I was busy, deep in thought and scrubbing the stopper in the sink, when it happened.
The lights in the bathroom suddenly went out.
I let out a cry of fright. Then a cry of agony.
A rush of pain hit my insides, so intense that I could only drop to my knees on the cold, hard ground. I fel over, clutching my stomach, feeling the slick tiles beneath my head. The ground trembled as if people were running outside of the bathroom, in my direction.
And then I heard a noise I never thought I’d hear.
The consistent drone of a wasp flying around somewhere near my head. I froze automatical y, my breath stopped and I didn’t blink.
The door shuddered back and forth and I heard the cries of Shay outside of it, but I couldn’t pay it any attention.
There was a wasp in the dark bathroom with me.
I’d been in a similar situation before.
Without warning, the buzzing from the wasp stopped.
I felt it land on my cheek, its tiny legs brushing against my skin.
If my world was black before, it now turned even blacker.
Whether it was from pain or from fright, I don’t know. I was gone.
~~~
When I woke up, I was lying on a stretcher being wheeled down a hal in what looked to be a hospital. Al I could see were the panels in the ceiling above my head as they slowly went past. They were perforated and white, except for the corners, which seemed to leak this black fluid. It came out in clumps, narrowly missing me as it fel to the ground in a splat.
I turned my head, it was as heavy as a pipe, and looked at the person beside me pushing the stretcher. He was a doctor, or a surgeon. He was wearing a mask, his kind eyes focused on mine.
“Not much longer til you meet her,” he said through the mask, the fabric bumping up and down with his mouth’s movement. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
“What happened to me? Where am I going?” I asked, my voice coming out congealed like jel y.
“Hush now; you’l need your strength. The hard part is over. She wil live. You did a great job.”
The doctor took one hand off of the metal handle and laid it on my forehead. His palm was ice cold.
I flinched but felt surprisingly constricted. I looked down at my arms. They were strapped in place by heavy, thick leather.
“You were a great host,” he added. His eyes went across the stretcher. I was suddenly conscious of someone else beside me. Flabbergasted, I turned my head the other way to see who he was talking to.
Her dreads were swept up underneath a white cap, but it was the demon girl from the other night. She had a mask on, covering up those terrible, sharp teeth, but her red, predator eyes were the same.
“Perry, Perry, Perry,” she whispered. A low cackle erupted from her throat. “Oh, you had no idea, did you sweetie?”
What, I tried to say but my lips were too dry.
The movement suddenly stopped and the stretcher was stil . The doctor and demon girl left my side abruptly, and I was alone, strapped down, facing a door at the end of the hal way.
“Hel o?” I cried out.
I lifted my head and shoulders up as much as they could go and looked around me. There was an old man sitting on a chair outside the door, hands resting on a cane, his eyes concentrated on his feet. There was no one else around. I looked down at my legs. I was stil in my Port-Town uniform; skinny jeans, black polo shirt, black apron. There was a sticky, wet sensation on my jeans when I shifted, especial y around my crotch. With whatever happened to me, I wondered if I had peed my pants in fright.
A weird skittering sound, like light nails brushing against steel, came from my right, from the ground. I turned and looked to see a large creature that looked like a wood bug undulating past me. It was the size of a dog; its grey, segmented shel of a body moving back and forth with each step of its many spindly legs.
My breath stuck to my lungs and I was unable to let it out until the wood bug skittered past the old man and around the corner. The old man, his attention stil at his feet, paid the giant insect no attention.
What the fucking fuck was going on? This had to be another dream. I had to stil be on the floor in the bathroom at work, that wasp stil crawling on my face. Even though what happened earlier was terrible, it was stil preferable to what was happening here.
A low, steady creak came from the front of me.
The door I was parked in front of opened and who stepped out of it but Dex Foray. He was holding a bundle of something wrapped in thick, white cloth, holding it like a baby.
Seeing Dex’s face both scared and calmed me. He looked much like he did the last time I saw him. Handsome in a rough, dark way. Eyes like mahogany-glazed coal. It would have fil ed me with hatred so frighteningly uncontrol able, but I couldn’t feel anything but confusion and fear.
“I didn’t think she’d make it,” he said in his gravel y voice. He was talking to me, I think, but looking at whatever he was holding in his arms. “Thank you, Perry, for doing this for us.”
“What are you talking about,” I whispered. I tried to get a better look at him but was distracted by a redness that was spreading on the sheet beneath me. I hadn’t peed my pants – that was blood that covered my lower half.
“Oh, God. What happened to me?” I squeaked. I tried to break free of the restraints but I was held firmly in place.
The leather cut into my skin as I struggled, but I didn’t care.
“Relax, Perry,” came a voice from behind. I tilted my head up to see Abby standing over me. Abby, Dex’s ex-girlfriend. Dead ex-girlfriend.
Unlike the last time I saw her, she wasn’t mangled into a mil ion bloody pieces. She looked like a normal, pretty col ege student. Straight blonde hair with a red tint. A pink dress that flared out from the waist. She looked completely normal.
Until she smiled.
There were wasps crawling on her teeth.
She promptly shut her mouth and swal owed until the moving bumps under her lips disappeared, then walked over to Dex. She put her arm around him and peered at what could only be a baby in the blanket.
“It has my eyes,” Abby said in her Fargo accent and looked up at Dex. He was now staring straight forward at the wal , not moving.
“Would you like to see?” Abby asked me, taking the bundle out of Dex’s stiff, frozen arms. She walked toward me with delicate precision, her shoes echoing extra loud in the strangely silent hal . As she came forward, I looked at the old man with the cane, wondering if he could help free me. He was now looking at me, his eyes black, his mouth wide open in a silent scream. It seemed to carry on forever, his gaping, empty mouth with no sounds coming out, the blackness of his throat, until Abby was al that fil ed my view.