Hi I'm a Social Disease: Horror Stories Part 1

Hi I'm a Social Disease.

Andersen Prunty.

Room 19.

She moved into Room 29. That was the one right over mine. I wish she had moved somewhere else.

The first time I saw her, I was coming home from the store, a bottle of whiskey wrapped in a paper bag clutched in my right hand. She had three cardboard boxes in front of her and was bent over one of them, lifting it. Dirty strawberry hair hung over the right side of her face so my gaze drifted lower to the skin between her blue stockings and thin yellow sundress. I tried not to let it stop me but I had to stare. She finally hoisted the box up against her chest and turned, startled, to see me standing only a couple of feet away.

"I'd like to help you," I said. "But I can't... I just can't."

"Yeah," she said in little more than a resigned whisper. Her face was thin and pretty. Everyone was thin these days but most people who were left weren't very pretty. She turned her back to me and started into the sh.e.l.l of the building.

I stood there until she disappeared into the darkness. There hadn't been a door since before I moved in. I took a deep breath and looked up at the ashy gray sky. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen the sun. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a pretty face. Once I was sure I wouldn't run into her again, I went into the building and into my room, Room 19.

I walked through the trash strewn about the floor, flipped the television on, and sat down on the wasted, moldy couch. I put the bottle, still in the bag, on the saggy upright cardboard box that served as an end table. Upstairs, I heard her clunk the box down on the floor. Static flickered across the television. There weren't any stations. Electricity, for now. Electricity was useless. It would keep the refrigerator running but there wasn't anything to put in it. It would keep the television going but there wasn't anything to watch. It would keep the lights on but, Christ, who wanted to see?

I heard her shuffling back down the hall, just outside my door, to get another box. Three boxes was pretty impressive. That was a lot of stuff to own. No one owned anything anymore. Things were just status symbols anyway and now there wasn't anyone to impress. She was probably wondering why I wouldn't help her. Or maybe she wasn't. One tended not to wonder about much. We'd seen it all. All of our nightmares had blazed to life right in front of us so if a stranger didn't offer to help you carry a few boxes, well, she was probably just thankful I didn't drag her into the building and have my way with her. Because I could have. The law was too busy to concern itself with something like rape.

The truth was that I was afraid to go toward the back of the building. And you had to go to the back to get to the stairs. The landlord, Mr. Grangely, lived back there. Until the girl showed up, I was the only other person in the building. He didn't charge rent but if you died in his building he would cook you up and eat you. Sometimes I think he helped that death along. I never went near him by choice.

I looked at the unwrapped bottle.

The screams were coming on. I could feel them way down in my guts. My ma used to say that was a demon. She said it explained the way I acted much of the time. I didn't believe in demons. I thought Ma was full of s.h.i.+t, rest her soul.

I knew what happened if I didn't let the screams out. I had to. It was like a release valve. But it was going to be embarra.s.sing now. Now that there was someone besides a cannibal to hear me. What would she think? Did it matter what she thought? Probably not.

The screams came on all of a sudden. I dug my fingernails into the arms of the chair, reached down deep past my diaphragm and dragged the first scream out. It was long and brutal and painful. Twelve more followed it. I screamed until I could taste blood in the back of my mouth. Then, with sweaty, shaky hands, I opened the bottle, tossing the bag and the cap on the floor, and dumped the first swallow into my mouth.

Ah, the numbing fire.

There was a knock on the door.

I didn't say anything. My voice was gone. The screams always stole my voice, not that it usually mattered.

"Are you all right?"

I took another slug of the whiskey and doubled over, resisting the urge to run to the door and throw it open. But I didn't because I knew it could only end in pain.

"You okay in there?"

She twisted the k.n.o.b but it was locked. When sharing the house with a cannibal of questionable ethics, one does not leave the door unlocked.

"I'm right upstairs if you need anything, kay?"

Then she was shuffling away, back that dark hall toward the stink of Grangely's room and up those rickety stairs. Right above me. I heard her moving around. Opening boxes. I sat in the chair, drinking and watching static until night fell.

I must have dozed off or pa.s.sed out in the chair. When I came to I could hear her crying upstairs. It was so loud it sounded almost like she had her face pressed to the floor. It was the most melancholy sound I'd ever heard. I must have still been half asleep because I imagined her tears seeping through the floorboards, falling through the rancid stale air like drops of seawater, hitting me in the face, trickling into my mouth. I drifted back off, my belly full of whiskey, sadness, and longing.

