The Sewer

Matthew Hall walked down Locust street, dodging commuters walking toward the subway when the sky opened up and rain fell. He sprinted toward the overpass, slipping on the sidewalk, and when he found shelter his uniform was drenched and his hair soaked.

             He removed his flask from his coat pocket and lifted his flask to his lips. Took a long sip, then another, and a third, and fourth until the frustration and stress of faking a smile and hauling luggage for entitled tourists for ten hours at an overpriced hotel washed away. He checked his watch, it was nearly 7 pm. In 10 minutes his bus would leave and if he didn’t catch it he’d be destined for another night of questions; Why had he worked so late? Was he really working anyway? More shit from Sarah and more reminders that he’s not the man she thought she married.

             Above the overpass car engines rumbled. The smell of sewage filled the cold air. Matthew coughed, covered his nose but the stench thickened, forced its way into Matthew’s throat. Just beneath the overpass, nestled amidst the dark concrete, eyes blinked at Matthew before disappearing behind the decaying structure of the bridge.  

             An old man in mud-stained khaki’s stumbled toward Matthew. He kept his head down, only the upper part of his neck remained visible between his trench coat and dirtied red Philadelphia Phillies baseball hat. As he approached, now less than a foot from Matthew, he too reeked of the sewer and his clothes were covered in moths and mud. He stared at Matthew, his eyes dark just like the creature he’d seen beneath the bridge.

             “There are others that are coming for us.”

             Matthew looked away.

             “Did you hear me?” The man stared right at Matthew.

             “I don’t have any money.”  

             “What’s been done to me can happen to anyone.”

             “I said I got nothing.”

             “It’s this world. This whole fucking world.”

             A bright pink flash flickered through the gray sky. The man’s mouth was bleeding, his lips dry and crusted with blood.

             “Like I said, there are more coming.”

             Matthew’s eyes remained fix on the sky. Waiting for the flash to happen again.

             “I’m just going home.”

             “None of it matters anyway. Friends. Family. When you have nothing in this world, there is so much more to see.”  

             Matthew took several steps back. He felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket. Ambulance sirens echoed and rain soaked his cheap brown dress shoes. The homeless man sprinted past him and turned the corner.

The phone rang again. Matthew picked up. It was her. He hadn’t saved her number in his phone yet, but he could tell by her raspy voice, and even just thinking about her he could smell her perfume. He’d seen her before, standing outside the strip club adjacent to the hotel. Last night, in that moment of anger or rage or sadness or perhaps all 3, he’d used his master key to get into a room when she walked into the lobby, and in the room, for the first time in twenty years of marriage he’d cheated on his wife. When the night ended, he told her wanted to see her again.

 He told her he couldn’t see her tonight. She feigned disappointment, but before she hung up, she said:

“Ayou seeing this stuff on tv?”

“Work was busy. I didn’t see much. What happened?”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“Just tell me.”

“I’m always worrying.”

“I really don’t know what your talking about.”

“Things on the news, I don’t know. Random attacks here and there.”

“Like shootings?”

“No.”

“I really need to catch my bus.”

“It’s these…things.”

“What things?”

The phone cut out. He re-dialed, but a rush of people stampeded around the corner of the next block, rushing toward him as screams filled the corner.  

Matthew’s chest tightened. He wanted nothing more than to get on the bus and go home. But perhaps it was his time spent in the military, or the guilt of being raised by a single catholic mother after the death of his father, but something told him to follow the screams. But he knew he shouldn’t. With a wife and three kids depending on him, he had no business getting involved.

When he turned the corner, the homeless was stooped over the body of a young woman. His hands were moving, digging like a child in a sandbox through a cavity in the woman’s abdomen. Her intestine were on the side-walk.

Matthew vomited. This afternoon’s salad and bread-roll and Twix bar. His back were covered in sweat. His vision blurred. He heard nothing.

             Behind the homeless man was the entrance to a subway station. The homeless man grabbed the remains of her body, and jumped over a sign that read “under construction” in front of the stairs leading to the  subway. Matthew thought about joining the others in the stampede, but instead, stared at the homeless man.

Though woozy from the drinks the night before and this morning, Matthew sprinted after him. He tried to hop the construction sign, but his leg got caught on the wet wood and he flipped over. He fell on his back, the landing sucking the air out of him. Lying on the street, he watched as the homeless man walked down the flight of stairs.  

             When he arrived at the bottom of the subway station, he saw his father, though he was wearing the muddied khakis of the man who’d tried to take his flask. And his eyes were blackened and it felt as though he was staring evil right in the face.

             “It is good to see you again my boy.”

             Matthew tried to back away. He knew that coming here was a mistake. His phone rang once again. Of course he could never be sure who it was, but he knew that something did not feel right.

             “You missed me. I know. I can tell.”

             “You aren’t really my father.”

His father stopped walking toward him. Smiled and opened his arms as if to give him a hug. “What a horrible thing to say to your father.”

             “I saw your body. I saw you die on our kitchen floor.”

             “People can come back to life.”

             “No. They can’t.”

             “But of course they can. Have you not heard of Lazarus?”

             “What you just did, that is not the work of God.”

             “But there is no God. Not really. Just us in this world and in this universe. You can do anything. None of it really matters.”

             His father continued to walk toward him, opening his arms wide as though to give him a hug. Matthew backed away, wondering the risk in turning his back so that he could run up the stairs. A sharp pain pierced through his ankle, probably from the fall. But before he could decide what to do, he felt himself falling back, his foot tripping on a piece of concrete.

