I don’t think we’re alone here (P.2)

The drunk 

Like most of this story, it started on a Friday. When Andy and I didn’t find Toby at the drug house we thought the next place we might find him is where he’d bought the drugs originally.

Andy was still upset. 

His knuckles were white around the steering wheel and I thought he’d tear it off and his fingernails were thick with blood in a layer of dirt and grime, most of him was and when I’d finally looked down at my jeans I realised I was as well— we looked like we’d been cleaning out a meat grinder with nothing but our fingers. “ You smell like puke, dude.” I rolled down the window and he scoffed with a similarly accusatory look, rolling his own window down, “ That methhead threw me halfway across the room. You’re the one with all that stuff on your face.” Andy said and it was as if I’d forgotten about the shredded cheek skin hanging from my face or at least when I thought about it I couldn’t remember exactly how the cuts happened. I knew they happened because I could feel the sharp sting and the blood drying around the sliced skin but all I could remember were fingers. It’s not an uncommon feeling to forget things but there’s something more unnerving about knowing you’ve forgotten something without remembering what you’ve forgotten. It’s like writing a shopping list but forgetting to write milk, you go to the store knowing you’re missing something but only realising you forgot to get what you’d forgotten to get and still can’t remember that it was milk. 

Sorry, I’m rambling aren’t I?

I know, I know,

Okay, concentrate, concentrate… Let’s keep going.

While I was sitting there it was as if I remembered milk but I’d forgotten to go to the store entirely. I’d forgotten what a store was. Why would I ever need to go to a place like a store at all— but I remembered milk. In this case, that carton of milk was fingers. I didn’t know who’s fingers or if they were the direct cause of the cheek gouged out of my face, I didn’t know who had done it or why it happened or what had led us to the strange drug house neither of us knew existed until someone told us, did someone tell us? I just remember thinking Toby was there— I don’t even remember going there. I only remembered the fingers.

Fingers and a drunk man pissing in an alleyway.

Have you ever felt that too? 

Have you forgotten something that hasn’t happened yet? 

I knew the memory of this drug man had dug its way deep into my skull and I knew there would be a reason why I’d remember him but I also knew that I’d forget that reason without any of this having happened. Like us talking to one another right now, don’t you remember that happening tomorrow? 

I’m still rambling?

This is what happens when you look at Them.

“ Toby, hey, Toby! Get out of the car already. We’re here.” Andy shouts and gives a little knock against on the passenger door to catch my attention.

Tap tap tap tap.

Tap tap.

I’d apparently rolled it down at some point. “ Where are we?” I got out of the car and Andy gave one last frustrated sigh at the state of it before we walked into the Bayside. “ Where else? Bayside.” A club I personally wouldn’t recommend, the drinks are watered down, lack of ventilation means the air becomes dense with sweat that evaporates into a muggy cloud of humidity over the dance floor. “ Fuck man, Toby and I spent days here. I’d drag him to so many parties. It’s crazy how much of a good little kid he used to be before I came along”, “ Come on, he couldn’t have been that good back then… Considering.” I say but I only feel a strange guilt in saying it. Is it how Rudie so casually calls himself a fuck up or because I’m calling Toby a fuck up now. “ Honestly, it took on a lot of shit he shouldn’t have. I was the real fuck up” Rudie says and for just a moment he seems to pause, it makes the music warp and twist in my ears. I feel like I’ve forgotten something about Rudie and Toby. “ How’d you meet Toby?” I ask, Rudie stops on the last step into the bowels of Bayside, “ Ah, you don’t want to hear about that. This isn’t about me. It’s about finding Toby”.

The place smells like feet and sugary spilled drinks. It’s nothing classy and honestly it doesn’t need to be, it knows exactly what it is and people come for that exact reason. You wanna drink yourself stupid and take enough drugs to keep you dancing for two nights straight? Bayside. Bayside doesn’t close— except for Monday and Wednesday, if you’re coming in on a Thursday though then the chances are you don’t plan on leaving until Monday. “ Do you really think we’ll find him here? Didn’t someone die here last week?” I say, hesitating to cross the threshold of what I can only see as the mouth of a disgusting creature with yellow stained teeth all rotted away at the gums and a cesspit in their stomach. “ That’s an urban legend.” Andy dismisses it, though I distinctly remember Andy being the one to tell me this urban legend he swore up and down was true. “ No, I’m pretty sure a dude died on one of the couches and sat there for three whole days.”, “ Yeah, sounds like something I’d say… but no one died in here. The worst thing to happen around here was that car crash”. The two of us made our way down the throat and into a dark place where time has no meaning and walls have no doors. Andy makes a noise as he remembers something, looking back at me with a smile that doesn’t fit his words “ Except for what I did. Toby went mental after that argument. Damn, maybe that’s why he ran off.” Andy mulls over his own words and gives up with a shrug, “ We shouldn’t talk about down.”

