Short Story | Horror | Creature Feature
Someone twenty years ago would be both astounded and horrified by everything we can order from our phones today. Last week, while browsing different style potatoes that I could send anonymously (along with a message of course), my monthly shipment PleasureBox and Doordash were dropped off simultaneously (awk!).
There are some absolute hidden gems on the internet, and you can have practically anything you’d ever want or need shipped to you, dropped off on your porch and sucked back inside when you hermit-crab out the front door with one greedy arm, never having to face another person. As of eight days ago, I was one of those lucky people, blessed and heaven-sent to sit on my sofa and get whatever I wanted hand delivered by someone else. And I was always hungry, sometimes eating five-to-seven smaller meals a day.
Sure, I partook in some stuff I didn’t need. But I was doing it for you, the shoppers. See, I used to be an online reviewer, #RachelsReviews, professionally sampling and publishing my critiques of anything and everything on my blog to help would-be shoppers. I tried the cream-of-the-crop grocery delivery services, the bottom-of-the-barrel mystery boxes and everything in between, all for you ungrateful sons of bitches.
Well no more. Absolutely, friggin, not. This will be my final review, and it’s only because I take my job seriously, and because the police won’t issue a public safety warning, so it’s up to me.
There’s a doctor out there, his name will change so it doesn’t matter what it is, but you’ll know him when you see him. He’s a bariatric surgeon with a 0.5 Star Rating on ZocDoc from 3 reviews, one of which is my zero. I can only imagine the other two reviews are from people who went to his “treatment center,” and didn’t stay, because no one else who booked a treatment survived, at least not at the location I left.
With complete transparency, I went to the highest rated doctor near me too, and it was a fine visit. “Have you ever had bariatric surgery?” their consultant asked me.
I lied, of course. Because if I tell them yes, they would disqualify me. Plus, the last surgery that shortened my bowels was supposed to reduce the amount I ate, but it just made me digest faster and be hungry sooner. If it didn’t work, why did it make a difference? But the doctors recommended that I lose weight naturally, as if there weren’t pills for that, I mean, hello? I can get a GLP-1 dropped in my mailbox weekly, so the visit was just to get a consultation and leave my review.
But a friendly commenter – looking at you, BigMitch2011 – said there’s no way I could be impartial without also reviewing the lower end of the spectrum.
We’ll call him Barry the Bariatric Surgeon, as he’s most definitely closed his practice and moved out of North Carolina now that I’ve escaped. Highly not recommended.
Here’s what happened.
“Welcome to Barry’s Bariatrics,” said the sickly-sweet receptionist at the front counter. She was barely twenty, perky, annoyingly-beautiful skin without the faintest hint of moisturizing shimmer even in the fluorescent lights. I hated her immediately.
When I told her I’d made an appointment a few days before, she click-clacked her manicured fingernails across the keyboard and found my name.
“Oh dear,” she frowned and somehow looked even more doe eyed. Instagram face, that’s what they call it. Anyway –
“It seems like you only booked a consultation,” she turned the computer screen around as if I didn’t know what I booked. “But we don’t do consultations without at least a stay in the facility to see our treatment methods. It’s really the only way.”
Is it really the only way, Candice? I tried to explain to her that the online system let me book just the consultation, and that I didn’t even bring an overnight bag or my sleep apnea mask, to which she replied something that went against everything I believe in:
“Sometimes the online system can make a mistake.”
Pfffft. I think I utterly gasped and would’ve let my knees buckle if I felt like I could get back up after. I was ready to turn around, until she said the magic words.
“The first day at the facility is free.”
And they provided a complementary robe, room service and TV. It was like a home away from home, and I unfortunately agreed.
“Cell phones aren’t allowed in the spa, unfortunately.” And that was almost a deal-breaker. But I got shown to my own personal cubby with a lock and key, where I could keep my belongings.
Cindy, or whatever her name was, guided me around the spa. A large swimming pool directly off the main entrance, multiple saunas, a gym which I wouldn’t be using, a snack bar which I absolutely would be using, full culinary staff, plus medical bays and surgi center. It was pristine, a cool blue/grey color across all the concrete, tile and painted walls, calming, with welcoming posters of skinnier people smiling.
