Loneliness Epidemic

click, we hear debris shifting and distant sirens

Adelaide: I found one.  Is this… is this what you meant?

phone beeps

Olivia: Just a moment, it's Recovery.

she listens for a moment

Olivia: Yes.  Is he ok? then to Adelaide  They are saying he’s hurt but intact.  Luca’s with him.  Tell him Adelaide’s found one relatively whole, should be able to wake them without extensive prep, we will report to him when he’s out of the vat.

She listens

Olivia: Very good, we will do just that.  Adelaide, get this debris off the body. Ingram is en route and will retrieve testimony… hopefully. His skills are more or less untested in this capacity.  Hopefully this amount of the cadaver will suffice.  If it was entangled like some of these…

Adelaide: its not just the bodies that are tangled up… its the glow inside them too…

Olivia: Precisely, even Owen would struggle to get anything out of them, but whoever you’ve found here should be suitable.  Let's clear the space, Ingram should be here shortly… what a mess.

Adelaide: Wait, what's that on his nose?  Is it the infection?

Olivia: No no, it's… I think it's just burnt?

Adelaide: Ah… that might be my fault… isn’t it?

click

Ingram: Ok, I think that should do it.  Uhh, shit, I guess I should-ok, um… changes voice to his necromancer  Arise soul of the departed, arise and tell us your tale-

Jim: NOOOOOO!!!!

Ingram: Oh shit! Cut it! cut it!

click

Ingram: breathing heavily goddamn that's a lot of work… ok straining like he’s lifting a heavy weight I should have the pain and fear under control - makes it way, way fucking harder though.

Olivia: I haven’t practiced the art in my current life, but I remember that being true.  Like atlas holding a whole world up from crashing down on the dead. But it is an honorable task, to give their final testimony clarity from the terror of death.

Ingram: wincing yeah, feels really honorable.  Ok, try that again.  Jim, are you there?  Wake up.

Jim: oh… holy shit.

Ingram: Yeah, sorry man.

Jim: Yeah… wow… Dead… is… dead isn’t so terrible, but dying is -oof- so fucking bad…  chuckles 

Ingram: Yeah…

Jim: *laughter trails away*  chuckles If anything is funny about all of this, it's that I was actually having a pretty good day, y’know, before the dying part.  Wall to wall shit and ugly disappointment most of the time, but the gross, cold weather had let up, the release date of a game I’d been looking forward to, Cell Cypher, got pushed UP which never fucking happens.Like when I saw they had tweeted some shit about a realease date I almost just blew my brains out right then, but holy shit three months early, that meant it was literally just a few weeks away.  Better than if I got called back.

I don’t get called back.  Not for jobs, not for dates, other stuff… whatever.  The only person who ever called me back was my team of doctor specialists and they only ever called with fucking bad news.

Anyways, that’s not important… oh yeah, I was I staring at doordash and realized I actually had the energy to stand up and walk across the street to the grocery store.  The amount of money I pay people to carry food to me when I can see a whole warehouse full of it from out my front window is embarrassing as shit.

Add it to the list.

Add it to the sticky, shitty list.

The weather didn’t suck and wind is nice I guess.

disoriented for a moment

The light… the light hurt my eyes… 

shaking it off The first weird thing I noticed was the lady in the parking lot.  She was having a full blown argument with someone, just tilted.  I assumed she was yelling into an earpiece phone thing but as I got closer I didn’t see anything like that.  What I did see was her little white puffy half coat with fur around the collar. Which was weird enough because it was warm, but it was all dirty grey on the bottom and her white pants looked like she’d waded through grey water and had like red splotches on it. Which didn’t surprise me because she was scratching her skin raw, like a meth head or a nut job.  I took a moment to hope it was her blood and she’d just scratched herself open a few times and not that she was a danger to herself or others.  Not that I was going to do anything about it, but I guess it would make it so the nothing I did slightly less terrible?