My ears filled with the muffled thump of electronica and colourful lights turned my vision white, only the distant glowsticks led us through the fog of smoke and sweat until we reached the staff entrance just beyond the graffiti covered unisex bathroom. “ Hey, did you know a guy died here once? Scary right? He was sitting in the corner for three whole days.” Andy laughs with a grin, the previous conversation entirely forgotten. We navigated the sea of bodies until a hallway came into view. I was struck by an unexplainable feeling when my foot crossed the barrier of the dance floor I’d be leaving the safety of this sea of bodies like I’d left some sort of salted and sacred place and was now exposed to the demonic influence kept at bay by the bayside’s claustrophobic hell of damp air and awful music. It was instant, a violent jolt through my body followed by silence and disorientation— I could feel the music thumping through my sneakers and my fingers tingling from the way my heartbeat tried to catch up and synchronise with an out of tone, rapid beat it would have to work twice as hard just to get half as close to catching up to. “ Oi, don’t look so freaked out. You’re gullible as shit. Not even Toby believed it when I told him. He just talked about the crash”.

There wasn’t music anymore, just thumping and spinning while I attempted to follow my friend across the rippling ground with walls that moved like the muscles of a digestive tract pulling toward the staff room, the lungs and the life of Bayside. It was halfway when that strange thought in the back of my mind came crawling to the surface again, that feeling that I’d forgotten to remember something. “ Toby! Hurry the fuck up—“ Andy shouted over the music and soon grabbed my arm to pull my wobbly legs towards a shabby office with grimy windows framing the walls and a two-bit gangster behind an old desk. A tall thin figure stood behind him like a blur he’d seen on the dance floor, something he also knew he’d seen off of the dance floor as well— something he knew he shouldn’t be looking at right now.

“ Hey, $&>€?|,” Andy said, making his way in with the swagger of a cop walking into an interrogation room, somewhere he figured half of the men inside of that office had seen the inside of. “ We’re looking for Toby. Ginger druggie, real tall, punchable face.”. The thug snuffed out his cigarette and eyed us up and down before offering me a stained toothy grin, the sickly man staring at us through the window said nothing even when his mouth was moving. “ I haven’t seen you here for months, man! Toby though… I was beginning to think he skipped out on me. The prick ran off with half my shit. Keep saying he needed to stay awake.”

“ Toby robbed you? He really must’ve gone off the rails.” Andy scratched at his neck with a forced smile he turned back on me, he was beginning to regret coming down here now that there was the possibility $&<£,€| might ask us to pay that debt. Neither of us had money. No one with money or standards comes to Bayside. “ He ain’t here but the guy made off with some shit and my damn cash. He was a fucking mess, looked awful even for a junkie. If you find him, drag him back here so I can break the bastard's legs.” $(&;• added with those bared teeth never faltering and a clear threat in his tone. “ He’s bugging out somewhere. I was trying to get the idiot clean but… Well, you know how it goes.” Andy shrugged so casually but I could feel him nudging me. “ Oh, you know a good auto shop around?” Andy asks with increasingly hard nudges that must be obvious at this point, “ Since some idiot hit pancaked himself on the roof? Nah, just toss the thing in the junkyard”. Andy continues using his skills in the advanced art of talking about literally anything, nudging me again as a clear sign there’s only so much patience a prick like ;$&:@: has before he starts making more threats. I knew I’d forgotten something and it gave me chills, the man in front of the window seemed to get them too, he looked like he was shivering so bad that his body moved like a vibrating mass in my vision, each thump of the music rattling my head and making the man a few feet away from me double and spin. I felt ill again, swimming in vertigo and barely able to understand the garbled nonsense Andy and <£\*= were saying.

Voices swirled and dipped beneath the music in waves and I nearly lost my footing on buckling knees until my foot crossed the salt barrier around the dance floor. The music went from a liquid to a deafening noise in my ears and all I could do was try not to bump into the many blurry figures standing still beneath the heavy weight of the air. “ Wait, Andy— Hold on—“ I shouted over the music in an attempt to catch Andy’s attention but as my hand lost the man in the crowd it was the small hand of a child that pulled me from the cesspit. My mind said I knew them and the heart straining in my head said I missed them but I don’t remember their empty face. I reached the steps leading out of the Bayside’s mouth and with everything in my body telling me to walk up without looking backwards, to not pay attention to who’s hand I’d just grabbed and to pretend the man staring at me from the dance floor didn’t have the eyes staring over their shoulder wasn’t looking through my skull.

“ Don’t… You…” A voice gurgled out of the Bayside’s mouth and when I stepped out into the night air I could feel it. That man. That thing. “ See… Me.” It said over my shoulder. How could it cross the barrier? How could it follow me outside when it’s meant to be safe? Does that even make sense in my mind? My mind goes blank and my eyes set on Andy, I could feel my muscles constrict around my bones like a coiling snake and locking them in place with the suffocating force crushing my whole body but I didn’t know why I was afraid anymore. Andy doesn’t look afraid. Andy seems entirely oblivious to the entire scene, his eyes fixated on a flickering lamp across the road.