The facility didn’t look that large from outside, and as it stood alone toward the tail end of the business park, I was sure it didn’t connect to another building or have more floors above. At the time, I thought maybe there was a basement or two, not an endless chasm of rot and despair down to the depths of hell. Nobody expects something like that.
So after the initial tour, there were only three things remotely offputting –
- The fact that this place had a .75 star review at the time, despite being “owned and operated since 1666.”
- The stark bareness of the private room. I mean, it was like a concrete box, with literally nothing on the walls, no amenities, no sofa, just, a small TV the size of a computer monitor on a little stand, and a telephone on a table next to a large bed in the middle of the room. I mean, I get it, I’m a big girl, but that bed was HUGE. They must’ve seen even larger patients.
And #3 as I got settled in my room: Barry.
“My, you must’ve been a lazy little toad, eh?” The first words out of his mouth as he greeted me during his new patient rounds.
He said it with a smile of glistening teeth, perfect, ageless against his wrinkled face, tight eyes and black stubble. He stood close to the door, leaving it opened a crack behind him like he wanted an escape option in case I tried to eat him.
Now, in any other circumstance, I’m leaving a bad review immediately. But Barry said it so fast with such a disarming tone that I could barely let out an, ‘“excuse me, what?” before he was taking my measurements.
“For the robes, of course, and our starting weight comparison,” he said, wrapping a plastic measuring tape around my waist like I was at a Big N’ Tall getting fitted for a mumu. “And what is your goal weight?” he asked.
I said something ridiculous like a buck-twenty, and he just nodded. No shock or indication that he thought it was unobtainable even remotely crossed his face, just a tightened lower lip and raised cheekbones as he smiled in agreement.
“It’ll take a few days, but I think we can get there.”
And he was gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts replaying the words he’d just said. A few days to lose – whoa hey, a lady never talks about her weight. He was either a con artist, a liar or planned to shave layers of meat off me on the operating table like a butcher with a deli counter slicer. Needless to say, I was intrigued and very, very skeptical.
I fully planned on hitting the pool or the sauna after I got settled in my new plush robes, but then I took a seat on the bed and my body just melted into it. My goodness, it was the softest thing I’d ever felt, like Egyptian cotton sheets on top of a cloud, folding around my body in all the right places, firm in all the others. I barely wanted to move.
And thanks to the telephone on the table within arm’s length, I didn’t have to.
“Hi Rachel, what can I get for you?” It was Catherine again; of course it was.
“I don’t have a menu,” I said, trying to ask about room service without feeling embarrassed that I was hungry only an hour after arriving at a bariatric center.
“We don’t have a menu,” came the reply. “We can make whatever you’d like.”
Bull, I figured. There was no way a diet rehab center would let patients eat to their massive heart’s desire.
But Cibile said, “Dr. Barry doesn’t believe in dieting. In fact, he encourages our residents to go nuts, so long as all dinners are done by 7 PM sharp – that’s how confident he is in the success of the program.”
Yeah, I was definitely going to get stabbed or something in the middle of the night. This was 100% a scam or a psycho with a weight fetish. I’d have to remember to lock my door at night or I’d wake up to Dr. Barry cranking it over top me in my robe, the perv.
“I’ll have… A bacon cheeseburger, spaghetti bolognese and a slurpee with half Coke, half blue,” I said with a chuckle. I’d have at least a little fun at their expense before eating the inevitable salad they sent over.
“Sure thing,” was all I heard on the other line before the receptionist hung up.
Oookay. I figured they’d bring me some slop in about an hour, so I clicked on the TV. Then I clicked to change the channel, up, down, friggin sideways, it didn’t matter. It seemed like this particular brand of guest amenities wasn’t as lavish as the food service – there was only one channel!
It was a weird history-style documentary, grainy, of an Indigenous American explorer guiding the videographer and some Asian scientist across a bridge. There was no background sound, just a chant-like song, low, rumbling played on repeat. I don’t think any of the people spoke the same language anyway, as both communicated with the videographer by pointing or motioning. The Asian woman pulled out a notebook and wrote in it occasionally, and it was by far the oddest thing I’d seen that month, even from all my internet niche corners.
