#stinkbugpussy

shortish story, horror / mystery. written by jan van gouden.

I haven’t been myself lately. I’ve been tired, more tired than usual. I used to wake up in the AM, but now every day I sleep until noon. My wife’s been getting really tired of it, even as I explain there’s nothing I can do to help it… I go to bed at ten, I wake up at noon. I go to bed at one AM, I wake up at noon. There’s no winning. She’s recommended I go to the doctor— “Narcolepsy,” she told me, with one of those accusatory fingers in my chest. “You’ve probably got narcolepsy, or some other sort of sleep disorder… you should really get it checked out, Samuel. I’m worried for you.”

I’m not worried for me. I work in sales, the night shift, and I get the weekends off. I answer phones.

“Good evening, ma’am, Sarber Wedding Sales. May I ask what you’re calling for?”

“Hi, yeah— I got this dress from your store lately, and I loved it, and I know this is kind of last minute— my wedding’s tomorrow, but one of the buttons came off in the back… do you think I could pull an appointment with a tailor before then? I don’t want to have to sue…” She used a very sweet voice, perfume over the shit of the fact that she was basically blackmailing us into tailoring her stupid dress, and probably wanted us to do it for free. Not so fast. “Certainly, ma’am, may I ask your name and birthdate?”

“Susan Saran, September 7th—”

I interrupted her. “Alright, Susan, I just found your file… your wedding’s at ten A.M, tomorrow?” I’d sleep through it.

“Yeah, it is… hopefully it’s not too tight, like I said, I love the dress, and…”

“I can have you scheduled with a tailor at eight A.M; does that work? He should have it done for you in ten minutes’ working time.”

“Right, yeah… will that cost anything?”

I squashed the hopeful intonation of her voice. “Twenty-five dollars, ma’am.”

Disappointment; she hung up before I could say anymore. I rung up a tailor then went on to pick the next call. Call after call after call. I got off work at twelve A.M; my wife, Sally, was long asleep. I quietly tucked myself into the sheets next to her, only to wake up in a cold sweat. Sally was gone. My furniture was gone. I told myself I was dreaming, but nonetheless, I was all alone. “We’re getting married tomorrow at dawn,” said a grasshopper, weeping into a lace ‘kerchief.

“You don’t seem very enthusiastic.”

“I’m not. My mother, she—” The grasshopper blew her nose. “—she’s having me marry a cricket… I find crickets so dreadfully ugly, and he can’t jump through fields like I can.” She lifted a leg, showing off a spine and a spur. My leg trembled a bit, and admittedly, I tried to look under her skirt. She didn’t look at all like a human woman, and I couldn’t even be certain she was a woman, aside from my presumption based on her voice & apparel. “No, you’re right; they certainly couldn’t,” I murmured, rubbing my chin.

We stared at one another in awkward silence for a moment, and then she disappeared, as quickly as she came. I woke up again, for real, this time, still sweating, but it wasn’t a cold sweat. This was a hot sweat, hot and sticky. I scrambled out of bed and checked the time. 7 P.M. Shit. That meant I’d been out for more than twelve hours. More concerningly, that meant I only had half an hour to my shift. I rushed into a half-assed suit and ran downstairs, pouring myself a glass of orange juice and grabbing a granola bar. Sally sat at the table, staring at me with this strange expression. “Where’ve you been?”

“I was asleep. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I tried waking you up at one, but you didn’t budge.” She was reading a book. Reginald and the Ruby Mines. Whatever. “You need to shake me to wake me up, Sally, shake me.”

“Well maybe I get sick of shaking you sometimes,” she muttered, earning her a glare she ignored. “Dinner’s in the fridge for when you get back; I made spaghetti. Don’t bother looking for sauce; I used it up.”

“You’re an angel,” I grumbled, but spared her no more thought, leaving for work. Again. Every day it was the same thing. Bitching brides, hustling husbands, botched bridesmaids, grievous groomsmen. Everyone always had some sort of beef, or some sort of question, or some sort of bizarre request. One time we had someone call in begging us to take the day off so we could fill in as guests, since no one wanted to come to the wedding. Unpopular couple, I guess.

I returned at twelve again, this time with a splitting headache. I realised I hadn’t showered in the past two days. Time was slipping away from me. I forced myself into the bathroom, dragging my hands down my face— I looked in the mirror. Thank God the rules for night shift were pretty lenient as far as dress code, because I looked like shit… my beard was pronouncing itself in little prickles on my face, my skin was acting up, my hair was unkempt, and my shirt had a stain on it from the orange juice that morning. That afternoon.