Anyways she was all ratty and hard eyed and dirty, but probably weighed like eighty pounds so I wasn’t too worried… but the shit she was saying… Really troubling shit.

Vicki: That’s the thing though, that’s the thing.  It was  a test, obviously, but I passed it by NOT passing it right?  If the truth is a lie then it’s not truth and passing the test was dealing with the truth so what I figure is it’s like still going, the test is still going-or fuck it and fuck them and all that screaming they got what they fucking deserve-didn’t come after me didn’t say a thing just let me go-like IIII was the crazy one?  Don’t make fucking laugh HAHAHAH and honestly it’s for the best because thats how I met you guys right?  You all got tossed out too, so you, you get it, you get it and we don’t even need them-show them fucking show them.

Olivia: that’s her voice, the woman who was with the Offal.

Ingram: her voice is coming through really clear, she’s obviously got a lot of juice.

Jim: She was just storming off about shit and like… I mean I don’t mean to be offensive… but I live in like a pretty nice neighborhood.  Wasn’t used to seeing someone so strung out, and I mean, she was struuung out, like a clothesline, no, like a downed livewire.  Anxiety just skittering across her skin, crackling in the air around her.  The kind of person you’re scared to get too close to… that static field could burn out if you got too close, you know?

Vicki: You guys are getting it, the first one was waaay too slow, the second one was much better.  You guys are getting it right?  Has to be fast!  Fast fast fast.  Fast is, you know.

Vicki claps, then claps again after an interval.

Vicki: Not that but- 

Vicki claps and then claps again quickly

Vicki: Like that!  Clap clap.  One two, one two… oh you’re getting it?  You are!?  Yes!  Clap clap! Fast fast!

clap clap clap

Jim: Her invisible friends must have been, I don’t know non-English speakers or children or something.  She was talking down to them, I mean, not literally, she was looking up, but she was talking down to them intellectually… I’ve never seen a schizo try to instruct their hallucinations before, it was really disturbing.

I’ve seen people who have totally lost it and are all strung out or whatever, but this lady was different… her… uh, her movements and her… it was her eyes, it was like they were REALLY locked onto someone and the someone was moving around and… it was just… convincing.  Middle of the day in a grocery parking lot and I got this… creepy feeling, like she was actually talking to someone, but I couldn’t see them or… they were hiding?  

Creeped out, his fear leading to frustration

I don’t know it was skeevy and I didn’t like I and so I just finished hurrying inside, but of course I tried to go in through one of the fifty doors on the front of the stupid place and I jerk the door and it won’t open because the place is fucking stupid and has some doors that are just for going out and “please use other door” or whatever dumb shit and I’m yanking on it like come-the-fuck-on it’s a door just let me go in and I look back over my shoulder and sure enough she’s staring at me.

She looked at me… like I was the freak.  

She.  The cracked out lunatic giving a gibberish ted talk to the invisible fucking man in the parking lot was looking at me like I was crazy.  Like I’m the loser.

I said something under my breath… I don’t remember what, maybe like “crazy skank” or “crazy bitch” I dunno something like that.  Like, not nice or anything, but there was no way she could hear me and it's not like it wasn’t true… she just stared and her eyes narrowed and I there’s no way, but I could swear… I could swear she heard me and she said something, to me, or the invisible man, or I don’t know, but it made me so.fucking.mad.

She said:

Vicki: And you wonder why you’re all so lonely.  Not for much longer though, we can fix that for you.  

Jim: I opened my mouth to say something else, something probably really nasty, but… I didn’t.  All the heat behind my eyes burned out when I saw her twitchy hollow face and I shuffled over to a different door, one that actually let you inside, and as I went in she said to something looming over her only she could see.

Vicki: Ok, are guys all ready for some fun?  Do it just like i told you.

