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Chapter Text

The unsettling dream Sam had been in the middle of dreaming ended abruptly when he sensed the presence of an intruder on his bed. Sam’s senses were always on high alert these days, ever since the time of the Visit.

Cracking an eye open, he squinted until his bleary vision cleared, and found himself face-to-face with a cockroach. Sam cracked his other eye open, and the roach made a startled chirp and scuttled off his mattress and into a crack in the wall.

Sam glanced at his clock: 4:34 A.M. His body wanted nothing more than to shut its eyes and return to sleep. Instead, he got up, marched over to the wall that the roach had scuttled into and knocked on it as though it were a door.

“Roaches! We need to have a talk!” he called into the wall.

The lamp which sat by Sam’s bedside turned on.

“Sam, what’s going on?”

He turned around to face Hellen, who was sitting up in their bed.

“One of the roaches was on our bed just a moment ago,” he explained, before knocking again on the wall and repeating, “Roaches! We need to have a talk!”

Out they came. From every crack in the bedroom’s walls, floors, and ceiling, the cockroaches crawled out, gathering together directly in front of where Sam stood. Piling on top of each other.

Then the bedroom door opened and Sam and Hellen’s two adopted kids poked their heads inside.

“Mr. Sam… hhhhh… why are you… hhhhh… yelling at the Roaches?” asked Joel.

“Do you need our help, Dad?” asked Ratrick, concern in all four of his eyes and his favorite pistol clutched cautiously in his bottom-right paw.

“We’re fine, boys,” Sam assured them. “The Roaches and I just need to have a private little chat.”

“Go back to bed,” Hellen added.

“Hhhh… okay,” said Joel.

“Holler if you need us!” said Ratrick.

And when the boys shut the door, the baby woke up and started wailing. He groaned under his breath, but couldn’t pretend he hadn’t been expecting it. Frankly, Sam was surprised it had taken him this long!

After slipping on a bathrobe, Hellen went over and pulled the baby out of his crib.

“We’ll be in the living room,” she told Sam. “Let me know when you’re done talking to the Roaches.”

By the time she closed the door, the Roaches had finished amassing together into their usual humanoid form. This time, they hadn’t bothered slipping into their usual trench coat, hat, and glasses, since they always left those in the bathroom.

The funny thing was that when the amalgam of Roaches was “naked” in this way, one could see that they didn’t truly resemble a human’s form so much as a snowman’s. One spherical head-sized ball of Roaches, resting upon a medium-sized roach-ball that served as the chest, which rested upon a larger ball of Roaches that served as the waist and legs. Only the “arms” of the roach horde truly looked somewhat humanoid.

“wHaT wRonG frIenD?” the Roaches asked in a chorus of overlapping high-pitched voices. “wHeN LAte-tIMe YoU nEvER wAnT sPeAk uS.”

Sam planted his hands on his hips. “All of you remember how we came to that special agreement, right? That certain parts of our apartment are off-limits to you roaches?”

“yEs,” answered the amalgamation of arthropods. “BeDs cRiB tOiLeT aND fRiDgE.”

Sam pointed back at his bed. “One of you was on my bed just a moment ago,”

The “head” of the human-shaped mass of Roaches briefly deflated, just like a balloon, collapsing straight into its neck. Sam heard the Roaches whispering rapidly amongst themselves. Then the “head” re-inflated.

“wAs RoTTo. hE yOuNg. nAuGhTy. fOrgIvE pLeaSE.”

A single roach was… spat? Flung? Blasted? …Out of the center of the amalgamation’s “head,” landing straight on the back of Sam’s hand.

“RoTTo! teLL fRiEnD sorRy!” the rest of the Roaches insisted, pointing a scolding finger straight at the troublemaker. “teLL fRiEnD sorRy! teLL fRiEnD sorRy!”

But instead of apologizing, Rotto raised a tiny foreleg up towards Sam, and shook it angrily like a fist.

“wHy YOu nO wAnT rOAchEs bE on bEd?!” the young roach shouted up defiantly in a tiny-yet-loud voice. “tHoUgHt yOu rOaCh-fRienD!”

“Why do you even want to be on my bed?” Sam asked him.

“bEd cOzY!”

Sam nodded. “Okay, listen, Rotto… you know that city you roaches built beneath the walls and floor of this apartment?”

“cEiLiNg tOo!” Rotto reminded Sam, who glanced upward and quickly suppressed a shudder.

“Well, what if I were to tear open the wall and enter your city?”

Rotto’s antennae snapped up in shock. “bUt RoAcH cIty nOt fIt FOr hUmAnS! rOaCh cItY foR rOaCheS!”

“Exactly! And in the same way, beds aren’t fit for roaches, they’re for humans!” Then, after a small exhale, Sam went on. “I’m not doing this to be mean, Rotto. Each and every one of you roaches are important members of my family…”

‘A sentence I’d NEVER have pictured myself saying back in the pre-Visit days!’ Sam couldn’t help thinking to himself.

“…But even among family members, there needs to be boundaries. Personal space. That make sense?”

“rOtTo gEts iT. RoTtO sOrrY,” said the little roach, contritely.

Sam smiled. “As long as you learn from your mistake, it’s all good!”

“nIgHt-NiGhT fRiEnD!” Then Rotto turned around, leaping off of Sam’s fingertips, and landing on the floor.

“nIgHt-NiGhT fRiEnD!” echoed the collective of other Roaches, just before dispersing from their human formation in a manner that somewhat reminded Sam of a snowman melting super-fast, and scuttling back to their miniscule city behind the walls and floor.

“Night-night,” said Sam.

Then he went into the living room to check on his wife and youngest son, who was still crying.

Eight years ago, a bizarre and dreadful extraterrestrial Visitor had come from who-knew-where and paid Planet Earth a Visit, which had lasted fifteen days. Fifteen days in which the skies had not been safe for anyone to look at, even fleetingly.

For the majority of that time, Sam’s apartment had served as a shelter for a total of fourteen individuals – including Sam, himself – one pet rat, and a colony of super-intelligent roaches. And this was in spite of his apartment having just one bed!

But then, the Visitor’s Visit had ended, and it had left Earth for… some other destination. People could look outside and go outside without fear of mutation.
Most of the others who had taken refuge in Apartment 33 had left, one by one, to live their lives.

Most, but not all…

…Ratrick stayed because he was just a lonesome baby who had latched onto Sam from the moment they met, and who regarded him as his father.
…Joel stayed because he was an eight-year-old boy who had lost his family.
…The Roaches stayed, partially because Sam had treated them with extraordinary kindness, and partially because that sort of thing was in their nature as a species of invasive insects.
…The Masked Shadow stayed because it had an unceasing fascination with Sam.
…And (to Sam’s surprise) Hellen stayed as well. “I’m not interested in leaving you,” she had told him, softly.

…Then there was little Sammy, the newest addition to Apartment 33’s motley crew of a family. Sammy was the result of a very special New Year’s Day celebration between Hellen and Sam, eleven months ago.

During the time of the Visit, the only pieces of furniture in Apartment 33 fit for humans to sleep upon had been Sam’s bed, and the couch facing the television.

But after the Visitor had gone, and it became clear that Joel and Ratrick would definitely be here to stay, Hellen and Sam had gone into one of the other apartments – one whose tenants were no longer among the living – taken a pair of beds, and lugged them into Apartment 33, placing them up against the living room’s left wall.

Ratrick and Joel were in their beds. The Masked Shadow loomed just behind Hellen, who was on the couch, humming a lullaby to Sammy as she held him in her arms. She had a surprisingly good singing voice; low-pitched but sweet to listen to.

“Sorry for waking you guys up,” Sam told his older boys.

“Hhh…. S’okay, Mr. Sam…” Joel murmured tiredly, turning his head further into his pillow.

“Is everything okay with the Roaches, Dad?” asked Ratrick, who was still wide awake.

“Don’t worry, Ratrick, it’s all been straightened out,” Sam told him.

“yEs, aLL iS gOOd rAt-FriEnD,” warbled a roach who happened to be halfway up the wall next to Ratrick’s bed.

Sam went over and sat beside his wife on the couch. “Sorry for waking you.”

“You keep forgetting I don’t sleep,” Hellen replied.

This was true. Mutating had robbed Hellen of her ability to slumber. Somehow, she simply functioned without it, laying next to Sam in bed every night as a form of meditation.

“I do understand why you needed to do it, Sam,” she continued. “Sammy will be fine.”

Sam cast an apologetic glance at the Shadow who shrugged its shoulders. Not only did the Masked Shadow never sleep, it never truly rested, either. Even when it stood perfectly still; a state which could last for days, if it wanted. Plus, it understood and respected Sam’s need for boundaries.

Sam leaned down towards his son. “How’re you doing, champ? Can you forgive Daddy for being a big ol’ loudmouth?”

Little Sammy had inherited the shape of his head and the color of his hair from his father. But he had his mother’s eyes – all of them. So many of them stared back at Sam from the inside of Sammy’s mouth, which was also permanently stretched out in a long, gnarled, spiraling, lipless Jack-o’-lantern gash… exactly the same shape as Hellen’s.

His biological child. His flesh and blood.

The baby started crying again – all those eyes inside his mouth spilling tears that slid straight down his throat – but at least it was much quieter than when he first woke up.

“Sammy will be fine,” Hellen assured him. “Go back to bed, Sam. I’ll handle this.”

