Essential Workers

by John Byutorie

You know that scene in It Follows where the revenant fucks the neighbor guy to death, and she bends his hands back all crazy-like before turning him into a man-pretzel? There’s this chick I knew who was totally into that scene. Before Tumblr went to shit, she used to post gifs of that hand-bending-backward clip and ones from Battle Royale, Audition, You’re Next, and so on in what she called the “Sexy Spooky A E S T H E T I C.” On the other hand, she also wrote loads of Taskmaster slash-fic under the penname “Little_Fellow_Me_Lad” after one of Greg Davies regular nicknames for his co-host and assistant, Little Alex Horne. They always ended with Greg coming as he screamed, “LITTLE FELLOW ME LAD!” while he took Alex from… well, you know. Jennica was into stuff like that.

She also used to like having sex off the side of the road on these inclined exit ramps of tarmac called “runaway truck ramps.” She got off on the idea that a semi barreling down the highway might lose its brakes at any time in the dead of night and never see her little hatchback at the end of the ramp until it was too late, and she wouldn’t care about getting annihilated because she was getting whumped in the backseat. That’s what she called it in her fan-fics and in real life. Getting whumped.

She was a thrill seeker and took risks. More risks than I liked, so that’s why we’re not fucking anymore. I can still remember the way she said my name. “Tobey… Tobey… press the knife harder against my throat while you fuck me with your detachable penis.” That’s another reason we stopped fucking. She’d play King Missile on blast while I took her in the backseat and I told her I didn’t think it was funny, but she was like, “Don’t worry, babe. I think it’s hot. I just like the song,” but I could see her smiling eyes. I told her if she didn’t cut that shit out, I wouldn’t use the knife at all, and that pissed her off. She called me a bitch, so I called her a cunt and tried to push her off me, but then she put my hand on her throat. Not gonna lie, I knew this is what she was trying to make me do, but I was still horny too, so I went with it and whumped her until she gushed all over the upholstery.

We don’t talk anymore, but sometimes I still think about how she looked as she drooled laying out making that goofy-ass ahegao face, my hand print bloomed in blue around her delicate neck as she heaved breaths in and out half-naked in her backseat.

I lit a roach sitting in the ashtray as she fuck-drunkenly went down on me when a light hit the rearview bright as the fucking sun, and we was all in a rush, trying to cover her tits and me pulling my pants on as I flicked the stub off into the wet night when the cop moseyed up to the window, tapping on the glass. Didn’t seem to care or notice about the pot, but he did care about prostitution. Neither of us were hookers obviously. Well, obvious to me. Jennica didn’t tell me she had priors. There’s another reason we don’t talk anymore.

The cop stared at my ID and the name REYNOLDS, TABITHA for an uncomfortably long time before blinding me as he glances at the angles of my features and the length of my hair—or the lack thereof. The picture is misleading.

“What’s your name, son?” he said.

I pause a moment and swallow, my mouth tasting like old weed and Jennica’s lip gloss. “Tobey,” I said.

He flicked the Maglite Jennica-ward and she looked dazed, swiping her eyes as she mumbled out a curse. I can see the tag of her bra sticking out so either it’s inside out or just there for show. I remember the teal color being a good match for the oversized goldenrod cardigan she was wearing that night. It was brisk evening and she got cold easily.

“Tobey, I’m only going to tell you this once. You and your friend go home, and I don’t see you out here no more. Understood?” He handed us back our IDs. “It’s not safe out here on these lonely stretches. People go missing ‘round these parts. Heard?”

There’d been talks about people going missing, even there being a trafficking ring through the Love’s travel center whose glowing sign I could just make out past a clutch of trees in the distance. I looked at his name tag, and back at the not unsympathetic face of a mid-to-late-twenties black man with absolutely zero five o’ clock shadow and kind eyes. “Yes, sir.” I looked at the name tag again to make sure. “Jerry.”