Then a high-pitch dingle broke my attention, as a bell chimed by my door. It slid open as Catherine stepped in pushing a cart of food, dishes barely clinging on top of one another as they threatened to topple. It felt like it’d only been a few minutes as everything I’d asked for was placed, plate, bowl and Slurpee cup, onto the bed next to me. But as good as everything looked, the room was filled with a sickly meat smell, like that chicken breast juice that came from the grocery store packages.
With a smile, Charity placed down one of those little white cups with some pills in it. “Daily medication for the program,” she said, and then she was gone, and the smell from the cart gone with her. I leaned over to check my food, but it all seemed normal, and my stomach growled. I’m not proud of it, but this review isn’t about how much I ate.
I absolutely wasn’t taking any random pills though. Screw that. Besides, I’d only be here for tonight, head home and then write up my weird ass review.
As I finished the last bite of my burger, my phone rang.
“Hey,” came a man’s voice. It was deep, smooth like the dessert I wished I’d ordered.
“Uh, hi?” I said.
“What are you wearing?” the guy said, and I nearly hung up until he laughed. “I’m just kidding. We’re all in the robes. My name’s Dom, Dominick. I think I’m your next door neighbor.”
“Nice to meet you, Dom Dominick,” I joked.
“There’s three of us here this week. Me, Shelly and Jay, but Jay’s kinda a bitch, so I’d just call me and Shelly if you wanna talk. I’d say see you in the spa, but…”
I get it. This Dom Dominick was funny; big guys were usually funny in my experience. And he sounded endearing enough to talk to. Maybe this stay wouldn’t be so bad.
“I’m on speed-dial four. And my bed–” Dom started. I heard a loud BANG BANG against the wall to my left. “I pushed it right up to the wall. Sleeping in the middle of the room weirded me out.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked. But the phone went dead. So did the lights in the room.
My TV documentary went black, and white text appeared on the screen: LIGHTS OUT, 7:30PM.
Oh come on. Who the hell can sleep at 7:30? At least that’s what I thought, until my head felt heavy and I decided to let the sweet embrace of these amazing sheets wrap me in decadence. I ate too much. Food coma time.
I awoke the next morning to the same dingle of a bell just before my door opened. I was barely able to rub the sleep from my eyes before Cathy placed down four plates of something that made my stomach turn from the smell. I was surprised to see confetti pancakes, hard boiled eggs, a cinnamon swirl bagel and a big ass cinnamon bun that dripped icing down the side in a slow and satisfying ooze.
“I didn’t order breakfast,” I frogged out.
“This is brinner!” came the sweet reply as the receptionist left, sliding my door shut behind her.
As soon as she was gone, the smell left again and I looked for my cubby key. I needed my phone to check the time, and get the heck out of here.
But as I moved, rolled to the side of the bed and felt around, a sharp pain stung in my thighs. Oh God; I was right, I’d been assaulted in my sleep. So I whipped off the sheet and the robe and looked down – skin lay flat against the bed, sagging off part of my thighs like I’d had lypo and they left the extra flab on me. It didn’t hurt so much as tingle, like when your feet fall asleep after too long on the toilet.
How was this even possible? I tried to push myself up and out of bed, and I slammed to the floor. My legs weren’t working. Screw this place, screw whatever the hell was happening to me. I was leaving.
Except I couldn’t walk.
I tried to pull myself across the concrete floor, but my arms weren’t strong enough. It had admittedly been a while since I worked out, okay? I tried to roll, push, but despite feeling lighter… I barely made it a foot away from the bed.
Time for a new plan. But I was so tired, and hungry.
I knocked over the small phone next to my bed with a clatter on the floor that surely someone would hear, but they didn’t come. With all my strength, I grabbed the phone and dialed the front desk. It rang. And rang. And rang. No answer.
Then I dialed a 4, and Dom answered immediately.
“You never told me your name,” he cooed and I wanted to scream.
“What the fuck is this place?”
“Barry’s Barria–”
“Don’t mess with me. Are you with them, is this all some sick human trafficking shit? I swear I will expose you all over the internet,” I growled as intimidatingly as I could with what little energy I had left.
“No,” Dom said. “At least I don’t think so. Why? What’s going on?”
“I can’t move my damn legs, they’re like loose and flabby. And what fucking time is it?”
