through his intestines as he continued to fill the toilet. Eyes watering from the effort and nose running, he finally succumbed to dry heaves as every ounce of material had voided itself from his body. But as he swiped fluid from his eyes, Hollis screamed at the new nightmare squirming among the stomach contents, for there in the toilet were dozen of living, writhing maggots.
Reeling from the sight of what his body had just expunged, he had enough control of his senses to flush away the creatures before falling back onto the bathroom floor. His face resting on green floor mat, Hollis made a feeble attempt to deduce what he could have eaten in the last day that would have contained the maggots. Even as he passed out with his cats wandering about his limp form, a part of him knew his reasoning for their appearance was flawed.
The next day Hollis rose awkwardly and in some pain from his time of the bathroom floor. He saw to the morning’s rituals, a good portion of the early day wasted sipping coffee and staring out his kitchen window at grey hills across the river. The rain had picked up if anything, and he considered calling his acquaintance to put off hauling away the garbage on the back porch. At least the damnable stench had subsided.
Still debating on whether or not to contact the individual with the truck, his cell phone gave a shrill ring in the silent house. It was Hollis’s acquaintance, only blocks away, who needed the rickety gate opened to allow him passage. Mumbling a number of curses, Hollis went in search of his shoes.
Named Corwin, he was an affable man and the trash took a short time to load. However Hollis noticed him making strange faces on a number of occasions during the job, looks of intense displeasure that he failed to hide. When politely confronted about his concealed aggravation once the process had been completed and Hollis was paying him, Corwin remarked upon the wretched stink surrounding the porch. Hollis had no reply as the man drove off – he had detected no trace of the offending scent that day.
That evening, as the dark showers continued outside, Hollis was in his office writing. As he tried to compose a short story in time for an impending deadline, he found himself increasingly irritated by a persistent itch in his scalp. As his prose gave way to a disturbance that was becoming more than merely an annoyance, he stormed into the bathroom to examine his head. Parting his thick brown hair with the expectation of finding red, raw skin beneath, Hollis was instead revolted to discover a small mass of the slithering maggots.
Screaming in as much fury as disgust, he leapt into the shower to claw frantically at his head. Stripping down under the water and lathering himself in all types of soaps, he scrubbed violently as he examined himself. A few stray maggots fell from his head and he crushed them underfoot before letting the tub’s modest current suck them down. Finally, no longer feeling any alien sensations upon him, he stepped out dripping to peer in the mirror. After careful inspection, he decided he was clean.
That night, Hollis threw the clothing he had been wearing along with his sheets and pillowcases into an old cardboard box. Determined to burn it and all its contents on the first available dry day, he carefully hauled the box to the back porch. He still didn’t smell anything.
That third day, Hollis awoke intent of accomplishing a number of writing assignments. He still had all of that day plus the next two of downpours to dedicate to his work, but he his distractions were many. His two cats were acting more bizarre than usual, their normal playful antics grown aggressive and loud. Even once he had banished them to an unused bedroom, Hollis was permeated with tension. All around, he heard faint noises like his ears had become so sensitive he could listen in on water droplets rolling down bare surfaces. These subtle crawling sounds only served to heighten his physical unease, the memory of the maggots never far. Each whisper of movement teased his paranoia, his hands more often searching for an unwelcomed intruder than the appropriate key.
After a disappointing word count, he wandered downstairs to find quick nourishment before returning to his task. Gawking in his refrigerator for something easily microwavable, Hollis sighed when his mind drifted to the day’s lack of achievement. He needed to focus, his concentration too easily swayed by imagined little terrors produced by undesired surprise of the maggots. He had barely slept or eaten in the past two days.
Thinking upon this, Hollis began to yawn but was caught half way through by a wrenching, acute pain in his face. Directly below his left eye, it felt as if someone had driven a thick needle into the skin, piercing the lower ridge of his orbital bone. He clutched at his face in sudden agony and stumbled into the dinning room, grouping for the light switch. The burst of illumination from the overhead lamps caused a new surge of excessive suffering, and Hollis had to fall against the dinning room table for support. Growling, he yanked himself over to wide mirror fastened to the near wall.