Sam nodded as Hellen began humming her lullaby again. Thankfully, their baby hadn’t inherited his mother’s sleeplessness. He kissed the side of Hellen’s face; his lips pressing tenderly against half a dozen teeth on her lipless face.

“Good night, Dad!” Ratrick squeaked from his bed as Sam trundled back to his bedroom.

Just as Sam closed his bedroom door behind him, an incredibly spine-chilling noise came from outside, like a million steel beam scraping against each other as hard as they could. It momentarily left Sam frozen in terror… up until he reminded himself what the sound actually was: Langston, regarded as the 102nd most-powerful member of the Hundred Gods.

Everybody who lived within a 50-mile radius of that towering titan had learned to recognize this awful cacophony as the sound of Langston struggling to find a comfortable position to sleep in.

Sam calmed his breath, reminding himself how he was lucky he and his family was to live in a town ruled by Langston and the cultists who served him. So many other members of the Hundred Gods were much crueler, more murderous.

His eyes were drawn to the curtain covering his bedroom window. The Visitor had been gone for eight long years. And Sam could count the number of times he’d opened the curtains of to look outside on the fingers of his one remaining hand.

Maybe… maybe tonight would be one of those times he could bring himself to do it?

Sam inched over to the curtain. Grabbed a handful of fabric. Pictured himself flinging it open, quick as ripping off an adhesive bandage. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what sort of sight was out there! There was no inherit danger in simply looking outside anymore! EVERYONE WENT OUTSIDE these days, all the time, including him! Just like the old days!

The muscles in his wrist tightened.

And Sam let go of the curtain as though it were suddenly transformed into living spiders. He ran into his bed, hiding under the blanket like he had as a very young boy, frightened of the creepy shadows that formed when Mom shut the lights off. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to mentally shut out the grating, faraway snarls of Langston trying to fall asleep comfortably, as he, himself, struggled with the exact same problem.

Chapter Text

Little Sammy’s crying woke Ratrick up again around 7 o’clock the next morning. Yawning — first with his outer mouth, and then his inner mouth — he stretched out all four of his arms, before looking over at the source of the noise.

His youngest brother was currently kicking and screaming atop a changing table as Mom wrestled him into a fresh diaper.

“Morning, Sammy. Morning, Mom,” he said, wiping crusty gunk out of his fourth eye.

“Morning, Ratrick,” said Mom, tossing out the dirty diaper. “Please go shower. You’re smelly.”

Ratrick’s ears flattened back against his head. “I’m not smelly!”

“You’re very smelly,” Mom insisted.

“How can you even tell?!” asked Ratrick. “You don’t even have a nose!”

“I can smell just fine through my mouth,” said Mom, picking Sammy up from the changing table. “Now go shower.”

Ratrick folded both sets of arms and turned away from Mom. “No! I’m fine! I hate showering!”

Then Dad opened his bedroom door. “Ratrick… please listen to your mother.”

“…Sure, Dad.”

Ratrick never liked it when Dad looked and sounded disappointed in him like this. Feeling defeated, Ratrick hopped off his bed, and went over to the dresser he and Joel shared.

A few old keepsakes from both brothers sat atop this dresser. The old red hat and backpack Ratrick had worn during the time of the Visit sat beside Joel’s old teddy bear, Fuzzy, a small, green army soldier toy, and an old framed photograph of Joel with everyone in his original family. Joel had salvaged this photo from the apartment they’d lived in… and it was always so weird for Ratrick to think that Joel had once had eyeballs, a nose, and a mouth as small as Dad’s!

Ratrick opened the drawers containing his clothes.

Every shirt Ratrick owned had holes cut into them for his third and fourth arms. His lower arms had never known the feeling of slipping through a sleeve. Similarly, all his pants, shorts, and underwear had holes cut for his tail to fit through. Grabbing a T-shirt with the Canadian maple leaf and a set of jean shorts, Ratrick went into the bathroom, where he found Joel, dressed in just his boxer shorts. Predictably, he was brushing his teeth in front of the mirror again.

Joel had always been very, very diligent about his dental hygiene; a trait which had been drilled into him by his original mom and dad. But for as long as Ratrick had known him, Joel always had a minimum of 700 teeth in his mouth, at any given moment. Knowing Joel, he must’ve gotten up an hour early just to make sure each one was brushed… and he still wasn’t done yet!

As Ratrick set his clothes down on top of the toilet, Joel’s toothbrush suddenly fell from his fingers into the sink, as his hand rose up, pressing against the inside of his mouth. Blood ran down his gums.

“Ow, owwww, OWWW… hhhh… owwwww!”

“What’s wrong, Joel?” Ratrick asked, coming up from behind his older brother with concern on his face. “Teething again?”

The sixteen-year-old teenager dove for the waste basket next to the toilet, spitting about a dozen teeth into it. Then he did the same thing again. And then a third time.

“Yes, Ratrick, I’m… hhh… teething,” Joel grumbled joylessly. “Second time this week.”

Peering into Joel’s cavernous maw, Ratrick could already see all-new teeth growing out of his gumline, both ones replacing the teeth he just spat out, and several other ones emerging out from completely different areas in his mouth!

“Do you need me to get you an aspirin?”

“Nah, I’m used to it. Barely even… hhh… hurts, really.” And then Joel squeezed a fresh glob of toothpaste on his toothbrush and resumed using it.

‘Poor, poor, poor Joel.’ Ratrick thought to himself. As much as he loved his big brother, he felt so glad not to be him… glad that his own mutation wasn’t nearly as big of a headache… or rather, toothache.

Shaking his head, Ratrick slipped out of his pajamas, entered the shower, and turned on the water. The next moment, all his fur was completely drenched, which was the absolute worst. He hated how he looked when he was wet, and he hated how he felt when he was wet! However, Dad had taught him that when you started something, you finished it right, so even though he hated it, he scrubbed soap in every part of his body, including the underside of his hind paws and all his tail.

But Ratrick got out of the shower quick, dressed himself quicker, and got right next to Joel and grabbed his toothbrush. Weirdly, for all that he hated cleaning the rest of himself, he had no problems brushing his teeth. Part of it was just Joel rubbing off on him after living eight years together as brothers, but most of it was that he actually liked the taste of toothpaste!

First the teeth on his outer mouth, then those on his inner mouth, and then he was done! Joel let out a little envious noise as Ratrick rinsed off his toothbrush and set it back in in the little cup that served as its holder.

But just as Ratrick was reaching for the doorknob, the door opened, and in stepped Dad. The expression on his father’s face stopped him cold.

Dad looked… glum.
Seriously glum.
Almost as though someone had died.

At the very least, that look was directed towards the floor, rather than at Ratrick, himself. A second later, when Dad looked up and their eyes met, the glumness changed first to shock, and then to his usual fatherly smile.

“Hey, Ratrick!” He ruffled the fur atop his head. “How’s it going?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, nose twitching. “You okay, Dad?”

“Course I am,” said Dad, still smiling while walking around Ratrick, to enter the shower. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Ratrick left the bathroom. His father had just lied to him. Even if he hadn’t looked at his face… he could smell it, thanks to his rat-nose. Normal rats’ sense of smell was five times stronger than that of a normal human’s… and the unhappiness that had been coming off of Dad had smelled… fairly strong.

As he heard the sound of the shower turning back on in the bathroom, Ratrick tried to puzzle out what had gotten Dad so downhearted.

Well… the Roaches had woken him up really early, and then Langston had been tossing and turning in his nest loud enough to wake the whole town up… so he probably just hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

And then Ratrick grinned, whiskers twitching excitedly as he realized just what Dad needed to perk up:

Cheese.
Cheese just made everything better.
Cheeseburgers, sandwiches, nachos, quesadillas, soups, hot dogs, salads, pizza…

“Hey, Mom!” he called out, while coming up to where she was sitting on the couch, with Sammy in her arms. “Could I make breakfast this morning?”

“That would be helpful,” she told him.

Mom and Sammy were watching an old DVD of Tiny Rhino Pals, a show for babies that had run for just a single season in 2004. Half their eyes were on the TV and half of them were on each other.

As Ratrick pulled out eggs and other ingredients from the fridge, he remembered Dad and Mom once telling him that back in the pre-Visit days, chickens laid either white or brown eggs, which were always identically sized and shaped, and they were sold by the dozen in little cartons. Imagine that!

He first selected a kidney-shaped egg – an orange one with bright red splotches – and pounded it repeatedly with a cooking mallet until its shell cracked open. He was pretty sure the raw egg moaned as he let it fall into the mixing bowl; there was enough to serve two people. Then, after whisking it up, he transferred the raw egg into the pan and began to fry it.

Ratrick had always loved cooking. He remembered, as a baby, watching Dad whip up all sorts of yummy meals in this very kitchen: spaghetti, fish stew, egg fried rice, and so much more! Everyone who lived in Apartment 33 always enjoyed his food and had fun conversations with each another as they ate together at the table. It had inspired Ratrick to start copying Dad’s favorite recipes at a very early age, until he’d mastered them, then he kept learning more and more from old cookbooks!

The Tiny Rhino Pals were singing their theme song again from the TV. Sammy must’ve heard this tune 500 times already, but he giggled and babbled just as happily as though it were his first time.

