Crawlies-Tradup

Crawlies

Troy Tradup

Jenny had just enough time for a run and a shower before she needed to leave for the airport. She dressed quickly – shorts, sports bra, neon pink t-shirt – and laced on her favorite pair of running shoes. She hoped one quick circuit around the park would help calm the restless legs and general twitchiness she always felt on airplanes. She did a cursory stretch, scratched Mitch’s ancient cat Milo behind the ears when he came over for a quick rub against her leg, and then she was out the door.

The afternoon was gorgeously warm after the rough winter just ended, the sky cloudless and sharply blue. Bright sunshine, low humidity, barest of breezes out of the north. A perfect spring day in Minnesota, where May could bring anything from blizzard to tornado.

Three-quarters of a mile into her circuit, Jenny realized she hadn’t put on any bug spray. Regardless of the weather, springtime in Minnesota meant bugs. Mosquitoes, gnats, spiders, chiggers, ticks – Jenny couldn’t tolerate any of them. Her running path circled a small pond, glorious with ducks and geese and frogs and turtles, but also lousy with all the little crawly things Jenny despised. And she had forgotten the damned bug spray!

Ah well, she had a lot on her mind. This conference was a huge opportunity, a long-delayed chance to prove to her boss that she wasn’t merely some blonde ditz he’d inherited after his last promotion. People had been underestimating her for as long as she could remember, but this trip would finally show everyone exactly what she was capable of. First, she would manage this short run without bug spray, then she would kick some serious ass in Vegas. She pushed herself into a sprint and entered the canopy of trees that covered the second mile of her circuit.

And abruptly stopped.

It was just a bull snake, sunning itself on the warm blacktop of the running path, but it was a big one. Certainly bigger than the pencil-thin garter snakes Jenny remembered slithering through the yard when she was growing up.

Jenny wasn’t particularly afraid of snakes, nor did she dislike them in the same way she did bugs, but still – a snake. She considered cutting her run short, or even jumping over the snake, but before she could decide the snake started gliding directly toward her.

“Jesus!” she said. She took an involuntary step off the blacktop and into the dusty leaves and dry grass at the side of the path. This was definitely not a place she wanted to be – she thought of the blacktop as a thin strip of safety between roiling colonies of crawling things – but she didn’t want to be any closer to the snake, either.

Abruptly, the snake stopped and lifted its head. It flicked out its tongue to taste the air. Perhaps sensing Jenny’s presence, the snake moved off the warm blacktop and disappeared silently into the weeds.

Jenny remained frozen for a moment, then remembered she was still standing in the bug zone and jumped back on the path. She brushed furiously at her shoes and ankles and stomped her feet to dislodge any little travelers that might be trying to hitch a ride home with her.

So much for a run to settle me, she thought. She turned and ran home, kicking off her shoes in the circular drive outside the building and carrying them at arm’s length through the lobby and down the hall to the apartment. Once inside, she pulled a garbage bag out of the cupboard and snapped it open one-handed. She dropped the shoes inside, then stripped off her clothes and added them to the bag. She knotted the top of the bag and took it to the patio. She’d disinfect everything once she got home from Vegas. Or maybe she’d ask Mitch to do it when he got home. He’d tease her – another guy who thought of her only in one particular way – but he’d do it anyway. True love.

She made the shower extra hot and soaped every part of herself twice, scrubbing her skin with a loofah until it was nearly raw.

Why am I so freaked out? she wondered. I’ve touched grass before! She supposed it was a combination of things – stress over the impending trip, weight of her own hopes and expectations, unexpected snake, forgetting to put on bug spray. Men. Life. Everything. Mitch would probably tell her she must be getting her period.

By the time she stepped out of the shower, she was feeling more herself. Next: get dressed, note for Mitch, feed Milo, Uber, airport, binge a few episodes of whatever was waiting on her iPad, dinner and an icy martini in the hotel bar, talk to Mitch, bed. Anything that had crawled on her in the park had certainly been washed off in the steaming shower – she could pack it away and not think about it again.

Even when she had to reach down several times during the flight to scratch a vague itch behind her right knee, the incident that afternoon didn’t rise to the surface in any significant way; she was always itchy on airplanes.

She shifted a little, trying to get comfortable, and accidentally jostled the man next to her out of his doze. By way of apology, she asked if she could buy him a drink. Why wait for the hotel? She was thirsty now – parched almost – and suddenly it felt like all the martinis in the world would not quench the desire that seemed to be growing inside her with every passing mile.