Jim: I became aware of all the muscles in my neck as they tensed up.  I gave her a quick once over - women didn’t usually, but you never know.  Her ratty clothes didn’t leave much to the imagination, I didn’t see anywhere to hide a gun… so fucked we have to think of that sort of thing, whatever.

I squinted against all the fluorescents and wandered over to the deli area.  Cast a passing glance at the produce section - passed - vegetables are gross and fruit is too squishy, creeps me out.

Adelaide: C’mon, he doesn’t like fruit? 

Olivia: We don’t judge the dead.

Ingram: aside to Olivia are you noticing how… different she is?

Olivia: the primordial fire has been… spent.

Ingram: Yeah, no shit.

Olivia: that’s what makes her so… otherworldly.  With it spent, now she’s mostly just a regular young woman who died babysitting. 

Ingram: Shit, she was a babysitter?  I thought kindled were supposed to be great warriors and shit?

Olivia: While babysitting she was attacked by an invisible knife wielding psychopath.  She killed him with a frying pan to protect the child she was minding.

Ingram: Ok, I guess that tracks.  Who doesn’t love a final girl - Uh, sorry go on - it's so creepy when you lose focus and they “shut off” like that.

Olivia: Agreed.

Jim:  The lady at the deli counter could have been thirty five or sixty five, just kind of a fat shapeless blob of sadness putting out boxes of chicken fingers and pasta salad.  I mean, I guess the chicken fingers were good at least.  I nabbed a box with the buffalo sauce and looked to see if any of the fry boxes didn’t look too congealed when the lady’s eyes swelled up out of her droopy head and she said something like “oh jesus.”  Then she turned back over her shoulder to someone else in the back and told them to call nine one one.

We hear a wet plopping and sticky footsteps

Jim: Someone was staggering out of the frozen food section.  Their arms were curled around, hugging themselves, they looked like they’d seen something horrible… or… i guess were seeing something horrible.  It took me a second to realize what was wrong, I thought - at first- I thought they had a head injury.  The left side of their head was kind of dripping off. My first thought was acid.  They got acid on their face, but as they turned their head… it… it was coming from inside their ear.

There was this black and fleshy pink looks for the word gunk bubbling and frothing up out of the man’s ear. It was like something inside him was running a microwave on high, just cooking and burning and bubbling him up and out of himself…

Adelaide: fucking sick. 

Ingram: straining Addie please I have to concentrate… this is  really really difficult…

Adelaide: sorry.

Jim: The gunk frothing out of the poor guys head wasn’t all falling onto the ground, some of it was like… crawling across his face, kind of webbing out, clinging to him… it was moving, like it was alive on its own, like if he dropped dead it could keep going… it was making these stringy tendrils that seemed like they were… fuck, I don’t know, reaching out?  Searching?  I noticed they were getting all tangled up in his beard and… I puked and fainted.  I have a weak stomach and…  I mean it was the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen and I grew up with the internet so that’s saying something.  Genuinely I don’t know how the others weren’t losing it too…

I kinda whited out for maybe like forty five seconds I came too half sitting up propped against a stack of plastic cases full of minimuffins and a few people had gathered around the melting guy, not close to him or anything, but standing around in a circle, with their hands up “Stay still, don’t move” hands.  “Don’t come any closer” hands.  We called for help, just hold still, help is coming, are you ok, what happened.  Stay there.  Just a barrage of questions.  None of which the guy could answer because little spheres of black-beige-pink tumbled out of his mouth whenever he opened it.

I felt this weird solidarity with the lady in the nice jogging suit who puked next.

I see you, jogging suit lady.

You’re not alone.

Some people were not in the mood to be helpful, they took a quick look at the man, clearly dying on his feet and headed for the doors.

This big lady almost made me laugh how she abandoned her cart and hustled away from the scene shaking her head.  “Nope, no way, no thank you.”

Looked like a good idea.  I was just trying to stand up and follow her out when someone burst through a stand of holiday cards and slammed into her.