Ratrick found himself swishing his tail back and forth in time with the song, as he unwrapped the cheese and poked it with a fork, to see if it came to life. When it didn’t, he added some to the egg he was cooking. But then he paused and turned as he heard Mom’s loud footsteps walk his way.

“Hey, Ratrick,” Mom said, holding his younger brother out to him. “Mind holding Sammy for me for a couple minutes? I need to use the bathroom.”

“No problem!” he said, accepting the baby from her, while shutting off the stovetop’s heat with one of his free hands.

As Mom opened the door and ducked her head to enter the bathroom, Sammy started crying in Ratrick’s arms.

“Sssh, sssh, it’s okay! Mom will be back out in a few minutes!”

But Sammy just cried even louder, leaving him scrambling to figure out what was wrong. He tried sniffing his diaper, but it smelled completely clean.

Then he felt Sammy’s teeth nipping at the fingers he had pressed against his face. Most of Sammy’s fangs were only just starting to come through his gums; still too nubby.

“Don’t worry, Sammy!” Ratrick said, knowing just what he needed to do now. “Big brother’s got you covered!”

Ratrick lifted his second arm to his mouths and bit down hard on a spot just below the wrist, stopping when he tasted blood. Then he brought his newly-opened cut down to his baby brother’s mouth. Sammy latched onto it immediately, drinking with gusto.

“Awwww… you were really hungry, weren’t you, Sammy?” he cooed down to the baby, snuggling him tightly as he sucked. “Careful! That’s my fur!”

Then Ratrick heard something break behind him. He turned to see Dad, fully-dressed, staring at him with an unexpectedly dumbstruck sort of look that left him feeling like he’d done something wrong. Then Dad’s eyes went down to the shattered fragments of a mug he’d just dropped on the floor.

“Oops! Clumsy me! I’ll clean that up, just a second!”

With a sheepish sort of smile, Dad grabbed a dishrag then started picking broken mug pieces off the ground while mopping up spilled coffee with the dishrag.

“You’re feeding him?” Mom asked, from behind Ratrick. For a woman so tall and broad, she could be quite stealthy when she wanted to be! “You didn’t need to do that. I was just about to do it myself.”

“It’s okay, Mom!” he told her. “Your arms deserve a break!”

She rolled down her sleeve, and studied the many, many cuts upon her thick right arm.

“You’re not wrong,” she told him.

Sam had adjusted to a lot since the time of the Visit. But some things would never be “normal” for him, not even after eight years.

One of those things was watching his baby son drink blood from the arm of a mutant rat… no, no, no, no! It was wrong of him to think of Ratrick in those terms; it made him sound like he was some disgusting animal. Ratrick was every bit as much his son as Sammy. Ratrick was kind, loving, and incredibly intelligent. He had sacrificed his arm for Ratrick’s sake.

In fact, he, himself, had fed his own blood to Ratrick during his early infancy (something he had been inspired to do after watching Leigh do it.) So he could hardly hold it against Ratrick for doing the exact same thing to Sammy.

But regardless, he lived in a world where most babies drank blood instead of their mother’s milk. And all the Cursed members of his family – which was to say, everyone besides himself – treated it as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Then a knock came at the front door. Everyone momentarily froze at the sound, apart from the Roaches, who emerged from the bathroom, amassed together underneath their trench coat, hat, and sunglasses.

By just sharing a look, they all wordlessly decided on a course of action.

Ratrick handed Sammy back to Hellen, as they both grabbed large kitchen knives. Hellen hung back, holding the baby protectively, as Sam walked up to the door with his hand hovering over his holstered gun, flanked by Ratrick and the Roaches.

Sam opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you!” he said, recognizing who had come.

“Uh… Yeah. I’m the delivery guy,” said the delivery guy, holding out the square box in his hand. “You order an extra-large sausage-and-mushroom pizza?”

“Yes, I did!” Sam told him, even though he had done no such thing.

“pIzZa! PiZzA! piZZa!” every one of the Roaches chanted joyfully in unison. Though, for some reason, Ratrick was silent and didn’t seem to be sharing their happiness.

“That’ll be $22.”

Sam suddenly remembered that there were questions he’d always been meaning to ask this guy. So he deliberately took his time pulling out his wallet and fiddling around in it for money.

“So … which pizzeria do you work for, exactly?” he asked. The pizza box the delivery guy was holding was one of those generic types which only had the word “Pizza” written on it, instead of the name of a specific restaurant.

“Vincenzo’s,” the delivery guy replied.

“Vincenzo’s? The one on the corner of Tupper Avenue?”

“That’s the one. But… shouldn’t you know that? You were the one who ordered this pizza, after all.”

“Uh… yeah, sorry, sometimes I can get a bit absent-minded about these kind of things,” Sam said, shaking some quarters out of his wallet. “How long have you been delivering pizza for, anyway?”

“Not long. Today’s actually my second day on the job,” said the guy who’d been sporadically bringing pizza to Sam’s apartment for the past eight years.

“What’s your name?”

“My… name? My name…” Every time this delivery guy had ever come to Sam’s apartment, there had always been a slightly glassy look in his eyes… including today. But at this moment, Sam watched the teen’s eyes dull to the glassiest they had ever been; it was like they had become the eyes of a porcelain doll. “My… name… is… it’s…”

Then the teenager shook his head roughly.

“Look, buddy, I really don’t have time for chitchat. I’ve got a lot more pies to deliver, and Vincenzo’s is one of those pizzerias where it’s thirty minutes or it’s free…”

“Sure, sure!” said Sam, quickly giving the delivery guy $22, along with an $11 tip, before shutting the door. Then he took a careful peek inside the box at the pizza; which was perfectly normal and didn’t attack him.

“You know – hhh – I don’t think that guy’s aged one single day since he first started – hhh – showing up here…” said Joel, who had emerged from the bathroom while Sam had been talking with the pizza delivery guy.

“Are we… really going to be eating pizza for breakfast, Dad?” asked Ratrick, with an almost dejected look on his face.

“Of course not,” Sam said, ruffling the fur between Ratrick’s ears. “This is going straight into the fridge for later.”

“Oh, great!” said Ratrick, perking up as all the Roaches let out a chorus of disappointed sighs. “I’m making everyone omelets for breakfast! You’re gonna love them!”

Then Ratrick scurried back to the stove and went back to cooking.

“Hey, Mr. Sam?” said Joel, following after Sam as he put the pizza box in the fridge. “Why is it that whenever that guy comes over, you always buy – hhh – his pizzas, every single time?”

The Visit had mutated all the world’s pigs.
The Visit had mutated all the world’s cows.
The Visit had mutated all the world’s chickens.
Even so many of the plants had changed – and plants had no eyes to behold the Visitor!

Pork and beef and milk and eggs and dairy products and such still existed in this crazy world. But they looked and tasted noticeably different than they used to, and you couldn’t always trust that they wouldn’t do funny things to your body…

…But there was one very notable exception: the pizzas from Vincenzo’s. (Mostly.) Somehow, every part of those pizzas — mozzarella, sauce, bread, and toppings — were exactly as they had been in the good old days. The pre-Visit days.

“I’m just afraid that if I ever didn’t buy one of his pizzas… he might stop coming altogether,” Sam answered Joel, shutting the fridge’s door.

Chapter Text

“What do you think of your omelet, Dad?” asked Ratrick.

Sam swallowed the mouthful of omelet he was chewing, and smiled at his four-armed son. “It’s very, VERY cheesy!”

His omelet had at least twice the amount of cheese most people would’ve put into their omelets.

Ratrick gave a big happy double-smile with both his mouths, tail thumping the floor proudly behind him. He had grown so big since the day he’d first become Sam’s kid; he now stood about four feet, six inches tall, weighed about 70 pounds and walked on two legs instead of all fours 80% of the time!

“Really?” asked Hellen, who was seated in her usual chair beside Sam. She cut open a portion of her own omelet open with a fork, staring at its insides with her many eyes. “Looks like my omelet has just a regular amount of cheese.”

“OuRs tOo!” said the Roaches, whose humanoid amalgamation was seated next to Joel. Rather than bothering with silverware, the Roaches’ plate of food was swarming with individual roaches. (Fortunately, they were trained NOT to venture onto anyone else’s dishes.).

“Was that on purpose, Ratrick?” Hellen asked.

“Uh… no!” said Ratrick, with a note of embarrassment in his voice, and his whiskers drooping slightly. “I didn’t mean to give you guys less cheese!”

“It’s fine,” Hellen told him. “I don’t mind either way.” Sam watched all the eyeballs inside Hellen’s mouth sink backward, like the heads of turtles retreating into their shells, as she brought food into her mouth.

In the past, Hellen had always gone into the bathroom to unmask and eat food, because she didn’t want other people to look at her face. But these days, Hellen ate with everyone else, and no longer wore masks at all. She had stopped doing so right after Sammy had been born.

Sam remembered that on the day of Sammy’s birth, she’d taken one look at his face – shaped so similarly to her own – and had yanked the hockey mask off her own face and thrown it in the trash. Later, when Sam had asked her why, she’d told him, “Because I don’t want our son getting the idea that a face like his is something to be ashamed of. Something to be hidden. Something abnormal.”

And it really wasn’t any of those things. Not nowadays.

Then Sam’s thoughts were interrupted by another knock on the door.

“Want me to – hhh – answer the door this time, Mr. Sam?” Joel asked him.

“Sure, why not?” asked Sam, as each of them grabbed weapons and followed the toothy teen to the door.