I unbuttoned my shirt and cringed when I saw my chest— it was oily and acne-ridden; the skin festered in little orange bumps and popped when I scratched at it, pus seeping out. “Jesus fuck,” I murmured to myself, holding some of the pus up to my eye. I scratched at my chest some more. Sebaceous glands, dirt, oil, the works. I wondered if I should see a dermatologist. I froze when after some digging I hit a shiny brown under my flesh. Shiny brown, and lots of it, as I dug more. Is there a reverse sleep deprivation? Over-sleep? Does that cause hallucinations? My chest was no longer mine; it was that of a cockroach, and my eyes looked suddenly less brown than they did a despicable black, soulless and selfish. I opened my mouth to examine my teeth, but when I did that, they all fell out, bloody and yellow. I held them in my hands and tried not to panic, certain this was a hallucination, or maybe even a dream… perhaps I had never woken up. Perhaps if I did, it would be eight A.M, scrambled eggs and bacon and Sally waiting for me downstairs.

Does anyone actually pinch themselves in their dreams? It doesn’t matter; I couldn’t anyways. My arms were degraded to gangly brown sticks. Cockroach arms, nice and hairy. In the corner of the mirror, I spotted the grasshopper. She was a sure sign I was dreaming; I knew for certain she couldn’t exist in reality. Neither could I, with a cockroach chest and cockroach eyes and cockroach arms and a cockroach mouth. I felt rather silly, and myself blushing as she approached me. “Good morning, handsome,” she purred. She wore a wedding dress, but I was not the groom. “I’ve been waiting all evening for you to come by. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

“I’d love to have one,” I replied with a smile. Can a cockroach smile? “I’ve had the most stressful evening.... work was awful, just awful…”

“Work?” She laughed; her voice was that of an angel. “Oh, don’t be so silly darling… work is such a dated thing, nobody does that anymore. Were you having a bad dream?”

“I might have been,” I admitted, scratching my neck. Well, I wanted to, but I couldn’t. My legs— arms?— didn’t bend like that. “Say, what’s your name?”

“So you can kiss and tell?” She laughed again. “I’m Susan.” Susan. I couldn’t figure out why that name sounded so familiar to me.

“Right, Susan. How long until the wedding?”

“Only an hour, she sighed, wiping at her eye with her arolium. “I really didn’t want to marry a cricket… he seems nice, but he’s really just not my type.”

“Well, niceness isn’t reason to go off and get married to someone,” I lamented sympathetically. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to marry a cockroach, either. I’m ugly, just god-awful.”

“Looks aren’t a reason to marry someone either,” she crooned, tickling my pronotum. “It’s compatibility, darling, and I just think we have so much of it.”

“So much of it,” I repeated, out of it. As soon as I snapped back into it, she was gone, or more accurately, she was walking down the aisle in a grand white gown, from which a button rather noticeably hung loose, even more noticeably attemptedly concealed by her veil. “I’m getting married now,” I remembered her saying to me. Her words echoed in my head some before I woke up, Sally next to me, snuggled well into my side. The first thing I did was check my watch. Six A.M. I wouldn’t go back to bed; this was a victory for me. I slithered out of bed and to the kitchen to make myself a bowl of cereal. I poured in too much milk, and watched with a dead expression as it dripped from the counter onto the floor, making a big white puddle. I knew Sally would give me hell if I didn’t clean it up, but I was tired, so tired, so I just took the bowl of cereal to the table and started to eat it.

I felt like I was moving in slow motion, each bite more labored than the next. I might have fallen asleep; I couldn’t tell you. I found it harder to stay awake, or to stay asleep; I couldn’t tell you which one of those it was. I don’t think I remember who I am.

I was in a field, a beautiful field— a cricket lie somewhere below me, buried six inches under the dirt, turning into compost to make more beautiful flowers. The grasshopper and I were on a picnic, and we were dressed so quaintly… she in a handsome little peplum dress, and I in a little tweed suit, that I got from somebody. I don’t recall who.

Sally didn’t exist in this world, but I vaguely remembered her name somewhere in the back of my head. A reminder, maybe. I was late to work. Again. Shit.

