He first saw the insects one Tuesday evening while waiting for his pizza to be delivered. He had been walking from his kitchen to the front door of his one-bedroom apartment, cash in hand, hoping the approaching headlights outside belonged to the pizza man and not a neighbor–he was hungry. Something moved in the corner of his eye, a strange, quick shape, and when he turned to look, it disappeared. He dismissed it as his imagination and opened the door. To his dismay, it was a neighbor. He sighed and closed the door.
Money in hand, he walked over and plopped down on his sofa. He rested a hand on his stomach. He was hungry.
He thought he heard something just as another set of headlights lit up the window in his living room, a small pitter-patter of feet. The pitter-patter of rodent feet. Oh, well, he thought. I’ll call the exterminator after my food.
The car pulled up in the empty driveway just outside his apartment and a teenager bounced out, pizza in hand. He looked startled when he noticed the door to the apartment was already open, but asked no questions, accepted the money, then left, leaving the resident to his long-awaited dinner.
He sat down to the rich-smelling pizza and devoured it completely, leaving not the slightest bit of cheese sticking to the oil-damp cardboard. Then he tossed the empty box into the kitchen and flipped on the television. A long night of sleeping and TV was ahead. He felt ready for it.
It was about an hour and a half after he first snoozed off when he woke up, itching all over his legs. Sometimes in his sleep the lights went off, which didn’t surprise him. He sometimes turned lights off in his sleep, like he sometimes hit the snooze button on his alarm ten times before waking up. It was a strange, sometimes harmful, habit.
He scratched furiously at his legs. He was sure some skin came off but he had to get the itching away. For some reason it felt like he’d been itching for a long time and couldn’t scratch it, not until now, and now it was maddening. He slapped, scratched, scraped, and almost bit his legs to get the itching to subside. As it finally left, he heard that little pitter-patter of feet. The mouse again. Or rat. Whatever it was, it was now officially a pest, and would have to be taken care of. He sat up and reached for the light.
When he pulled the little string to make it come on, nothing happened. He yanked down a couple more times then gave up. The bulb must have burned out. He stood up and reached for the switch on the wall. When he flicked it up, the overhead light turned on. For a moment it looked like his floor was dark brown and, interestingly, churning with activity. When he blinked, though, it was the normal beige color.
Strange.
He opened his front door to let in some of the cool summer night air. It felt good. Crickets chirped outside in the lawns, and somewhere not too distant he could imagine frogs croaking and much more night activity than could be seen. All the neighbors’ lights were out. It must have been later than he thought.
Something moved behind him. He swiveled around. It was more than that little pitter patter. It was larger, fatter, slower, than a mouse or a rat could be. It sounded like an old lap dog near death dragging its butt across the floor one last time, or something along that effect. He couldn’t quite give the sound a familiar image. It was out of place in his home, though, and that was wrong. He tensed.
The sofa moved. The damn sofa moved.
What moved it? He edged forward and it moved again. He kicked it, immediately regretting the decision. Pain shot up through his bare foot right as it connected with the old, hard sofa. He hissed in air through his teeth, trying to lessen the noise.
He bent down and grabbed the sofa by the bottom and flipped it. It went airborne, at least three feet, then crashed into the wall. When he saw that it made a small hole in the wall he cursed. He would have to pay for that.
And what was worse: there was nothing under the sofa. He felt like an idiot. It couldn’t have moved on its own. He imagined the whole thing, he was such a fool, and he had a hole in his wall now, a hole he couldn’t pay for, at least not for a while. He would have kicked the sofa if he had a shoe on and if it were in its rightful place. But it wasn’t. Damn.
As he went to grab the sofa and lower it into place, he saw something scurry into the new hole. Aha! There was the blasted rodent! It was large, definitely, and he would have a tough time getting it, but there was no way it could go far inside his walls being so fat.
He rushed to the kitchen to grab his longest steak knife, his only steak knife, really, right next to the forks in the silverware drawer. He ran back in the living room and still saw the blurry outline of the fat, disgusting rodent. He leaped forward with a ‘Ha!’ and stabbed down into it. The knife when all the way through, into the wall, and he pulled back again for another thrust. But there was nothing on the blade. No blood, or entrails, not even a little piece of whatever was inside walls. The blade even seemed shinier and sharper when he pulled it out.
