There’s something in the basement…

The black smog of war creeps over the horizon. Every day the front inches closer, preceded by sulfurous fumes and explosions, and the smell of money is in the air. As the best arms dealer in the business, Gilly should be thriving in these worst of times. But he can’t relax: professional success only brings more confusion, his new boss is hiding something sinister, and the girl he admires won’t bother to remember his name. Still, none of this compares to the mystery of what lurks under his floorboards. A menacing creature— or is it? Does it live? Undoubtedly it hungers, with an insatiable appetite for blood. Soon the question of what Gilly will do with it takes a back seat to the worry of what it will do with Gilly…

From Unreal Press and the author of Eggplant and I Pray to the Hungry God comes this story of horror and adventure, of unknowable eldritch beasts and the last hopes for humanity that glimmer through apocalypse.

 

CHAPTER 1:

A black rose of putrid smoke sprouted on the horizon. Through the office window, against the orange abyss of the sky, it appeared frail. For a moment, Gilly worried the plume might wilt and crumple. But it won’t. It will continue to rise. It will bloom into a proud mushroom cloud, then become a mist that would obscure the sky. Another ugly addition to the garden of hellfire that colored the countryside, miles away from the air-conditioned office, where the State troops were killing each other. If Gilly’s arm had been ten miles long, it would have been an easy thing to pluck it with mammoth thumb and forefinger. Remove it from the Earth. He could almost smell it: heat, charred flesh, motor oil, alkaline swamp.

Torvald set a bottle of merlot on the oak desk before them, gripping the neck like a knife’s handle. He grinned. It was for Gilly.

“You had a good year, Gilbert.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“No— thank you! Consider this a small token of the company’s gratitude.” He swiveled it, so the label faced his star employee.

No raise, Gilly deduced.

“Thank you, sir.”

The sky flashed. After a delay, shockwaves and sound washed over the building. From the thirtieth story, all Torvald and Gilly and the rest of the workers felt was a faint sway. Undulating through him so gently that it could have put Gilly to sleep. Pens jingled in their cups. A stapler hit the floor. The buzz of typing and dialing and rubbing temples proceeded without pause. Another winding cloud followed the others up to heaven, and Torvald shut the blinds.

“The wine is only the start— and I do hope you enjoy it,” he moved around Gilly and shut the door quietly, peering out at his dutiful employees with pride. “That’s no ordinary red. They bottle that at Mr. Hector’s private vineyard back East. Somewhere behind that snowy range, there’s a fertile valley where entire villages are in his employ. That bottle is a sign you’ve just about made it, Gilbert. If Mr. Hector sends his congratulations, then he’s got his eye on you. Bright futures await you.” Torvald was clearly proud of the year and origin of this vintage, as if he’d plucked the grapes himself.

 

Gilly turned the bottle in his hands. The wine sloshed behind the green glass; inky legs drained down the inside of the neck; a clot of oxblood wax smothered the mouth. He could almost taste it: acrid, smoky, dry, hints of teak oil and isopropyl.

“Thank you, sir.”

Hector was a name Gilly had heard whispered around the office, invoked by his superiors in the same tone his mother employed to warn him that his father would be home soon. He was unsure how to feel about such a presence taking a shine to him. Never having seen the man in person, it was possible Hector was just a motivational tool. A specter conjured by the board to offer its members distance, and their employees a stick. The wine, therefore, would be the carrot. If the whole thing was just a story— this private vineyard the newest chapter in the ongoing tale of Mr. Hector— Torvald seemed genuine enough to not be in on the secret. His own bottle was sitting on the bookcase like a trophy, right in front of the photos of his wife and two children.

“The second part is something I’ll need you to keep between us. Worker dissatisfaction is at an all-time high— likely due to circumstances out of our control,” Torvald waved his hands in the general direction of the bomb-smoke in the distance. “Regardless, hearing of another’s success can set some people off. Information is something we must always attempt to control. I’m sure you understand…”

“Yes, sir.”

Another explosion shook the building, and Torvald put an envelope in Gilly’s breast pocket. His heart skipped; a bonus? A promotion, codified in a formal letter? Was he being terminated? The paper was thick and rustic, as if it had been hand-pressed on the same property where the wine was bottled. He flipped the top flap to reveal gold trim and the caps of cursive peaks. Unable to contain his excitement, Torvald explained before Gilly could remove the invitation and decipher the ornate lettering.