As he stepped up towards the door, Joel tried to guess who it might be. Some door-to-door weapons salesman? A Langstonist with lots to say about the glory of Langston? The pizza guy again?

Or… there was always the awful possibility that it could be some poor soul who got bit by someone Cursed just like he had, and whose mind has snapped after mutating into a monster with fangs or tentacles or something else entirely… and was just acting on a mad need to murder.

(Like his dad. Like his mom. Like his baby sister. Like he, HIMSELF, ALMOST had, if not for Mr. Sam…)

You could never be too careful. Which is why you always answered your door armed and with backup.

“Who is it?” he called out to whoever had knocked.

“It’s the exterminator!” the person on the other side of the door answered him. “I heard you have a roach infestation!”

“VeRy fUnNy tRoUbLe-FrIenD!” said the Roaches, very unamused.

Joel recognized the voice at once. Sophie!

He opened the door and there she stood, dressed in faded blue jeans, red sneakers, and a slightly torn T-shirt showing Chucky from the Child’s Play movies.

She grinned adorably at Joel – with those small, cute, neatly-arranged teeth of hers – and he felt his cheeks heat up.

“Oh, hi – hhhh – Sophie! What brings you – hhhh – here?” he asked, trying his best to sound offhanded.

Sophie shrugged. “Just thought I’d drop by. This isn’t a bad time for a surprise visit, is it?”

“You know you’re always welcome here, Sophie!” Mr. Sam said from behind Joel.

What a super-swell guy Mr. Sam was!

As Sophie stepped inside the apartment, Joel’s tongue nervously licked as many teeth as it could reach, (although his mouth had grown enormous back during the Visit, the size of his tongue had stayed unchanged.)

“Uh… I’ll be… hhh… right back! Need… hhh… a bathroom!”

But instead of going straight to the bathroom, Joel first rushed to his dresser and grabbed his coolest shirt – the black one with Freddy Fazbear on it.

Once he was back in the bathroom, Joel switched out of the shirt he was wearing into the Freddy Fazbear shirt, squirted hair gel into his hair and began combing it into an acceptably “cool” shape.

The first time Joel had ever met Sophie had been in Mrs. Shnabbleheimer’s homeroom back in third grade. They’d been classmates, but had barely interacted with each other. She’d been too much of a little menace and he’d been too much of a teacher’s pet!

But then the Visit had happened. And one day after Joel had started living with Mr. Sam, Sophie had knocked on the door, and Mr. Sam had let her stay in his apartment for a while, so he and Sophie had become roommates! They’d talked together, played video games together, explored the apartment complex with Mr. Sam together, fought crazy Cursed people together, and had even saved each other’s lives quite a few times in the process!

Joel kinda had mixed feelings when Sophie’s mom had shown up at Mr. Sam’s door, ten days later. On one hand, he was happy that Sophie was able to reunite with her mom and go back to her home, (Joel would’ve gladly given ever tooth in his jaws to have had that happen to himself!) But on the other hand, he was no longer living with anyone else his own age. Supply runs hadn’t been quite as fun without Sophie!

But then the Visitor left, and the years had gone by, and Sophie had grown, and there was so much about her these days that was just so pretty!

She had two eyes, two ears, one nose, and one small mouth… all on her face and nowhere else on her body!
Her fingers didn’t have any kind of claws on them!
Her skin wasn’t scaly or slimy or made of something inorganic like metal or plastic!
And her lungs, her brain, her pancreas, her gallbladder, and all the rest of her internal organs – they were all inside her body!
Yes, Sophie was nothing at all like the other girls his age!

And by some incredible stroke of luck, Sophie still thought that Apartment 33 was a cool place to hang out at, every now and then, even as a teenager!

He gargled some minty mouthwash and returned to the living room just in time to see Ratrick give Sophie a fresh, steaming omelet.

“Your breakfast, Mademoiselle Sophie,” he said, bowing like a waiter at an old pre-Visit French restaurant.

“Merci beaucoup, Ratrick!”

She took a bite of the omelet. “Wow, this tastes great! Three-and-a-half-stars, Chef Remi!”

Ratrick chuckled, sat down, and began eating his own plate of food. Joel thought about laughing right along, but from where they sat, the Roaches were just glaring straight at Sophie with such wordless sullenness on every one of their little faces, that everyone else quickly went uncomfortably quiet.

Finally, Sophie herself snapped, “Okay, what’d I do wrong this time?!”

“yOu cALLeD uS iNfEsTaTiOn!” warbled the Roaches. “yOu jOkeD aBoUt eXtErMinAtInG uS!”

“No so loud, please!” Hellen said, “The baby’s napping!”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “It was a joke, Roaches! You know it was just a joke! Even the Shadow back there knows it’s a joke!”

The Shadow who stood on the same spot he’d been standing in for the past three weeks just made a weird shrugging motion.

“Look… would some food make it up to you?”

And Sophie scooped a morsel of omelet into her spoon, took aim, and flung it straight at the area on the Roach collective which comprised their “face,” striking them squarely on their “cheek.”

Joel knew most human beings would’ve been outraged or greatly upset at such treatment. But the Roaches squealed with delight. Although Ratrick had served the Roaches a considerably large portion of food, their collective was comprised of thousands; so at any given moment, at least a couple hundred of them were guaranteed to have empty stomachs. So the spoonful of cheese and egg disappeared from their “cheek” like a T-bone steak dropped into a piranha pool.

“There. We good now?” asked Sophie.

“YeS tRoUbLe-FrIeNd!” the Roaches chirped. “wE vErY gOoD!”

“You know how Sophie likes to tease,” Ratrick told the Roaches, pouring himself a glass of water.

As Joel tried to think of how to inject himself in this conversation with Sophie, she fixed a thoughtful look at his ratty brother.

“Hey, Ratrick, did you ever figure out what you were originally? You know… were you a human baby that looked outside and became rat-like? Or were you a rat baby that looked outside and became human-like?”

Ratrick thought a minute, then shrugged and bit down on a piece of toast.

“Don’t know,” he said. “My earliest memory was crying and feeling hungry in that crib that Dad found me in; I can’t remember what exactly I was before that. At this point in time, I’d probably need to do a lot of serious ‘detective work’ to uncover the truth about my past… and I just don’t really care enough. Dad’s my dad and I’m his son, and that’s all that really matters to me.”

His brother finished this little speech by directing a very loving look towards Mr. Sam, who smiled warmly, said, “Thanks, Ratrick,” and then held out the can of soda he’d been drinking towards Ratrick, who clinked his cup of water against it as though he’d just delivered a fancy toast, and the both of them drank.

“Well… it’s not THAT important to me to be honest,” Sophie said. “You’re a cool little guy either way… I was just curious, you know?”

At that point, Joel finally thought up something good to talk about with Sophie.

“Hey, Sophie, did you hear that they’re – hhh – finally going to be reopening some of the – hhh – schools?” he asked her.

“Yep. In just a few months. And they’re going to make all the kids attend it,” she said, really drawing out the l-sound of the word ‘all.’”

“Yeah! Isn’t it great? This whole time, I’ve felt like – hhh – such a dropout, but now I’m finally going back to school!”

Joel knew that it wasn’t his fault that nearly all of the teachers had either died or gone crazy during the Visit, but it’d always bothered him to be deprived of a formal education for so long!

“What grade do you think – hhh – we’d be in right now, if the Visitor had never visited? Eighth grade? Ninth?”

“Eleventh grade, I think,” said Hellen.

“Do you think they’ll put us in eleventh grade – hhh – because of our age? Or will they put us back in third grade, since that’s – hhh – where we left off?”

Sophie gave him a look that was almost pitying. “Joel… you seem to forget that the Canadian government’s not running the show anymore. It’s those cultists, the Langstonists… and Langston, himself. They’re going to indoctrinate all their students to worship Langston just like they do!”

“I… I’m – hhh – sure they’ll include some fun math classes along with all the religious studies!” he responded awkwardly.

Sophie laughed and then smiled at him beautifully. “You’re such an adorable dork, Joel. I always loved that about you.”

Joel felt his heart skip a beat: she’d used the L-word! While speaking about HIM!

“There’s a lot that I love… that I – hhh – like about you too, Sophie! You’re clever, you’re – hhh – funny, you’re not afraid of getting into trouble, and you look… you have great – hhh – fashion sense!”

“You think so?” she asked.

“Totally!” said Joel. “Chucky’s such a – hhh – cool horror villain!”

Sophie looked down at her shirt, then back up at Joel.

“Joel… how are you able to see without eyes?”

Everyone else at the table fixed their eyes curiously upon him. It made Joel feel very self-conscious. But he took a breath and said:

“I know it’s – hhh – weird. I wish I could explain it. I lost my eyeballs the day I mutated… but it hasn’t affected my ability to see at all. It’s like they never left! In fact, I can even shut the eyes I don’t have. I do it all the time when I sleep! Watch!”

And Joel’s vision turned completely black. He maintained that blackness for several seconds.

“aRe yOu dOiNg iT tOoTh fRieNd?”

“Yeah!” Joel answered. Then he let out a sigh. “It doesn’t look like I’ve done anything, does it?”

He let his vision return to normal, so that he could see everyone around him.

“No,” said Mr. Sam. “But I don’t think a single person at this table’s doubting you, Joel.”