I’ve NEVER seen anyone hit someone else like that.  It was one of those full body tackles you see at a sporting event and someone goes “oh their career is over”.  

Whoever the assailant was pitched forward, sent birthday cards fluttering up into the air like a flock of spooked pigeons and just “cracked” into the lady.  Skull to skull, body to body.  The force of the collision sent the two slamming to the ground.  The visual was so jarring it was almost comedy.  But the spray of black-pink froth and the sickening cracking egg sound of them going down made my stomach pitch upwards again.

The sound was like a signal.  A starter’s pistol.

Screams ripped through the store.  I pushed to my feet, sending muffins tumbling as the first goo beard guy hurled himself at the nearest helpful bystander.  The guy got his hand up and, to stop the melting man’s face from colliding with his, but that meant his hand met the guy’s face first and it just - went in.  His fingers slipped past lips and skin and teeth and shoved down his throat to the elbow.  The melting man’s throat made a sickening slurping sound and the two sucked together,   wherever they touched they… joined.  They melted together.

But it didn’t stop there, the two, now one mass, half of it screaming and panicking spun, new limbs slapping into a woman’s face which sagged inwards like silly putty and joined them in this unholy wet tumble.

There wasn’t anything left in my stomach, so it just clenched up so hard my eyes watered.

I could hear more screaming from around the store.  I could only imagine what horrors the other aisles were hiding from sight.  Crashing of boxes and displays and screaming and…

Someone said 

Barbara: Here! Over here!

Jim: In my ear.  

Jim: The lunch lady… or, I realized my brain had regressed, fear had made me just a kid again and so the deli counter lady was a lunch lady and she was gesturing to me, reaching out her hand.

I reached up over the glass case full of food and grabbed her wrist.  She was surprisingly strong. I crumpled all the pastries as I scrambled for footing, but mainly she just yanked me over the metal and glass until I was on the other side.  A half second later one of the melting amalgamated limbs of the poor cluster of onlookers swiped out and shattered the display where I’d just been.

The lunch lady’s sad sunken eyes had a bright adrenaline spiked quality to them now.  A tiny piece of glass was embedded in her cheek.  “Come on” she commanded and shoved me through the doors into the back.

Barbara: Gotta get out.

Jim: She was surprisingly calm. 

Barbara: Can’t help anyone, gotta get out, they’ll be here to deal with this.

Jim: A new pain moved into my stomach next to the dry heaves.  Guilt.  I hadn’t even thought of helping anyone.  I’d dismissed this woman as a fat, sad blob.  I was an asshole.  I was wrong.  She was heroic. 

She pushed on the door below the glowing red exit sign and it didn’t budge.  She depressed the bar and shoved a shoulder into it.  Nothing.

She hit it one more time, harder.  Again, stronger than she looked, the door shuddered but didn’t move and this time, something oozed out from under it.  We both backpedaled, kicked our feet, the crawling black webbing snaked and slapped at us.  The lady flipped a cooler over and kicked it flush to the door.

Barbara: Get any on you?

Jim: she was grabbing at her neckline, pulling something up out of her shirt on a chain.  It was a symbol, some new age something.  Like a hand with an open eye in its palm.  She kissed it. And whispered something like “help us” like a prayer or something.

I didn’t think I did, I kinda patted myself down and realized how shaky my hands were.

The lady grabbed them and held them still.  

Barbara: We are going to make it out of this.  They will come for us.  You’ll see.

Ingram: Do we have anything on her?  Did she survive?

Olivia: I don’t know who she is.  I am not aware of anyone surviving, but maybe she got out?

Ingram: I mean… he didn’t…

Jim:  I didn’t know who the fuck she was praying to but I didn’t care for more than a second because a scream made up of a dozen larynxes fusing together nearly split my eardrums.

We hear a harmonized, multi voice wail

Jim: I pushed my hands up over my ears.  The lady pushed hand over my mouth.

Barbara: “We have to stay quiet.”