The next morning I woke up stiff and sweaty. The days were like this. Most of them were cold but there were these occasional sticky, humid days. I didn't know what season it was. I'd had a calendar once but lost it and then stopped caring. I stood up, stretched, went into a corner and p.i.s.sed. You get used to the smell. The whiskey bottle was empty. I don't know why I didn't just p.i.s.s in the whiskey bottles. Whiskey in. Whiskey out. Now I'd have to go to the store. I suppose I could just clean the store out but going there gave a sense of routine and normalcy to the day.

I opened the door and saw her standing with her back to it on the other side of the hall. She was looking at the wall of little metal mailboxes. Most of their doors were hanging from the hinges or torn off completely. I quickly shut my door and imagined her turning around. Then I heard her going away. I opened the door again and stepped out, looking at the mailboxes. I looked at the one for 29. She'd added her name to it. Blue marker on a piece of masking tape. Anita Marvel, it said. I ran my fingertips over the tape and thought about that tiny expanse of pale skin above her stocking. I could still smell the fumes from the marker. I thought about my dead wife and my dead kids and wondered if I could ever feel that way about another person. I didn't know.

I came back from the store and hoped to run into her again but she wasn't anywhere to be seen. Her room was silent above me. Sometime in the afternoon I had another bout of the screams and started drinking shortly thereafter. Night fell and I heard Grangely leave the building on one of his excursions. Hunting. That's why he was so fat. He went into the city at least once a week and returned with fresh feral children, wild animals, whatever he could catch and cut down in the dark back alleys of the city. They were always dead when he brought them back. I don't think I could have stood it if they were still alive. What he did was ghoulish enough without having to listen to some poor innocent struggle as he took them out of this rotten world.

The girl, Anita, began moving around shortly after he left. She walked back and forth across the floor. It squeaked and wobbled. What was there to walk back and forth to? What reason was there to even move? I thought about going up to her room, knocking on her door, introducing myself, but I was pretty sure I was too drunk to stand up. After a long while I heard her settle down and begin that weeping again. Some people scream. Some people weep. The sound of her weeping made me sad but there was something about it more human and beautiful than I had heard in a very long time.

The days and nights continued like this. She became part of the routine, as unchanging as the cloud-covered sky. But I never forgot about her. I longed for her. That became a constant too. That became part of the routine. I watched her check her mail each morning, always in that dingy yellow sundress and blue stockings. She never received anything. I listened to her pace and cry at night. I thought about going up there all the time. I should have. At the very least, she needed warned about Grangely. She needed to know what it was he did, what would become of her if she happened to die here.

I never went.

One evening, something banged against my door and I snapped out of my drowse. My hands had gone numb and I thought I was blind in my left eye. I flexed my hands and blinked. I stood up and went to the door. I opened it but there wasn't anyone or anything there. I thought Grangely had accidentally b.u.mped into it on his way out. But I could hear him at the back of the hall. I looked at him. He was down on all fours, sniffing. I looked down. If he was sniffing the floor there was a good chance something was there. Something was. A thin trail of blood.

Anita was my first thought. Grangely and I were accounted for. The blood trail led outside. I turned to face Grangely. "Get back in your room, Fata.s.s." There wasn't any need to shout. No noise. No other people.

He stood up. He was a large man, tall and robust in a skeletal age.

"You don't boss me," he said. "I'm the f.u.c.kin landlord."

"I know what you do. If I wanted, I could tell someone. There aren't any landlords anymore. There aren't any t.i.tles anymore. Just people."

"You'll f.u.c.kin get yours." We stared at each other for a few uncomfortable seconds before he turned and went back toward his room, slamming his door shut behind him.

I turned back toward the opening of the building, staring out at the dark milky night. I didn't see her. The trail of blood was thin at first and then, by the time I had reached the curb, it had tapered off into sporadic splashes. I didn't want to venture out any farther. Not at night. I thought about yelling for her but I couldn't bring myself to do it. She didn't even know me. I looked back down at the final splash of blood. I'd never be able to find her that way.

I looked into the surrounding darkness and took a deep breath. Loss was nothing new. I wasn't even close to her. If I started grieving for people I didn't know then I had a whole life of grief in front of me. Every day people died. Every day people disappeared.