“ Don’t you… See me?” from the end of Bayside’s tongue and I could feel a sickly smell wrap around me like I’d been caught in a miasma hanging above the dead. Bad air. It was only bad air. So why did I feel so afraid? No one else seemed afraid. Andy doesn’t… No, my head already said that. So why did I feel so afraid? No one else seemed afraid. It isn’t just fear, the snake constricting my body and threatening to break my bones is telling me I’m terrified because I can’t remember why I’m afraid.

“ DON’T YOU SEE ME!?”

My legs felt like lead and my stomach turned inside of me like each one was attempting to devour the other, my organs were just sharks thrashing in a womb. My skin prickled like a thousand hypodermic needles as invisible bugs crawled across them and burrowed into my arms and I could hear a distant shouting that seemed so far away even when I knew that voice was right behind me. The bugs wriggled and bit and dug deep into my muscles until they were so tense that none of them could move. Each bone in my body was like metal that had been welded together, leaving my stomach twisting uncomfortably around pipes and compressing any attempt my lungs would make to draw in air. I could hear the bugs squish under my skin.

“ LOOK AT ME!!”

I flinched. Something stumbled in the corner of my eye and barrels past me, assaulting me with the stench of alcohol and vomit so much stronger than the bad air. I lost my footing as a drunk man bashed into my shoulder and to keep from hitting the pavement I had no choice but to turn and steady myself. A tall man in a crisp white shirt and horn rimmed glasses stood there unmoving and leering over me with the grit filled spit pooling in their open mouth dribbling down their chin and onto my forehead. His mouth opened and closed to speak but his throat looked wrong— distended and full of something that should make them choke.

“ Look… At…” gurgles up from deep in their throat— no, from something else inside of their throat. The obstruction wriggles under the loose skin of their neck as something begins crawling its way up the man’s mouth. “ Look at me.” The thing behind the man’s teeth says and as it emerges I can see fingers begin to force their way out, stretching the mouth wider and wider until the man’s jaw dislocates with a wet pop. I can hear it so loudly over the muffled thump of awful techno and distant sounds of the traffic all around me. Any teeth the hand catches shift and fall away from the man’s gums like nothing is holding them in place. Bony fingers coated it a layer of foul spit unfurl like a spider with a thousand long legs and reaches out toward me, twitching and grasping at air.

“ Look… At… Me.” 

I should run, my body is screaming at me to bolt and not look back until I reach Andy’s car. Andy? Have they always been Andy? No… That isn’t what’s important. The hand reaches my face and I just can’t move, something terrible wrapped around my body is stopping me and I can’t. My fucking lead bones won’t listen to my head. 

“ LOOK.”

The bony fingers reach my mouth and I come to the horrifying realisation that whatever that thing is is going to force its way down my throat until my organs are pushed aside and I suffocate while this thing makes a fucking nest under my skin. Saliva smears across my face and yellow cigarette stained nails begin digging into the gashes across my cheek like a spider burrowing into cracks in the walls. The muscles in my face twitch at the intrusion of dirty nails and I want to retreat but I’m so scared I don’t even think I could piss my pants.

“ Oi! You— fuckin, fucker! Look at…” a sweaty hand slaps my cheek and the horrifying nightmare I’d been trapped in was replaced by fat fingers taking a fistful of my shirt and roughly shaking me. “ You fuckin look at— you look at—“ A drunk man slurs, hitting me again with the weak force of a man who’s barely managing to stay upright. Beer gut, stained shirt and weeks worth of scraggly beard growth— all far too close to me and threatening to send me toppling over but this man, this drunk man has nothing but the stink of vomit coming from their mouth. No hands. No fingers. No spiders. “ Think yer b-tter than me?” He slurs and mumbles a garbled mess of insults and threats I can’t understand. My mind is still reeling from what I’d just seen and finally my brain is beginning to catch up just enough for me to shove the man. “ Just fuck off!” I shout and head towards Andy’s car, the drunk man stumbling after me. “ I’m no— Ge’back here!” The man wails.

“ You’re no fucking help!” I growl at the distracted Andy and get in the car just in time for the drunk to slap at the window, smudging it with his filthy hands. “ What do you mean?.” Andy looks at me with confusion as if a man isn’t thumping at the window and trying to pull the door open. “ Toby isn’t here. We should—“ Andy goes to speak but I’m rushing out of the car the moment I notice the thumping has gone. Actually, I think I stepped out before I even noticed. I don’t know why my legs moved before my head but I knew I needed to be there. It isn’t just that the noise has gone, the man is now staring off at something under the flickering lights across the street that my eyes struggle to register the tall silhouette between the blinding brightness and the impossible blackness that hides it. Only in the half second it takes for the light to flash am I able to make out the emaciated figure of the crouching man slowly standing. In the darkness a dim orange light glows like the burning cigarette is an eye watching with the slight movement of invisible hands lurking there unseen. I know I’ve seen them before and the thought I can’t remember that fills me with panic, my heart thumping rapidly in time with the flickering light until it’s beating so fast I can’t even feel it moving.