“Calm down, calm down,” came Dom’s reply, and he was lucky I couldn’t slap him through the phone. “I think Jay went through this too… As much as it pains me. One sec.”
And I heard a light click and a new voice came on the phone.
“Yo yo.” It was a younger man.
“Jay, Dom and uh… Room two on the line. She’s apparently got the same issue you had.”
Trust me, if there was any other option instead of listening to these two, I would’ve hung up by now. But there wasn’t.
“You skipped the medicine too, didn’t you?” the apparent Jay said. “Dummy.”
“Told you he was a bitch,” said Dom. “But he’s right. You couldn’t feel your…”
My legs, I told them. God I was so hungry, like dying inside, stomach churning and eating itself to the point where you feel nauseous from not eating for too long. What time was it?
“Yerp, gotta take the meds,” Jay squawked. “I couldn’t move the left side of my body for two days when I skipped ‘em.”
No fucking way was I taking anything they gave me. I wouldn’t eat either. After how sleepy I felt last night, how deeply I apparently slept to not feel whatever happened to me in the middle of the night – no, friggin, way. I’d starve myself, stay awake until I could move, then I’d bust out and call the cops.
From the small window at the top of my concrete hell, I saw the sun setting and my last hopes faded with it. With pained scooches, I grabbed the remote from the top of my bed and switched on the television. A few minutes later, the lights went out, my TV went blank, replaced with the words: LIGHTS OUT, 7:30 PM.
Tonight, I’d stay awake. I had to.
I’d keep my eyes glued to that door, listen intensely for whoever was coming in to suck the fat from me. They’d expect that I’d eat. There were no cameras in the room from what I could tell. They wouldn’t know I was waiting. Maybe I could even pretend to be asleep, bash them with the rotary phone when they got close enough. It was a solid new plan.
But my stomach hollered at me, flipped and churned and told me to throw up bile. This was death, surely.
If there was a singular thing I had going for me, it was being spiteful. From my reviews to my everyday life, if somebody tried to pull one over on me, they had another thing coming. I could starve myself out of spite, no problem. But my eyes had other plans. Whatever they’d laced my food with the night before still stuck its fangs in me, and I felt myself blinking slower, holding my breath just a little longer as the hours passed. Until the screaming.
Shrieks, long and full of terror, close ones. The first sounded almost like entering a dream, hearing a faint sound from through the wall, but the second snapped me from my daze to full attention. What was that?
As best I could, I slid on the floor just a little bit closer to the wall, pressed my ear against the cold concrete. It was distant, but how far, I couldn’t tell. Pained, horrifying shrieks from a woman, screaming at the top of her lungs. Nothing in the world had made me yell that loud, ever. And that was a concerning thought.
Had I been right earlier, and the crazed Bariatric Barry would sneak into our rooms, shave off layers of fat and then sew us back together by daybreak? Then cries from the distance stopped for about thirty minutes to an hour. I lost count on that empty floor, fighting to stay awake.
Then they started again, closer, right next to me. Male, deep and guttural howling with a hopelessness that made my skin tighten as it pulled away from the wall. Dom.
He went on the longest of the three, lasting an hour by himself, even though his voice went hoarse after twenty minutes. I know it was still happening because I could hear the pounding against the walls, the knock knock knock knock that he’d done earlier, but this time in a panic, scrambling, as if begging for anyone anywhere to hear him. I didn’t dare make a sound to call back.
In the pitch black, I clung to the rotary phone, my back against the bedpost leg, jumping at every thud against the wall. After Dom must’ve been Jay, because another man started howling. By that time, I was numb to it, and thankfully it was further away than Dom’s room. He was quick; must’ve been either a wimp or a skinner guy.
No knock came to my door, no swipe of the keycard, no surgeon entered to chop me to pieces. The sun poked out above the window sill behind me, casting a shadow from the bed onto the wall across from me that loomed like a beast, shrinking as time passed and day grew stronger. I’d made it through the night.
My thinking was correct when I turned the TV on again, and it played the same documentary again, this time from what I guessed was the beginning. The videographer shook hands with the other two. It was the first time getting a good look at the videographer, his hand at least – thick, big fingers. Then the scientist showed the Indigenous guy something inside her book. I watched as I furiously dialed a 4 on the phone, over and over. It rang through the wall, faint, as desperate for Dom to answer as I was, but he never did.