The phone wouldn’t stop ringing, and I was certain it had it out for me. I stared at it for so long and so hatefully… its lustrous black surface, its shiny black wire. Old fashioned, a rotary. Very chic to the youngsters but nothing to me. Especially when I had to pick it up. There was a hand on my shoulder, and I looked up to see my boss, this worried sort-of expression in the wrinkles of her dark face. “You okay, Samuel?” she asked in a very-sweet voice. I struggled to remember her name. Something Sarber. I didn’t forget her first name, mind you. Her first name really was Something.

“I’m alright, Mrs. Sarber; I’m sorry… I’ve just been having some troubles at home, that’s all.”

“Anything you wanna talk about?” she asked in a very low voice, as though it would shield me from the prying ears of the surrounding cubicles. My work was such a shit-hole, now that I thought about it. Dusty books and outdated pamphlets everywhere, beige-brown-mustard-yellow everything, a perpetual smog and possible lead poisoning from the dated building. Built in 1802. “No, it’s alright— just some sleeping problems; Sally wants me to get it checked out by the doctor. I’m doing my best in the meanwhile.” The doctor. Had I already scheduled an appointment with him? I couldn’t recall. Troubling. There seemed to be a lot of gaps in my memory. “Alright, Sam. Just let me know if you really can’t take it anymore and I’ll get someone to cover your shift for you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Sarber.”

“Anytime, Sam.”

I suspected my cubicle-mate, Sordid, had called her for me… he was a well-meaning guy, but he was so nosy, always in everyone’s business but his own. I couldn’t blame the guy. In a job this boring, the only entertainment to be wrought is when you can wiggle yourself into someone’s business. I knew one guy who’d managed to hook up with some bride the night-before her big day; she’d invited him to her bachelorette party just for shits. Her husband didn’t care; I heard they’d even had a good laugh over it ‘cause he’d done the same. Young couples. I wished I was still young. I didn’t remember how old I was, but I knew I was out of my twenties. Basic information, Sam, I chided myself, and buried my head in my hands. It was so hot in the basement of the building. The must made me sneeze.

The sneeze woke me up enough to answer a call.

“Good evening, is this Sarber’s?”

“This is Sarber’s, how can I help you?”

“Oh, good. Well, you see, my wife’s been awful lonely lately, and I remember there was some guy at your store she really took a liking to… I can’t remember his name for the life of me, but according to her, he was— oh, hold on….

“Alright, his name was Saunders, at least, that was his last name… young, mid-twenties, bronze-ish skin, black hair, brown eyes, nice cheekbones… do you know him?”

I ran my fingers through my hair. Dandruff drifted to the surface of my desk. Dandruff. I hadn’t had that since I was a teen. “No, I’m afraid I don’t, sir, I’m sorry. I can try to dial him up through the directory; he might still be awake. Might I ask what you need? We offer tailoring, repairs, detailing—”

“She wants to fuck him,” the guy said very abruptly, interrupting me. “My wife wants to fuck this Saunders character, and I want to fuck him, too. We want to fuck him together. I want him to fuck her while I fuck him. Can you please relay this to him?”

I would not. “Sir, I’m afraid that’s not offered in our line of services, but I appreciate your interest.”

“What do you look like?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m curious.”

“Well, I’m 5’11”, brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, mid-thirties…” I stopped myself. Why in God’s name was I answering him? I was so tired, even though I knew damn well I’d slept a good fourteen hours. Sleep makes you tired. God’s cruel joke. “Nevermind. Why are you asking?”

“Well, I was going to ask if you could step in for—”

“I’m sorry, sir; we don’t offer those services. If you need a repair on any item of clothing, we can do that, but I’m afraid what you’re requesting is out of our bounds.”

The guy started droning on again. I think I fell asleep.

Part of me hoped I’d wake up again to that pleasant field and the grasshopper, but this time I woke up to what I was positive was some harsh aspect of my reality: a hospital. Bright lights blinded me as they shone harshly into my eyes, and I heard the distant murmur of voices that sounded oh-so-familiar, I just couldn’t place for the life of me. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I was restrained. I wasn’t me. I wasn’t the me I remembered, at least. I felt younger. I caught a distorted glimpse of myself in the silver of my hospital cot’s frame. I was younger. Gone were my eyebags and my fine lines of age. This was, yet again, a dream, or maybe a lucid memory. Whatever it was, I fought against it vehemently, trying to get back to the present. Trying to get back to life, my life.

Maybe Sally was right. I really did need to see a doctor.

