paid well enough to offer her a new start. Most people forget to tip, especially after throwing massive parties that trash the room. She wonders if there will ever be enough cash in her pocket to pave a new life with. Would things be different if she had worked in retail? Or maybe fast food or the front desk at a clinic?
“What got you into cleaning crime scenes?” Yoni says.
“Used to be a maid.” Ruby picks moldy bread in torn plastic packaging off of a shelf. “One day, I realized the family I cleaned for wasn’t ever going to increase my wages. I didn’t have any other experience, so the highest paying job I could find was with Val.”
“The boss chick?” Yoni asks.
Ruby nods.
“How come she doesn’t wear a mask?” Yoni says.
“Can’t smell ever since she got Covid,” Ruby answers. “She once told me it was the greatest gift she’d ever received. I think she’s been doing this job for about twenty five years now. Could be less, though. My memory is tricky.”
THUMP.
Yoni’s bones almost hop out of her skin. A timid shriek escapes her. That sound, whatever it was, came from the freezer. Her and Ruby both have their eyes glued to the door. The hotel Yoni’s employed at now is a pretty swanky place with a high end restaurant attached. Sometimes, she has to walk through the kitchen to find someone and she always passes a freezer door just like this one. An overbearing metal chunk, no way to see inside. What it would be like to get trapped in one, Yoni’s thought about it before. A slow, agonizing crawl toward death, losing all feeling to the freezing cold along the way - she shivers just thinking about it.
“Those things have a lot of insulation.” There’s a tremor in Ruby’s voice. “All of the ice must just be melting now. Something probably fell.”
“We’re going to clean it eventually,” Yoni says. One foot goes forward and she thinks about holding the other back. Ruby said those things are good at insulating, it could be possible that it’s still ice cold inside. Of course, If someone did get stuck in there, if they’ve been freezing without the strength to escape, Yoni should open the door before it’s too late.
When she grabs the handle, she feels ice on the other side of her glove. It shouldn’t be able to get that cold, especially after all the time the power’s been off. Ice cracks around the frame of the door as she pulls. It takes a lot of effort, but eventually the frozen door breaks open.
A chill rushes down her spine. All along the walls, roaches and millipedes zip up and down. They pile up on the floor, crawling over each other. Beetles and maggots infest animal carcasses. It’s par for the course with this place, but they shouldn’t be able to survive in here. The air is freezing. There are even rats crawling in piles of their own shit.
Yoni scans the place with her flashlight and gasps. For a moment, she thought she saw a person hunched over. A pile of vermin that big—she couldn’t have guessed she would ever see something like that.
The unmistakable turn of a head looking over its shoulder greets her. Her stomach sinks, starts to stir with more puke. She was right, there is a person under all of those pests. Asking if they’re okay should be the first thing she does, but she can’t. She’s paralyzed by the glowing green eyes.
Maggots, beetles, roaches, worms - even a rat king squirms in this pile as it rises and stands. It takes the shape of a person, yet twice as tall as anyone she’s ever met. It takes a heavy step. Then another. This mass of writhing vermin is lurching toward her and she can’t think of what to do. The litter stick falls from her hand, bugs crunching underneath its weight. Her heart leaps into her throat.
“Human flesh.” The writhing mass speaks with a voice like cracking bone. “House of the soul.” It reaches out its hand of bugs and clutches Yoni’s. “Power.”
Yoni shouts. She pulls away, but this thing’s grip is strong. Over her glove, she feels each wriggling maggot press into her. She drops her flashlight and uses that hand to go underneath her glove. It slips off, and she runs.
“What’s going on?” Ruby stands, her mouth agape as she watches Yoni run away.
We have to go, that’s what Yoni wants to say, needs to get out. Her mouth is useless, her tongue dancing around and spitting out babble. When Ruby shines her light on the writhing mass coming from the freezer, she gets the message.
Ruby throws off her cleaning gloves and takes her phone from her pocket. She dials 9-1-1 and the two run away. As she speaks with the operator, they keep looking back at their pursuer. Guts from bugs that they had crushed walking this way slick the floor underneath them and they fall. The writhing mass picks up its pace.