“Yeah!” said Sophie. “I’ll bet that you got some kind of crazy sixth sense when you mutated. Plenty of Cursed people did!”

Sophie looked like she was going to say more, but an angry-sounding pounding on the door stopped her.

“Third time today!” muttered Mr. Sam. “Almost like the Visit all over again!”

“we’LL gEt DooR tHiS tImE!” the Roaches offered. They didn’t need to push their chair out to get up; the cockroaches occupying the seat of the chair simply slid off it bonelessly into a stand. As before, the others took defensive positions; around the Roaches; even Sophie drew her gun.

The Roaches opened the door.

“oH hELLo mOtHeR-oF-TrOuBLe-fReInD. hELlo mAtE-oF-mOthEr-oF-tRoUbLe-fRiend!”

Two people pushed past the Roaches, and entered into Apartment 33. The first was Sophie’s mom, Miss Harriet. The other was Miss Harriet’s second husband, Ian.

Before the Visit, Ian had been a bank teller. But Ian had looked outside on the first day the Visitor had peered down upon Planet Earth. His mind had stayed perfectly sane, though his body had transformed into one long, winding, man-shaped small intestine. Two years later, he and Miss Harriet had met. One year after that, they got married.

“You are in SO MUCH TROUBLE, Sophie!” Miss Harriet yelled, walking up to grab Sophie by the arm.

“For what?!” she shot back, slickly dodging her mother’s grabs.

“For sneaking out here when you’re supposed to be grounded!” Miss Harriet retorted.

“I’m sixteen years old! I’m too old and mature to be grounded!”

“You call slipping laxatives into my tea MATURE?!” Sophie’s stepdad bellowed, while pointing a slimy, ropy, pink finger at her.

Pretty much all the Cursed were deformed in one way or another. But the ugliness of Ian’s body was the type that was very difficult to look away from. It was horridly fascinating to behold the singular humongous length of intestinal tract which was Ian’s body, wound back and forth tightly against itself to take on a humanoid shape, shifting and pulsating with each movement he made and breath he drew.

“Shut up, Ian! You’re not my real father!”

Joel and the rest of his family watched this dysfunctional drama continue to play out in uncomfortable silence, as Miss Harriet made a frustrated sob.

“Where did I go wrong as a mother?! Where?!”

Ian scooped her in his arms, pressing her against his chest, letting her sob against his shirt.

“There, there, darling, it’s going to be okay.”

And then Miss Harriet looked upward, and gave Ian a brief, yet loving kiss on his mouth… which wasn’t shaped like a proper mouth at all, but the tubelike opening of a small intestine. Sophie made a disgusted face.

As gross as this all was to watch, Joel knew that he had no room to show any disgust himself. In fact, it comforted him in a weird way. After all, If Miss Harriet could fall for someone like Ian, Joel knew there was hope for himself! He hoped Sophie could one day find it in her heart to love him. He really hoped she was the kind of girl who liked big kisses.

BOOM!

The lights flickered. Things fell off of shelves onto the floor. Everyone stumbled, apart from the Shadow.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

“Something big’s going on outside!” Sophie exclaimed. “Come on, Joel! Let’s go to the roof and see!”

And before anyone else could properly react, she grabbed Joel by the wrist and ran with him out the door.

“Hey, wait for me!” Ratrick called out, jumping off his chair and scampering after the two teenagers, even as his parents shouted after him.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Chapter Text

The announcements started coming on over the loudspeakers that had been installed all over Montreal as Sophie flung open the door to the roof and let Ratrick and Joel hustle past her.

“MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO FAITHFULLY FOLLOW THE ONE TRUE GOD, LANGSTON: TAKE HEED! A VAST, UNHOLY TERROR IS APPROACHING OUR SACRED KINGDOM OF MONTREAL!”

The outside sky was its usual deranged muddle of colors – pinks and purples and dark blues clashing with fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. It was pretty in its own way, but Sophie wished the sky could go back to being just blue for at least one day of the year!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

It sounded louder and closer.

“VERY SOON, LANGSTON WILL DELIVER US FROM THIS EVIL, BUT UNTIL THEN, TAKE COVER AND REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES! PRAISE LANGSTON!”

“Do either of you see – hhh – what’s making all the noise?” asked Joel, while the announcement proceeded to repeat several times.

They all looked around. A few Cursed winged creatures flew through the air – one was a human whose arms had grown flaps of skin like a flying squirrel, one had clearly started life as a bird but had mutated to look like a gargoyle with a beak, and there was a bunch of green-colored things flocked together in a K-formation that she couldn’t tell WHAT they had originally been! There were terrified looks on their faces as they all flew straight southward as fast as their bodies could manage.

Then hundreds of alarms went off all over the kingdom right as Sophie, Joel, and Ratrick spotted the ‘unholy terror.’

The three of them immediately took cover behind an especially large HVAC unit and peered out from behind it.

Sophie was not the greatest at judging sizes, but it had to be at least sixty feet tall. It mostly resembled a mannequin – a bald, slender, female mannequin – except that it was made from bone instead of whatever it was that clothing store mannequins were made of. (Plastic? Fiberglass?) There were also thousands upon thousands of jagged, zigzagging porcupine-like spins coming up from every inch of the back of its body. It walked with its body and arms bent like a praying mantis.

“I know who she – hhh – is!” Joel whispered to her and Ratrick. “That’s Giselle! One of the – hhh – Hundred Gods!”

“I’m not familiar with her!” Sophie admitted.

“She’s the queen of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia!” Ratrick squeaked. “The experts who’ve been keeping track of all the Hundred Gods rate her as being the 98th-most-powerful Hundred God.”

“She looks very mannequin-y,” Sophie noted.

“Apparently, she used to work in a fashion boutique, back in the pre-Visit days,” Ratrick told her.

The ruler of New Bruswick and Nova Scotia spread her weirdly disjointed arms as far as she could and bent her head forward. A mouth opened on the crown of her head.

“IIIIIIIIIII AAAAAAAMMMM GISELLLLLLLE! MONTREALLLLL ISSSSSSSSSS NOWWWWWW MIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!!!!!”

Sophie, Joel, and Ratrick all clapped their hands over their ears, though it did very little to block out Giselle’s piercing voice, which was as shrill as a pterodactyl in a dinosaur movie.

”GAAAAAATHER BEFORRRE MEEEEEE ANNNNND SWEARRRRRRR ALLEGIANNNNNCE ORRRRRR DIEEEEEEE!”

And then the giant mannequin straightened her back regally and held herself still, awaiting to see how many Montrealers would gather.

“It – hhh – doesn’t look like she came alone,” Joel whispered.

Sophie squinted forward; though Giselle was huge she was also many blocks away. “Yeah, I do see people around her… but I can’t make out details from here… wish I had some binoculars or something.”

“Luckily, I brought mine,” said Ratrick, pulling them out of a pocket, and looking through them. “Ooooh, yes, she brought soldiers.”

Ratrick handed his binoculars to Sophie, who had a look for herself, and gave a whistle.

Sophie wasn’t totally sure if ‘soldiers’ was really the right word for the hundreds of people gathered around and behind Giselle. None of them were dressed in flak jackets or camo, like you’d see in a proper military. But most of them were armed with weapons – and the ones that weren’t certainly had enough menacing mutations to make up for it! These people had to be cultists who worshipped Giselle, judging from their robes, and the fact that all of them wore white masks that resembled Giselle’s mannequin-ish face.

“Can I – hhh – see too?”

“Yeah,” said Sophie, passing Ratrick’s binoculars to Joel, who held them up to a patch of empty air just below his hairline and right next to a cluster of his uppermost teeth.

“Oooh, I’m seeing some people come out of the – hhh – brick building on Bennett Street,” he told the other two. “They’re going up to Giselle… and now they’re – hhh – on their knees bowing to her.”

“Do you recognize them?” Ratrick asked.

“Yeah, it’s – hhh – the Caldwin family.”

“They always were a bunch of cowards,” said Sophie.

“And now the cultists are putting robes over the Caldwins and…”

A new sound – a sound that had become very familiar to Sophie, Joel, Ratrick, and everyone else who’d been living in post-Visit Montreal – drew their attention. All three of them redirected their attention away from Giselle, her minions, and the Caldwins, towards the east.

“Looks like our ‘one true god’ has arrived,” Ratrick observed.

Unlike Giselle, Sophie knew lots about Langston. Of course she did. After all, Langston and all the Langstonists who enforced his laws had ruled over Montreal for almost a decade!

In the pre-Visit days, Langston had been a fat, grumpy man who had worked as a cook in a school cafeteria. And on the day that the Visitor had come, Langston had happened to look out the window at it, right while he’d been in the middle of cooking a huge batch of macaroni and cheese.

Now Sophie and her friends watched an entire river’s worth of macaroni and cheese flood the streets. and rushing decisively and purposefully in the direction of Giselle. The moment the hot, bubbling mass of macaroni-packed liquid cheese was within attacking distance, all of Giselle’s cultists opened fire on it: shooting bullets, tossing bombs and Molotov cocktails: two especially mutated cultists breathed fire on it like a dragon!

And the cheese burnt and bled as it was attacked; clouds of red bursting through the thick yellow, but the mac-and-cheese surged even faster and angrier through the streets. Those cultists who could climbed quickly up the walls of nearby buildings or just flew straight up out of harm’s way… the rest were all washed straight into the deluge of cheese.