“Every year the board has a company-wide retreat. It’s not for the whole company, obviously. But two people from each branch are selected to represent their region: the top-seller, and their supervisor. In other words, you and me!” Torvald was grinning so hard his cheeks were turning red. He looked like he might squeal.

“I… I…”

“No. Don’t say it, Gilbert.” He put his hands on Gilly’s shoulders. “Don’t thank me. For the first time, I need to thank you. Thank you, Gilbert. Thank you. For years, I’ve been trying to earn the attention of the board, but all they care about is sales. No time for the managers. Every disciplinary action is seen as a failure on my part, when it really is the surest sign of my abilities. But whatever I’ve managed to instill in you has worked. You’ve outsold every other top-seller. This is it, Gilbert. You and me. We’ve done it!”

“Th-thank you. Sir.”

The invitation explained further: Gilly was supposed to deliver a speech. He would be asked to lead a seminar with only the other top-branch-sellers. He was supposed to instill in them whatever Torvald believed he had instilled in Gilly. His stomach knotted itself. Was he being punished? Was someone trying to destroy him? Another explosion. On Torvald’s advice, he pulled his jacket over the bottle and tucked the invite into his back pocket before departing. Torvald was right about one thing: the other workers would be jealous. Without granting anything to his character, people knew Gilly could sell. But no one, not even Gilly, knew how he did it. It was all in the product, Gilly would say if asked. It sold itself. Is that what he would say during his speech? ‘Don’t thank me, this stuff sells itself!’ They’d eat him alive. Mr. Hector would summon himself into existence just to wring Gilly’s pale neck. Uncork his skull like the bottle of merlot and toast a glass full of his blood.

The maze of cubicles led to Gilly’s own, square-shaped home. He sat and jiggled his mouse, sending the screen-saving loop of the company logo that bounced around the screen into the aether. No new emails. No new calls in his voicemail. No activity worth reporting. Was this the sign of a good salesman? Something was amiss. He looked at his monthly log: 125 crates of 120 mm KE cartridges and 15 silos Malkara ATGMs on the fourth; 200 crates 39 mm, 200 crates 51 mm and seven M91s on the sixth; 14 M39 EMRs and 75 crates M118LR 175-grain long range on the tenth; 60 crates M75 Fajr-5 shells on the eleventh; another explosion; 300 crates 120 mm KE cartridges and 45 R1 FN-FAL BRs on the fifteenth; 30 FN MAGs and 15 Browning MG4 MMGs with 80 crates 7.62x51mm on the fifteenth as well. Was this outstanding? Gilly didn’t know. The phone rang, an anonymous caller placed the order and Gilly arranged for delivery to various drop spots along the Western front. Isn’t that what everyone was doing? He turned the bottle in his hand, watching the black liquid twist and foam.

“Is that for the party?” Samir poked his head over the wall into Gilly’s cubicle, his eyes set on the bottle’s shine.

“No— I mean, yes… I mean—”

“Bring it. Just in case.”

Every year the office holiday party was overflowing with cheap liquor and wine. Everyone pitched in to supply an open bar, a karaoke machine, and this year a hypnotist. There would be no need for Gilly’s booze, but it was in good taste not to come empty-handed, as Samir inevitably would.

“Piss-rats,” he muttered. “They’re letting me go after the new year. I can feel it.  I tell you what Jennifer said to me?”

Gilly couldn’t recall.

“Come on, I’ll tell you all about it.”

They made their way to the bathroom one floor up and huddled together in a stall. Samir wiped the porcelain lid of the toilet’s tank, laid out four lines of white powder, and drew one up his left nostril. Gilly took the next one.

“They found one of my sales in some kid’s locker.” Samir stomped the tile and bit his knuckle in anger, then snorted the next line. “No one was shot. No one’s even sure if that was the point— maybe the kid was just showing it off to his friends, you know the type. Anyways, police traced it back to our warehouse. Torvald had to call in some favors to get the case dropped. Big headache, and they’re putting all the blame on me.” Samir shook his head, flabbergasted.

“Did you sell it to the kid?”