Someone came into my “room,” but it wasn’t a nurse, or a doctor— it was a policeman, all shinied up in his brass blue uniform, a concerned expression on his face and a pen and notebook in hand. “How are you feeling, son?” I didn’t answer. I stared at him like a stray at a bear, wishing to recede into the mattress. Let me absorb. Let me absorb. I didn’t absorb, and I didn’t wake up. Whatever purgatory I was in, I was stuck in it. I couldn’t make out his face. “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents,” he lamented, taking off his copper hat. He was balding. “I know there are a lot of accusations towards… you, right now, and I have to do my job, so… I’m here to question you. Do you think you’re alright to do that?”

No, he wasn’t a copper, not a copper-copper. A private detective. His outfit changed on cue with my realisation. Probably some attorney’s investigator. “I’m fine,” I responded, sitting up a little. I realised I was cuffed to the cot. Someone didn’t want me to escape. No wonder I hadn’t been able to get up. “Good, then. Where were you when…” He went down the rabbit-hole of the questions you always hear the police ask, be it in shows, in movies, on TV, in person, or otherwise. I answered them like clockwork and he left me be. This wasn’t a dream. This was a memory, delivered to me in the form of a daydream. Inaccurate description, however, seeing I’d fallen asleep at work, at night. Nap dream.

“Sam, wake up, come on now.” That was Mrs. Sarber’s voice. “Do you think you can get up?”

“Yeah, I’m—” I shakily got up, leaning against my cubicle. Mrs. Sarber rushed to help me gain my bearings. “—I’m sorry, Mrs. Sarber… I wasn’t even aware I fell asleep; it won’t happen again; I—”

“Sh, sh, sh, sh, sh,” she shushed me, letting me lean on her as she walked me out the basement, into the fluorescent green light of the offices on the first floor. She was walking me towards the door. “Is Sally here?” I asked hazily, struggling to remain conscious. Come on, Sam; you’re embarrassing yourself, my conscience chided me. “She’s here, Sam; don’t you worry about that.” Once outside, I was greeted by flashing red and white lights. An ambulance, and some men in crisp little white suits with a stretcher. It’s uncanny how sometimes dreams predict the future. Sally was there; Mrs. Sarber hadn’t lied about that. The only way she had lied was by concealing from me some parts of the truth.

“Hey, Sam,” Sally said in a nice, quiet voice I wasn’t used to, as the men in white suits helped me onto the stretcher. I didn’t put up much of a fight, and I didn’t question anything. I was too tired. “Sally….” I didn’t need to say any more; she knew exactly what I was going to ask. It was pitch dark outside, aside from the building and the ambulance. It had to be late. “I’ve been worried about you, Sam… something’s changed, and I just wanna make sure you’re alright… I got a call from your boss at two that you’d fallen asleep, and well…” Sally messed with a string hanging from her slip. “...like I said, Sam, you’ve really been worrying me… you don’t eat, you barely ever sleep, sometimes you don’t remember who I am… I just wanna make sure you don’t go dying on me.”

A grim smile accompanied the last line. She placed a quick kiss on my forehead. “Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially because you’re not doing so hot, but… well, the police called; apparently they’re reopening that case…” That case. A memory lodged itself into my brain like a shard of glass, crystal clear. The daydream I’d had was that exact memory. My parents died when I was 16 and there’d been some big drama about it; the police made this big deal about investigating and interrogating me, but they couldn’t find any dirt. The case had been sitting on a dusty shelf in someone’s office for some fifteen odd years, and now some busybody had decided to reopen it.

Fantastic.

The workers loaded me into the ambulance, and Sally called out after me— “I’ll try to visit you at the hospital tomorrow… the police shouldn’t be giving you too much trouble, especially ‘cause you—”

They shut the doors before she could finish speaking and the ambulance roared to life, bumping and banging down the poorly maintained roads to the hospital, which was in equal or even worse disrepair, long discontinued construction making it an eyesore as we drove up and I was unloaded, rushed to the urgent care center. “I don’t think I should be taking up emergency space,” I murmured, but was ignored, even as I very faintly lifted a hand, making a circle in the air. “I’m not going to die, or anything. I’m just very tired, and not so hungry, that’s all. I think I’ll be alright. I don’t think I even need to be hospitalised.”