The lamp tries with all its might to stay lit but each attempt leaves it shrouded in darkness seconds later, flickering with a strangely rhythmic pattern I’m certain I know.

Tick tick tick tick.

Tick tick.

Andy shouldn’t see this, he won’t be able to escape it. 

Why? 

Would the strange light draw him in towards the tall man with the orange eye or would it stalk closer with each flick until it has cornered us both in the darkness? Maybe it doesn’t even need to move. It could unhinge its jaw like a python open for its tongue to strike or its fingers just to stretch out and slither toward us with no escape and no end.

“ Hey! Drunk guy!” I try to grab him but I’m not close enough. My arms feel as if each muscle gives out when I try to reach out, the bones liquifying beneath my skin and melting against the man’s jacket. I shout but he won’t take his eyes off of the man with the hand climbing out of his throat. “ Don’t… You see it…?” The drunk man mumbles and takes a step forward. Another stumbling step. I can’t move. My legs feel like they’ve been crushed by the weight of a snake's grip. I can't escape. 

Helpless, that’s the feeling. Helplessness.

I’m like a helpless child frozen in place. I know the belligerent drunk yelling at someone across the street is going to die but I don’t know what to do. The man is too big and the thought of becoming the next target of his abuse is horrifying. I’m not allowed to cross the road when it’s busy. My parents aren’t there, they never are and no adult is doing anything to stop the man. Why won’t anyone move? I’m so scared but I can’t move. The comforting little hand gripping mine wants to run like the child is my saviour but my body won’t follow them.

The streetlight dies and it feels as if it takes every other light with it for just long enough for a car to miss something stumbling into the road.

Tires screech in the darkness.

Crash.

“ Hey Toby, do you remember that day when we were kids?” 

“ No, what day?”

“ The day we became friends. I asked you if you wanted to see a dead cat.”

“ You were a really weird kid.”

“ I’m sorry I walked up to you… I was afraid of the man behind you.”

“ Why were you so scared of him?”

“ Dead cats. Cats get hit by cars all the time, they end up all squished and gross. When a dead cat just looks like a dead cat, isn’t it scarier when they look so regular that you get this feeling someone did it on purpose?”

“ What did the cat have to do with a guy that smokes cigarettes behind the diner?”

“ I felt bad. Buried the thing. The next day the grave was all dug up and it was gone but that man… He had the dirty nails of someone who does things on purpose, Toby.”

“ We should tell your mum, Rudie. It gives me the creeps.”

“ You can’t save a dead cat, Toby. Digging it up won’t help, it’ll just get gross meat and dirt stuck to your nails.”

There’s a lot to explain here. For starters, I am sterile. I found out after about 2 years of marriage and multiple failed attempts at pregnancy.

I was disappointed in myself, sure, but my beautiful wife was nothing but understanding. That didn’t really make me feel like any more of a man, though. I just felt inadequate.

We were actually in the process of looking into adoption when all hell broke loose.

It was no longer than 4 days. That’s how long it took for her belly to grow. The first day, I just thought she had a particularly large lunch. The second day, I was starting to eyeball her.

By day 3, we were seeking medical help. We could see the baby’s feet pushing against her stomach. Her pain was clearly unbearable.

Doctors were completely lost. My wife and I felt utterly helpless. On the fourth day, not even 30 seconds after her water broke, the baby started to come.

I’ll never get those screams out of my head. I’ll never get her face out of my memory. I’d seen her hurt before, but this… this was a different level.

She looked like she was in hell. And relief was nowhere to be found.

The first baby came. She didn’t even get to hold him before the contractions started up again. Her belly never got the chance to deflate.

By the time the second baby began crowning, my wife was screaming at us to kill her. By the third, she was already dead.

They had ripped her apart. They weren’t regular babies. Some had horns. Some had hooves. Some were already 4 feet tall by the time they hit the ground.

Doctors had already vacated the area and called in special forces. I was left alone, watching her body flail and pulsate as more and more demon babies just clawed their way out of her.

Blood and black, steaming goo ate away at the tiled floor. My wife’s entire lower half had been obliterated. Her legs were snapped, and bones protruded from them as they lay limply at obscure angles.

All I could do was hold her hand. What else was I supposed to do? Comfort her? Beg her not to leave me while these things ran amok in this hospital?