“How the fuck should I know? I haven’t sold a lone unit in months. Or gotten the real name of a customer during transaction. Do you know where your sales end up?”

Gilly didn’t. Often, while watching the news, or seeing a caravan of APCs move Westward, he’d recognize the equipment the soldiers carried as the material he’d been hocking. It only took a few rough statistical calculations to determine that he had to have seen some of these articles listed on his monthly logs. He was the top salesman of his branch, apparently. That meant something, in terms of distribution. He snorted the final line and wiped the tank clean with his sleeve. Another explosion. The pair went out and washed their hands.

The halls rang with a metallic sound, thumping in a staggered rhythm that morphed into two voices singing in Farsi as Samir and Gilly drew closer to the festivities. No one in the massive conference room was dancing. They would later be told that the karaoke machine was purchased second hand from a Persian woman’s estate sale, and only the few Iranian employees knew any of the songs included on the disc. The select few cheered and lined up to sing, while the embittered masses stirred their drinks in disdain. The bar was already overrun; the entire sales department had gotten in early and were thoroughly drunk.  One of the new hires was dancing on someone else’s desk, seductively removing his shirt to raucous laughter. A manager from the twenty-eighth floor barged in smoking a cigar, a single file of women in lingerie right behind him. Gilly assumed they were strippers, until he recognized a few receptionists from different departments. As they passed he could see tiny bullets sewn into the black lace of their skirts and bras. Silhouettes of AK-47s and six shooters adorned their silky hose. Samir gave one a goose, was immediately slapped, and burst out laughing. Gilly held his merlot close to his chest, worried that someone might recognize the label and identify him to the crowd as the branch’s best salesman. But nobody seemed to care. They were all equals here, excepting the lucky Iranians singing along to the tinny music. A bronze flicker of light caught Gilly’s eye. He turned to find Maxine was alone, downing a shot of tequila and wiping her dark lipstick from the glass’ rim. He froze, captivated by the iciness of her pale fingers. Her skin against black nail polish, against her black shirt, against the rich bloody wine he envisioned himself pouring down her cleavage.

She saw him staring. She looked bored.

“Sorry,” Gilly tried to call, but wasn’t sure anything could be heard over the noise. She mouthed something back at him. He couldn’t make it out, but it seemed like a threat. She turned to the elevator. A pair of sleek golden doors parted, then closed around her.

“Smoke?”

Gilly found Samir busy earning the good graces of the other receptionists. Their fingers walked coolly over his chest, grazing his breast pocket, subconsciously seeking out the little baggy of cocaine. Gilly tapped his shoulder, pointing upward to the roof, the smoking section for the entire building.

“I’ll meet you up there. Trying to make the most of my last hurrah, you know?”

The gold doors sucked shut around Gilly, and it was quiet once more. Another explosion made the sealed box and mirrored walls tremble. Gilly pressed the button for floor 64. Only after the doors opened again and the wind brushed against his skin and slithered up his sleeves did he realize he had no cigarettes. He had only his bottle of wine, and the gilded invite still folded up in his back pocket.

The doors slid open. Gilly squinted in the orange rays of sunset breaking through the smog and chain-link that ensconced the perimeter. The patio was nearly barren. Moving forward like a somnambulist, he stumbled on the severed stumps of metal pipe sticking up from the blacktop. This square used to be a basketball court, he remembered. Paid for by several of the businesses in the building to encourage general good health and fitness among their staff. It was removed after the early phase of the conflict. As the war front passed through the city, off into the West, much of the area was altered in similar ways, but little was actually destroyed. Schools were converted to bunkers and waypoints for refueling, while children were brought down to the empty subway tunnels for their daily lessons. Hospitals were coated in thick ballistic-suppressing panels and barbed wire, the parking lots cluttered with concrete barriers. The twentieth floor of Gilly’s old apartment was cleared out for a remote command center with a spectacular view of the Western front. Fortunately, Gilly had had the good sense to clear out before fire was returned. The building was left decrepit and empty as a sort of straw man to attract enemy shells. And, to no great disappointment, they’d cut down the basketball hoops on the roof of his workplace to make way for emergency helicopter landings which never appeared.