Ruby screams incoherently into the phone, watches that horrid monster sink down and grab her legs. Yoni, only a hair’s length in front of her, takes her arms. The phone falls out of Ruby’s hand and she holds on as tight as possible to the woman she just met. Her eyes don’t dare leave Yoni. The writhing mass pulls her into itself like a black hole. Yoni pushes away from the scene with her feet, those piercing screams more terrible than anything she’s heard in her life. No matter what she does, though, they both get pulled closer and closer to that thing. Maggots and roaches crawl into Ruby’s mouth. The sound of her gargling on the bugs, the way they silence her scream, makes Yoni dig into Ruby with her nails. Before she knows it, the bugs have almost reached her fingertips.
Yoni has to let go. She pushes herself away. Her hand lands in the gooey roach viscera all over the floor. The ones that are still alive swarm her, their little legs crawling up her boots and into the bottom of her pant legs. The writhing mass isn’t any bigger after taking Ruby in. It must have consumed her completely. Yoni launches herself off the floor and makes a break for the exit.
“What’s going on?” Val rushes over from her side of the store. There were more words on her mind, Yoni can tell by her eyes. As soon as she sees the writhing mass, every word she could have possibly had escapes in one breath. She tears a radio from the clip on her belt and screams into it, “Steven, we have to get out of here. Find an exit now!”
The writhing mass swipes at Val, but she dashes just before it can get her. She joins Yoni in the race to the front door like two deer heading for the tree line with a hunter on their tail.
It could be from the cold or from the fact that this thing is made of smaller living things (a thought that makes Yoni gag), but it doesn’t have any agency in its steps. Yoni looks back and forth over her shoulder and to the door, but something doesn’t feel right about the scene. Her eyes are locked on the writhing mass. Right as they reach the exit, it stops. The bugs that make up its arm all lift up, reaching out in the shape of a hand toward the door.
Yoni makes it to the door first. She pulls, but nothing happens. It shouldn’t be locked, it wasn’t when they came in and it's not like the city had a key to give them or anything. Her arms burn as she strains, but it won’t budge. Val gets to the doors and pulls with her. They might as well be trying to push a wall.
“I don’t want to die,” Yoni says. Tears slide down her cheeks.
“You’re going to be okay.” Val looks her in the eye.
The writhing mass creeps toward them, one step at a time. Val’s arms wrap around Yoni. It’s nice, reminds her of the days when her grandma would hold her.
Val lets go, tears the top of her jumpsuit off to reveal a plain white tee underneath. What was the jumpsuit wraps around her hand. She takes a deep breath and punches through the glass door. Shards get stuck in the cloth around her arm, and she motions for Yoni to go first.
Yoni’s careless. Broken glass slices into her hand as she reaches out to the other side, but the pain doesn’t matter. Blood seeping onto the concrete, bandages, the last time she got her tetanus shot: all those thoughts are for later. Now, she just needs to rush out and ensure Val makes it to safety.
She rolls on the glass, each shard a nail driving into her back. When she’s finally on the other side, she reaches through the space that Val created to grab this immaculate woman. She pulls as hard as she can, probably harder than Val could normally handle, and her compatriot is dragged to the other side with her.
They both rush out into the parking lot. It’s just the cars of the crew that came out here. Getting in and driving off isn’t going to stop the writhing mass, though. They’re out of the store, but the writhing mass follows. There’s no knowing what drives it, what it will stop at, why it’s even here in the first place. It could chase them forever.
Red and blue flashes through the air. Wailing sirens accompany the tires of a cop car screeching to a stop. Two officers step out and lift guns at the trio in front of them. “Freeze!” Lifting arms, that’s instinct. Yoni and Val both know the drill. She can’t see behind her, but she prays to God that they have the sense to let them run away before the writhing mass gets to them.
One of the officers turns their gun to the side of the store. Man-Bun takes out a pocket knife, dashes at the obvious threat coming toward the two ladies.
“I said halt!” An officer shouts. Man-Bun doesn’t listen. His mask is down, he’s got some twisted smile on his face. It’s like he’s telling himself he was born for this moment, that nothing matters except for him driving his knife into this bug monster. The officers even open fire on him, but they’re poor shots on the running target. Man-Bun gets to the writhing mass, drives his knife into it. As soon as he does, it pulls him in. He screams as his flesh is eaten by the writhing mass. The rats, and maggots, and all of the disgusting things that make up their pursuer chew him to shreds. The writhing mass spits out the knife which clatters on the concrete beneath them.
