Chapter Text
I opened the fridge in Tim’s kitchen to find an unorganized and meager supply of food stuff, a depressing absence taking up most of the space between. There was an apple, skin shriveled and rotting– its off-red flesh now wrinkled with age told me that it likely had lost its bitingly sweet flavor, and reduced it to what would be a sickly wet squelch. There was also a loaf of bread in the fridge, probably to stop the growth of mold spores– but upon investigation, I found that mold had begun to sprout up in fuzzy splotches of white and green along the crust anyways. How long had this been sitting here? Probably days, if not weeks. The other contents of the fridge were red-lidded plastic tupperwares filled with various leftovers that I couldn’t identify, a carton of expired milk, an empty ice cube tray, a case of beer, a liter of soda, a package of processed hotdogs, and a half-eaten jar of dill pickles. This couldn’t be it, could it? There must be more in the cabinets above and below the sink, surely? I pulled open the peeling wooden cabinets with a light creak, careful to open them slowly in order to stifle the sound as much as possible. Within them, was nothing but one can of creamed corn.
Maybe, I would be able to use this? Creamed corn seemed like a good enough comfort food, right?
I pulled out the can and spun it around in my palm. It looked new enough, the label white and crisp. If anything, I had hope– until I squinted just enough to read the year that was definitely not our current one. I sighed and resigned it back to its lonely place in the cabinet. I only wanted to help Tim, not poison him!
From my position in the kitchen, with the only sound being the hum of the fridge and the tick of a distant clock, the world seemed so empty. Yet, I knew that just a hallway away Tim lay in a fuzzy-headed and restless slumber. With his head whisked away into a dream, I was forced to confront the emptiness that came with being on my own again, compounded by being in an unfamiliar environment. I didn’t want to give up on the idea of making Tim dinner, with the sun now setting beyond the kitchen curtains. He would have to eat at some point and if he didn’t then he would likely only get worse. With my car now being towed from its spot in Rosswood, and my bike stranded at my work– there was no way for me to run to the grocery or get around at all. I was stranded for the time being, and that filled me with nervous energy– but also the relief of freedom, of not having to be in control for once and being able to truly just enjoy where you were and the space you found yourself in.
If I was going to get anything for Tim, it would have to be on foot. A neighbor might have something? Taking Tim’s keys from the dresser next to his bed, where he now lay sweaty and snoring, I locked the door behind me as I stepped into the cool dusk air. I decided that I would be as quick as possible, for fear of the creature that Tim believed was after me now. Scanning from left to right, I saw no evidence of the creature and felt no angry humming in my head, so I decided the coast was clear enough to put one foot in front of the other and begin down the sidewalk.
All of the houses around Tim’s seemed to be oddly run down and some even seemed completely unoccupied; with no cars in the driveway or lights gleaming through weathered windows despite night’s approach. The longer I walked, and the further I got from Tim’s house, the more my skin started to crawl and the sun’s descent filled me with dread. The chirp of the crickets occupied the silence with an eerie drone, a sound which usually brought me comfort on hot summer nights– but now brought nothing but unease. I was far from Tim’s house, far from anything I could consider vaguely familiar.
At that moment, I noticed a yellow light breaking up the blue hour sky. It flared brightly, wavering like a flame at times, but emitting a golden glow that reminded me of the poor lighting in the home I grew up in. The type of lighting that always made it difficult to read the words on the page of a book, or piece together a 1000 piece puzzle– but through its association with childhood, it meant safety and comfort. I approached the porch quickly, noticing a couple dusty white moths circling the same yellow light, entranced. I wondered if that was exactly what I looked like too– a moth to a flame. I scoured the wall next to the dilapidated door frame, searching for a doorbell, and after a long couple of seconds, I realized that the house didn’t have one. Forcing my hand to knock upon the door, sending loud insistent bangs through the mostly silent night, I startled myself. The sudden noise sent shivers all through me and it felt like everything in the neighborhood had all shifted its attention to me. A few silent moments passed, and I felt for a second that there might be nobody home. Would I find anybody at all before the sun was fully down, and I was plunged into darkness?
However, as if hearing my anxieties– the door slowly swung inwards with a rusty creak.
“Who is it?”
A man in his early 20s stood in a striped purple and black un-zipped hoodie, the strings of which were worn and frayed at the ends, and a dingy white t-shirt with a drooping neckline. He had his brown hair swept carelessly to the side, possibly bed-head, or just the night-time mist causing certain clumps to stick up in odd areas. He wore glasses that were smudged and sat halfway down his nose, which he pushed up as soon as he spoke to me.
“Heyyy–... Uhm… You don’t know me, I mean– I’m not from the area…”
I began hesitantly, I was losing my train of thought quickly– as I found it difficult to speak under the man’s hardened glare.