Gilly strung his fingers through the metal lattice. The smoke had built into a thick wall rising slowly at an angle. It merged with the oncoming night. Another week of midnight, Gilly worried. It had happened before; the smoke from the constant barrages often got so thick it stayed dark for several days, forcing both sides to wait for the ash to clear so they could fire effectively once more. This was ultimately the safest time to go outside and take a walk or visit family, but for the fumes that one inevitably inhaled by the gallon. We were already doomed, people assumed. Why waste the time we’ve got? During these dark weeks, people went to the laundromat and the grocery store– which now sold almost exclusively canned-goods and overly processed, artificially sweetened chaff in bulk. They got their cars washed, ignoring the fact that the ash would only make them dirty again on the drive home. They went to the dentist, the barber, the dry cleaner’s.

“Wouldn’t be right without one of these.” A man approached, seeing Gilly’s emptyhandedness. He wore a suit under a dark dress coat, holding an already-lit cigarette out to Gilly. He thanked the stranger and accepted. The man’s glasses were made of a strange material that turned dark in the sunlight, and a waning cigarette hung out from the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you, sir.”

It wasn’t stated, but the man seemed to be superior in some way to Gilly. Possibly an executive, or a board member. Maybe from an entirely different office in the building, yet still of greater importance than Gilly himself. Gilly admired the cigarette he’d been given, a thin band of gold separated the filter from the neck. It smelled like torched perfume. They smoked in silence. Another explosion cracked; in the open air, it was loud enough to make out the crescendo and denouement of falling detritus smacking the Earth.

“Qassam-8, ATGM. About 50 kg, I’d say.” The man was speaking out toward the explosion. “Not one of ours. Fortunately not as sophisticated in tracking and seeking, but surely as deadly. See how white the smoke is? Plastics. Indicates a cheap casing.”

Gilly recognized the name. Not one of theirs, indeed. Yet it was something Gilly had managed to sell on occasion. Every so often, this kind of contraband made it into his supply. One had to be flexible with their providers and their customers. The ultimate goal of firms like Gilly’s was to help the State and its various paramilitary groups kept on retainer. The men on the front and the men in the cities shared the same goal. But money had to flow. This was essential. If a buyer’s allegiance was in doubt, it was above Gilly’s pay grade to question them.

“Let the rockets fall, I say. It only reinforces what is decided already. Victory belongs to the State. Victory is anathema to the structure of the opposition. It isn’t a matter of not-knowing what to do with it once it’s achieved, moreso that victory would destroy the opposition worse than any of our forces ever could. Worse than any virus, it would be like a molten ball of nickel swallowed, burning its way through internal organs and out of the skin. These catabolized insurgents who know how to wield a gun, but cannot comprehend the reasons why— I say let them have it. Fighting them only delays their own demise.”

“I came up here to meet a woman. Tall, black coat and dress. She—” Gilly wouldn’t have known how to describe Maxine without revealing his obviously prurient interests. Slender? Graceful? Tortuously beautiful and erotically impudent?

“There are no women here. Women don’t smoke.”

Gilly said nothing.

“It was said that Stalin only ever loved one woman. His first wife,” the man continued a conversation Gilly wasn’t aware they’d been having. “But not the second. Was such a thing out of his own grasp— the most powerful grasp in the world? Unable to have say in who he felt affection for? I do wonder what possesses a man when it isn’t emotion.”

The stranger flicked his cigarette through the chain-link fence, and they both watched it spiral into the abyss below.

 

The realtor that had shown Gilly his new place had advertised first and foremost the quiet. The conflict was already raging by this time, explosions and gusts of smoke were commonplace. Those with money had fled Eastward, and the remaining salaried workers were looking for places of respite. Somewhere they could pretend that everything was fine. Gilly’s new neighborhood was rundown, built before even the formal war was declared. The homes were all single-story with wooden porches and flat roofs. Most were empty. Gilly’s best friend in the community was a stray calico that kept the rats away from his property. The streets were riddled with potholes that had filled back up again with dead weeds and anthills. But it was reasonably quiet. The realtor had not lied about that. But quiet felt like something Gilly did not deserve. There was an obvious yet undeclared sense of guilt on his mind every time he felt an explosion shattering the Earth. Ultimately, he wasn’t sure what drew him to the place– he could certainly afford better. He wasn’t attracted to the idea of maintenance, which the dilapidated building was desperately in need of. The paint was peeling and the wood housed clusters of termites. Ghostly marks where photos had been hung or furniture placed by the previous tenant were all over the walls, and Gilly made no effort to cover them up. His appliances just barely functioned, and his stack of to-be-read books was forebodingly large. It worked for him. That was all he could say confidently.