Yoni and Val step away and the officers train their fire on the writhing mass. Each bullet only pops the maggot and bugs that it lands on. The writhing mass itself looks unbothered.
It lifts up its hands, an inverted arc between its arms. The air goes silent. The walls at the front of the supermarket, every tree surrounding it, starts to pour blood. It gushes down onto the parking lot, lapping at their feet. Some spatters into the sky, raining down like a hurricane.
“With everyone it consumes, it grows more powerful,” Yoni says. She doesn’t want to find out what it can do once it consumes all of them. She grabs Val’s hand and makes a break for the side of the building. As they flee, the muffled sound of an officer calling for backup accompanies gunshots. She puts a pinky in her ear before realizing that she must have tinnitus from the gunfire. As she drags Val along, she sees exactly what she was looking for: the employee door Man-Bun must have come out of.
“What are we doing?” Val says.
“That thing is only going to get worse,” Yoni says. “We have to stop it before it does serious damage.”
“We need to get out of here.” Blood drips from the trees into their hair. “The police can handle that.”
The sound of gunfire is swiftly replaced by screaming from the officers. Yoni shakes her head. “If we don’t try, it could destroy the neighborhood. I have friends that live there.”
“We don’t even know what that thing is,” Val shakes her head. “It absorbs people and makes trees bleed. I don’t think there’s anything we can do other than run.”
“Suit yourself,” Yoni frowns. She can’t blame Val, there’s only a half-cocked plan in her head and it will obviously take a lot of luck. Running probably is the only way they make it out alive, but if the writhing mass gets to her house or kills all of her friends then she’ll have nothing to live for.
Val rushes into the trees, and Yoni heads back into the store.
Worse than the stench of death surrounding her like a crypt is the dank air. Paired with the consuming darkness, the market is like a dungeon. After this whole ordeal is done, if she makes it out alive, she never wants to go grocery shopping again.
Yoni takes out her phone and turns on the flashlight. It was a bad day to have 17% of her battery left. She swore she charged it last night, but she always swears she did that.
The back of the store has less bugs crawling around. Given the parking lot is filled with blood, this is the cleanest floor she’s walked on all day. Swinging double doors lead to the nest, the infestation, the inferno of crawling pests all looking for the next moldy fruit to gorge themselves on.
First, she hits the beauty section. Any pests that have come down this aisle realized quickly there was nothing to feed on, it’s about as clean as the back of the store was. She picks up the largest can of hairspray she can find, then runs to the checkout area. An empty display where numerous Bics must have been taken by local kids right after the closing was first announced sits next to candies and old magazines. There’s only a grill lighter left and it’s wrapped in plastic.
She puts the hairspray on the checkout line and fights with the plastic container. What’s even the point of making these things invincible, anyway? It’s like they’re meant to last the end of the world. Out in front of the glass door, a squadron of police cars make cover for officers emptying their clips into the writhing mass. Its hand departs, flying through the air toward one of the cops and dragging them back screaming. Into the maw he goes, muffled by maggots that will surely eat him from the inside just like the other victims.
Green eyes appear in the back of its head to stare Yoni down.
“Oh, shit,” she whispers.
Her brain starts to vibrate inside her skull. The plastic package falls out of her hands. The air itself swirls around her and her stomach turns. Behind her, another mass has started to form. This one is shapeless, just a pile of bugs and rats and all sorts of things that threaten to give her diseases if she manages to make it out of this. She tries to step back, but the signals that her brain is sending to her body get all scrambled.
“Cover your eyes.” Luckily, this command is a lot simpler. Yoni manages to throw her hands on her face, and she hears pressurized air. The unmistakable smell of bug spray sneaks in under her mask.
Once the sound is gone, Yoni opens her eyes to see Val with a can of raid. She takes a knife from her pocket and stabs into the grill lighter.
“That looks like the one that Man-Bun had,” Yoni says.
“Steve,” Val looks her in the eye. “Custom made. We all had one. Got them engraved for everyone after I bought the company.”
“Thank you for coming back,” Yoni says.
“I shouldn’t have tried to run.” She hands Yoni the grill lighter. “Fire’s smart. You better be able to get that thing, because I’ve got a splitting headache.”
