The plastic police tape flutters like a hummingbird’s heart. I stoop underneath, slopping through the fetid water, into the chasm of a storm drain. My brother-in-law, Detective Grimley, chops me in the chest. It burns – that Faustian rush – the towel whippings from my bully, Chase Dankworth, in those endless high school locker rooms, then lately this beast my sister settled for, choking family gatherings with his noxious ego.
“Alright, men, listen up, doctor death’s here,” Grimley barks at the junior detectives – flashlights trembling, lantern jaws squelching spearmint. They part, revealing the frail cadaver in a white coat – an old man, a skewered jugular, broken glass – the calling card for this spate of murders. Something less ordinary lies alongside. A younger male, face down.
“Okay,” Grimley booms, “quelle surprise, we’ve found Professor Zabludovsky, missing scientist number four, done in like the others with a broken bottle. But Stabby Mcgee next to him is the damndest thing…”
I kneel, twisting the outlier’s head sideways with latex fingers. He isn’t much more than a boy, but… those crater eyes. Those razor cheekbones, as if something has eaten him from the inside.
“…that’s Dylan Campbell. He was on our shortlist. Cleaned petri dishes at the bio-lab. A klutz, by all accounts. He kept dropping their beakers. Went home sick after spilling a bunch of chemicals, but they were gonna fire his useless ass anyway. He was ragging on his superiors online for their hurty words. Typical no-pussy gettin’, grass dodgin’, jizzy keyboard incel. Hey!” Grimley turns on me. “You coulda been besties, beta bro!”
The assembled cops’ braying hoots slap off wet concrete.
“So?” my brother-in-law curls from his fat mouth.
“So?” I croak.
“So, why’s he dead, genius?”
“It’s too early for that,” I stifle a smirk. “I’ll get him back to pathology and – ”
Grimley leans, bracing a forearm under my chin. I’m transported to last Christmas. Him, needling me for a body count as he pounded Bud’ after Bud’. Me, outwitting him in charades. Him, wrenching me in a headlock, parading me around the yard. Yelling at my sobbing mother to get the hell inside.
“Don’t be a process princess in front of the boys,” he growls in my ruby ear. “Take a look, at least. I need a win. Get me a jump on a workin’ theory. If he’s hopped up on… whatever, there’s less handwringin’ all ‘round.”
I hunker, making a hollow show for my puppet master, straining my seams. My stitches. Viscous boils crawl up the corpse of Dylan Campbell’s translucent arm.
“Makes you wonder,” Grimley muses, hitching his belted belly. “What makes these sickos cross a threshold? What drives ‘em? I mean, some broad gets mouthy, they get a backhand, but… a pillar of society like this? What a waste.”
A purple-headed pock winks at me. Pops.
Puss splatters my face. I cough. Retch. Collapse. Laughter slaps. An unreality squeezes a sleeper hold. Through the void, I hear voices.
“Ah, shit. I’ll take him to hospital. His bitch sister’s already mad at me for knocking up that stripper.”
I seep through an ink-black portal – a bug, whirling, circling the drain. Then, I’m through another threshold, the world inverted, and I surface. Float.
I’m back in High School. The swimming pool. It’s that time we broke in on Prom night – me, coerced by the cool crowd, on the inside for once, joining in. Part of the prank. The joke.
Except, I’m the joke. Of course I am. They threw me in, buttressing my escape on all sides, stamping as I reach… retreat… tread water. Flailing. Failing.
Their grotesque grins, their hooting holler, torture me anew. The chlorine sting. The burn of lactic acid.
Chase Dankworth, the ringleader of my tormenters, directs his acolytes, barking orders, grabbing his crotch.
It’s as I remember, over and over. That Pavlovian lesson to always shrink and compromise. Always choose appeasement and paths of no resistance. Guiding my quivering compass, unclenching my soft fist.
Except, something else lives here.
Something new.
A shadow.
A beast.
The echoes of my classmates see it too late. It rips heads from shoulders. Shoulders from torsos. Then it sees me. Really sees me. It offers a hand. Scoops me into an embrace.
From a backseat, sirens wail me awake.
From within, a new me shows its teeth, imbuing my blood like hot scotch. The bacteria, a psychosis, soaks synapses. Swamps cells. Insists I do. Opens a threshold. Lets me choose my poison.
We screech to a halt in front of the hospital.
“Wakey wakey, Lil’ Miss Tippy Toes – ”
I stick the pig Grimley behind the wheel with a needle full of air – a more cerebral calling card.
I sink back, sated by his rolling convulsions, unlocking my phone, searching up old friends – starting with Chase Dankworth – my smirk unstifled.
Ian Johnson is a writer from North East England. His work appears in such publications as Trash Cat Lit, Underbelly, 3:AM, Scaffold, Hawkeye, and Free Flash Fiction. He is a BotN nominee.
Urban Pigs Press 
Leave a comment