“You have a nice night.”

“You too.”

Jerry drove away without lights or fuss just like he drove in, silent like the night.

I looked over to Jennica who looked sullen and a bit bleary-eyed.

I think she was disappointed that it wasn’t an eighteen-wheeler coming to bring us 80 thousand pounds of brilliant, blood-misting salvation. Then again, maybe she just recognized him from a previous collar. I never asked.

“Fucking pig,” was all she said.

We lost touch after that night and I lost her number.

That’s why I’m surprised to see her here, in the store, scoping out the industrial containers of bleach down the Rotter aisles. She didn’t look the same as she used to, clearly, and maybe the only way I recognized her was by that oversized goldenrod cardigan, the sleeves all rolled up. The skin visible on her body was stretched tight to her bones and what was left of her muscle. Her bottle blonde hair hung lank over her withered features, eyes glassy and distant, her slightly upturned nose already putrefied. I could see trac marks up one arm and the remnants of a rubber hose still wrapped near her elbow. Then she turned from the display of bleach and looked at me. Well, my name tag.

“Tobey…” she said in a rattling, hoarse voice. “I knew a Tobey once.”

I gave a shiver.

“Can I help you today?” I asked, slightly muffled behind my N-95, eye-shield, and goalie mask. The rest of my body was likewise covered in hockey gear. When the pandemic hit, we made do with what we had, and it’s not like many folks are playing hockey in north Alabama anyway these days—or any days for that matter until hell froze over.

She looked at me with disgust, her face pulled into a sneer, but it already sort of was what with the dying and everything. “I tried the bleach and it didn’t help.” As if to emphasize this, her lower intestine started to slop down the inside of her dress. I tried to ignore it, but she seemed to notice my eyes dart towards the serpentine movement, and she self-consciously tucked it back inside herself, leaving a wet spot on the white, slightly torn fabric. “Do you have the kind with the sunshine inside?” she rattled.

Between the mismanagement of the administration telling people to use grout cleaning chemicals to “clean everything out” of the human body—including a heartbeat—and very specific memories from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s of Dawn, Pine-Sol, Windex, and Mr. Clean commercials all claiming to be some variety of “Sunshine Fresh!” led people to unalive themselves in alarmingly effective ways. People were so afraid of the possibility of a wide-sweeping upper respiratory disease that they dived into what turned out to be a very literal mind virus perpetuated by a group who bought into their own hype and disinformation, leading to this staggering zombie generation. Before they were all too far gone to save, those of us holed up in our homes making castles of toilet paper made jokes about the conspiracy theorists falling for the Mindrot disease. Rotten minds, rotten hearts.

They embraced the insult and called themselves “RAnons,” hence, Rotters. Some less than classy folks used other “R” words, but that shit got shut down like everything else.

Rotters. If only we knew.

Now here I am, after my office job got liquidated, working at SmartMart, trying not to get my throat ripped out (literally and figuratively) by deluded monsters all too happy to put their own “freedom” over the health and safety of others. At least I’ve got my hockey pads.

Jennica looked at my nametag. “Tobey. Where’s the sunshine. Is there any more?”

She didn’t recognize me. I wasn’t surprised, I suppose, but it still hurt somehow. “Jennica,” I whispered. “That shit will kill you.” I said it with a laugh, making a joke, haha.

“I’m Jennica.” She paused and internalized what I said. “Fake news.” She looked at my nametag again. “Manager?”

I sighed. Fuck it. “Right this way, ma’am.” I pointed down an aisle with my grabber claw and walked in that direction, making sure to keep six feet of distance between us, but it felt like so much more.