“-But, I was wondering if you had any food to spare. I ran out, and my car broke down, and I don’t think the buses come out here– or this late–...”
Why on Earth would I tell him such sensitive information? The information that explicitly spelled out the fact that I was stranded and alone? At once I felt like the biggest fool, so I forced myself to shut up and await his response. He seemed to look me over, trying to identify if I was a loiterer or a criminal by how I held myself and the condition of my clothes– which I momentarily felt self-conscious about– until he returned eye contact.
“I think I have some laying around, come in.”
“Really? Thank you! I’ll actually stay right out here, I don’t want to disturb you or anything.”
A lie, but a lie for a good reason. I gave a good mannered smile which bordered on a grimace and picked at my cuticles. The man only nodded and slunk back into the dark crevice of his home. When he answered the door, I don’t think I saw any lights on inside, maybe he had been asleep?
“Ugh…”
Suddenly, an incessant ringing almost brought me to my knees, followed by a pulsating buzz of static that drilled deep into my eardrums. The delirium that it caused made it hard to see properly, the world for a moment felt like it had melted and distorted into a mix of shapes, colors, and textures– none that I could properly identify, and none that felt correct. I realized that I had been hearing the buzz for quite a while now, which had been increasing in volume so slowly and steadily that I hadn’t noticed it until it became unbearable and drove my senses to failure. My knees buckled and I put a hand on one of the support beams of the porch, my body feeling like wax that was melting away, dripping away from the marrow of my bone and slothing away into nothing but a congealed puddle of sludge.
“Here, this is all I can offer.”
At once the buzzing stopped, sweat beaded my skin and my body still felt wobbly and drained, but the noise, and with it– the pain– had immediately ceased– like it was sucked away into an air compressor, or a black hole. Gone, just gone.
“T-thank you…”
I could barely get out the words before I snatched the plastic bag that he held in an outstretched hand and was already all the way across his overgrown lawn, and halfway down the street. I didn’t look in the bag, and I didn’t look back. If there was nothing in the bag to begin with, we’d starve for the night, but I was not going back. My sneakers slapped noisily on the ground, as I unconsciously broke out into a run. Without knowing where I was going, like a magnet, I found myself back on Tim’s porch. While running, it was never as if I was sprinting in a known direction, it was as if I was sprinting into an unknown darkness, and yet– somehow, I found my way back to exactly where I needed to be. I let out several puffs of hot breath that formed clouds into the now chilly air before heading inside, slamming the door behind me, locking it, and bracing my back to it. I waited just a few moments before slumping to the ground. The handle of the plastic bag slipped from my grasp, the contents spilling out across the barely illuminated foyer floor. I could hardly comprehend what was there until some of the items rolled into a sliver of moonlight shining through one of the windows. An apple, an orange, a can of soup, and a can of beans. I found that there was a box of saltine crackers as well. Reaching out to pick up the apple, I found it to be covered in a thick fuzzy layer of blue-green mold, and beneath my hand that held it, I felt something writhing between my fingers. Turning it over, I found a fat white worm feasting upon the rotting apple, half of the fruit having already been devoured. The edges of the torn flesh bruising from the puncture and causing the apple to decay quickly. I dropped it, and let it roll away under a piece of nearby furniture.
Shit.
Maybe… it was just that one thing. Maybe, he didn’t see that it had already gone bad.
I began gathering the other items one by one, turning the orange over meticulously until I had decided that it was safe. The other items looked alright, except– just like the items in Tim’s fridge, they too– were all expired. Except, these were at least only a week over the sell by date, not months or years– and they weren’t foods that could easily expire like milk or loaves of bread. I decided it would be good enough. Safe enough, at least. I had eaten expired food all the time, especially things from cans or stale chips, and nothing had ever happened to me– Therefore, I would take the chance.
I bent down and strained to retrieve the decaying apple that accidentally rolled under one of the shelves, and just barely grasped its furry complexion with the tips of my fingers before dragging it out. I turned it over, and found the worm to be wiggling in the same bite-sized hole in the side. Some part of my heart felt like I should be kind to it. It had grown so bulbous and happy from such a disgusting apple, and who was I to kill something that had made a good life for itself? It felt cruel, most other worms hardly lived long enough to get this plump, nor have had the food to sustain themselves. This worm was finding nourishment from a food supply so revolting and shriveled that it felt almost like a triumph to thrive in such conditions. So, I opened one of the windows in the kitchen and lightly tossed it into Tim’s overgrown lawn. There, it would continue to live on, and do what it wanted– whether it continued to feed on the apple, or find somewhere else to roam.
A lot of us aren’t always afforded that choice.