It turns toward me. It’s looking at me. I see eyes—hints of them, at least. The thinnest slit of a mouth. It has a face. It glides over me before winding around my waist and coiling through my legs. I’m coming for your cooooooch, coochie-coochie-coooooooooo, it whispers.
I bite through it as hard as I can. I have no choice. It’s the only way. My teeth sink into the stalk like the intestinal sheathing of a sausage, and I don’t let up until the slippery skin breaks, sending the ectopede splattering across the far wall of the stall, just behind the toilet.
The wet splat echoes throughout the bathroom and I know there’s nothing I can do to keep Lorraine from hearing me puke all over the place. All over the floor. The stall walls. Me.
“Erin? Oh god, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I manage to gasp before releasing the rest into the toilet bowl. “I’m okay.”
“Here, let me help—”
“Don’t come in!” I lift my feet onto the toilet. I wrap my arms around my shins, slowly rocking back and forth. I can’t stop myself from trembling. I just want to hide. Hide inside myself. I shake my head before burying my face between my knees.
“It’s just us.” Loraine doesn’t have a clue. “Don’t worry, okay? You can let me in.”
“No. Please. I’m fine, I promise. Still a little sick is all. Food poisoning. I just—”
I lift my head.
Look down.
The man with the melted face is on the floor. On his back. He slid under the gap between the stalls. He’s staring up at me with his one remaining eye. His jaw swings open and his tongue tumbles to the floor with a flaccid slap and I scream, oh god, I scream so loud, I can just imagine the sound of it echoing out into the rest of the office where everyone can hear but I can’t stop.
He’s lapping at the puddle. He can’t contain himself, frantically licking every drop of what I’ve just expelled. He looks so happy. It tastes soooo goooood, his blissful expression says.
I leap off the toilet, screaming louder and louder. I can’t stop myself. My shoulder hits the door and I bounce back, falling to the floor. I hit my head against the side of the toilet.
Lorraine is pounding her palm on the stall door. “Erin? What’s wrong?”
My head. I can’t see straight. Can’t stop spinning. I have to pick myself up. I have to—
The man licks my face. Sandpaper at my cheek. His tongue reaches into my ear.
I scream as I lurch onto my hands and knees. So does the melted man. Our movements mirror each other. My vomit dribbles down his chin. I watch as his gray tongue rubs over his exposed jaw and licks it away. His one good eye rolls up into his skull, as if he’s in absolute ecstasy, as if he’s high—oh my god, he’s getting high off me—and my scream lifts an octave.
There is nothing left within me, no air left to use, but I find a way to shriek even louder.
“Erin! Open the door! Please!”
Rather than reach up for the latch and unlock the door, I crawl through the gap under the stall. I find Lorraine standing just on the other side and I use my hands to climb up the front of her body, scaling her frame until we’re face-to-face. She looks absolutely terrified, but she doesn’t see—good god, she doesn’t see them—all the burnt bodies now crammed inside the bathroom, all the ghosts pressing against one another, shoulder to shoulder, leering at me.
They all want a taste.
There’s no space in here. No air to breathe. There’s just too many of them. They’re everywhere. I haven’t stopped screaming. I can’t stop screaming. I’ll never stop screaming.
coatroom
“Fashionably late as always,” Mom says as she presses a drink into my hand. She really has this routine down pat. I glance at the guests—the same ones that have been coming to my parents’ soirees my entire life—and marvel at how they’ve gone through the social motions for decades. On any other night I wouldn’t be caught dead at one of their dinner parties, but I can’t be alone right now—not after what happened at work. Lorraine tried to take me to the emergency room. Somehow I convinced her I was okay—food poisoning, ha-ha—that I’d be better off going home and resting instead of sitting in a waiting room for hours. She reluctantly agreed but insisted on calling me an Uber and walking me to the car, which might’ve just been her way of making sure I quietly exited the building without making any more of a scene than I already had.
How am I going to show my face there tomorrow? Do I even have a job anymore? I’m crash-and-burning through my future before it even begins…all because of some fucking drug.
Because of Silas.
“I was wondering if I could crash upstairs,” I ask Mom. “I’m not feeling—”
“Nonsense. We have guests.” She leads me in a lap around the room, an elegant hostess in a three-quarter sleeve beaded tulle illusion gown with a bateau neckline and a V-cut back. She leans in and whispers, “Could you at least attempt to dress for the occasion? You look like you’re going to a funeral.”
I look down and realize I’m wearing my job interview dress turned funeral dress turned dinner party dress. I didn’t realize I’d slipped it on. I want to tell her she’s lucky I’m still holding on to whatever scrap of sanity I have left after the horror show that unfolded during my first day at my job—keep telling yourself you’ve still got a job, Erin—but there isn’t any time before she presents me to the rest of the party. “Our daughter finally graces us with her presence!”
I make polite conversation. That’s the deal with my parents—they help with rent as long as I play the show pony. They trot me out for their country club comrades whenever they host one of their suburban soirees.
Erin, our pride and joy.
Erin, our darling angel.
Erin, our—
“Li’l Deb,” Silas whispers in my ear. The chill of his breath spreads down my neck. I turn to see who’s standing behind me, but no one’s there.
“God, I could pack my whole wardrobe in those bags under your eyes,” Mom mutters.
“I think I should lie down…”
“Don’t dillydally. There’s someone I’m dying for you to meet.” Mom guides me from one golf pal to the next as I shake their hands with a trembling wrist. I go through the motions, repeating everyone’s name before quickly forgetting them. Their faces blur. Gleaming teeth.
I can feel a migraine gaining traction in my head. “Do you have any Advil?”
“We can ask Loretta to fetch some.” But Mom never does, guiding me to the next guest.
Salisbury is a neighborhood built around its own country club. It’s a bit chicken and egg: What came first? The suburb or the green? I grew up among these palatial, mass-produced McMansions, remarkable only for their architectural blandness. There’s no history here. One good breeze could blow them all down.
In high school, I’d sneak out in the middle of the night to meet up with the other neighborhood kids on the golf course. We formed our own suburban cabal, just a bunch of bored boys and girls with nothing better to do but get drunk and mess around. We’d bring whatever bottles were gathering dust in our parents’ liquor cabinets. Usually the fruity stuff—peach schnapps or coconut rum. It tasted absolutely disgusting, but it was our only shot at breaking up the monotony. Most Salisbury guys were merely looking for a chance to get to second base. The schnapps was just a warm-up. We’d all start off in a circle, passing around a bottle of you-name-it before falling onto our backs and staring up at the stars. I’d glance at my so-called friends making out and see the next generation of privileged date rapists. They’d move into houses exactly like the ones I was desperate to escape, raising their own 2.5 kids with the same values their parents imposed upon them, voting for the same presidents and attending the same private schools, repeating the cycle all over again.
Some guy would suddenly slither up next to me. Then on top of me. I could always smell the candied alcohol on his breath, then taste its sweet burn when he’d press his lips to mine.