We walked past the empty beauty products (those were all being sent either directly to the distribution centers for shipping or sorted in the back of the building for Curbside orders), the only products still on shelves being the newly marketed NeauSkin that rolled out a few months ago alongside a robust marketing scheme complete with cardboard cutout of Reese Witherspoon in deadface, followed by several palettes of bottled water and pet food piled in forklift-neat lines. Shaving had been gutted entirely, and the back wall of floor to ceiling paper products was empty—again—with a shipment two days late. Something about a shipping container capsizing and causing extended wait times. Video showed wild-eyed strangers floating on makeshift rafts of baby wipes and triple-wrapped diapers, clinging to bog roll for dear life.

Finally, we turned a corner dominated by candles and deodorant of every stripe and ingredient (the new ones I swear were mostly citronella and Raid scented) before reaching the stripped-down triangular display of cleaning products graded for industrial use only, where Pete stood in his short sleeves directing two Rotters already with a length of PVC piping. Judging by the broken-necked sound of undead laughter, he was also engaging them in charming conversation, which was unusual since Pete was the kind of guy who barely looked at me twice with a smile on his face. But he was local and had the “Yes, Ma’am, No, Sir” drilled into him from birth, so the schmoozing always came with a little “Bless Your Heart” when transplants were around. He also never wore his PPE and kept a handkerchief wrapped around his wrist like the most obnoxious fashion statement so that no one could tell him he wasn’t wearing his mask.

Basically, Pete was an asshole.

“Well, I will have to try that recipe sometime Mrs. S!” Pete laughed as he held out his plastic baton to the side in a vaguely non-threatening manner like a small child trying to ward a particularly kiss-happy second-aunt-removed. The decrepit woman and (presumably) her husband who carried his jaw in one hand and an oxygen tank in the other chortled at some unheard joke and winked at the assistant manager. The Rotter man was wearing a familiar red hat. I avoided eye contact as they walked towards check out.

Jennica’s peeled lips couldn’t hide the happiness of her smile as she beamed at the display of products meant primarily for cleaning out houses flipped after exterminating an especially nasty rat infestation. Then she stopped. “Tobey… I knew a Tobey once…”

I tensed. I didn’t want to make a thing of it in front of Pete of all people. “I’ve been working here for a while now. Probably ran into me once or twice. Anyway, Pete here will be happy to help you find just what you’re after… Jennica, did you say it was?”

“Jennica,” she confirmed.

Pete, like clockwork, stepped right in to fill the gap. “Miss Jennica! How are you?” I saw his eyes bob up and down her spindling frame but stop to gawk about two-thirds up. “And looking like a million bucks if I might add.”

She gave a coquettish laugh, or as coquettish as you can get when your lungs are optional. “Pete.” She frowned and pointed at me. “Tobey.”

He smiled back. “Now what did you do to this beautiful customer, Tabitha?” I felt something in me drop cold in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t tell if he was just being a shit-bird or if he was actually trying to fuck my zombified ex. And the other thing.

I saw something come back to Jennica in the darkness of her guttering mind. She looked between us. I could tell she was struggling with her dislike of authority and her love of being pandered to. She found a way to marry the two.

“Tobey’s dating that fucking pig.”

“Jermaine isn’t…” I stopped myself from raising my voice more than I already had. Jerry—Jermaine—left the force after George Floyd and started working for AshaKiran shortly thereafter. When he handed me back my ID after that night on the ramp, he included a business card, and after shit went sour with Jennica (a full 24-ass day later), I gave him a call. Been snuggling on the couch with him and his cat ever since. I still remember watching as protesters walked down Washington Avenue chanting, “I CAN’T BREATHE!” only to be met by Rotters holding signs saying: “WE DON’T NEED TO” and wearing homemade shirts reading: Oxygen Free Zone, Off the Chain, and Free Thinker. We were too stunned to say anything. What can you say to shit like that? His cat Roscoe demanded snuggles, nonetheless.

Pete, for once, seemed speechless—but not for long. “Well, this seems to be a personal matter between you two, so I’ll—”

I cut him off. “I was just heading to my lunch.” I looked to Jennica. “Pete will be happy to help you, ma’am.”