He set the wine down on top of his refrigerator and pulled a can of beer from the bottom shelf. He dragged his only dining chair over to the kitchen window, facing his ragged backyard, and sat. The springs of his mattress were particularly sensitive to the distant booming. Even the explosions he couldn’t hear could be felt as spontaneous jiggling when he tried to sleep. So, he slept most nights on his brittle wooden chair, forcing himself into unconsciousness with beer. In the morning, he’d awake with a red oval on his forehead where it’d pressed against the cold window. His alarm was the sunrise trickling through the trees of the dense forest behind his backyard. The wall fended off the urban sprawl of apartment towers and office complexes.

Once, the sound of animals fighting in the woods woke him. Some high whining and clattering of fangs. He watched frozen, waiting for the brush to shake or a tree to budge. Maybe a bear would rise slowly from the dark and point its yellow eyes at him. Did bears live out here?

“The bears have all been killed,” his neighbor had told him the next morning. “When the insurgent groups were driven through here, they were forced to kill all the bears. For food and for protection.”

Mohder, Gilly’s nearest neighbor, was a wellspring of this kind of lore. He was an old man with a gimp leg who wore several layers of coats and sweaters at all times. When he wasn’t watering his lawn or feeding the calico, he was regaling Gilly with stories about the conflict. Most people passionately involved in conflict politics were much younger than he and Gilly. They were teens hoping to enlist, or energetic liberal students looking to impress girls at a protest. Mohder’s obsessions were not enthusiastic, but begrudging, as if it were his curse to catalog the events of the ongoing conflict. His accent was indiscernible, and Gilly wondered if possibly his obsession was a sign of his political leaning. Could he be one of these enigmatic infiltrators the State warned citizens about? Vagrants from far far East whose only motivation was the destruction of the State. It wouldn’t have mattered to Gilly– everyone in the conflict was the same, only differentiated by their varying access to modern weapons and cloisters of support. Merely different categories of clients: those who could afford the fancy equipment, and those who shopped from the metaphorical bargain bin.

“The problem with the slaughter,” Mohder had explained, “was that it opened a niche for a new apex predator. Nothing as large as the bears could fill this void. But a conglomerate of monsters learned to work together to terrorize the smaller forest creatures more effectively than any bear ever could. Even the roving squads of insurgents would fear these beasts, if any of them remained. With no bears, and no bear-killers, the only thing left in the forest is chaos and murder. An incestuous tangle, perpetually feeding on itself.”

For a while, Gilly slept even less easy. He was constantly worried that this terrible entity might surface in his own backyard. Like an elite hunter, it would know how to kill Gilly instantaneously, painlessly. But clumsily it would take its time– crashing through his window, destroying his shabby abode and fumbling through his body, making a mess of the entire thing. Soon exhaustion overcame Gilly, and he slept, but the shapeless knot of violence found him in his dreams. Right where it wanted him.

Gilly opened the fridge and reached for his last beer. On the rim, arrogantly displayed and leaving a trail of fetid slime like cursive across the label, was his truest enemy. He became instantly belligerent. Dammit, he swore. God damn it. He kicked the chair he’d been sitting in to the floor and grabbed two fistfuls of his hair. When he’d calmed himself, forcing in-and-out, slow, even breaths, he began to search the sides of the fridge for holes. How? he wondered. How did this bastard find its way into the fridge? And what, if anything, could be done to stop them now? The endless onslaught of nemeses invading Gilly’s only sanctum.

They were everywhere. They were in the living room, and the front porch. In the sill of every window and slithering up from the drain in his bathroom. These little, milky-green slugs. Their acid trail that left unremovable lines on his carpets and his laundry. Even when he didn’t find them, he found their remnants. Their trails. Their withered corpses. Piles of fine crumbly dirt he was sure was their excrement. He’d tried poison, traps, and of course the underside of his shoe, but nothing could prevent the hordes. Until now, when one had finally found its way into his refrigerator, he wasn’t sure they wanted anything but to linger. But now it was clear they were after his food. He should’ve suspected. What do mindless armies crave but sustenance?