I tried the other numbers too, even the front desk with one last ounce of hope to ever make it out of here alive. According to the schedule Charlotte had explained during my tour, breakfast was served at 9AM sharp, and it had to be close.
On the third ring, the sickly sweet voice of Cameron came through the line.
“What the actual fuck is this place?” I spat back at her.
“What ever do you mean?” She said, and I wanted to choke her between my fat folds til her skinny ass went limp.
“I was awake last night; I know what goes on here when you think we’re asleep, and I want out. I don’t care about them. You do whatever you want to anyone else, but let me out of here. I won’t tell the cops.”
Pretty much all of that was a lie. I would absolutely be going to the police, or at least I would’ve, if this were just the freaky surgery kink chophouse that it seemed like on the surface. And I did care what happened to the others, but if pretending I didn’t got me out of here, then so be it.
“Are you going to eat your food?” came the reply, and my heart dropped into my empty stomach.
On the bed behind me sat my full plates of brinner from the night before. They were watching me. I checked around the room and saw nothing but grey concrete around me.
I slammed the phone down. The receiver shook beneath my hand and I nearly tossed it across the room. Carmen was calling me back, telling me to be a good little piggy and eat my slop so they could fatten me up for the harvest. Well, I wouldn’t listen to it, mostly cause that was a terrifying thought. But when the phone stopped ringing, I heard a BANG BANG from the wall to my left, and the receiver shook again.
“Oh God, Dom?” I practically sobbed as I answered the phone.
“Wassap?” he said back, cheerful if not a little bit gruffly. “You wanna hit the gym with me later? Just kidding.”
“Are you okay? You’re alive?”
He assured me he’d checked, and he was very much alive. Then he asked me what I was talking about.
“Last night, you were screaming and banging on the walls. It was awful, just awful.”
“Now that sounds like a crazy nightmare,” he said, but I didn’t dream it, I was positive. I’d stayed awake, heard the awful things that happen here at night, and my one confidant thought I was trying to be funny. I told him I’d heard it happen in every room.
“Well lemme three-way Jay again,” Dom said, dialing. “Not like that, but you know.”
Jay didn’t answer, not the first time, not the fifth. We tried Shelly too; same thing.
“Maybe they checked out,” said Dom, nonchalantly. How did he not know what was going on? They were dead; dead as fuck, I was sure of it. And either Dom or myself would be next.
“I dunno,” he said. “I slept like a baby last night. Is it possible you’re having a reaction to the meds?”
Those damn pills stared back at me from the tiny cups on my tray. Two of them, one from dinner the first night, one from brinner yesterday, both taunting me from right up there, as if to say, it’ll just be easier if you take me. Forget and die blissfully unaware like Dom.
Then my door opened, and in stepped Bariatric Barry.
After my slew of curses and an attempt to launch the pillow over at him, he spoke calmly.
“Please hang up the phone.”
And then he waited. I was stubborn, remember? I didn’t hang up for a minute, maybe more, just staring at him as he looked back, his eyes glazed over blankly like he was looking through me. Maybe he was.
Dom was unfortunately no help, and as much as he might be my confidant, he wasn’t a lifeline right now. I finally put the receiver back on the black telephone.
“Thanks!” the doctor said. He shuffled over to the TV and turned it back on.
“Hungry, my little toad?” he said.
Um, absolutely the fuck no. How about that one? But again Barry just stared at me, until–
“If you’d like to get out of here, then get up and hit me with that phone,” he said. “Clock me over the head, bash my brains in until they’re seeped in with the dust and dirt on the floor. Then run out of here and escape. No one will stop you.”
I gulped, my extremities going numb as he said it.
“No?” Barry leaned against the TV, now behind it. “If you won’t do it for yourself, let me assure you that no one else will do it for you.”
I threw the phone in response, and my arms arched even doing just that much, hey-babies jiggling out from the robe sleeves.
“Now eat.”
Barry looked through me with those cold, dead eyes that have done this hundreds of times, if not more. It was clear by how nonchalant he spoke. Nothing I did would matter. I wasn’t the first to be stubborn, I wasn’t the first to wish I was stronger, wish I could escape alone. So what choice did I have, really? I could either starve to death, or this guy could kill me on a full stomach. So as the tempting fumes of the food from the night before made their way to me from the bed, I gave in.