             Before Matthew could raise his head, he felt the woosh of the trench coat and oncoming rotten odor descending on him. The homeless man held him down, and in his rage the look of his father seemed to fade away, replaced by the look of something or someone that he couldn’t explain. When the trench coat flew open, he saw what was behind it, and it certainly was not the body of anything resembling a human.

             “What the hell are you.”

             “I told you. There are more coming.”

             The creature leaned forward. Matthew pushed the creature away, feeling wet drool dripping from the creature’s mouth. But the creature held him down just as his father had done when was he was little.  

             “Just hold still for me little Matty,” the creature said, in just the way his father would say, in a stale and alcohol rage.

             Again Matthew pushed him way, but he could feel his strength deteriorating. His mind raced back to those nights when Mom worked alone at the hospital, and he’d sit alone in his bed thinking about what he’d do to his father if he got the chance.

             “It won’t hurt at all, I promise you my boy. Not one bit.”

             “Get the fuck away from me.”

             “Oops! That is one curse is the curse jar. I’ll have to punish you for that my little Matthew.”

             “I said–”

             The creature leaned in. Over the next few minutes, the appearance of his father disappeared. The thick hair his father fell away, replaced by a bald head was covered in scars. His breath turned rotten, and as Matthew’s shirt was ripped open he felt hands climbing up and down torso, his father began to shed his skin over the dirtied floor of the subway.

             Matthew screamed in pain as sharp nails dug into his abdomen like a child in a sandbox. He stared at his father’s skin behind him, covered in blood, and his father sat on top of him. It was not human.

             “Nothing you do matters. We understand that don’t we Matthew. You’ll forgive me for what I’ve done.”

             Blood spilled from Matthew’s mouth. He tried to speak, but nothing but saliva and sounds of agony came from his mouth.

             “There is no God. There are no consequences. We must kill to remain strong. That’s the only way to become your true self.”

             A sharp pain spread across Matthew’s abdomen, sending the rest of his body into shock. He could no longer hear the scratching and digging noise and the screams that echoed from the subway station. The rotten smell and wide eyes of the darkened face in front of him.

             “People make such light of higher powers, but I think it’s a bit silly, don’t you? Everyone around you is just part of your environment.. Especially after what he did to your mother.”

             Despite the pain and the agony, through the blood choking his throat and spilling from his mouth, Matthew said; “What are you?”

             As he spoke Matthew stretched his hands, reached for any objects near his body. On floor next to him, he found a concrete brick. He grabbed it, and despite the agony and torture consuming his body, he felt strong holding that brick in his hand just as he did when he was a kid, holding a knife and walking into his parent’s bedroom while his father slept.

             “I know you’ve tried to kill before. Your father. You were close, you really were. It’s a shame it didn’t work out. That’s why he went after your mother isn’t it.

             Matthew grabbed the brick, slammed it against his father’s head, only he knew it wasn’t his father, some creature. Some horror he didn’t understand.

Its head jerked to the left, blood spurting from its ear. He hit it again, hard, and the creature fell to the floor. Matthew summoned all his strength and rose to his knees. He raised the brick high into the air, and brought it down with all the anger and fury of everything in his life that hadn’t gone right and all the mistakes that he’d make that he couldn’t fix.

When he was finished, Matthew’s shirt was soaked in blood. He let the brick fall to the ground, and he stood over the creature, still not recognizing what it was but knowing it didn’t belong.

When he walked back up the stairs out of the subway, the traffic lights had fallen to the ground. The windows in all the stores had been broken, the cars destroyed, and bodies littered the streets. The sounds of screaming and agony filled the streets around him. Matthew looked down at his abdomen. His shirt was covered in blood and he felt dizzy. Whatever time he had left before he bled out, it wouldn’t be long.

Ahead of him, he saw a man covered in a black ski-mask, though they had the same eyes of his father and the creature that had stared at him beneath bridge. Matthew went prone, using the turned over cars as coverage. By the time he reached the hospital just a few blocks over, he was met by a platoon of police officers. Covered in blood with ripped uniforms and the look of someone who’d seen a ghost.

They stared at Matthew, asking him how the hell do I know you aren’t one of them. Matthew didn’t know what to say. Instead he just stared at the platoon, and fell to the ground.

             When he woke up, he heard conversations about what was happening. The creatures, atleast that is what the cops had referred to them as, were from planets unknown to humans. They infected our minds, taken form of people that scared us the most, making it impossible to tell what was real and what was fake. The conversations went on and on, but Matthew wasn’t sure he bought any of it.

             Matthew reached for his phone to call his wife. He prayed that she would answer but after three attempts, he decided he’d leave a voicemail. It had been years since he had left her or anyone else that he cared about a voicemail. But he wanted to talk to her. Wanted and need to talk to her badly. Wanted to tell her that he was sorry that he worked so much and that he wanted to be a better father and a better son. As he talked, tears dripped from his eyes and he thought about the time they met in eighth grade. He’d fallen in love with on the first day of school, but it took until Sophomore year for her to pay any attention to him.

             Beside him, a pile of bodies had been dropped off next to him. We he looked over, he saw a young woman in her early twenties. He recognized her. She wore the same clothes that she had on the night before. The same jeans he remembered pulling off her slim waist.

             When he turned back over his phone rang.