And once inside the mac-and-cheese, they were as good as dead. Through Ratrick’s binoculars, Sophie watched one scalded cultist swim upward, surface out of the cheese, and take a huge gulp of air, only for several macaroni hands to rise up, grab him by the neck and drag him back down into the boiling liquid.

“I’ll give Langston this much: he certainly ain’t no pushover!” Sophie said.

And then the mac-and-cheese reached Giselle herself. It rose straight up, taller than the tallest tsunami, seventy feet high, before reforming itself, taking a muscular, apelike shape with a wide, protruding jaw… like a yellow dripping King Kong.

The true form of Langston the Hundred God.

“GET OUTTA MY KINGDOM!” He roared at the enemy God.

Giselle snarled at him, bending down and ripping a good chunk of asphalt straight out of the road and hurling it at Langston, but he dodged it, quickly closed the distance between them, then bit into the side of the other God’s neck with impossibly sharp and strong macaroni teeth…

“YOU LITTLE IDIOTS!”

The voice was Ian’s. Sophie felt herself grabbed from behind by her stepfather’s moist, squelchy hands. The undulations in his intestinal face showed both worry and anger. Glancing over to her right, she saw that Sam was here also: he had Joel and Ratrick.

“Look, Ian, we…”

But Ian just shushed her as he and Sam both hurried them all back through the rooftop’s door. Once the five of them were back inside, Sophie saw her mom standing at the top of the stairs. The Roaches and Hellen were here too, and Hellen was holding little Sammy in her arms.

“You’re alive!” cried her Mom, scooping her up in her arms. “Oh, thank God, thank…”

“Save it for later, Harriet!” Sam said. “We need to go!”

They hurried down the stairway and did not stop running downward until they had reached the basement. Many of their neighbors were already here; families huddled together against walls. The family who lived in Apartment 17 had a portable radio turned on, and was listening to it intently. The Shadow was also here, occupying a corner; its mask bobbed in a welcome as they spotted it. Sophie and the others gathered around it.

And then Ian snapped at her, “Sophie, what the HELL were you thinking, going up on that roof?!”

“It was a fight between two of the Hundred Gods happening right outside!” she snapped back. “Of COURSE I was going to go up and watch!”

“Would it’ve been worth the risk of getting disintegrated by a plasma beam or something?!” Ian screamed. “Would it’ve been worth it if Ratrick or Joel had gotten disintegrated?!”

Ian continued to yell at her about how irresponsible and out-of-control she was, until he finally ran out of steam. Then the both of them sat down against the wall with all the others. They could all still hear the noises of Langston and Giselle fighting; even from way down here.

“Do you think they’ll destroy this building?” Sophie heard her Mom ask. “This is a fight between kaiju…”

“Even if they do, it’s safest down in the basement, Harriet,” Sam assured her. “Just like it would be during a tornado.”

“What if that other kaiju can burrow underground, like the one that rules China?”

Sam didn’t have an answer for that. It was all they could do to just hunker down quietly and hope for the best.

About an hour into the waiting, Sophie’s stomach rumbled.

“I wish we’d brought a snack,” she muttered.

“I have a Chocky bar in my – hhh – pocket,” Joel told her. “You’re welcome to it.”

Sophie looked up from her feet. “Really?”

“Yeah. It’s – hhh – yours.”

He held it out to her. Her fingers brushed Joel’s as she took it from him; Joel’s cheeks pinkened, and he looked away, muttering, “Hope you like it.”

Sophie unwrapped the candy bar rather slowly. Given how backwards society was these days, it would be quite a few more years before any of the candy factories were ready to reopen and go back to mass-producing sweets, (thank God for preservatives!)

So a gift like this was not given lightly.

Sophie wasn’t blind to how Joel looked at her these days… as well as all the times he pretended not to look at her, like he was doing right now! Though… he wasn’t the only one. Even now she could spot Arnold Beckler from Apartment 30 and Dwight Emerson from Apartment 15, each stealing longing glances at her while they sat with their families.

It was funny, really. Back when she was just a mischievous little third-grader and the Visitor hadn’t yet turned the world upside-down and inside-out, she’d never dreamed that she’d grow up into the sort of girl who’d turn boys’ heads. Now practically all the boys her age were drooling over her, (a few literally!). She'd been asked out on dates quite a few times.

The true secret to her desirability, of course, was that she had not stepped or looked outdoors for fifteen days during a certain pivotal moment in Planet Earth’s history.

But the idea of dating any of her admirers had always unnerved her, since every one of them was Cursed. You weren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover… but Arnold Beckler’s body looked like it had been flayed, (though he was perfectly alright.) And Dwight Emerson looked like two man-sized tarantulas glued back-to-back. And ever scarier than their physical deformities was the underlying question of their mental health. The Visitor had caused so many crazy changes to so many brains…

“You’ve – hhh – been holding that Chocky bar for quite a while, Sophie. Are you – hhh – going to eat it?”

Sophie looked down at the Chocky bar then back at Joel.

“How about we share it?”

And she snapped the bar in two, and placed one half in Joel’s surprised, wide-open mouth. He chewed it with surprising delicacy, and she giggled.

Joel didn’t scare her at all.

Yes, Joel’s mouth had completely taken over his entire face, neck and quite a bit of the center of his torso. Yes, he had more teeth than a small family of sharks. But when you did the math… that was probably only about 15% of his body that had changed! All the rest of Joel was a normal teenage boy.

Also, Joel was kind and sweet.
He was mentally and emotionally stable.
He was a pretty strong, dependable fighter, when he needed to be.
And he liked her, in spite of the fact that she was a troublemaker.
He’d always been this way, ever since they were kids!

If there ever was a boy worth taking a chance on, it was definitely Joel!

Just as she bit down on her own half of the Chocky Bar, some lady from the Apartment 17 family called out, “Hey, everybody! Listen up!” and turned up the volume of the radio she’d been listening to.

“…BROTHERS AND SISTERS, I SHALL SAY IT AGAIN: IT IS SAFE TO RETURN TO YOUR HOMES! IT IS SAFE TO RETURN TO YOUR HOMES!”

Chapter Text

The Masked Shadow kept still and didn’t follow Sam and his family when they left the basement, but it had already returned to its usual spot when they stepped back into Apartment 33. Sam nodded at it, and it nodded at him. Then he turned to the others.

“First, we need to check how badly this place got damaged,” he told them.

“It… really doesn’t look like anything’s – hhh – damaged, Mr. Sam,” Joel noted.

He wasn’t wrong. The fight between Langston and Giselle had caused a few objects to fall onto the floor, but even these were all in one piece.

“Appearances can always be deceiving,” he cautioned. “Remember how the Finchley family died the last time Langston threw a tantrum, two months ago!”

All of them nodded grimly at one another.

Then Sam pointed at the Roaches. “You guys, get back behind the walls and check the structural integrity of our home. All the internal places… everywhere human eyes can’t see!”

“YeS fRiEnD!” The Roaches saluted Sam even as they dispersed out of their clothes from the bottom. Everyone else remained perfectly still to avoid stepping on any of the insects until they had all scurried into all of Apartment 33’s many cracks.

“You two, check the bathroom,” he told Joel and Ratrick. “And you, honey, check the living room,” he told Hellen. “I’ll check our bedroom.”

They split up.

Inside the bedroom, Sam began by turning the lights on and off… the light switch worked. Then he decided to listen to the local news station as he continued with his inspection. Even though he didn’t really trust the local news.

“…wings?!” a female voice exclaimed in disbelief, once Sam turned on his radio. “Can it truly be true, Brother Hubert?”

“I swear it upon the name of Langston, himself, Sister Lucienne!”

“Never take Langston’s most sacred name in vain, Brother Hubert!” chided Sister Lucienne.

“Forgive me, Great and Mighty Langston!”

Sam then heard a hard-sounding noise from the radio followed by Brother Hubert letting out a cry of pain; he must’ve done something to hurt himself in penance. Probably to one of his fingers.

“But nonetheless, it is true!” Brother Hubert continued. “Great and Mighty Langston was in the middle of battling the false god, Giselle, and her foul invasion force from the east! Langston had trapped that repugnant interloper in a most holy chokehold, when she sprouted a pair of wings from her back, and took to the sky… with our one true god still wrapped around her body!”

“And where is our great Langston and the false god now, Brother Hubert?!” asked Sister Lucille. “Still battling each other in the sky?”

“They are still battling each other, Sister Lucille,” the other Langstonian reporter said, “But eyewitness reports say they are now fighting in Saskatchewan!”

“And which of them is winning, Brother Hubert?” inquired Sister Lucienne.

There came the sound of an arm swinging, followed by the noise of impact and Sister Lucienne letting out a little scream.

“How dare you even ask such an impertinent question, Sister Lucienne!” Brother Hubert shrieked at his fellow reporter. “OF COURSE the most almighty Langston IS triumphing over the odious Giselle, you faithless hag! It’s just that Langston – in his infinite wisdom – is taking his time finalizing his victory, only Langston alone, in his boundless wisdom, can say when he’ll be finished…”

Sam shut the radio off. He was almost done checking the bedroom, and everything looked just as it had before Langston and Giselle had fought.

There was just… one other thing.

“Hellen, honey?” he called out. “Could you come in here for a second, please?”

Hellen stepped in. She was not carrying Sammy; she must have left him with one of the boys.