I went back into the building. Back into my room. Despite having drunk an entire bottle of whiskey, unconsciousness wouldn't come back. I began to wish I had stockpiled it so I would have something else to dive into.

I had never experienced the night like this before. It was maddening. I sat in the chair, watching the static and listening to hear if she ever came back. Toward dawn the electricity started flickering and I knew this was the beginning of the end. Not that it mattered to me anyway. I hadn't allowed myself to become reliant on any of the appliances. I only kept the television on because I thought I should use something.

Once it was full on morning, I went to the store to get some more whiskey. I almost pa.s.sed out on the way there. How was it that I could stay up all night and now that the air was bright I felt like I would fall asleep if I shut my eyes? I was so tired I felt sick.

I made it back to the building, put the whiskey on the cardboard end table, and screamed myself to sleep.

She was the first thing I thought about when I woke up. I had to do it. I had to go up to her room to see if she was okay. I took a slug of the whiskey to fortify my nerves and began the long walk down the hall and toward the stairs. The stink, as I drew closer to Grangely's, was increasingly nauseating. It was one thing to be a f.u.c.king cannibal but you'd think he'd clean up after himself. He didn't have to be so unashamed about it.

I climbed the dark and rickety staircase, waiting for my foot to drop through one of the boards, until I reached the second floor.

Down the hall to Room 29.

The door was ajar. I pushed it inward. It smelled like flowers and meat inside. Something light and pretty over something black and rotten. I didn't want to snoop but, well, there wasn't anything better to do. My conscience wasn't what it used to be. Besides, it didn't look like there were a lot of things to snoop through, anyway.

The three boxes she had brought with her were turned on their sides on the floor at the bottom of the far wall. Notebooks were lined up on top of them. They looked swollen and puffy like they had been left out in the rain. Her room had a bed and I wondered how many people had died in it. On top of the bed sat another notebook. It was the old kind of composition book with the black and white, vaguely bovine, pattern.

I really shouldn't have.

But I had to. Because there wasn't anything else to do and, I rationalized with myself, if she never came back, this would be a way to remember her. I imagined what I was about to go through was a journal. How could the pages of a journal live if no one ever reads them? I knew it was more than that. I knew I was going to read it because I wanted her. I wanted to possess some small part of her and if I was too much a coward to try and get inside her physically then this was how I'd do it mentally.

I opened up the notebook.

I expected to see the hasty scrawl of handwriting. That's what a journal was, wasn't it? That's not what I saw at all. It was an oblong, crusty, crimson-black ma.s.s. It looked like a scab. I flipped the pages with a mixture of disgust and intrigue. More of the same. One per page. I closed the notebook and went over to the other notebooks arranged on the boxes. The first two I opened were empty. Perhaps those were for the future. But the rest of them were filled with more of the same. Scabs. I was sure of it. These were diaries of scabs. I ran my fingers over them. The ones on the boxes were drier, older. Bits of them had flaked off and were smashed between the pages. Some of them came away on my fingertip. I stuck it in my mouth. It tasted like blood, come back to life on my tongue. I put the diary I presently held back on the cardboard box and arranged them as they were originally, neat and orderly. Then I went back to the bed and flipped through that one. This must be the latest one. The scabs inside this one seemed fresher, hanging on to the blue-lined pages with more intensity.

I sat down on the bed and continued to flip through it, running my fingers over them and wondering what the point of this was. Really, what was the point of anything anymore?

I thought of her melancholy weeping. Was that what it sounded like when she cut herself? Did she do that to let some of the pain out? I had dreamed about reading her diary and possessing a little of what was inside of her but this was greater than I could ever have imagined. I probably stayed in her room for two hours. Then my insides were crying to pour out so I left the diary where I had found it, went back down to my room, released myself to the screams, and drank myself into a coma.

When I woke up it was dark and all the electricity had gone. That made it official, I guessed. The end was here.

The next two days continued like all the ones before it only now I spent a bit of time in Anita's room, lost in her diaries and wondering if she would ever come back. Then, after being gone for four days, she did.

Unfortunately, I was busy looking through her diary when she entered the room. A rare thunderstorm was upon us, turning the dim afternoon nearly nighttime black. She startled me but I immediately realized I had been caught.

"What are you doing?" she said.

I held up the diary. "Looking through this."

Her left arm was missing below the elbow. A yellowish bandage covered the stump.

