The Glutton

It’s been five days since Chicago went dark. Those disgusting gurgling sounds coming from the streets are chipping away at my sanity. That thing in the streets, it’s hard to explain what it is. In fact no one knew what it was. All I know is that whatever it is, has spread beyond the city. Whatever this thing is, it’s the end of humanity.

     Two weeks ago we heard dozens of reports of missing people, all from a run down neighborhood in the south suburbs. Over the next few days, the dozens turned into hundreds. In every case, absolutely zero pieces of evidence were found. Everyone was baffled. A state of emergency was declared and 10:00 curfew was put in place and strictly enforced. Anyone caught still outside was promptly arrested. But the missing person’s reports continued and they only grew. A friend of mine created a digital map of the overall area of missing persons reports that would update itself as more and more people vanished. In the center of it was that small neighborhood where it all started, and the red area surrounding it formed a blob around it and it grew bigger every few hours, even with the increased police presence. Then it happened. We didn’t find the ‘people’ causing the kidnappings. It found all of us.

     I was at work when it happened. It came from the sewers. Wherever there was a sewer drain, it oozed out. The city was in mass panic. No one knew what was happening. Every single news channel all said the same thing. Don’t go near the substance and most importantly, don’t make contact. Now I worked at near the top of my building so I was 56 floors above whatever was going on, so I felt reasonably safe where I was. Every one of my colleagues immediately chose to flee. I tried calling them to see if they got away. Not one answered. I was too scared to check the windows to see what was going on outside. The news stopped rolling and all I had to listen to were the sounds of screams, cars crashing, and gunshots. After a few hours the sounds of chaos grew quiet, except for a citywide chorus of gurgling screams. When I heard it, I broke down. What the hell was going on down below? That night I slept in the bathroom on my floor. It was the only place where I could go to block out the screams. The next morning the screams were gone. It felt so eery to have complete silence in a city. After buying some food from a vending machine I worked up the courage to look outside.

     What I saw was nothing like any apocalypse movie I’d ever seen. I didn’t see cars on fire and stores broken into. All I saw was a flood of a sickly yellow substance streaked with red in many areas covering every street. It stretched as far as the eye could see. It looked worse than any flood disaster movie I’d ever seen, only this wasn’t rain. It looked to be flooding at least 10 feet high, with cars and lamp posts protruding from the top. I was in total shock. Where was everyone? When would the military come and rescue people trapped in the buildings? I couldn’t get a connection. I was alone, cut off from the world. I wasn’t sure how car out this flood stretched. I found some keys in a storage room and unlocked the door to the roof. It was nice to get a breath of fresh air. At least the flood down in the streets didn’t smell.

     I spent the next two days sleeping on the roof, waiting for rescue to arrive. I had a pair of binoculars our company had on the roof of our building for sightseeing. Three days ago finally saw another person while looking out over the roof. He was next to a broken window about ten stories above ground level in the building across the street from me. I could see he was handling lots of rope with a hook on the end. He looked terrified, and kept looking behind him every few seconds. I was about to call out to him when I saw something shimmer by his side. A machete, and it was red. I figured if this man was dangerous, I shouldn’t let him know I was here. As the minutes went by, he kept making his rope longer while looking behind. Finally he finished tying it and tried throwing one end to my building. Time after time he failed again. The rope wouldn’t latch on to anything and he’d have to pull it back. He looked more and more terrified with every swing and miss. Eventually, to my disbelief, he looked behind one last time, let out a scream, and heaved the rope with all his might across the street to my building. It must have caught something because it stuck. The man pulled hard on the rope to make sure it was secure. He then tied the rope to a bar near his window, grabbed a backpack and his machete, and proceeded to hang from the rope.

     I watched as he shimmied along, slowly at first. He looked back toward the window he came from, started panicking and moved faster. I focused my binoculars at the window and couldn’t believe what I saw. The substance was gushing out his window. Had it flood his building? How could that goo flood the 10th floor of his building without being barely over one story on ground level? I didn’t think long before I heard a snap. The man plummeted toward the ground. He let out a scream that echoed throughout the streets. I could only describe it as a roar from someone falling into the fiery pits of Hell. He fell for a few seconds. What happened next is how I came to call this flood ‘The Glutton’.

     I hoped the man to die upon impact, like how one would die falling into water from a high height. What happened I would not doom onto any man. Before he even hit the flood, hundreds, if not thousands of skinny, veiny tentacles shot up from the goo and wrapped around him with lightning speed. The veiny tentacles covered almost all of his body as he hit the flood and went under. I hoped he’d died on impact. I was wrong. A few seconds later he resurfaced, screaming in absolute anguish. It looked like there were less veins on him, but when I zoomed in closer with my binoculars I was introduced to the most terrifying thing I’d ever see in my life. The veins were swarming inside him. They went in through his skin, mouth, nose, and eyes. All the while he was still screaming. The veins started to swell, and the man’s skin was changing. He was melting. The skin of his arms, sides, and legs fused with the Glutton, all the while the veins getting fatter, sucking more blood and god knows what else out of him. His screams become gurgled from choking on blood, veins, and the melted skin from what was once his lips. This man was suffering a fate worse than death. He was slowly becoming a part of the Glutton. I just stood at the top of my building, frozen in place, unable to look away. Then I heard something that snapped me out of my trance.

     “Shoot me! Please!” The man cried out from below, with only the remnants of his face now sticking out of the Glutton. He must have seen me looking down upon him as he was being devoured from the inside and out.

     I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? I didn’t have a gun…

     “Shoot me! I beg you! Plea-”

     Just as he was about to finish, an explosion of Glutton and veins erupted from his mouth and brought the rest of his face down under. The only thing left of him was a mouth, just barely peaking the surface, permanently opened wide in a frozen scream. All the veins retreated back into the Glutton and all went quiet.

     That was three days ago. I’m typing this because I fear my time is almost up. Ever since I saw that man die, the Glutton has slowly been moving up the sides of my building. It only has about 10 floors to go before it reaches the roof. It must have saw me through the man’s eyes in his final moments. There’s still been no rescue and I doubt it’s coming. The Glutton knows I’m here and it’s coming.

 I hear a voice. It’s that man’s voice, down in the street.

“We want your body.”