“The living room’s perfectly safe,” she said.

“That’s great,” he said. “But there was something else I wanted to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“Do you mind looking outside the window for me?” Sam asked her. He briefly considered adding some kind of excuse, such as ‘I have a bathroom emergency,’ but she’d see right through it, and he didn’t want to be even more cowardly than he was already being.

“Sure, Sam.”

He shut his eyes right as she was reaching towards the window. After he heard Hellen open the curtains, the cowardly part of him was horribly sure he’d next hear her flesh and bones tear as she mutated even further…

“I see several buildings around the Pearson Street area have been very badly wrecked. Some are nothing but rubble,” Hellen informed him. “Also, from what I can see of it from this angle, our apartment complex has not been damaged at all.”

He opened his eyes.

“You should see for yourself, Sam,” she added.

He paused only a moment but went over to the window and looked outside. Everything was just as Hellen had described… and then he felt his wife’s large arms wrap around him from behind, pressing his back against the front of her chest.

“It’s not out there,” she whispered softly into his ear. There was no need for her to specify what ‘it’ was. “It’s never coming back.”

“How can you possibly know that for certain?” asked Sam, his throat suddenly dry.

“I just do,” she answered. His wife’s voice was almost seductive in its simple surety. He turned around and hugged her back; her body was so soft, in spite of her muscle. Then they looked into each other’s eyes.

Hellen’s eyes – so many more than two – no longer frightened him. Especially not at a time like this, when all of them were full of concern for him.

And then Sam stiffened as he felt a cockroach scuttle up his leg and across his waist and arm, until finally stopping on the back of his hand.

“HoUsE aLL oKaY fRiEnD!” the roach reported. “ChEcKeD aLL oVeR!”

“That’s great!” said Sam.

“wHaT wE dO nOw?” the roach asked.

Sam looked over at the clock: 10:32 A.M.

“Go back and tell the boys and your fellow roaches to get ready. We’re going to go to work.”

Sam would always remember the night just before the Visit had begun.

He’d been sitting at his laptop, desperately e-mailing job application after job application. Regretting that he’d gotten himself fired from the convenience store earlier that afternoon. Plagued with worries about how he was now supposed to pay for food and for electricity and for water and for taxes and for toothpaste and for shampoo and for his rent and for new video games. After submitting his tenth job application, he finally called it quits and crawled into bed, praying to God that one of the businesses he’d applied to would respond back tomorrow.

None of them had, of course.
For very justifiable reasons.

The Visit had been a lawless period of chaos, madness, unpredictability, transformation, and death. Sam had survived those fifteen days by scavenging food and other supplies from the homes of neighbors in his apartment complex. Through it all, he’d never felt any pressure to continue hunting for a new job.

But the Visit was now in the far past.

It wasn’t as though Sam could’ve stayed unemployed forever, scavenging other people’s stuff for all the rest of his life. Especially not after the new government had taken control of Montreal.

To be sure, the new government was an absurd theocracy which worshipped a humongous, half-mad, shapeshifting macaroni-and-cheese monster. But it was a government, nonetheless, and like most governments, the Langstonists had strong laws against theft. And taxes.

On top of all that, Sam was no longer living alone. He had a family to provide for.

After slipping into his work uniform and collecting his gear, Sam stepped back into the living room. Joel and Ratrick were both sitting on the couch, playing Ultra Bash Cousins Maximum.

Ratrick held a game controller in his upper set of paws, and another game controller in his lower set of paws. He was playing two different characters at once again: Danongorf and Birky, while Joel was playing as Pigglyjuff. Frankly, what most fascinated Sam most was that Ratrick’s two fighters were not teamed up against Joel’s. Instead, Birky and Danongorf were battling each other just as aggressively as they were Pigglyjuff.

Reminding himself that he had to be a father first and a gamer second, Sam put his hands on his hips. “I thought I told you we were going to go to work!”

“We’re already ready, Dad!” said Ratrick, not turning away from the game.

“Yeah, we were just waiting for – hhh – you, Mr. Sam!” said Joel, who was putting up a very good fight against both of Ratrick’s characters.

It was true. Joel and Ratrick were dressed for work, and all their gear was right by their side.

“Turn it off!” he said. Both boys let out disappointed sighs, but Joel turned the console off.

“And what about you, Roaches?” he asked, turning around to face them.

“wE ReAdY!” chirped the aggregation of insects.

“Then you should head out,” said Hellen, stepping towards Sam with Sammy in her arms. “You’re already going to be late.”

Ever since the baby had come into their lives, Hellen had quit going to work with the rest of them. Being Sammy’s mommy had become her full-time job. She bent and kissed Ratrick and Joel on their foreheads, Sam on his lips, and the Roaches not at all. As Sam kissed his youngest son’s forehead, Sammy let out a little nonsensical noise and snuggled deeper into his mother’s arms.

The three of them plus the Roaches descended the stairs for the second time that day… this time at a much more leisurely pace. On their way down, they were passed by Mr. Wakefield, whose skin had transformed into steel wool, as well as his wife, who eyes had turned entirely green and had ruler-length fingernails growing out of all sides of her neck.

Once they were at the ground floor, they walked by a child-sized maggot who was entering the laundromat, a giant mass of earwax chatting with a woman whose body was zits upon zits upon zits, and then left the apartment complex through the front entrance. Outside Sam spotted a man with three necks, a woman who had many sections of her body replaced by those of a lobster, a living assemblage of crushed beer cans…

…Every single day of his life, Sam felt like a refugee from an obliterated world who now resided in a planet-sized Halloween Town from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. The only thing missing were actual Halloween decorations (except when it was October.)

Shaking his head, Sam told the other three, “Come on, we need to hustle!”

They started walking down the sidewalk at a fast pace, when a yellow SUV drove up beside them.

“Hey! You guys need a lift?” a male voice asked.

No person was sitting in the driver’s seat of this SUV… because it was one of those living vehicles. Most likely, it had melded with its driver during the Visit. It was watching them with large blue eyes that had once been headlights.

Sam remembered the very first pack of living vehicles he had ever encountered – all in the garage of his apartment complex, during the Visit. They had all been violently insane, and difficult for him and the companions who’d been with him to put down.

“I’ll be your taxicab if you’ve got the money!”

To his credit, this SUV did not look or sound like a dangerous lunatic. His grill and front bumper had been replaced with a very humanoid mouth, complete with teeth and tongue, which it was using to smile affably.

Sam checked his wristwatch, silently calculating how long it would take to walk to his job. He looked back at his sons and the Roaches. “You guys okay with taking a drive?”

“That sounds – hhh – swell!” said Joel, and Ratrick and the Roaches nodded in agreement.

The yellow SUV grinned wider and opened its doors. Sam took the front passenger seat, while the others all packed together in the back.

“Wait… is that dude a bunch of bugs?!” asked the yellow SUV, his voice now coming through the car’s interior speaker system. “Eeeewww!”

The Roaches all hissed indignantly. Sam quickly said, “They have human-level intelligence, and they’re friends of mine!”

“But I can feel them scuttling on my back seat and it’s SO GROSS!”

“Look… I’ll pay you extra!” Sam promised.

“Fine!” grumbled the SUV. “Where are you headed, anyway?”

“133 Turner Street,” Sam told him.

Seatbelts fastened themselves over all of them. The straps were living skin, and the buckles were formed of bone. And then the SUV started forward.

Montreal’s traffic lights – like so many other niceties of the pre-Visit days – no longer worked. Those which hadn’t been destroyed during the chaos of the Visit, simply shut off a few years afterward, so Sam and his family members had to rely entirely on the SUV’s good judgement, as it drove around destroyed sections of the road and other vehicles – both alive and not.

They drove in uncomfortable silence: the Roaches were still upset that the car had called them gross, and were making angry little chittering noises as they all sat stiffly. Every couple of minutes, the SUV couldn’t quite suppress a quiet noise of disgust.

Up in his seat, Sam did his best to make himself comfortable. Riding inside a living vehicle was not at all like driving in a normal car, because living vehicles were completely alive. Just sitting in this seat felt like laying against another person’s body. He could hear and feel the car’s breathing in and out as it rolled down the road, and his seat inflated and deflated ever-so-slightly with each inhale and exhale.

“It’s kind of hot today. Would you guys like some AC?” the SUV asked his passengers.

“Yes, please!” said Ratrick.

When the AC came on, it didn’t really feel like a fan was blowing or any other kind of mechanical process was taking place. Rather… it felt just like somebody’s mouth was breathing cool air on his face. Sam wasn’t entirely comfortable with the sensation, so he looked out the window to distract himself, seeing a sign up ahead that read ‘Tupper Avenue’…

“Stop!”

“What?!” both the SUV and Ratrick said, nearly at the same time.

“Stop right here!” Sam said, louder.

The SUV hit the brakes.

Sam got out. He was standing right on the corner of Tupper Avenue. He quickly spotted what he’s looking for: the ruins of a pizzeria. It had been burned to the ground, and very little of its walls were still standing, but he could see the charred, wrecked remnants of a pizza oven in what had once been a kitchen. Large neon LED letters littered the ground; although broken, they still spelled out “Vincenzo’s.”

“Are you feeling – hhh – okay, Mr. Sam?”

He turned back around. Everyone in the SUV was watching him with concern on their faces… and so was the SUV, himself.

“Hey, Mr. SUV-guy…”

“My name’s Gary,” said Gary the SUV.