I stuffed my face, shoveled eggs down my gullet like a hamster with expandable cheeks. I ate the pancakes, grabbed their buttery goodness with my bare hands as they crumbled, cracked from the dry air, and I pressed them inside my mouth without so much as letting them touch my tongue. Syrup and bacon grease and powdered sugar dripped and caked and sprinkled from my chin onto my neck, onto my chest and I was no longer trapped in this hellhole. I was at a home, eating a delicious Wafflehouse breakfast that had just been delivered, at least for a moment.
And then as I finally swallowed, the dry chunks of food building up in the back of my throat, I tasted it – the thing that had been covered up by the freshness before – the smell.
The smell of dead meat, rotting out in the sun on blacktop pavement next to a dumpster that leaked sludge onto an alleyway floor. A dirty diaper heated in the microwave with a side of two week old honeybaked ham.
Everything I’d eaten was rotten, soaked with the smell that wafted in and dissipated with the cart. It wasn’t Charlie, it wasn’t a weird meal someone had made, it was everything. Every little thing on that cart, built up a tiny bit of the smell, just enough for it to be detectable when all together, but hidden when the fresh food went in your mouth. Now that it had been out for over twelve hours, I could taste what it was really made of. And I wanted to yank my tongue out and throw it at Barry like the phone, letting it flop weakly to the ground between us.
I couldn’t even vomit. I tried, gagged on purpose but my body wouldn’t let me, greedily clinging on to any nutrients in the slop. And all the while, all the dry heaving and making a scene, Barry just watched, smiling at me, letting that weird documentary play beneath his folded arms, a kid watching a whale show through the Aquarium glass.
It was the tail end of the documentary now, a part I hadn’t made it to the first night as it looped. On it, the Asian man and the videographer made it across a bridge while their guide stayed back. He didn’t dare go with them, a look of fear on his face as the camera panned back to him, then onward again as the pair walked.
They looked over the edge of a large overhang to a whirlpool of water under them, white foam spraying and hissing all around. And in an instant, the Asian man was sprayed with white that seemed to sizzle against his skin, and as the water cloud dissipated, he was gone. The camera panned back down to the whirlpool and I felt the peripherals of my vision begin to haze. As black encroached my sight, I got dizzy, lightheaded as the water on the screen swirled around and around and around, a new slight-red hue growing under it.
My eyelids were heavy, so heavy, and before I could even open them, I heard the slurping. Like a straw at the bottom of a Big Gulp, nothing left but ice as you still try to suck up the last bit of vapor. That sound was coming from me. I could feel it before I saw it – a pressure in my stomach, my belly button.
When I finally forced my head up, my gaze down, it still took me a few seconds filled with disgusting gulping to understand what I was looking at. Out from a fold in my stomach stuck a long, hard tube, like the nose of a vacuum, see through, and I watched as pink chunks of tissue were hoovered from my stomach, up through this tube, wet cotton candy swirling around inside before more pushed it out of the way.
I grabbed at the tube at the base, the rest of it hanging over the edge of my bed. I held on as tight as my weak grip let me, and I pulled up with a grunt. My voice was hoarse, and I realized I’d been screaming until now. As I yanked at it, it came loose and some of the sloshy refuse sloughed off onto my stomach, the sucking sound suddenly replaced with a high-pitched whine, like that of an injured dog.
And that’s when I realized that the tube wasn’t plastic or glass. It was malleable, hard on the outside, but with give when I tried to squeeze. It was organic, and the whimpering came from it.
It whipped back, away from me, down onto the ground and I leaned over after it. Like a hose being reeled back in, the tube slithered as it was pulled back through a small crack in the door. I rolled off the bed, collapsed onto my stomach as it throbbed, and I saw the end of the tube disappear from my room, leaving behind the same foul smell as the food, this time in the form of a liquid snail trail on the concrete. But the door was open, unlocked.
I shuffled forward, feeling lighter than before, even if I was still numb. Skin hung down from my stomach and my arms, loose and flapping as I pushed up to my knees and scrambled for the door. Please don’t close; please don’t close. Whoever was out there, Colleen, Barry or the owner of the tube, screw them, keep the door open. I can’t stay here any longer. I refuse to let myself waste away.