Ignored again. I shut my trap. Deja vu hit me as I was dumped into a little pink “room,” apparently meant for little kids; drawings of princesses littered the walls and the trim was sparkly pink. The ER was probably overloaded. I wondered, morbidly, if any little kid had died right where I lie. I fought sleep as I waited, and waited, and waited… I lost the war and again was in the world of the unknown, where I courted a recently-widowed grasshopper in the midst of a distorted reality. My dreams liked to continue off one another… this was a recent development; I’d say as soon as the past few months, for once, they would be erratic and entirely unrelated, but with the coming of my sleeping-in and barely-eating, they became more interwoven, more continuous, more comprehensible.

The grasshopper today was sobbing, and I consoled her, the big, bumbling blubberbus of a roach I was, kissing her so kindly on the cheek and wiping her tears. “Oh, my darling, don’t cry; surely, you must be able to see the light in your future?”

“It’s terrible, just terrible, my love… the damn ants believe that it was I who killed my cricket husband… oh, certainly, I wasn’t very fond of the fellow, and oh, surely, I was forced into the marriage… but to murder, my love, to murder?” She blew her nose, and again, I wiped away a tear. “I would never do such a thing… I am of the elite class, and find such immoral acts simply despicable and belonging to the lower insects… the worms, the slugs, the…” She dared not speak it, for she knew I was one. I did not begrudge her. The roaches were the scum of insects, but we would survive the nuclear fallout the humans above us were sure to invoke, so I counted my blessings.

“At least you know I believe you,” I consoled her, kissing her on her lovely cheek. “I know you would never do such a terrible thing…” I did not believe her, but I would never tell her this, for I knew it would break her poor fragile heart. You can’t over-excite a grasshopper. The poor thing’s heart will combust. It’s as cruel as asking a bumblebee how it can fly. It causes it to question its very existence.

“You’re such a wonderful man,” she cooed, and she was over me, her abdomen pressed against mine.

“Samuel,” said a man’s voice, and I knew it was not her. I was awake again, rubbing the grog from my eyes. A blurry figure stood above me. “Good, you’re awake. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but— as your wife may have informed you…” a heavy sigh. “...we’ve reopened the case pertaining to the murder of your parents years ago… see, your cousin, he recently fell into some serious financial troubles and… well, it may be unprofessional of me to say this, but I believe he’s attempting to con you out of your inheritance by fabricating a guilty charge against you pertaining to your parents’ death.”

My parents died brutally and horribly— my father had been shoved, commando, into an Edwardian dress once belonging to my ancestor, shaved entirely bald from the ears down, and decapitated. My mother had been cut to bits. The police never found their fingers or their toes. It had been a hot topic in my old hometown for months, and the conspirators drove me away, albeit I had inherited the house. I’d met Sally somewhere in high school, and we were reunited when we were about thirty. I gave up on college after I got my job at the wedding shop, which I really didn’t need, but the spectacle still haunted me, and I didn’t want to be known as the guy who bummed off his dead parents.

It’s funny how people can make you feel guilty about a tragedy you suffered.

I hadn’t actually comprehended any of what the man in the hospital said, however; I asked him to repeat himself, and he did. It took me a minute to fully process his statement. “Does my cousin have any sufficient grounds for reopening the case?”

“Well…” the man looked mildly disgusted, as he pulled a tightly-sealed baggy from his bag. Inside were some little nibs of bone. “We recently managed to locate the fingers and toes of your parents; we matched them via DNA, and in the mix, found some of your DNA on them, as well… which led us down a little rabbit-hole, some pretty nasty calls from your cousin, and eventually to you.”

“I’m unsurprised you found my DNA on those,” I muttered, staring blankly at the ceiling. My body was entirely drained of energy. “I believe they both hugged me before they put me to bed the night I died.” I was so shocked when they had died initially, but eventually grew numb to the fact, figuring some jackass carved into ‘em ‘cause they were rich, or maybe because they had a grudge. Who knows. Who cares. Whatever. I caught myself saying that a lot lately, a concerning lot. Maybe it was my way of coping with how shitty my life was turning out to be.

The man’s face was drained entirely of life. He looked like he regretted coming here. “Where did you find them?” I asked. I was curious.

“Strangely enough, by their grave— under their headstone, to be exact. Like somebody had planted them there.”

“It might have been me,” I mused. He was taken aback. “How might that be, sir?”

