Dina Perthakines
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The thing eating my husband was still in the kitchen. I could hear it. I could hear both of them.
Groaning, shrieking. Ted whimpering my name. Then a crack, like huge jaws clamping shut.
Silence.
I was crouched behind the bathroom door upstairs, clutching a plunger in both hands, and listening for anything that resembled my husband’s voice. Slurping and sucking like a vacuum cleaner running over gutted fish, but nothing more from Ted. When the snapping and crunching started, I dropped the plunger and clapped my hands over my ears.
Swallowing down bile, I closed my eyes and contemplated making a run for the baseball bat lying under our bed. If it were me in that kitchen, Ted would already be down there.
#
It started while Ted was making ratatouille, the steady chop, chop, chop of a medley of unappealing vegetables providing a percussive backdrop as I ordered dinner online upstairs.
Like Jack Sprat and his wife, Ted hounded me to sample his plant-based concoctions while I clung to my all-red meat and fried starch diet. He’d beaten liver cancer and sworn off animal protein, then begged me to stop shaving years off my life with all the “garbage” I ingested. This after I hadn’t been able to keep anything down through his surgery and two rounds of chemo, wasting away while he withered. When the news broke about contaminated produce, I wouldn’t stop crowing about it. Ted was more sanguine.
“Run, Nancy! Get out of here!” he shouted from the kitchen, followed by what sounded like the clanging of heavy metal objects being thrown against hard surfaces.
“I’m coming, Ted!” I yelled back, heading for the kitchen.
“Nooo! Lock the door, Nancy! Lock the fucking door!”
But our bedroom door didn’t lock. So I bolted to the bathroom down the hall, slammed the door, and twisted the flimsy button to the right. Ransacked the tiny closet for anything I might use as a weapon. All I could find was our ancient toilet plunger.
That’s when the muffled echoes of Ted’s anguished moans began creeping up the air vent.
Not again.
“Ted!” I screamed. “What’s happening?”
“It’s got me by the leg, Nance,” he hissed. “So many teeth. I can’t…”
“Ted!” I screamed again as my knees buckled and I slid down to the floor.
Useless. Like the plunger. I imagined myself substantial, sturdy. More like Ted. Before.
#
From what I could make of the noises traveling through the air vent, the thing hadn’t moved. Or at least not very far. Chewing my bottom lip until I tasted blood, I tried to convince myself that Ted had passed out from shock and there was still time to save him. I opened the bathroom door and slunk back into the bedroom.
The bat was barely an upgrade from the plunger. I was no athlete. But I held it over my head as I tiptoed down the carpeted steps toward whatever had my husband.
He’d left the television on in the living room and his beloved local news station droned at a low volume. I crept toward the kitchen and an unmistakable odor invaded my nostrils, gathered at the back of my throat. Shit. Our house smelled like human feces.
The scent intensified the closer I got to the kitchen. It was all I could do not to retch and reveal myself. Holding my breath, I made it to the threshold, as far as I dared, and looked down at the floor. Ted’s body was mostly concealed by the table and chairs – only his shins and bare feet were visible, dripping with greenish slime and surrounded by a rapidly expanding pool of blood. Way too much blood. Choking on stomach acid, I started to shake uncontrollably.
Then I heard it. Moving in my direction. I couldn’t make my legs work. Only managed one tiny step back. Then another. And finally, blessedly, I was running for the front door until my right foot collided with something and I stumbled forward.
Ted’s salad spinner.
It had cost me precious time.
I raced toward the coat closet and launched myself through the open door, bashing it closed with my elbow.
There was a soft grinding sound, growing louder. I prayed to every deity I could name. The stench stung my eyes. It was right outside, blocking the light between the floor and the closet door.
“Ted,” I sobbed.
But I’d failed him. I braced myself. I had no idea what this thing even looked like. My lungs were working too hard. Ted was always nagging me to hike the local trails with him. I will, I vowed. We’ll go first thing tomorrow. I could feel sweat dripping from my armpits down to the waist of my jeans. Did the thing have a nose? Was it smelling me?
The thing made a gagging noise. The grinding stopped. What was it waiting for? I expected to die, but nothing flashed before my eyes. Not Ted’s wan smile as they wheeled him into the OR, or the surgeon’s stutter when he told us about the new mass. Only darkness.
Then a little light returned under the door. And the sewer smell began to dissipate. I hadn’t heard the thing retreat, but figured this was my only chance to escape. I’d have to leave Ted behind. Couldn’t think about that now. Pictured him deep in the woods, humming Metallica to himself, healthy and whole. I tentatively opened the closet door to find the living room empty. The only sounds were coming from the television.
The FDA and CDC are advising the American public not to eat the recalled…
There was a smear of slime on the closet door. Had I touched it?
I ran out of my house, across my lawn, and down the street, looking over my shoulder to make sure nothing was following me. I had no idea where I was going, only that the night air tasted like freshly-cut grass on my tongue. I couldn’t swallow anything else.
Dina Perthakines is a writer and psychologist in Queens, New York City. Her stories have appeared in Fictive Dream, Stanchion, Bending Genres, and Maudlin House, and are forthcoming from Passages North where she was a finalist in their Neutrino Short-Short Contest.
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