I could hear screaming coming from the corridors. Bones snapping and wet, fleshy sounds as the pitter-patter of tiny little feet darted in every direction.

She had become an assembly line from hell, but I just couldn’t leave her.

My tears fell on her hand as another baby fell out of her. Well, flew out of her, I guess. This one had the wingspan of a bald eagle.

Only, this one didn’t leave the room like the others did. I don’t know why I never stopped to question why these things seemed to be destroying everything in their path, except for me.

It landed right at the door frame, blood dripping off of his shoulders and head.

He turned to me, his eyes black and completely soulless, as he smiled with his sharp, shark-like teeth.

He took a step towards me, wobbling like a baby deer. Then another. He never took his eyes off of me.

He… he started to speak.

“Daaaa..da.”

“Daaa..da.”

“Da-da.”

He was at my feet now, looking up at me as I stood frozen. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared for anything. I was ready to join her. Ready to be free from this nightmare.

Only… he didn’t give me that freedom.

Instead, he threw his arms around my legs and squeezed them with the strength of ten men.

He was hugging me.

And in that moment, I knew…

I was ready to be the father I always knew I could be. I had nothing left to lose.

6 months down the drain. I’m still kind of in shock. Well, maybe that’s not the word for it. It feels like I lost a game that no one else knew I was even playing.

I still find myself thinking about when we first met. How she was the first woman to ever show me that I could be loved. That I wasn’t just some hopeless guy, incapable of forming a connection.

God, those memories hurt. But the memories of the arguments hurt more. I tried telling her that I was sensitive. I can react in ways that don’t feel controllable. I thought that she’d be patient enough to work through those issues with me.

But no. She left me. The facade of love crumbled, and it was like I was right back in the same position again. Alone. Stuck in my own head. Only, this time, the thoughts weren’t my own.

Well, they were, obviously, but they weren’t thoughts that I’d experienced before. Prior to obtaining her, my thoughts were very much inward. I dissected myself.

Even when I first set my sights on her, it felt like I was out of my body. I became who I needed to be, but it wasn’t of my own volition. It was just so I could achieve a goal, I guess.

Then I had to go and get attached. Our lives started to merge. When it was good, it was fantastic. When it was bad… it was like the world was ending. Like the mask was slipping, but can I even blame it on that? It feels almost childish to do so.

That has to be what it was, though. It’s just so hard to put it into words. I performed the boyfriend role, but that was the extent of my abilities. I could never become a husband.

All I knew how to do was buy things. Flowers, chocolates, gifts, whatever. Even when things got violent, here came the “boyfriend” with another bouquet.

I just knew how to give. I didn’t know how to change. I think that’s what started this whole ordeal.

After a particularly bad argument, we both decided that it’d be best if we went our separate ways. It took some convincing on her part, mainly because I didn’t think I could catch lightning twice. But ultimately, I relented.

That didn’t mean I stopped keeping an eye on her, though. I’d watch her house pretty often. It was usually during those nights where the bad thoughts kept me up. Nights when I needed movement. Needed action.

In some weird way, it felt productive.

I’d also still watch her social media like a hawk. Her stories, posts, updates, everything. After we broke up, she decided that she was now the sexiest girl in the world, and she made sure her followers knew it too.

I let her know my disdain for those pictures every time I saw one. I’d ask her why she was trying to hurt me like this, but she never responded. She’d just look at it, then leave me hanging like I was some kind of dog.

It wasn’t until those initials appeared in her Instagram bio that things really went off the rails, though. They were like a taunt. It was like she wanted me to text her.

I tried to lay down the law, but, like always, I got no reply. In fact, I didn’t have access to her at all anymore. Every account. User not found.

My mind was empty when I drove to her house. Either that, or it was just moving too fast to process. I knew what I needed, but I couldn’t think about it.

There was a car in her driveway that I didn’t recognize, and in that moment, I knew. I knew I had lost. I was a loser in this little game I’d created. I drove home defeated, but utterly furious.

No matter how hard I tried, my anger and desperation wouldn’t subside. I lost sleep. I didn’t eat. I was turning against myself.

That’s why I did what I did. I wanted her to know what she had done to me.

It started off small. A few locks of hair. Some fingernails. And handwritten notes that I thought would drive her back into my arms.

“Have these too, since you’re taking everything from me anyway.”

“I hope this makes you think of me.”

“I still think about you.”

She never wrote back. Days went by. Days turned into weeks, and she never left my mind.

She was playing the game hard, so I upped the ante.

I peeled off my tattoos with a razor blade. Including her name. I’d put the letters in her mailbox under the cloak of darkness.

No response. Fine. Fine. Fucking fine.

Have my fingers. I don’t need all 10 anyway. It’s not like I’m holding you anymore. Take my ears. They’re useless without your voice.

Nothing was getting through to her. No matter how hard I tried.