“Me too.” Yoni says. “I’m getting more used to it by the second, though.”
Yoni takes the grill lighter and hairspray, gets them into position. When she turns to exit, the writhing mass has a burning flame in its own hand. It tosses it at the glass doors, all of the panes that were left now shattering with the impact. Hundreds of tiny shards fly back and slice into Yoni. She feels blood leaking out, but more cops are being dragged into that monster by the minute. What’s worse, a S.W.A.T. truck arrives, and overhead the sound of helicopter blades whapping the air appears. They’re just going to keep throwing fodder at it without a plan.
That fireball, though. It might look threatening, but it’s a good sign. Everyone else gets the flying maggots dragging them into its insatiable body. Seems like the most effective strategy, so that fireball tells Yoni that the writhing mass wants her nowhere near it. She knows how to take it down.
Val follows her out into the blood pond that was once the parking lot. Someone over a bullhorn tells the two women to get away from the thing. They want to open fire, but they have no clue what they’re doing. Val flanks on the right, Yoni on the left. Another fireball forms in the writhing mass’ hand, but it won’t get the chance to throw it. Yoni starts her flamethrower and Val assaults it with the bug spray.
It lights up in a raging blaze. The two don’t let up. It’s time to erase this thing from the face of the Earth.
A piercing wail of a million voices, the rat king inside it shrieking along - it’s a haunting sound coming from the dying thing. It’s not going down without a fight, though. It dashes at Yoni. There’s no space to get out into the open, so she rolls back into the grocery store.
Thundering, flaming steps sprint after her. It swings wildly only inches away from her. If Yoni’s hair was any longer, she’d get singed.
The flaming pests that make up the writhing mass fling off and deeper into the store. The scatter gun of fire starts multiple embers in the supermarket, all the while it never lets up the chase. Yoni’s trapped running down an aisle with this freak running fast after her.
“The old ones granted me knowledge of the incomprehensible,” it rumbles. “For ages I searched to take form. Now look at what you’ve done.”
Yoni’s only a couple of yards from escaping this aisle, maggots and roaches surrounding her on all sides. The flaming beast behind her chucks a fireball at the roof right above the opening on the other side. It crashes down, a gate of fire sealing her off from safety.
“If I am to die here, I will not let you escape,” it growls.
“Then I’ll be the last thing you kill!” Yoni sprays what’s left of the flamethrower into the writhing mass. By now, it’s become no taller than her. The rest of her hairspray/lighter concoction diminishes the beast until it is no more. Finally, the screaming stops. There’s no sound except for the roaring flames consuming everything around her.
Smoke burns her lungs, her eyes sting and beg for water. A coughing fit possesses her. She tries to force a deep breath, to get her wits about her and find a way out. She just coughs more.
When she finally gains her composure, steels herself enough to stand, she takes a look around. If it weren’t for the mask that Ruby gave her, it wouldn’t be possible to breathe at all. With everything she has left, she tosses her body at the aisle. No dice, the thing won’t budge. She looks up. Where the roof collapsed and caused the fire that closed her in, light shines through.
The metal racks of the aisle are hot to the touch. They burn her exposed hand, but she has to keep going. It’s only going to get hotter by the minute, this is her only chance. Each step she takes upward, each time she pulls herself to the next shelf, her muscles all pull down. Give up, relax, they say. You killed that thing. It’s over. She struggles to breathe through all of the smoke. The foul stench of a million burning bugs tries to drag her down. She only has one more rack to climb when she loses all feeling in her exposed hand. Her gloved hand isn’t doing much better. “Just one more step,” she whispers. “You got this.”
Finally, she pulls herself onto the roof. She runs over to the parking lot and sees a fire engine pull up. Her hands wave madly in the air. She struggles through the smoke already in her lungs and screams like gravel, “Let it burn! Please, let it burn.”
An airlife helicopter descends toward her. “We gotta go,” a paramedic says. He reaches his arms out for her, and she climbs in. Val is already there, wrapped in a blanket. The chopper flies up and Yoni looks down at the scene of blood perplexing the firemen. The ones who are in action, they focus their hose on the tree line around the supermarket. Freddy’s continues to burn, and Yoni smiles.