He snatched it up and dropped it down the garbage disposal, flipping the switch and relishing the wet grinding sound of a slug reduced to mucus. Gilly grabbed the beer and started the hunt. On hands and knees, lurking around the baseboards and flipping up the corners of his rug. There would have to be more. They never travelled alone. And, eventually, he found enough to fill a paper cup. He took the load of them and dropped them down the sink with their comrade and flipped their death switch. His only regret was that they could not scream. They could not wail in pain and satisfy his thirst for revenge. He wanted them to suffer as they’d made him. Their slimy bodies and tracks. The fear that one day he’d inevitably wake up and find one trying to wriggle up his nose and make a nest in his brain. Gilly shuddered. If he could just find their source…

They weren’t coming from his yard. The internet told him slugs like to nest in damp Earth, but the soil out front and back was bone dry. Plus, he’d turned it all over with a shovel. There was nowhere to hide, yet still they found their way into his house. There was no information as to their species. They didn’t appear to be the pupae form of some larger insect, like a roach or beetle or butterfly. They were just slugs, and they were of indeterminate origin. Slugs apparently didn’t live in moist wood like termites. They weren’t welcomed by other bug life. In fact, Gilly learned, bee hives could get slug infestations. And in such instances, the bees aligned their power to sting them to death and form waxy edifices around their corpses, weaving them into the walls of their home. Gilly had considered releasing bees into his own home to combat the problem, but luckily he came to his senses before taking such a drastic measure. Still, his own attempts at annihilating them had proven futile. He was losing the war against slugs. He’d made no ground against them. Even giving up was out of the question: there were slugs burrowing into his mattress and hiding in his clothes. The chair in front of the window was the only safe haven– and now they’d managed to work their way into his fridge– it was too much.

The floor was damp. Still on all fours, he realized the cold of the floor in the hall was not just from poor heating, but it was actually damp. Water had soaked into the planks, so deep it wasn’t making any puddle. But it was definitely moisture. Could this be their source?

Gilly crawled across the hallway, patting the boards to keep on the trail of the damp, until he found himself against the one place he dreaded:

The basement.

When he’d moved in, the basement was locked. The realtor didn’t have the key. The place is yours, he’d said. If you want, you can break down the door. See what’s in there. But Gilly had no desire. For months it had been locked tight with no reason to unveil its contents. It had to be empty, Gilly was sure. But now he worried that this had been the source of his torment all along. The slugs were coming from down here. What else would he find inside?

He’d need a hammer. Possibly a saw. The door was bolted shut, and he’d already scoured the entire property for keys long ago. Without any tools of his own, he’d need to borrow some…

“Mohder?” The old man’s garage was open.

Gilly called again to no answer. He could see on a workbench the articles he’d come for: a mallet, a rusted screwdriver, a pry-bar tucked into the corner behind cobwebs. But it felt wrong to lift the items himself, even if he knew he’d bring them back shortly. Was he on good enough terms with his only neighbor? The cat appeared from nowhere to rub itself against Gilly’s leg, a reminder that he was always being watched.

Mohder eased his back door open, suspicion in his eyes.

“Oh, it’s you.” He hobbled out and summoned Gilly inside.

“Actually,I’ve just come to borrow some tools. There’s a stuck door at my place– to the basement. Need to get down there.”

“I see,” he scratched his beard, sending dandruff onto his knitted cardigan. “What’s down there?”

“Don’t know. Probably just some old junk left by the previous owner, if anything.” Gilly didn’t want to mention the slugs. Mohder would likely have some rambling anecdote about how the slugs were common to the area and how the war had sent them indoors and yadda yadda yadda.

“Well, take what you need.”

“I’ll bring them right back.”

“Don’t hurry. What does an old man like me need tools for anyway?”