Pete looked at his handheld device and pressed the screen a couple times. “Actually, looks like you don’t go on your fifteen for another—”

I glared at him before turning around and putting distance between this scene. Let him try to hook up with the corpse.

“Brainwashed bitch,” I heard Jennica mumble.

Somehow, I fought the urge to turn around and kept walking. I hope she choked on Mr. Clean’s sunshine lemon dick.

The deli display reflected my own hodgepodge reflection as I grabbed a sealed container of sliced fruit before walking up to Peg’s checkout lane.

She swiped a red curl out of her eye and adjusted her surgical mask. Peg meant well, but the way she pulled her mask below her nose made me want to shake her. Or maybe I was externalizing my irritation with other things at the moment. I dunno.

“You okay after whatever that all was, doll?” she asked, her nostrils flaring the way they always did when there was something for her to gossip about.

“I’m fine. Just some bullshit.” Y’know, Rotters.

“Sounded like you knew that girl,” Peg said with stifled interest. She hesitated, waiting for me to answer the unasked question, before scanning my fruit pack and holding it hostage, her finger hovering over the total button.

“Used to.” I guess that was enough to confirm her suspicions as she gave me the dignity to let me pay way too much for a vacuum-sealed container of hydroponic cantaloupe and red grapes. “We don’t talk anymore.”

“Obviously. Have a good break, doll.” She still struggled with getting my name right since I came out publicly—tried to do it quietly, but they screwed up my paperwork right off the bat—and so avoided it entirely by using southern-fried pet names. I suppose it was some sort of compromise. Y’all is gender neutral after all.

I ducked past the empty shelves of Maybelline LEDs as Pete walked Jennica towards checkout so I could go to the break room in peace.

I piled my PPE on the couch next to the round tables as I pulled up a plastic chair that had to be devised special-like by the CIA to be painful after a few minutes, discouraging use. As hard as things have been to get, I’d had to ration my transition medication, so I hadn’t really needed to shave, and if we’re being honest, I was getting lazy and hadn’t been binding regularly (the hockey chest pad kind of works to the same effect), and sometimes I forgot to wear a bra since I stopped buying them, and I could feel the weight of my chest resting against the particle board table as I slouched forward before my meager meal.

That’s when I noticed that the seat across the table was occupied. I looked up at the back-room organizer, Dev’s dark-ringed eyes staring directly at my tits blobfishing on the table as I straightened up a bit, and then he noticed I noticed and looked bug-eyed at me full in the face.

“H-hi, Tobey. S-sorry, I wasn’t—”

I waved it off as I popped a piece of melon into my mouth. “Don’t worry about it, man.” Just don’t be so fucking obvious about it, I thought. “Shit’s bad and there’s worse things to worry about than you being a looky-loo.”

He scratched his head absentmindedly as he pulled a pizza Hot Pocket thing out of his knapsack and walked over to the microwave to nuke it to palate-melting perfection. “Still, that wasn’t cool of me.”

I jabbed my plastic fork at a particularly squishy grape and pushed it off into the corner before changing the subject away from my body. “You doing okay, dude? You look like you’ve been playing peek-a-boo with Sadako.” He looked at me quizzically. “The girl from The Ring?”

“Oh, Samara?”

Typical.

He chuckled before looking serious and haunted. Seriously haunted. “It gets weird back there, man. Sometimes the Rotters get into the back dumpsters or lick up the oil slicks from the trucks, and they’re always chanting those dog-whistles. It freaks me out.”

I didn’t blame Dev a bit for getting freaked out. I’ve heard them chanting, too, beyond the steel barriers of the loading docks. Where we go one, we go all. Where we go one, we go all. Where we go one, we go all. I shivered involuntarily.