"What happened to your arm?"

"You know... You know what I've been doing up here, don't you?"

"I think I do."

"I cut myself too deep. I had to go look for help. I don't want to die, you know? It just feels like something I have to do." She paused and held her right arm up to her chest. "Like your screaming."

"Yes."

It was then I decided I was going to kill her. She had crossed the room and was arranging her past diaries. Her dirty sundress was up above her blue stockings again and it was then I decided everything was hopeless. I would kill her and keep her for my own because I couldn't stand the thought of that beast Grangely gnawing on her. Her being in the apartment was something. She was the promise. The promise of everything missing. I would kill her and then I would kill myself. I realized I would never see her in anything but that yellow sundress and blue stockings, the screams would never go away, the electricity would never come back, the whiskey would run out, and the sun was never going to show its face again. I had already done some very bad things and the dead world was rotting around me.

I turned my attention back to the diary I held in my hand.

"You shouldn't just read people's diaries right in front of them," she said.

"I know." I closed it and stared out the darkened window at the nothing darkness outside. "I came up here to warn you."

"Warn me? You didn't need a reason to come up here. I'm surprised it took you this long. What were you going to warn me about?"

"Grangely."

"Who's that?" she whispered from behind me.

"The landlord."

"The landlord?"

"Yes, he lives downstairs."

"No one lives downstairs except you."

I laughed. "You've had to have seen him. The fat guy. The one who smells so bad. Anyway, when the tenants die, he eats them. And he makes excursions out into the city at night. He brings back all kinds of things."

"Things? Like people?"

"Yeah. Sometimes."

"That's horrible. That's how I lost my sister. At least, that's what everybody suspects."

I felt her weight on the other side of the bed. I thought about turning around but didn't want to spoil everything. I could imagine her hot breath on the back of my neck. It had been so long since I had felt anything like that. Would I actually get to possess her?

"That's a shame," I said.

"It is. She used to go to this little corner store for candy. She went there just about every day. Usually she took a grownup along with her but you know how candy is... It's like an addiction after a while. Somebody got her. Apparently, he got quite a few people. He was keeping them in a deep freezer of the store's cellar. He would keep them there and go back every day, eating little pieces of them, cooking them on a portable grill in the store's office. They sifted through the ash and found Sis's earrings."

She said that and I had an image of the cellar. The owners had lived above the store and had apparently used the cellar for their own storage. They had died a long time ago.

"Guess he's s.h.i.+t out of luck now that the electricity's finally gone," she said.

"Yeah," I mouthed but my throat had closed up.

She leaned over me and I felt her hot breath on the back of my neck and cold steel pressed to the front. I looked down and saw the handle. It was the kind of straight razor no one had used in a very long time, even before the end of the world.

"I always wondered why you were always screaming until I saw that. Weiv hve been looking for you for a very long time. You know, most everybody else has really come together. I've seen people do things I didn't know they were capable of. Good things."

"You can kill me," I said. "I deserve it." What else could I say? This would be the best way to go. Visions of lynch mobs filled my head. There was no point in fighting back. Even if she was a one-armed girl.

"I'm not going to do that. We can use you."

Outside, I noticed lights from a car. I still wasn't entirely sure of all the things I had done but I knew they were bad and I knew it was me who had done them. Within the next few seconds the room was swarming with people, most of them tired and hungry and hostile. They were not very gentle with me.

They brought me to a hospital. It's a hospital for some, a laboratory for others, and a prison to many. They never told me anything directly but, since I was now human waste, they talked about me like I wasn't there so I heard a lot of things. They had discovered the nature of the plague. They thought they were close to figuring out how to reverse it. It was the only way. To reverse it. To regrow what had rotted on our insides. No one used the word soul. I was recruited.

I've become an experiment. I sit writing this with a third hand growing out of my forehead. It's all a sick joke. They wanted to see if I could develop my dexterity with this new hand. I wanted to ask about Anita. I wanted to ask if she still kept her scab diary. I wanted to ask them if any of them knew why she kept that diary in the first place... You have to admire the human spirita"we'll continue building things just so someone else can watch them fall. I wish I could put the pen down and run my fingertips over Anita's scabs because that was what we were leaving behind and that was what we were working so hard to build. b.l.o.o.d.y crusts over wounds.

I haven't seen her again.

Now I sit here and keep my own diary, written in the pus from a hundred different infections.