I shrugged. “I could have been the one who took their fingers and their toes… it’s morbid, I know, but I wasn’t in the right mindspace then at all. I was hysterical. Maybe I saw it as a memento mori. You did arrest me for digging up their grave when I was seventeen.” Not him specifically, but the law enforcement in general. Someone up there. They released me for psychiatric reasons, but had me enrolled in a two-week course at the psych ward. I didn’t blame them. I don’t think any “sane” person digs up their parents’ graves so they can hug them while sucking on their thumb to fall asleep.

I did miss them terribly, then and now.

This was bringing up dreary memories. Damn that cousin. I think I started to cry, because the interrogator offered me a tissue. “Again, I’m really sorry to bother you… maybe I came at a bad time. We’re still investigating but I don’t think we’ll keep the case open for much longer… there just isn’t any motive or evidence for you killing your parents.” I took his tissue, tore it in half, and just laid it under my eyes, letting it absorb the tears until it was a sad wet crumple, and I had to flick it onto the floor.

There really was no motive; I remembered being a pretty fat and happy, so to speak, kid, spoiled, but not in the way I was made ungrateful and cruel. “Well, hope you’re back in good spirits soon, Sam. We probably won’t be contacting you again, at least, not unless something new pops up.” He left. Sam. He’d said that in such a familiar way… I wondered if I’d known him at some point. Whatever.

Half an hour passed exactly; I kept track via the pretty pink princess clock mounted up on the wall directly perpendicular to my cot. On the dot, a nurse walked in in all white. He was very young. I recognised him from somewhere. I didn’t remember where. “Good…. well, I should say morning, Samuel; it’s four A.M. How are you feeling?”

“I’m very tired, and a little nauseous,” I responded, trying to sit up. I couldn’t muster the strength. “I tried to tell the EMTs on the way in, but I don’t think I need to be here… I’ve been like this a lot lately, so I should be just fine.” The nurse kind of laughed at that. “So you should be right here, Samuel, where we can take immediate medical care of you. How long have you been feeling so tired?”

“A few months.”

He went through an entire interrogation of his own, medically, then left, leaving me again in limbo, this time waiting for a doctor. I didn’t want to be there, and after about another hour, I’d really had it… I managed to drag myself out of the cot and stagger down the corridor. Dimly lit with rattling, dated lights hanging from the ceiling, wheelchairs and crutches and random medical devices (I couldn’t give you the names) littering the floor here and there, glowing a little under the moonlight peering in through the front door. The waiting room was full of the homeless and some sad looking cases, coughing into their arms, clutching their pregnant bellies, and so on. A person stopped me by the door and asked if I was a patient; I denied it and claimed I was only visiting a relative; she let me out, and I wandered on my merry way. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I felt pretty aimless, and I didn’t want to go home… I felt an insurmountable frustration as my body started lagging, trying to shut down on me, and no matter how hard I pushed back, my efforts were futile. I ended up passing out, I think, for when I could see again, I was again in the world of the insects, this time in court with my grasshopper lover, defending her innocence. I was a lawyer here, I think.

“She would never resort to such a barbaric thing as murder,” I barked, pacing around the courtroom like I owned the place. “Look at her, just look at her… she’s sobbing just being here; she’s so terribly confused! You people are the criminals, putting such an emotionally vulnerable and hurt young lady in the spotlight, let alone under the pressure of accusations pinning her as a murderer! Have you no shame?”

The court booed me, and I gritted my teeth, realising my jury consisted of ants and worms, insects of my class. They probably saw me as a traitor, defending the likes of a grasshopper. But I loved her, and I believed firmly that our love would help in uniting the fighting castes. “It does not matter that she is a grasshopper… she is still a victim, and I hereby do not feel, but rather believe, and declare, that she is innocent!”

For whatever reason (it was a dream, after all), the court found that a just fine argument, and the booing turned into a lauded applause, the audience rising from their seats and whistling, hooting, cheering… the judge, a praying mantis, banged her gavel and declared the grasshopper innocent; she gasped and hugged me, kissing me all over. She morphed, in my dream… she was no longer a grasshopper; she was now Sally. Sally was kissing me, and I was a man again; even through the distorted vision of my dream, I could tell I looked as fine as ever, restored and without boils on my chest.

“Oh, Samuel, I just love you,” she crooned. She was naked, I deducted, and she was all horned-up, spinning all over me like a spider about to wrap its fly in a web. “Have I told you that before?” She nuzzled her nose into my cheek; if she were a cat, she would’ve purred. “You have,” I said in a sloppy-sweet kind of voice, rolling so I was on top of her. “Oh, no, Samuel,” she chided, making a tsk tsk tsk noise and wagging her finger.