His Hot Pocket stopped spinning, and it made that blearing beeping sound, but it was one of those old models that kept running as long as the food was inside and you didn’t hit END, but he was distracted by something outside the plate glass windows. I turned around and watched as Jennica stood outside the cart rack and twisted off the head of a bottle of Pledge and poured it down her throat. The Rotter couple I’d seen from before came out from behind a car to join her, their jaws bouncing up and down, regarding each other—the husband still holding his in one hand. They shared the floor cleaner, tasting it and swishing the bottle around like a fine vintage. The wife helped her husband keep from spilling, potentially washing away the various stains that covered the front of his Members Only jacket. The daylight was getting low, hitting that selfie-hungry spectacle known as golden hour, but through the gently smoked glass, it made the parking lot, especially the trees planted at regular intervals and the parade of everyday grotesquery before us, look strange and sickly. Jennica held up the plastic bag and pulled out a large can of Black Flag, the large red letters on the side reading: OUTDOOR SAFE.

In the back of my mind, Henry Rollins screamed in the microphone,

Someday, I’ll feel no pain

Someday, I won’t have a brain

They’ll take away the part that hurts and let the rest remain.

I watched them spraying jets of insecticide into their gaping jaws with delighted glee. Then Jennica pulled out a set of syringes, and I turned away right as Dev’s Hot Pocket exploded in the microwave behind us.

But I didn’t look that way. I wish I had. Instead, I looked to the left, towards the front door of the store where Pete stood outside watching them. His khakis looked tight around the crotch as he lifted his hand to his mouth to cough.

*****

I went back to the floor and made a concerted effort to avoid Pete, joining Dev in the back room to sort Curbside orders, but on our way, we ran into a Rotter man gnawing on one of those light up cat toys like it was some kind of jawbreaker. And if he bit down any harder, it probably would’ve been.

Dev used a pool noodle to keep a visible distance. “S’cuse me, sir?”

The Rotter looked up, drool pooling down his hairy chin.

“Can we help you today? If you’d like, we could help you check out.”

Mr. Rotter used his tongue and spat out the glowing toy with a hunk of something else I didn’t want to contemplate, but it had that reddish purple color of liver to it. “It’s got the sunshine inside it.”

Dev and I shared a look. I glanced back two aisles where the nearest clean up kiosk was. Then Dev had to try and be helpful. “Maybe we can direct you to something that’s less of a choking hazard?” You could even see his dopey smile through the surgical mask.

The man advanced on him, nearly slipping in his own puddle of spit. “Fake news,” the man said in a voice like a broken train whistle. Dev stepped back and tried to slow the Rotter’s approach with the pool noodle, but, well, it was a fucking pool noodle. I stepped in front of him and used my long grabber tool in both hands pressed to his shoulders to slow his movement, but the man’s fetid breath filled my vision, fogging up my eye-shield.

“Sir, you’re far too close to us; I’m going to need you to give me some space,” I asked with the patience of a fucking saint. He wasn’t feral, but his behavior was unacceptable.

“Triggered?” he spewed as I’m pretty sure a moth flew from the dismal depths of his larynx. I could hear his teeth clicking against the metal wire of my goalie mask.

I could see Dev standing there holding his pool noodle with all the effectiveness of a limp, polystyrene dick in the glossy reflection of the man’s eyes, he was that close. “Dev? Could you get this customer some glo-sticks? From the sporting goods department.”

“The camping section, right?!” Dev replied a bit too loudly.

“Camping?” the man barely at arm’s length said, slackening back. “I remember camping.” Then he stepped back with a dazed look on his face, some formative memory of sitting around a fire, eating s’mores, and shitting in the woods bringing him back to a more peaceful time. Before he low-key hungered for human flesh.

“Did you have an RV?” I asked, my grabber now extended the full six feet as I tried to not look at the pile of effluvium still lying on the floor.

“No. But my uncle did.” He paused and thought with some effort. “Cousin.”

“That sounds nice.”