He emitted a low whine as he pried his fingers apart to scrutinize his face, the spot below his left eye a bit red. As he gently probed the area, there was a slight shifting beneath the skin. Choking back a scream, Hollis pushed at the emerging protrusion and worked the bulge closer towards his eye. From beneath his lower eyelid, a single maggot was discharged to land on his cheek, still alive and wiggling.
Now Hollis did scream, and beat the tiny monstrosity from his face.
The pain abated, he fumbled his way into one of the chairs near his dinning room table. His imagination in a frenzy, he tried to piece together any seemingly random events in hope of understanding what might be happening to him. Shortly, his chaotic mind began to operate on a certain bleak logic and Hollis concluded the basement needed further investigation.
The few bare bulbs hung low from exposed wires like the last available pieces of electric fruit sprouted from the ceiling. Their dull glare in the expansive stone room did little to inspire confidence, too many niches and angles still enveloped in shadow. Hollis stood at the bottom of the steps and glanced around, seeking clues. He still didn’t detect any of the stench that had pervaded days ago.
Cursing, he began marching about the crumbling floor, dodging light bulbs and keeping an eye out for any twitching movements. Where previously the heaps of discarded junk had littered the basement, the space remained bare and blameless. Wandering aimlessly, he found himself at the back of the room near the abandoned cubby. Hollis stopped short when he saw the plank of wood he had wedged against it. Here, all along the floor and reaching out along the cracks like some grotesque puddle, a plethora of small, indistinguishable mushrooms had sprung up. Grey and fleshy, they had developed rapidly from somewhere within the cloistered space, even climbing up the bottom of the warped hunk of cedar.
Moving one of his larger trunks out of the way to fish out an old shovel, Hollis used the wooden handle to knock the plank free. With it dislodged, the sudden reek assaulted him and he stumbled back choking as he gaped at the miasma that rose from the damp, torn fungi. Their insides black and juicy, they appeared to steam in the dim illumination.
Hollis fell back and found himself sitting on his trunk, only yards away from the narrow hole carved into the side of his basement once used to house coal and kindling. Without daylight from the high opposing window, the bulbs did nothing to brighten its interior and a gash of oppressive blackness captured him. As Hollis sat entranced, he swore he heard that deeper black whisper to him, a prose of filth that promised violations both malevolent and majestic.
Time no longer applied to Hollis as he allowed half-formed concepts of a brutal beauty cascade over him, through him, and out to other regions of the basement. It wasn’t until hours later, as the rays of day began to break the spell before him, that he staggered back up the stairs. He left the wooden plank on the floor next to the broken bits of mushroom and slammed the door as he fled.
He found his way to the bathroom, his head swimming with aborted ideas he couldn’t quite recall or shake free from, and stood before the toilet. He urinated, zipped his pants back up, and stared at the reflection of a person he barely recognized.
Hollis tried not to see the similarity between his pallor and the fungi below, that sickening pallid grey. Nor did he try and correlate the heavy puffiness he saw in his features with anything he had seen in the basement. As he exited to find relief upon his bed, Hollis definitely did not notice the handful of maggots he had expelled into the toilet with his piss.
That next day Hollis rose and remembered to his dismay that he had left his cats imprisoned in the extra bedroom for over twenty-four hours. When he attempted to release them to their usual haunts throughout the house, the feline duo hissed at him and refused to depart. With a troubled sigh, he retrieved their food and water along with a spare litter box and deposited it all in the room.
Any attempts at writing were foolhardy. Hollis could only think upon those horrid mushrooms that acted as silent beacons before the awaiting maw of the basement. He spent much of the day wandering about the house, failing to dismiss the faint drone in his ears, and occasionally staring at himself in the dining room mirror. It was no longer a stranger that peered back at Hollis. The image reflected back barely resembled a human. He fell asleep at the bottom of the