“Go lower.” I backed off her face and pushed her against the pillow, face-to-crown now. But I was not greeted by genitalia. I was greeted by a pulsating crust, and a peculiar smell, like a cheap, too-sweet “fall” scented dollar store candle. I wrinkled my nose. “Come on, Samuel; I’m dying up here,” she lilted, rubbing my hair with her hands. Sweat started to accumulate on my lip and brow as I slowly looked over at her hands. They were dry and inhuman, a shape I cannot describe to you. I stared back at where her genitalia should have been, and flinched, but could not draw back, as stinkbugs started to crawl from that gaping hole… one after one after one, until an army had accumulated and were all that I could see as I looked down and around the room.

They swarmed everything but Sally and me; I could hear so faintly their scuttling as they climbed over one another on the floor, crawled underneath the furniture, hid behind the wall hangings… I looked down at my knees and yelped as they crawled up my legs and to my privates. “Sally, you’ve got a stinkbug pussy,” I said with a quiver to my voice, batting them away before they could make it so far. They stunk, and stunk, and stunk. I wanted to feel bad for them but was too taken by terror to do so. “Sally, please wake me up. I know I never went to the hospital, I know this isn’t real, hell, I even know I didn’t go to work today. I know I’m still sleeping, Sally. Please wake me up.”

“Who says you’re dreaming, baby?” Sally asked, covering up then making a 180 to face me. Sally was not Sally, Samuel’s deadbeat wife, anymore. Sally was a stinkbug. Sally had a stinkbug pussy. Stinkbugs don’t crawl out of women’s vaginas in the real world, and wives don’t become stinkbugs, either. Sally still had Sally’s body, but her face was pure stinkbug. All the tiny stinkbugs were gone, now. Sally was Sally again. Sally’s face was normal again. I breathed a sigh of relief. She looked concerned. “Aw, baby, you okay? I know this is your first time— you don’t have to, if you don’t wanna.”

“No—” I didn’t want to sound dumb. You had a stinkbug pussy. Yeah, that sounded dumb. “—no, I’m happy to, Sally— here, lay down again, I’ll try again. Sorry; I…” I shook my head. “I zoned out for a moment there.” So again, Sally had her fingers in my hair, cackling as I went down on her… I froze solid when she spoke. “C’mon, baby. I know you wanna bite off this stinkbug pussy.”

I woke up. I thought I’d woken up before, but I hadn’t. I had never gone down on Sally, not yet. I was still a virgin, surprisingly. Sally had a pretty healthy sexual appetite, but I could never get it up— she respected that, and she never tried to pressure me. Sally was a deadbeat wife, but I had myself to blame for that. Otherwise, Sally was a pretty nice person— respectful, considerate, polite… she hadn’t really wanted to marry me, but did it anyways because she was trying to get relatives out of her hair over the whole “you’re nearing thirty; you don’t wanna be an old maid, do you?” thing. We’d been friends in high school, and had agreed to marry if we didn’t find anyone by the age of thirty… so we did just that. A lot of people thought Sally married me for the inheritance; I even got some questions about that, to which the answer was always no, and, that’s a kind of sexist way of thinking.

I woke up, but now I had to deduce where I had woken up. I certainly wasn’t in the hospital; I was surrounded by dirt… a stinkbug crawled on me and I flicked it off. The dirt reeked of stinkbugs. No wonder I’d dreamt with them involved. I was holding something. What was it? It was too dark to tell, but I had a flashlight shining on me to help.

I had a flashlight shining on me to help.

Oh, Lord. That certainly wasn’t me.

“Christ on a crutch,” said the voice of a stranger, and I tensed up as I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked over to where the flashlight shone, and stifled an outburst. I was holding a skeleton. No flesh, no meat. Long rotted away. I recalled the interrogator from earlier. At some point, I’d held my parents’ skeletons. Maybe I’d regressed. Maybe I was doing that again.

I was a dead weight but they still managed to pull me from the hole— as soon as they did, my eyes rolled back and I unwillingly was siphoned into a dream again. I don’t think I fell asleep. I think I passed out, but I still dreamt.

“You were so sweet to defend me in court,” the grasshopper gushed, hugging me tightly. “Do you think we should marry?”

“I want to marry you with a clear conscience,” I replied, looking her dead in the eye. “You weren’t lying in court, were you? You really did not kill your husband, right?”