Milo started meowing on the other side of the door the second Mitch jangled his keys out of his pocket. The vocals seemed so urgent and specific, Mitch thought even a stranger would understand: Food, food, I’m starving, you’ve betrayed me yet again!

Mitch got the door open and dropped his bags in the entryway, Milo weaving around his feet and voicing his relentless complaint. The cat slinked a few steps toward the kitchen, then moved back to stare plaintively up at Mitch. Meow, kitchen, back, stare. Meow, kitchen, back, stare.

“Alright already,” Mitch said. “You’ve been alone, like, four hours. You’re not exactly wasting away.”

He followed the cat into the kitchen, where both food and water dishes remained perfectly full. “Faker,” Mitch said. He scooped Milo up and nuzzled the cat’s forehead with his own.

Milo’s entire being rumbled to life in a full-throated purr.

Mitch carried Milo into the bedroom and plopped him in the middle of the bed. There was a note from Jenny on the dresser, and Mitch scanned it while changing his travel clothes for shorts and a t-shirt. I’ll miss you honey, back Sunday, something something blah blah, xxx ooo, every i dotted with a tiny heart like they were still in high school – Jesus. P.S. Don’t worry about the bag on the patio, I’ll explain when we talk.

Mitch was certain he wouldn’t have noticed the bag on the patio if left to his own devices, but since Jenny had mentioned it, he assumed he was supposed to do something about it. He gave Milo a quick scratch on the belly and padded out to the patio.

The bag was your basic black trash bag, presumably containing something other than trash or Jenny would have taken it down to the garbage chute before she left for the airport. Mitch loosened the knot that held the bag closed. Clothes, shoes, a dry papery smell like dead leaves or very old spices. He started to reach in but abruptly pulled his hand back. Maybe she stepped in something gross. The bag didn’t smell bad, however, just … musky cinnamon tree-bark weeds dirt. Poison ivy? Mitch left the bag on the patio. He’d hear the story soon enough and, knowing Jenny, it would be interminable.

He went into the kitchen to wash his hands. Reaching for the faucet, he felt a pinprick between thumb and forefinger on his right hand. He flipped on the counter light and brought his hand up to look. A whitish speck jittered on the thin web of flesh. Too small for a tick, and the wrong color, but some sort of mite or something. A crawlie, Jenny would have called it. Apparently, the little fucker had just bitten him. A tiny bead of blood rose out of his skin, and the crawlie instantly grew more animated.

Mitch flipped on the hot water and washed away critter and blood in a single whoosh. He worked antibacterial soap into a froth and massaged the bite area and then both hands for two solid choruses of “The Birthday Song”. He let his hands air-dry and then, for good measure, gave them a healthy glop of hand sanitizer. He didn’t quite have Jenny’s level of enthusiasm for germkilling, but they’d been together for three years now and, sooner or later, well, you live with a bat, you fly like a bat. Mitch laughed and grabbed a beer from the fridge.

Several hours later, Mitch swam up out of muddy thoughts to the glow of a muted TV showing basketball highlights. Milo dozed on the sofa next to him and glanced up briefly as Mitch leaned forward to grab his beer bottle from the coffee table.

Annoyingly, the bottle was empty. Mitch’s mouth was dry, thick with sleep funk and the taste of dust. Three empty water bottles lay on the coffee table – he must have gone to the fridge and drained each of them without realizing. Sleepwalking? Jet lag? He was still thirstier than fuck, and now his stomach gave a loud rumble as well.

The clock on the DVR read just after nine. Jenny should be at her hotel by now. He checked his phone, but there had been no calls or texts. Weird, but probably she was just waiting until she was back from dinner and climbing into bed.

Jesus, he was thirsty. Dry – it felt so dry here after the humid week in Atlanta. And his hunger was exploding into righteous indignation now. He heaved himself off the sofa, sending a rush of blood to his brain. He checked the fridge for food but found nothing appealing. He grabbed another water and guzzled it down while he called their favorite pizza place – favorite primarily because it was closest. He ordered a large hand-tossed with everything, a side of boneless wings and two large sodas. They told him forty minutes and he honestly wondered if he could wait that long – he thought he might starve to death before then.

He was too dry, he smelled funky, his head was a bank of impenetrable fog. He needed a shower, and a shower would take his mind off that long forty minutes before the food arrived. He trudged into the bathroom and turned the water as hot as he could stand it. He felt like he could stand in that steam forever. Under the rushing water, he didn’t even feel all that hungry anymore.