The dark thing in the wall shifted position, bringing his attention back to it. He thrust with the blade again, pulled out, and again, but it was all in vain. The knife only got shinier and sharper. He decided something different must be used.
So he got a spatula from the kitchen. He left the knife in the drawer next to the forks, where it usually, always, went, and came jogging back into the living room with the spatula.
He realized the front door was still open. If anyone out there was still awake, surely they thought he was mad by now. Throwing his sofa, stabbing the wall? Sure marks of an insane mind, he thought. He didn’t bother closing the door. If they already thought he was insane, there was no point caring what else they thought of him.
Spatula in hand, he attacked the wall, first slapping it where the mass was–he was sure now it wasn’t just a rodent–then stabbing inside, scooping, trying to get it out. Little tufts of fur or something came up, but disappeared as they did. He only redoubled his efforts.
The overhead light flickered out. He looked up. How could both light bulbs burn out in the same night? Strange, certainly, but he had a spare package of bulbs in his room. He dropped the spatula on the floor and gave the hole in the wall a threatening look, as if to say, “I will be back, and when I get here, you had better be gone, if you know what’s good for you,” and went into his bedroom. The light in there was out, too. The switch was unresponsive, no light coming on at all no matter how furiously he flipped it up and down. He would have to get his lighter from the kitchen to see.
His feet started itching. He scratched at them absently, hopping the short distance from his room to his kitchen. The lighter rested on the kitchen table next to his cigarettes and a candle. The light wasn’t working for the kitchen, either. The power must have gone out. But not, the refrigerator was running. How could all his lights go out at once?
He dismissed the thought and fumbled in the darkness for his lighter. He found it, lit it, then lit the candle. He left the cigarettes alone. He needed to save them for later.
There should be more candles on the coffee table, he thought. Two, at least. The most he even looked at the table was when he was decided where to rest his feet on it. Guided by the light of the small candle from the kitchen, he walked into the living room and lit two more candles, then set the kitchen candle in between the two on the coffee table and leaving a third on the front window sill. He left the front door open.
When he turned back to the wall, the spatula was gone and so was that dark mass that was supposed to be a rodent but wasn’t.
He cursed and ran at the wall. What did this thing think it was, taking his spatula? He kicked a hole near the bottom, then another halfway up, and one more as high as he could kick, just about eye level, and then punched two in the wall, before he spotted the mass moving again, burrowing deeper in the wall. A quarter of an inch of the spatula handle was sticking out of the back of the thing and it was going deeper as the mass burrowed deeper. He grabbed it with his fingertips but lost his grip. It slid away, out of existence. His feet itched a little.
He punched the mass now, downright angry at it for stealing his spatula. He only had one spatula, like he only had one steak knife and only one giant spoon for stirring soups and one potato peeler. He liked that spatula. It was his. And this pest stole it.
At first, when his hand touched the thing, it moved to avoid his touch. Then it engulfed his hand and it started itching. A fraction of a second later, searing pain burst through his arm, cracked his skull, making him scream, he felt his hand, hurting, couldn’t possibly didn’t want to know…
He yanked his arm back and looked at the stump where his hand had been.
His feet itched more.
He staggered back from the wall. He tripped over his itchy foot and landed on his back. He had to do something about these pests, about his hand, his sofa, the holes in the wall. What if there were more things like that in the wall in the other homes? He had to help those people!
The phone was on the wall above the light switch in the kitchen. One of the candles went out.
He stood, holding his stump of a hand, blood squirting out every half second like from a water gun. He got some in his eyes and it burned but he tried to ignore it. Get the phone. He made it to the empty doorway to the kitchen and the second candle went out. Get the phone.
How would he dial the number? He’d hold the phone in his mouth and dial the number. That would work. Just get the phone.
The third candle went out, but that was okay. He didn’t need it to dial a number. His feet itched. Get the phone.
He grabbed the phone, put the receiver in his mouth, dialed the three numbers, three quick movements of the finger, the fine line between the rest of his long life and an infinitely longer death. His feet itched. He got the phone and held it to his ear. His feet hurt now, hurt with such extreme intensity that he screamed as loud as humanly possible. He could barely hear the operator answer. He fell to the ground, phone in hand, blood squirting out of his stump hand and now, he was sure, stump feet. His entire body itched. He summoned all his strength–oh, how his body itched–and brought the receiver back to his face long enough to scream five words before it all went dark.
“The bugs they’re in the–”
Posted by Tallain 