“Of course I did, baby,” she cooed, her sweetness almost drowning out the weight of her words. “How else could I be with the man of my dreams? Oh— don’t look at me like that; you know we’re soulmates… the second I laid eyes on you, I just knew you were the one. Come on,” she stroked my cheek. “Come on, baby, it’s not so bad. That cricket… that damn cricket had to die. The police are off my tail, and if we marry in… a few months, it’ll look even less suspicious… besides, why do you care anyways? It’s just a cricket.”

“You still took a life,” I retorted, this awful, nauseous feeling rising in my gut. “I mean— how can you do it with a smile? How can you feel absolutely no remorse?”

“Because I didn’t do it for me, sweetheart. I did it for us… and the price of a life of one is most definitely worth the price of happiness for two.”

I felt all the more nauseous. “But.” She winked. “For the sake of argument, and so you don’t feel so bad about it… let’s say I didn’t… in fact, how about you forget all about this… and we go live on our happy little lives.”

The nauseous feeling came to a boil, and I vomited— quite literally; I woke up with bile oozing from my mouth, and some guy rushing to help me with a bucket, sitting me up and holding it under me. In the room, there was some woman pacing around, a hand scrunched up against her forehead and some twisted expression on her face— “This is a real mess, Saul,” she exclaimed. She had a Boston dialect. “This is a real fucking mess… you mean to tell me the fucker’s been in the dirt with mommy and daddy this whole time?”

“Not the whole time,” said another voice, some guy. “He made it through trial and questioning, but we ain’t seen him since, letting this guy loophole his way in… it’s been so many years now, it ain’t no wonder he got away with it for so long.” I retched again, and again, the same person held me over the bucket, patting me on the back. “You’re makin’ me sick, Seb,” she called to the person assisting me. “How you gonna help that guy when he’s a fuckin’ serial killer?”

“You ain’t a damn shrink,” replied Seb. My mind was rushing to fit together the pieces of the puzzle, but it was exhausted. So exhausted. “Guy’s off his fuckin’ nuts.”

“What’s the wife gotta say about all this?”

“She don’t got nothin’ to do with it, far as I’m concerned. They hadn’t seen each other since high school, an’ they kinda look like each other, so with age, I don’t blame her for thinkin’ it was him.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” the woman muttered. “I’m gonna go get the fuckin’ lawyer waitin’ out here, you read him his rights an’ get him cleaned up some.”

Before she left, she called back, “An’ it’s a good fuckin’ thing that damn relative stuck his dick in the puddin’; the wife coulda ended up next!”

The guy cleaning me up— Seb— muttered something incomprehensible, wiping residue off my mouth and my body, combing his fingers through my hair. “C’mon, buddy, let’s get you straightened out… lawyer’s waiting to talk to you, your wife didn’t wanna get involved.”

“I don’t think I have a wife,” I mumbled, awkwardly patting at the air. I wanted to be in that musty basement again, picking up call after call after call. It was boring, but it was safe. Nice and cozy. Warm. Comfortable. I felt like I was under a heap of blankets, falling asleep so peacefully, like a bear entering hibernation. “I have a grasshopper and she is so pretty; she wears frilly pink dresses and cotton candy in her hair.”

Seb said something but I honestly didn’t listen, too far into my comfortable sleep… a nice, quiet place of retreat, where I didn’t have to face the “real” world, whatever that even was at this point.

Two cockroaches skittered across the floor and collided… they were fighting in my bathroom, over a grubby crumb on the filthy floor. The one managed to somehow kill the other, and began to nibble away at its body.

The bathtub was filled with a muddy, murky water that stunk of rust, and the linoleum floor peeled off in the corners. The sink was encrusted with grout and its pipes were rusty; the toilet bowl housed a drowned rat that’d gotten stuck when someone tried to flush it down. The shower curtains were covered in suspicious stains, and I think there was a corpse in the midst of the murky water, its face beautiful above the water but its body bloated, a hand erect in the air missing fingers.

The toothpaste tubes and the toothbrush and the soap all had some film or stain on them, looking like they’d do the opposite of clean jack shit.

I was in front of my dirty mirror again, picking at my chest… this time another man entered the bathroom and walked up behind me, embracing me from behind and placing kisses on my ear. He was so beautiful, and his face matched the vague image I had of the one in the tub. I couldn’t tell you who he was, no matter how hard I tried. All I remember is that he kissed me from my neck to my cheek, then whispered in my ear,