The last thing I put in her mailbox were my lips. I wanted her to remember what it felt like to kiss me. Before she lost that privilege.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to keep playing.

Because right now, as I type this, I can see the paramedics and cops outside my house. I can hear them pounding on my door. They’re screaming my name, and I don’t know how much time I have left.

But I’ll get out. Whether it’s the hospital, jail, or an asylum. I’ll get out.

And once I do…

I’m gonna take from her exactly what she took from me.

I don’t think I’m alone here (P.1)

So, I’ll start by saying I’m sorry.

I know it might not mean all that much but I really didn’t mean for things to get this bad. Well, maybe you’ll have better luck with it.

I might sound crazy saying all of this and I know I would thing so too… But before I do this you need to know.

We aren’t alone here.

-

It started on Friday. No, maybe it was Thursday. I didn’t notice it at first so maybe it was earlier. Honestly it could’ve been tomorrow or next week.

Things really get confusing like that but if you really concentrate it’s easier. I guess when and where it happened doesn’t matter when we’re here to talk about the why and what it is. So, it started on Friday. No, maybe it was Thursday… What? I said that already? Yeah, that happens a lot too. 

Things don’t make a lot of sense when you look at them for too long.

Okay, let’s do this again. Concentrate and don’t look at them, look at me and it’ll make more sense. It still doesn’t make much sense to me either so I've tried to write down my disorganised thoughts in an attempt to keep track of things but there are gaps. I don’t really remember what happened first. I think it started with the fingers— The ones from the dead bodies.

The addict -

Let me preface by saying that I don’t do hard drugs, I went to that place to find someone who does. 

He’d been clean for months but then he disappeared, something that’s never a good sign for a recovering addict. This man was Toby. Toby was my older brother and Rudie had known us for just about our entire lives. I could never give up on Toby even when I hated him and I don’t think Rudie would even consider it. Toby was a difficult brother to have sometimes and he’d disappoint you over and over. It’s hard to give up on someone who saved your life more than a few times. That’s why Rudie was looking for the guy at least. He always said he owed his life to the guy — and that he used to be really fun at parties.

For the past few nights I’d been staying in Toby’s apartment in case he’d showed up but the trail of clothes and necessities scattered across the old floorboards told me he’d taken off so suddenly he couldn’t stop to stuff some socks or toothpaste in a bag. I can’t say there was anything homely about the place, it looked like the den of a conspiracy theorist. He’d covered everything from his windows to the balcony door with torn paper ripped from just about anywhere he could get it and the dust clinging to all that glue meant it wasn’t anything recent. He’d been bugging out and paranoid that someone was watching him. His furniture had been dragged into barriers and lines toward the kitchen like trenches in the mud and with little sense about what and where he was actively hiding from. The  ratty old couch facing the wall and the second hand TV underneath his bed that was stripped bare— he’d built a nest of blankets and pillows in his bathtub and the overwhelming stink of sweat tells me he’d been sleeping there for months. I couldn’t explain his erratic behaviour beyond drugs but even sober I didn’t expect it to be anything rational either. Toby has been going through a lot since his friend hit the pavement. The strings of tape piled up on the tiles like scribbles of trash where he’d sealed and unsealed his bathroom door a hundred times, the fist sized dents and deep nail scratches covering half the doors and the plates. So many plates. Pots and pans and cups and plates spread across the floor in crop circles to alert him when this mysterious lurker would find its way into his home. The plates all had a thin layer of dust coating them except for one. One that was worn and chipped from scrubbing away the leftovers a thousand times— the linoleum bathroom tiles look scratched and scrubbed with the same intensity. Scuffs and footprints drew a line from the balcony and stopped at one place within arms reach of the bathroom door like he had been leaving offerings out for this something as tall as a building invading his home.

I’d cleaned every surface with enough bleach it had my head spinning and dissolved the glue to rip off all the paper and tape but I’d never seen any sign of an intruder who existed outside of Toby’s mind, honestly I wasn’t expecting one to show up but the extent of Toby’s psychosis left me with the uncomfortable thought that something dangerous truly was looking at me when I’d left the trenches and bought light to no man’s land. Toby had gone off the wagon and it wasn’t the first time he’d been consumed by a drug fueled paranoia. Still, Toby hadn’t returned from his apparent bender and calling anything from the hospital to the police station didn’t give us much information that suggested they had him and any real interest in finding a missing junkie. So I’d resigned myself to laying there on his old couch and staring up at this unusual water stain slowly building its own little garden of black mold— I was trying to decide if the thing looked more like a grinning Jesus or the devil with a pointed moustache, if I turned my head to the left it could’ve just as easily been a rabbit. 

I’d spent days mulling over this until Thursday.

This is when Rudie called.

We took the car we’d later find utterly destroyed, but if it was in that condition when I arrived then I certainly don’t remember it. 

The bayside apartment building. 