Jim: I didn’t even realize I was making a sound… moaning or crying maybe.

Barbara: “It’s ok, we are gonna make it out of this.”

Jim: Another church organ of the damned multi scream had me almost losing it.  Something was peering into through the interior windows.  Dozens of desperate, lonely eyes peering through the glass… I tried to run but my knees were buckling.  I think I pissed myself.  The lady hoisted me up.

Barbara: Here.

Jim: She shoved me, not unkindly, to my left, pulled open a big heavy metal door letting out a blast of cold air and shoved me in.

Barbara: I’ll… I’ll try to find another way out, I’ll get help.  Don’t open this door unless someone outside says it's over, with ONE voice, ok?

Jim: I didn’t say anything, I just shook like a leaf and tried to read the kaleidoscope of emotions rotating on her face.  She didn’t say anything else and closed the door, plunging me into darkness and silence.  

I don’t know how long I was in there.  The quiet and the dark felt so good.  Honestly, I never wanted to see or hear anything again after… after all that.  If I went blind and deaf it would be just fine with me.

But, the cold.  It started seeping in through the stress and adrenaline before too long and, as you’ve picked up, I don’t have the highest… constitution I guess.  I hadn’t heard anything outside at all.  I kept waiting to hear the handle rattle and a mashup of grocery store patrons to roll inside with me.  In my little day nightmare they’d slough inside, close the door behind them, joining me in the dark.  Then my peaceful quiet would be filled with a dozen mouths breathing heavily as they got closer and closer…

But nothing like that happened, nothing even banged around on the outside.  But that lady didn’t come back either.  That lady who realized I wouldn’t be able to stay on my feet when we ran.  That lady who realized I’d slow her down.

I guess heroism has its limits.

I stayed in the fridge as long as I could… or was it a freezer?  My fingers and face went numb pretty quickly, but fear and cold make time go kinda funny so who knows how long it was.  When I started kinda dipping out of consciousness I realized I had to open the door, I had to.  If I passed out, whoever the lady thought might be coming to help would find me, but they’d find my frozen corpse.

Better that than melted together into a pile.

Better that than ripped up and melted in.

Someone in the back of my brain was taunting me, or warning me, or trying to get me to just lie down and go to sleep.  Better this, than that.

Survival instincts won out.  I pushed the door open and crept out.  Something was wrong with the power, the gleaming fluorescents were flickering and sputtering.  I peered out over the smashed up deli counter and didn’t see anything, just a coating of oozy black goo, but that was still now, no longer crawling around searching for more meat to sink into.

I poked my head out of the back.  The whole middle of the store was ripped up.  The ceiling was partially collapsed, all the huge metal racks were tipped over… or like outward, like something had exploded in the middle of the store.

The blood was kinda returning to my face, my vision was clearing… there was a girl… a blonde girl standing in the middle of the toppled over aisles.

slowing down

I… I realized my nose was starting to hurt.

Then the girl burst into flames.

The whole world went white hot and mad orange and screaming blue and the walls blew in and the counter broke loose and slid towards me and all the kitchen equipment tumbled over and I felt myself pitch back and then everything was falling on top of me… the last thing I remember is being thankful it was dark again.  That light hurt my eyes…  

Adelaide: Did I… I’m sorry.

Olivia: It is not your fault.

Adelaide: I’m sorry.

Ingram: hey… we didn’t have a choice, can you imagine if this shit spread?

Barbara: Help… help, please.

Olivia: Over here.

Ingram: Holy shit we got a live one.

We hear digging through rubble

Ingram: Addie careful, we aren’t as strong as you, don’t crush us.

Barbara: Thank you, thank you.  I knew you’d come.

Olivia: Don’t try to move.

Adelaide: We need a medic over here.

Olivia: her arm is missing, see if you can find it…

Barbara: NO, NO, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I cut it off, I did that - let it burn.  Let it burn.

click