Minutes passed, maybe an hour as I crawled to the door, hand over hand, fingernails digging into bits of concrete, knees scraping raw with each pained shuffle. Then my hand felt wood, fresh, flowing air, a doorknob and I was up on my feet.
The lobby was empty, eerily quiet. What time was it? Through the thick glass doors, I saw the night’s sky, cloudy with a barely-visible moon. The exit was a few feet from me, and yet still so far. Two doors, latched shut with a deadbolt stood between me and freedom. I had to try.
I threw myself at the welcome desk, crashed down onto the counter, sending all of Chelsie’s crap flying to the ground. Good. The food cart rested nearby and I could shimmy my way across, leaning on the counter. I reached it, leaned on it and it supported me. Thank God we all ordered a ton of food held up on this tiny cart. Now I was mobile. Now I could escape. Just a few slides of my makeshift walker and I would be at the front door; I would slam into it, use my weight to my advantage or throw something through the glass. Until I heard a familiar scream in the distance.
Dom.
The darkened spa area behind the desk welcomed me with all the friendliness of a slaughterhouse. Who knows what was in there? And just like Barry said: If somebody wanted to be saved, they had to do it themselves, Dom included.
So then why did I find myself scooting the cart into the unlit gym, past the spa and massage tables that all loomed like short creatures in the dark, waiting to snatch me with their tubes. I followed the screaming, made my way further in and found another wooden door, cracked open.
Even in the dim light, I could tell there was something on the floor keeping Dom’s door propped. I ran into it with a bump on the cart wheel that sent me toppling over. The door swung against the wall as I caught myself, slamming into a wet, soft sponge-like substance on the floor. Goopy, malleable to the touch like what I’d always imagined a bowel felt like from medical TV dramas. And it ran across the whole floor, into Dom’s room and back down into the darkness of the spa like a giant hose, but one that moved, breathed, and very much disliked me being on top of it. Good.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” came a chipper voice behind me.
Charlemagne flicked on the overhead light and grinned at me, her stupid shiny eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed in fervor as she looked inside the room. I followed her gaze and saw the monstrous tube inserted into Dom’s stomach as he howled and lashed at it futilely in his comatose state. It was sucking out the fat from Dom’s massive body, hoovering it up and down through the giant pipe that I leaned on. So I smashed at it.
I pushed myself up, let myself fall down, putting pressure across it and I saw a bulge build, a backup clog right in front of me as it swelled and tripled in size. The tip of the tube shot out from Dom’s stomach, trying to stop the flow of more tissue, but it was too late. The backup bubbled and inflated to the point where it was completely see-through, a balloon too inflated. Then it burst, flung liquid and goop across the room, on my face, in my mouth, but I didn’t care. Celeste shrieked in panic and I scrambled over to Dom as the damaged creature retracted into the darkness.
“Dom. Dom!” I patted at him, trying to wake him. His face was thin, more ragged and older than he seemed from his voice. Whatever glow he’d had in his smile that I could hear through the phone was gone. Blood dripped from the new hole in his stomach, and before I could do anything to patch it up, I got hit in the head from behind, sending me onto the bed next to Dom.
“You cancer!” Chancey screamed as she aimed the phone for another strike. It came down hard on my chest and I knew I’d struggle to breath with another hit, so I did the only thing I could – I rolled myself off the bed and onto the floor.
Next to me, chunks of the exploded tube slithered across the floor toward each other like inch worms congregating together. One two touched, they fused as if they’d never been apart. Colette smacked me in the back with the phone, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad this time.
She and I were covered in the bits of creature that exploded all over, and it gave me an idea. I grabbed for the ball of pink goo now pulsating on the floor. When I picked it up, it squealed a high-pitched whine from a newly-formed mouth. I threw it at Chuckie’s head.
It fused with the rest of the pink chunks and she thrashed around, dropping the phone with frantic grunts and swats. This was my opportunity.
I clung to the bedframe, used the last of my strength to pull myself up and back to Dom. He was awake, looking at me with droopy eyelids. He was bleeding heavily from the gash in his stomach, and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t hit the tube, it wouldn’t have thrashed. I could’ve pulled it out as smoothly as it came out of me. Dom would have lived, if not for me.