The man shrugged as Dev spun around a corner, boxes of glo-sticks spilling from his arms and for some reason a Coleman lantern hanging from his neck looking bewildered. It seemed like he expected to have to wrestle the man off of me, which is why he whipped a hockey stick off his back. The man reached down and picked up two of the boxes and held them close to his face. “Does it have the sun inside?”

I nodded. “Yes. At night-time,” and I pointed towards the skylight. “That’s a SmartMart guarantee.” I have no idea why I said that, but it felt right.

The man seemed to still have lips enough to affect a facsimile of a smile, and I gave him a padded thumbs up in return as he shuffled towards the front of the store.

“Hey, Dev?”

He looked towards the man then back to me. “Yeah?”

“Take all those glo-sticks up and tell Pete or someone to make a display of them near the front while I clean up that.” I didn’t need to gesture as its mere existence in the world was gesture enough.

He was already trying to scoop up the boxes as Millie strolled up with the Curbside cart and paused to witness. “What the hell is that?” she asked.

I was already halfway to the head-height bag of desiccant and comically tiny broom and dustpan as I called back, “Not your problem, Mills.”

She fake huffed and headed towards the front to get orders out the door.

For whatever reason, the gunk on the floor was obscenely stuck, requiring damn near the entire bag to sop up enough of it sweep, but as I did, I swear I felt motion inside, like something in whatever came from the man was crawling inside of it. I tried to not think about it and swept the lot of it into the cleaning kiosk trash can alongside the now ruined broom and dustpan before tying it off.

Something happened, though, after that, in the bag. Maybe when I dropped in the dustpan, the edge had ripped open the thing inside, because the tied-off bag ballooned with tiny, crawling legs rippling outward in a semi-sphere of asterisk bodies, and the combined kinetic energy of hundreds of—what? Baby spiders?—were shifting the trash can. Right at that moment I wished I had a can of hairspray and a lighter so I could do it like Serial Mom, but instead, I shoved the trash can into the cubby and walked as quickly away from the kiosk as possible and towards the back room. That cubby belonged to the spiders now, and I sure wasn’t going to open that door ever again.

*****

The rest of the night was pretty quiet. I managed to avoid Pete by the way he was coughing, and we were too understaffed for him to make a big deal about it. Millie told Dev and me that he was taking over checkout for Peg when she took her lunch break, and he sounded pretty miserable by the way she heard it. Orders dried up after eight, so the three of us snuck out for a spliff beneath the back door delivery light. But we knew the rules.

You see a shadow, you go back outside.

Buddy system. No one goes out back alone.

Dev was putting a bike together while I shoved seven bottles of Almond Butter body wash into a box to be shipped in the morning (FedEx willing) when that rattling cough echoed through the back room followed by the rumbling clank of the rolling trash receptacle barreling through the doors. Pete was collecting the last of the trash for the evening after clearing what little was left of the shopping trollies in the parking lot. “Got the last of the buggies from out front. Peg and Millie are zoning, but it was slow tonight,” he paused to cough, pretty heavily at this point, “and last thing to do is to kick this trash out back and we’re good to go. You two finished?” Pete rolled up to both of us, red rimming his eyes. He only looked at Dev and pretended I wasn’t there. Or beneath him.

I taped off the box I was working on. “I think so?” I looked at Dev too.

He was Spider-Man webbing up a palette as he spoke. “Just… about… there! All done.” He used the palette jack to drag the product nearer the staging doors.

“Great job, Dev, uggh—” his pettiness was cut off by another coughing fit. “Dagnabbed allergies.”

“Get worse every year, just like everything else, huh?” Dev replied.

“Climate change,” I said.

“Fake news,” Pete barked.

None of us moved for a few seconds. I shifted my feet silently.

Pete pointed at me. “We don’t discuss politics on the clock. Check your protocol, Reynolds.”

I did my best Neil deGrasse Tyson as Pete stomped towards the rear door.

“You two can help Peg and Millie finish up front of house; I’ve got this.”

No one goes out back alone.