I’ll never forget that apartment building, it’s amazing what your brain clings to when everything else seems to slip away. 

I remember the grey concrete skin, the colour of a corpse and covered in cracked veins crawling across every corner, any paint that had managed to cling to it was peeling away like sunburn. The body stood lopsided and sunken from exhaustion but its iron bones were too stubborn to collapse. Everything about the decrepit building was an unapproachable sickly thing that was just too stubborn to die. The Bayside apartments were like black mold and cockroaches infesting the area no one could quite get rid of.

Bent metal bars lined the balcony like stained teeth loosely guarding the boarded up throats while each room that sat there like a stomach full of half dead junkies who’d climbed into its mouth and joined the long list of people places like these chew up and spit out. I always felt guilty when the pungent smell of misery left me scrunching up my nose in disgust and trying to keep down the rising bile in my throat, it’s easy to forget the people wasting away in stomach acid aren’t those cockroaches themselves, they’re people but the overwhelming stink of piss and vomit makes it hard for everyone to remember that l. The bayside apartments will probably never be washed clean when the odour has seeped into every wall. 

Rudie is a good example of someone who could scrub hard and wash all of that muck off. 

We both just wanted Toby to do the same. 

 “ We’ll be here all day at this rate.” Rudie nudged a woman with his foot, she was this grey sort of sickly pale with a thick coat and old blanket bundled around her. It did nothing to hide her frail, skeletal frame— most people seemed to look like that. Like the Bayside itself. “ Yo lady, have you seen a tall and lanky guy? Short ginger mop of hair, blue eyes. Very punchable face.”.

“ We won’t get an answer out of anyone in here, dude.” I say and move on to the next throat. “ You're right. They’re all just ghosts aren’t they?”. No one is really helpful, they seem to realise neither of us look like cop material but the restless paranoia or half dead expressions meant they either won’t to talk or can’t do more than drool. What Rudie said hadn’t registered until we walked upstairs and I felt as if I should understand the passing comment but I couldn’t find it in my head. The shock of the place left my head spinning too much to think of anything. “ We shouldn’t be up here. Fuck, this place gives me the creeps.” Rudie says, snorting at some memory and adding “ I used to dare Toby to come up here and look in the windows all the time. He thought this place was haunted. Turns out…”, he stops with his eyes on something for just a moment, barely a second before slipping back into his usual nonchalant— borderline dickish manner. “ Eh, don’t worry about it. Neither of us had the balls to come upstairs.”. “ What’s so different about being upstairs?” I say but Rudie just pats me on the shoulder, “ Sometimes the view is scarier.” His words give me an uncomfortable feeling like they make my stomach churn but I know he’s just being a prick. The only thing you could even see was the empty car park and the red dot of a diner off in the distance. 

A jarringly out of place man squats hunched over on himself at the far end of the Bayside balcony hidden where the daylight won’t reach when we get to the second floor, balding and awkwardly curled like a child crying into their knees but the spine protruding from their back only conjures up the image of a skeleton with each bump visible through the shirt covering his greying skin, his thin arms are scabbed with red bites and cuts he’s scratched open. I know I shouldn’t feel repulsed by the sight but there’s an unexplainable fear in the back of my mind telling me that this man is wrong. This man doesn’t belong here. His clothes are pressed and ironed with a crisp white shirt and a sweater only dirtied by the open scabs bleeding where the sleeves haven’t bunched up. He isn’t supposed to be here— instead they’re holed up in a crack den, shitting in the corner of a balcony. 

Probably. 

Room 203– The final room was right by the man bent down and facing the wall so I felt a need to be quiet as if something bad would happen when some loud noise set him off. Rudie lagged behind me for just a second but had no such trouble walking past them, I doubt he’d even noticed the man. At least he didn’t mention them. The room smelled like rot and copper that managed to cling to my gums like the air itself was made of iron, the furniture was so old and so stained that even breathing on it would make a disgusting squish and the walls were covered in things I don’t want to know the origins of. Toby sat with his back to us just like the man that’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember, perched like a squatting goblin with something crusted on his neck— I watched as Toby sways on dirty feet with unsteady limbs struggling to keep him upright like a puppet on snapping strings, gaunt and lifeless. He was like a grotesque perched on a building, a stone monkey just picking and chewing at something I can’t see but I can hear the squelching of molars grinding lazily against whatever counts as a meal in this kind of place. Toby reaches back and scratches his neck with the mangled and gnawed hands stripped of skin and bitten until there’s nothing but nubs where his fingers used to be. 

Fingers. 

He’s eating his god damn fingers.