“Hey Room Two,” he smiled at me weakly. For a moment, the brightness in his voice was back, and I tried to force a smile for him, but he saw through it.
Then the monstrous drone from the spa depths came again.
“You gotta go,” he said and I shook my head. “It’s okay. It is. I won’t remember any of this in the morning anyway, right?”
Tears wet my cheeks, and I wanted to stay with Dom, to do anything to move him, to cart him out, for both of us to escape from here, but he was right. I could barely move myself.
With a squeeze of my hand, Dom closed his eyes. I reached down to Callie and dug through her pockets for the keys. She was just breathing heavily on the floor as more bits of pink good stuck to her head. I found the keys, hoped they were for the front door and shuffled as fast as I could out of the room and back into the hall.
Feeling was returning to my legs and I didn’t need the cart to flee; I just padded along the walls through the spa. And then I saw it, in the back of the gym that no one used, the floor had opened up into a giant pit with bits of pink goo in a trail leading back down. Before turning away, the thin, shaking tube peered its way over the lip of the pit and back onto the floor, slithering. Fuck looking down there; I was gone.
But as I saw the desk through the next hallway, a heavy thud against the wall rang out behind me. For a moment, my heart leaped and I thought it might be Dom’s one last bang against the wall; he was okay. But I turned back to see…
Camila, smacking against the walls as she pushed herself after me, a large pink lump sticking off the side of her head and onto her neck. It reeled as she moved, and whatever was in the pit bellowed so loud it shook the foundation of the building. I pushed myself even faster and so did Cora.
I made it to the desk, flopped against it and clambered to the door. My stupid hands shook as I tried the keys like some helpless victim in a slasher movie, Carmen growing ever-closer behind me.
She rounded the corner, close enough for me to smell the raw sewage smell emanating off the pink glob. Damn this girl and her persistence. She stepped closer and the tube slithered along the floor next to her.
“No one… escapes…” she said, wheezing and barely able to stand by the way she hunched. The tube wrapped its way around the floor next to her, coming closer to me.
Of course she had thirty fucking keys on this ring, and I couldn’t find the right one. She was one me, grabbed me by the shoulders and held on. The tube lifted in front of me like a snake about to strike, and the pink attached to Celine’s neck turned its “head” toward me, glared at me with tight eyes and perfect teeth. Barry.
Which meant… Chantal wasn’t a part of this thing, or she would’ve been absorbed too. Which then meant that she was as much a potential target as I was.
I grabbed the tube, latched onto it with a chokehold and jammed it into Crystal’s perfectly sculpted cheek. Her eyes shifted, turning toward the tube in a panic, widened. Then she looked at me with her mouth agape as the tube SUCKED. Her skin tightened to the bone and she collapsed to her knees, letting go of me. I turned back to the keys and fumbled through them as the creature behind me slurped and whistled like a staw at the bottom of an ice-filled soda. Chastity reached a hand out at me, breathing terribly, a gasp for air, anything inside her and the tube pulled back with another howl rippling from the chasm in the spa.
The building shook and the tube retracted again. Then I heard the sound of stone moving, boulders crumbling and nails or teeth gnashing against concrete. It was coming out of the pit.
With a crash, the glass in front of me shattered as the walls shook with every step of the creature behind me, but I didn’t look. I didn’t dare. I covered my face and stepped through the broken glass door, then through the other and out into –
The light of sunrise. The sweet, fresh air of the outdoors. I ran for the first time in years, threw myself toward as heavily and as hard as I could, gasping for air, fighting for every step. And I kept running as the creature behind me shrieked one more time. I saw a giant pink glob near the receptionist desk, as CRASH, the building collapsed overhead, slammed down into a pile of rubble and everything was silent.
With that, I stopped, nearly fell over looking back. I could finally breathe, buckled over and inhaled as much as my lungs would let me. Nothing moved from the rubble, no monster, no Barry, no Chrissy.
I panted. It was over. “Zero… stars, assholes.”
It doesn’t matter to me if you believe me or not. Nobody trusts every review they read online. But, please, if you ever feel the desire to go to the lowest rated doctor on ZocDoc…
Avoid, avoid, avoid.
– #RachelsReviews