There Used to Be People Here

Scott Dewey, who was soon to be Bill Bethany’s first and last kill, waddled goose-like with his legs pressed together, his feet turned inward for support. It was a trick he’d taught himself when he was younger to keep from wetting the front of his pants. His hand, a brown blur beneath the swaying club lights in Larson’s Alley, was intertwined between a stranger’s fingers. He’d only met the man moments before, when Scott first felt the urge to pee, and suddenly someone had been beside him asking to tag along.

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Scott hadn’t had the energy to say no, and besides, the entire reason he’d entered the boy bar in the first place was exactly this: to find a stranger who would take his hand and push him against the wall and maybe, if the kissing went well enough, make love that night and breakfast in the morning. In spite of everything inner-city dwellers in Wenton, Mississippi, tried to convince unknowing outsiders, there were more than enough men in the small 1970s town who were willing to try.

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Together, Scott and his stranger followed the flicker of the bathroom sign and braced for the smell of bodily fluids. Scott expected the usual business: a pretty boy fixing makeup by the sink, one or two at the urinals, and a stall shaking in the back corner. The room was completely empty besides the skitter of a mouse above the ceiling. So Scott, in a moment of boldness and delirium, turned the lock on the bathroom door. He’d done it before, a flirtatious act of showmanship, and it had always yielded a positive response.

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This stranger, though— Bill, but Scott would never know his name—could do little else but stare. Stare without mercy, eyes flicking incessantly back and forth. It was difficult to tell whether his colorless pupils were real or conjured by bourbon. The bruises around his sockets glowed brighter under the bathroom lights. Scott cringed at the blood crusted around his nose and down his violet lips.

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And before Scott could ask for privacy to relieve himself, Bill smiled and pressed his midnight partner against the wall. He moved his hands to his waist, as if preparing to unbuckle the belt pinning his cargo pants to his stomach. Scott braced himself against the tiles; he didn’t mind rough. All his focus went to squeezing his bladder to keep from leaking. He half expected the freak to lash the strap across his chest, although a kiss was what he wanted. But Bill hadn’t gone for his belt at all, and instead tore sweaty clothes from his rippling belly, and Scott screamed at the sight.

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Unlike Scott Dewey’s smooth, unshifting skin, Bill Bethany’s stomach moved, bucking and rearing like a horse’s head. It was a globe swollen with pulsing flesh, and when the belly suddenly began to deflate, a tumor exploded from the stranger’s throat. The thing clicked rows of needle teeth and some astral language, like a mass of scarred entrails gleaming with heat. It wound from the carcass until clothes slid down the bones and crumpled to the floor, and the animal drooled over Scott’s head.

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He wanted to run. Even eyeless, the gaze of the predator held him in place.