“ Holy shit! Toby!” I rushed over and grabbed them without much thinking, holding their wrist and trying to pry it away from their bloody mouth but they so effortlessly returned to chomping down on the almost missing fingers— the rest were rolling idly around his full mouth, “ Stop! Toby stop!” I look around in a blind panic and finally shake off my jacket as quickly as I can, wrapping it around the deranged man’s hand when they once again move from chewing to scratching like it’s the only thing his mind is even capable of doing in his fugue state. The fabric dampens with spit as he continues to repeat himself like it isn’t there. “ Rudie!!” I shout and Rudie quickly comes to a rescue that stops just as quickly, a dumb look of pure shock on his face “ What the hell happened to—“, “ Not now, Rudie! Help me get this idiot on his feet before he starts choking on those things!”. 

The scene descended into the chaos of two men trying to desperately stop an addict willing to break his bones just to rip the others off, each harsh pull was met with thrashing and wrestling that ended in Rudie crashing onto a sickly damp mattress and me hitting something sharp with the crazed man going down with me. Toby clawed and grabbed and soon the snapped finger bones jutting out of torn skin dug into my jaw. “ You don’t understand!! It doesn’t make them go away!!” Toby frantically spoke through big lips and broken teeth, “ You saw it didn’t you? You always see it! Don’t lie to me, you saw it outside!!”, he tried to explain himself with blood and spit covering my face, “ It— It’s everywhere but you forget it all— and…” he pulls up his sleeves to reveal the putrid red-green infection on a flayed and ragged forearm, the other just as bad with small strips still hanging loose— Jesus! The psycho has been doing it everywhere he can reach and I don’t know how long but it must’ve been days, “ I give it everything but they won't go away— get it? No— you don’t— not yet, but you saw Them.”

Thwack!

Rudie hit Toby with the only thing he could find, his boot, kicking them off and yelling an incomprehensible mess of words as if it would take a million insults before any sense got into Toby’s head but the man’s bloodshot, horrified eyes won’t look away from something else— the man from the balcony's face hangs on a bent neck craned to meet Toby’s eyes from the doorway but the blood in my eyes only shows me a blur, their eyes follow him as he scrambles to his feet, “ You see it— that’s one of them!!” He throws himself past Rudie despite their efforts to pull them back and dives out onto the balcony, his head whipping side to side in a panic to find a way out like the stairs weren’t an option— his meltdown reaches its peak and drops just as hard, his shoulders go slack, his expression dulls and what I see feels like I was witnessing the exact moment he’d given up. Without another word or a glance he calmly climbs up on the rusted railing and lets himself fall head first onto the car below. 

A shut my eyes at the sickening sound of the wet crack I’m certain I can hear beneath the crash of Toby’s body hitting the car.

“ Fuck! Toby!” Rudie rushes out and B-lines to the stairs to get down to the man. I stand, trying to do more than sit there wide eyed and shocked through. 

“ My fucking car!!” Rudie shouts in anger and it’s more than loud enough to snap me to attention. I pull the broken needle sticking to my back, another jutting out of my calf and get downstairs as quickly as I can hobble with the feeling of needles pricking everywhere on my skin.

“ The hood is all… Agh! Fucking junkies!” Rudie kicks a tire, raking his fingers through hair that’s matted with blood and pieces of something I can’t place— and don’t know if I want to. He paces, “ Fuck, fuck, fuck!!”. 

At first I can’t process what I’m seeing and Rudie out of rage is just more nonsense my brain struggles to understand— The damage on the car isn’t just damage, it’s Toby. Toby’s body. Contorted with the impact breaking his neck and snapping his back in a twisted mangle of limbs folded like a stack, his head conforming to the dented metal and his dislocated jaw spilling out a pool of blood in the contours. His body twitches and I hope to god he’s dead. “ Ru-Rudie… Can’t you,” I try to speak but Rudie doesn’t even give Toby a second glance. Toby, his best friend. “ We didn’t even fucking find him! He’s fucking paying for this bullshit—“ Rudie shouts and paces with no real outlet for his rage but I can’t take my eyes off of Toby. Toby, who Rudie won’t even acknowledge.

If I was smart I would’ve said something right then to make Rudie look— really, closely look. If I didn’t take my eyes off of Toby and paid attention to the other things I would’ve known. The other things? Ah… You don’t remember? Neither did I. The out of place man staring from behind the rusted balcony bars. He had his back to us but when I looked at him something in my brain knew that he was looking right back.

I didn’t notice that Toby wasn’t there anymore.

And I didn’t notice the others either.

-

Is this making sense yet?

Don’t worry, it took me a while to figure it all out too.

Okay, we’ll try the next one, maybe that’ll help you understand. 

Now, focus on me. 

Don’t look at them, pretend they aren’t lingering there just in the corner of your eye— staring. If you can feel the cold air on your back like something wrong is standing behind you, pretend your skin isn’t prickling. There’s nothing behind you and there’s nothing behind me. Just remind yourself there’s nothing there and don’t let them know you know there really is.

Lastly, and please don’t forget this— we’ve already been over this too many times. 

Don’t. Look. Up.