As a young man with no tools, Gilly could answer this rhetorical with ease: it was the duty of all true men to carry tools. In the absence of tools, weapons would suffice. Gilly had neither, and was deeply ashamed. He was inexperienced with using tools, so it made sense that he wouldn’t have any. Still, it was right for men to own tools. He felt he should have kept at least a drill or an axe in his shed out back. Men were expected to fix things, or demolish them, and create from raw materials entirely new things. Women were supposed to bring life into existence, and men were supposed to own tools. If the miraculous occurred and Gilly had managed to bring a woman back to his home, the first thing she’d undoubtedly look to inspect were his tools. You have no tools? she would say, clicking her tongue and looking for the exit. She would want a man who owned tools. Who used them with ease. Who didn’t feel the awkwardness Gilly felt as he pounded the basement door’s hinges with the mallet, only managing to sink them further into the jamb. He attempted a more meticulous approach: take the screwdriver and separate the hinges from the wood at the weak points. But he found them to be securely fastened; the bolts attaching them were inaccessible. Who would’ve known doors were such intricate pieces of craftsmanship (men with tools, obviously). Gilly abandoned them both in favour of the pry-bar. With all of his strength, he managed to pop something metallic within the frame. The whole wall creaked. Gilly stepped back and nearly slipped; under his shoe he found a squashed slug that left a long, snot-like mark on his floor. His rage refreshed, he took the hammer straight to the centre of the door. At first, it only bounced off– but he struck it again and again and again and again. His face was red and sweaty. A deep crack had formed but was only acting as a trampoline to send Gilly’s blows back with more force. He dropped the hammer and threw his whole body into it. Shoulder first, ‘til he could feel it bruising. Again and again. Another explosion. Something snapped. He tossed himself forward again with all his strength and broke right through the leaf like it was a wet paper bag.

There were stairs. Gilly tumbled. Knocking his elbow, his ribs, his temple. His face smacked the floor, sending fine dirt up into clammy air. Clay formed from the blood streaming out of his nose.

Gilly let the pain subside, then rose to a sitting position. His nose felt broken. He’d smashed another bug with his face, and scraped it off to inspect the remains. It wasn’t a slug. It was crunchy, with little hairy antennae jutting out of the phlegm he’d pulled off his cheek. It was something once-decked in chitinous armour, before Gilly had reduced it to a smear. What was left of it glistened like ink. He peered through the dim haze. They were wriggling in the dust. There were hundreds of them– slugs and beetles and snails and spiders and mantises and mealworms and katydids cicadas centipedes roaches scorpions and millions of swarming, microscopic flies– all with the same milky-green tones gracing their shells and plating and moist outsides. They were on the stairs, making nests in the mortar of the gray brick wall, collected in hives on the ceiling and, in the middle of the basement, a congregation of all insects was sifting through the dirt. Driven toward an invisible centre. A whirlpool of silt and hissing insects.

Gilly felt a shiver radiate from his stomach. Before he could stand, puke was rushing up and out of his mouth. Panic set in– acid constricted his throat and he saw himself drowning in his own bile. But after a few thick heaves, he stood, and the adrenaline subsided. Steaming vomit pooled around his shoes. He ran back up the stairs and tried to close the half of the door that remained, but dust was still billowing out through the splintered opening. His eyelids drooped. The revulsion had made him drowsy. He curled up on his mattress, not minding the few slugs that still lingered around his baseboards and on his shirt, and went to sleep.

Why had he been sick? he wondered in his dreams. What had he expected but a hive of greasy slugs? Logically speaking, finding other insects only lessened the disgust he should have felt; at least these other bugs didn’t leave trails of mucus wherever they went. He wondered for what felt like years, as the dream took him to his childhood school, then to an old friend’s backyard, and then to a place he’d never been. A familiar face he had no name for asked him his own thoughts:

Why did the bugs scare you so much?

“I don’t know.”

Why did you get sick?

“I don’t know…”

You shouldn’t do that.

“I’m sorry.”

They only have love for you.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated over and over until his dream took him somewhere else. Only after waking, getting dressed and ready for work, did he wonder now why he’d been sorry for being sick. It was just a dream; too strange to seriously consider, he decided. Better get some plywood on the way home and board the basement up for good. Maybe heave a bug-bomb down the stairs for good measure. He was confident in this plan, vowing to stop at a hardware store not far from his home. But for whatever reason he didn’t, and the doorway to the basement remained open. And he didn’t get sick again.