He still planned to make short work of that pizza when it arrived, however.

He was still in the shower when the buzzer rang, and it took a moment to realize what he was hearing. That brain fog again – muddy, undefined thoughts. And the buzzer, and then the buzzer again.

Mitch turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. “Coming – sorry!” he called. He wrapped a towel around his waist and padded into the entryway, trying not to slip on the hall tile. He flipped the deadbolt and headed for the bedroom. “It’s open,” he called. “Just have to get my wallet.” He heard the door open and close, and a young male voice call out, “Angelo’s.”

Mitch came out of the bedroom, hair dripping, wallet in hand, towel sagging on one side.

The kid was their regular delivery kid, comfortable enough to go into the kitchen and place the food and sodas on the granite island. He turned at Mitch’s approach, hesitating a moment when he saw Mitch’s bare chest and the towel and the little puddles dripping onto the tile around Mitch’s feet. “Um, that’s twenty-six fifty,” he said.

“Sorry,” Mitch said. “I zoned out in the shower. Been traveling all day and—” He took a step forward, opening his wallet, and the towel lost its precipitous grip and fell to the floor.

The boy flushed and took a step back. “Listen,” he said. “I’m flattered and all that but, you know, I’m not really into that sort of stuff. I’m just trying to make a living, ya know?”

Mitch looked at the boy, uncomprehending, then glanced down at his nakedness and realized the issue. He laughed. Then, inexplicably, he continued to move toward the boy.

The boy stumbled back, not really worried but not thrilled, either. It happened once in a while. Usually some lonely old dude flashing him at the door, and those guys tended to tip pretty well so he wouldn’t report them … but now he’d managed to trap himself in this narrow kitchen, and this dude was young and in shape and still coming towards him, and suddenly he didn’t really care about a tip or even the cost of the order – he just wanted out.

The boy lunged, planning to dart around the naked dude and make for the door, but his foot hit something slippery, sending him into an awkward skid. He overbalanced and ended up crashing to the floor, the naked man’s groin almost directly in his face – just fucking perfect.

The boy put out a hand to leverage himself back up, but his hand hit the same slick spot that had caused him to fall. He glanced down.

“Jesus Christ!” he said. “Dude, was that your cat?”

Mitch paused. His mind was so clouded, so dry, so hungry, so thirsty. Finally, it cleared enough to answer. “Forty minutes was too long,” he said. “And I was so fucking hungry.”

He stooped down to help the boy up. There was plenty of food in the apartment now.

Jenny shared a cab with the man from the plane. His name was Roger Deacon and he was in town for a software conference. Cyber security, computer bugs – something. Jenny was going over tomorrow’s presentation in her head and only half-listening.

In Roger’s hotel room, they stripped off their clothes and fell into bed like the first people ever to discover sex. After some initial jockeying for position, Roger lay back and let Jenny ease herself down onto him.

The skin on her breasts and abdomen had a dusty sheen in the heady desert sun streaming through the window. Small patches stood out on one shoulder and just above her clavicle – smooth and shiny bumps like a beetle’s shell.

“What the fuck is that?” Roger said, but she rocked back to drive him deeper. They found a rhythm, and then it was just movement and heat and itch and desire. Jenny leaned down and pressed her lips against Roger’s neck. “No marks,” he said. “I’ve got a wife at home.”

Jenny giggled against his throat and clamped down hard.

“Stop! Fuck!” Roger jerked his neck away from the girl’s mouth and pushed her back. There was blood on her lips – how the fuck would he explain that when he got home?

“Listen—” he said, meaning to stop things now no matter how much his balls might hate him for it, but Jenny did something with her pelvis that drove him even deeper, impossibly deep, and he could tell from her breathing that she was getting close. That made him close, and really, at this point, the damage was already done.

He watched her face – the pale skin flushed with heat and desire, the short blonde hair matted against her forehead, the eyes that rolled as if in dream behind closed lids – and he moved, continued to move, moved inside her right on the very knife’s edge of climax. Finally, he knew the point of no return was upon them. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember your name.” Jenny opened her eyes and looked thoughtful. “I don’t have a name anymore,” she said. She opened her mouth wide and gave him a brief glimpse of what she was becoming. Then she lunged and bit the scream from his throat even as his final pumping and thrashing flooded her insides with heat and passion and burgeoning new life.

After he had finished most of the delivery boy, and the pizza and wings, Mitch drank both sodas. Then the remaining bottles of water from the fridge. The remaining beers. The dregs of a carton of Jenny’s almond milk. His thirst was endless, untouchable.