Dev gave me a startled look. “Uh, sir?”

“Did I ask for your opinion, Mr. Choudhary?”

Dev swallowed and looked at me again. I chimed in against my better judgment. “That’s against protocol, Pete. You know that.”

Now the redness reached the rest of his face. “I am the protocol, miss Reynolds. Now I suggest you do as you’re told. We’ll have a thorough discussion of your insubordination and how to talk to our guests when we go to clock out. Do I make myself clear?” His shouting rant was undermined by the depth of the cough that overtook him before he spit something the color of liver into the corner of the trash can before pushing off it and opening the back door.

“Sure,” I lied. “Come on, Dev. We aren’t wanted here.”

To confirm it, I heard him whispering beneath his breath in a ragged voice, “Foreigners and Yankees ruining my home. Not on my watch.”

Dev and I slipped through the double doors and pressed our bodies against the back wall. In the tiny square of the window, we saw the shaft of yellow from the delivery light, and then we saw a shadow. Seconds later, we saw Jennica’s familiar cardigan. Then we saw Pete peeling it off of her and decided we saw enough.

We didn’t get more than ten yards past the dressing room. down the carpeted softlines, before we heard his screaming.  

Dev rushed to the back room as I slid over the closed-down dressing room counter to grab the Louisville Slugger tucked carefully beneath the countertop.

“Tobey, hurry!”

I slammed through the double doors and saw Dev shoving at the back door, but I could see the splash of red on the porthole window. Something heavy was blocking the door. Something heavy and screaming, “Oh God, help me! She’s eating me! No! Please, stay away!” Pete wasn’t there. He’d been replaced by a scared animal desperately fighting for any survival possible, and pressing his back into the double-thick steel door seemed the best solution given the situation. Unfortunately, even the combined strength of the two of us couldn’t dislodge the door from the dying weight of assistant manager CrossFit.

But we didn’t stop. He screamed and pressed—“Please stop eating me!” he said again and again, and we heard the response, “Fake news”—and we heaved and hoed for what felt like minutes, until suddenly the screaming subsided into sobs and we could inch it forward, seeing more than just Jennica on top of his thoroughly red body now—voice now voices growling, “Triggered?” “Cuck” “Soyboy”—until the sobs went silent, and we felt his body being dragged away, and we could open the door easily then.

Pete was lying there as Jennica, Mrs. S and her husband, and two other Rotters surrounded him, shoveling mouthfuls of Pete down their gullets. Pete did not move. I tried to ignore the fact that his belt was undone, slacks hanging around his knees, but couldn’t. All the while, the creatures garbled out their dog-whistle catch phrases.

“Cuck.”

“Shill.”

“MAGA.”

There was another rule that was adopted these days.

When Rotters go feral, do what you need to do.

“I’ll get the shotgun,” Dev said.

I didn’t look at him. “Get the forklift.”

“Yes, sir.” He went to find the keys.

I walked over to the naked remnants of Jennica with the baseball bat gripped tight. There was a needle still sticking out of her thigh. She didn’t notice me until I held the extension of my hand over Pete’s unseeing eyes. She looked up at me, then at the bat, then back at me before standing. With Pete’s blood still staining her ruined lips, she met my eyes and said, “Fake news,” before lunging forward to grab the bat.

I swung and swung and swung again, giving Jennica one last, final piece of bliss until her body fell to the blood-strewn alley with a whump.

BIO: Johnny Byutorie (he/him/they) is a poet, novelist, father, and occasional optimist. This multidisciplinary author’s works have been published in Hog Creek Review, Something Else, North Meridian Press, Cardinal Arts Journal, among others and is a reader for Gigantic Sequins and Grey Coven Publishing. He has an MA in English and a love of horror and its gradual rise as a genre worth serious literary consideration. His many influences include Pullman, Pratchett, Peele, Jemisin, Jackson, and Mothman. Instagram: EDICalibratin