He moved back to the shower and ran the water cool this time, trying to focus the stream directly into his mouth. It helped, but not enough.

When the thirst finally overwhelmed him, he turned off the water and lay down in the tub. The ceramic felt cool against his parched skin at first, but soon warmed to his body temperature, which seemed to be rising exponentially beyond fever and into something he’d never experienced. He had a vague sense of flesh drying, flaking away – of substance turning to dust like some old saying he thought he should remember but didn’t.

When Angelo’s Pizza finally reported their delivery boy missing three hours later, police found the boy’s Corolla still idling in the apartment building’s drop-off zone. On Mitch’s kitchen floor, they discovered two smears of inconceivable gore – one large, one small – and, in the bathtub, a vaguely human-shaped mound of dun-colored dust.

Despite the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the door of Roger Deacon’s room, hotel management finally relented to multiple phone calls from Roger Deacon’s wife the next afternoon and asked a maintenance man to peek inside. The room was empty and undisturbed, save for a swatch of sticky, rust-colored goo across one of the pillows and a thin layer of cocoa-colored powder pressed into the sheets in the general shape of a man. Running a finger across the impression, two thoughts flashed through the maintenance man’s mind simultaneously: moth’s wing / Shroud of Turin. Wiping his finger against one pant leg, the man transferred three tiny white mites to the denim fabric and carried them home at the end of his shift.

It was still remarkably easy for an attractive young woman to hitch a ride from Nevada to California, no matter how strung out she might seem. Or perhaps because she seemed too strung out to put up much of a fight.

Crossing the desert, the creature that had once been Jenny gathered three more deposits of sperm and left mounds of dust on the driver’s seats of three vehicles pulled over to the side of the road.

In California, she moved north up the Pacific Coast Highway, collecting two more deposits and infecting a woman who suddenly decided to drive east across the country after dropping Jenny among the redwoods.

In Vegas, Jenny’s first clutch of eggs hatched and her tiny offspring skittered throughout the hotel, attaching themselves to travelers heading to seventeen states and four countries.

Among the towering trees of the Pacific Northwest, Jenny deposited eggs sacs in protected areas near picnic spots and parking lots until, finally exhausted, she burrowed into a shallow bed of detritus on the forest floor and let all the crawlies she’d once hated return her to the soil. Her final thought was a feeling of satisfaction. After twenty-seven years, she’d finally accomplished something with her life. All those fuckers who had ever doubted her – she was finally going to show every damned one of them.

Internal Memo: Confidential to Deming-Markson BioTech Executive Committee

From: S. Parker, Mitochondrial Engineer Level 3, Minneapolis MedPark Campus

Re: Deming-Markson BioTech “Super Mites” (DMBTSM^®)

We have successfully completed internal efficacy testing, in a controlled environment, of our genetically modified Mesostigmata (order Parasitiformes), designed to virtually eliminate disease-carrying tick populations. As you know, we created a strain of common wood mite specifically predatory toward ticks. Individual product lines can be adjusted to target specific disease vectors (Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever) as requested by marketing. An enzyme in DMBTSM^® saliva works along two parallel paths: in male ticks, it depletes internal moisture to the point of fatal desiccation; in female ticks, it inserts coding into the ovum that effectively turns 90% of offspring predatory toward their own species (we can easily bring that to 100% but don’t want to destroy our profit potential until patents begin to lapse).

We did experience one minor concern during testing when several mites went missing from the Minneapolis lab, but there is no known vector into animals other than ticks, and the danger is considered infinitesimal and unimportant in terms of regulatory testing and product launch.

In anticipation of expedited regulatory approval, we have already shipped breeding populations of DMBTSM^®to Deming-Markson sites across the globe.

If I may end on a personal note, this project is going to make us all so fucking rich even my blood-sucking wife isn’t going to be able to spend it all. This one’s a real world-changer, guys.

Troy Tradup has written in pretty much every form and format imaginable and even achieved a modicum of success in a few. He is particularly proud of two adaptations: a stage version of the H.G. Wells classic, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and a screen adaptation of his own novel, The Forsaken Boy. If someone has a few million dollars they’d like to toss his way, Troy is certain he could direct the hell out of that screenplay. Troy lives in Minnesota, although every damned winter he asks himself why.

Without in any way limiting the authors’ and publisher’s exclusive rights, any unauthorised use of any part of this story to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, locations or general circumstances is entirely coincidental and/or used in a fictitious manner.