“Hey, Gary, do you have any idea when this pizza joint got destroyed?” asked Sam, pointing back at the pizzeria.

“Vincenzo’s?” The SUV’s blue eyes squinted in thought. “Oh yeah… it got wrecked during the first day of the Visit. I didn’t see it happen myself, but apparently people were setting other people on fire in there, and the whole place got torched. Real nasty stuff!”

Sam looked back again at the pizzeria’s ruins.

“Alright, I’m done,” he said, opening the SUV’s door and sitting back down in the front passenger’s seat. “Let’s keep going to 133 Turner Street.”

The car started up again.

“wHy yOu dO tHaT fRiEnD?” asked the Roaches.

He turned around in his seat so he could see the others, and reminded them of the teenager who’d been delivering all those pizzas to their apartment for all these years.

“…And he said that he was working for Vincenzo’s on Tupper Avenue.” he finished.

“But… if Vincenzo’s has been – hhh – destroyed for so long, how were those pizzas being made?!” Joel said, “Have we been eating some kinda – hhh – ghost pizza this whole time?”

Sam shrugged and said, “Who can say?”

Although, in the back of his mind, it somehow just made total sense to Sam that it would turn out like this.

Then the SUV came to a stop. “We’re here,” he announced. “That’ll be $54.”

Sam pulled out his wallet. “Where do you want me to put the money?”

The glove compartment opened itself… and a human hand stretched out from inside it. Uneasily, Sam placed three twenties on top of its palm. The hand disappeared into the glove compartment, and returned with $6 in change.

They all stepped out.

What Bethlehem was to Christianity and Mecca was to Islam, Meadow Valley School was to the Langstonists. It was the place where Langston had originally worked as a cook, back in the pre-Visit days. And it was also the place where Langston had ceased being a ‘mere human’ and became a Hundred God, when he had laid eyes on the Visitor.

Although the building’s name had not been changed, Meadow Valley School was not truly a school any longer – no children learned lessons here, (although there was a training room for new recruits on the second floor.)

It was also the place where Sam, Joel, Ratrick, and the Roaches all earned a living. Well… it was their headquarters, anyway!

They all walked up slowly to the front entrance, because there was a large contingent of guards stationed all around the school. The more humanoid ones were armed with automatic rifles. The less humanoid ones had mutations lethal enough that they did not need automatic rifles at all.

“Alright, stop right there!” one of the guards called out to everyone in Sam’s group, which they all did. They all knew the security check-in routine.

A single guard – whose whole head was just one enormous head-sized nose – came up and sniffed them all, one by one, just like a police dog. Then he turned back towards his fellow guards.

“They’re good!” he announced, somehow able to speak with his right nostril. “Let ‘em in!”

They were allowed inside.

“Welcome, Brother Sam!” called out an especially bloated and sociable Langstonist, with purple-reddish skin and horns, once they were in Meadow Valley School. “Brother Joel! Little Brother Ratrick! And all the many Brothers and Sisters that constitute you collective of Roaches!

“Hi, Brother Al!” squeaked Ratrick.

“Wasn’t Langston magnificent today?!” Brother Al sighed. “Battling that horrible creature, Giselle and her invasion force! Praise upon the Mac! Praise upon the Cheese! It will only be a matter of time before Langston finishes smiting her and then he’ll boil her alive like a…!”

“Sorry, Brother Al, let’s talk some other time, don’t wanna be late for work!” Sam said, hurrying away from him.

The last photograph of Langston’s human form had been a selfie on his own phone, taken less than an hour before his ascension to godhood. In it, Langston had been making “devil horns” like a heavy metal headbanger, while wearing dark striped pants, a T-shirt with “Meadow Valley School” written on it, vinyl gloves, an apron, and a hairnet. Later, after a cult had formed around Langston, this ensemble had become the dress code for all his cultists.

So when Sam and the others with him hustled down the hallway, they passed many people dressed as though there were going to be scooping mashed potatoes and creamed corn into the serving trays of hungry young students – even though the work they performed was a mashup of governmental and religious. Sam always felt thankful that he, Ratrick, Joel, and the Roaches wore uniforms that were much more dignified.

They walked to the end of a hallway, then opened the door to what had once been a fifth-grade classroom. Their boss was sitting behind her desk.

“Very sorry we’re late,” he told her.

She drew in a long breath. “Hey, Sam… when Langston and that other Hundred God were fighting each other… it was really close to that apartment complex you live in, wasn’t it?”

“yEs! CLosE!” the Roaches interrupted.

“Are any of you named ‘Sam?’” she asked the Roaches, a note of irritation clear in her voice.

“…nO…”

Then she turned back to Sam. “So is your home okay?”

“Yes,” Sam told her.

“Is everyone in your family okay?”

“Yes, they are.” Sam said.

“Are YOU okay, Sam?”

“Yes, I am.”

Leigh grinned wider. “Heh heh heh… let’s see if that’s really true!”

Then she launched herself at Sam like a puma, leaping over her own desk to do so.

“Surprise physical assessment test, Sam!!!!”

Chapter Text

Four days after the Visit had ended, Leigh had announced to everyone else in Sam’s apartment that she’d be moving out.

“Heh heh… I’m going to explore the outside and see how crazy the rest of the world’s gotten!” had been her words. “Anyone here who ain’t chicken, you’re welcome to come along with me!”

Sam and the others had quickly decided they were “chicken,” and declined to join Leigh on her exploratory adventure. She had outright guffawed at that before racing off.

About a week and a half after Leigh had left, Sam had gotten a job working at a bar in order to support his family. It mostly entailed dishwashing.

Three days after that, Langston had declared himself the King of Montreal, establishing his dominance by wrecking numerous city blocks, and killing a number of larger Cursed beings… the tallest of which had been half Langston’s size. The people of Montreal had surrendered to Langston the following afternoon.

Two days after that, the cult of Langstonism had formed, and six days after that, the Langstonists had become the government of Montreal.

Then, two months after that, Sam had gotten a second and third job at a second and third bar, because the money he was earning from the first bar wasn’t enough.

Finally, a little over two years after he’d started working three jobs simultaneously, there came a certain fateful day…

He had been in the middle of working at Bar #2, halfway through his shift, wiping down a tabletop, when he’d heard an unmistakable chuckle from behind him.

“Heh heh heh… it’s been a long time, Sam…”

He’d turned around and there stood Leigh… barely blinking as she stared at him with her pancake-sized eyeballs, with a grin worthy of a demon clown.

He grinned a much smaller grin back at her. “Hey, Leigh! It sure has.” Then Sam did a double-take as he took in what she was wearing. “Why are you dressed like a peacekeeper?”

Leigh was wearing a uniform that very much resembled a policeman’s riot gear, except that it had been dyed the same shade of yellow as Langston’s cheese. The only things that were missing were a helmet and any sort of footwear. Once again, Leigh was completely barefoot.

“Because I am a peacekeeper!” she told him.

Many of the others around them both – the drunks and even the bartender – were watching Leigh out of the corners of their eyes very warily. Which was smart of them all, considering this was Leigh.

“So… uh, what brings you to this little watering hole?” he asked, since she was making no move to sit on one of the stools and order a drink.

“You,” she said simply. “Fight me.”

“Excuse me?” he replied, mouth suddenly dry.

“Fight me!” she said again, louder.

“I’m in the middle of my shift, Leigh…”

“Don’t care! Fight me!”

Then Phil had yelled out at Leigh. Phil was both the bartender and the owner of the bar; a three-armed fellow with skin exactly like tree bark.

“Hey! Officer Shoeless! Has my employee committed some kind of crime? Are you gonna arrest him?”

Leigh narrowed her eyes at Phil without answering. He’d pointed at the door.

“Well, if not, then take a hike! No violence in my bar!”

The bar’s bouncer had started to walk towards Leigh, but she’d paid him no notice. Instead, Leigh had strode up to Phil, taking out her wallet and pulling out a number of dollar bills.

“$500 says that you let me fight him.”

Phil had studied the money, and looked past Leigh at Sam, who had shaken his head fervently.

“$700 dollars, and I’ll let you arm-wrestle Sam,” he’d said, sternly pointing a finger at Leigh. “Without damaging any of my property.”

“Heh heh… you drive a hard bargain, buddy… but sure, okay!”

$700 was passed into the bartender’s branchlike hand.

Then Leigh had sat down at one of the empty tables, planted an elbow atop it, rolled up her sleeve, and grinned at Sam. Seeing no way out, Sam went and did exactly the same (minus the grin), clasping hands with the grinning woman. Several of the barflies gathered around them, watching with interest. Even as he and Leigh simply clasped each other’s hands, Sam could feel Leigh’s monstrously Cursed strength.

“Ooooh… lemme do the countdown!” One of the drunks had eagerly exclaimed. “Three… two… one… GO!”

Sam had felt his arm muscles immediately start to protest as Leigh bore down on him. She’d definitely gotten stronger since the last time he’d seen her!

“So…” she began conversationally, “You’re working three different jobs at three different bars, huh, Sam?”

It momentarily surprised Sam that she knew this, until he took another look at her peacekeeper uniform, and remembered how law enforcement officials were known to investigate people.

“Something wrong with that?” he shot back.

“Heh heh… not at all!” she said sweetly. “It’s all honest work.”

The drunks around them were placing bets. He tuned out their voices so he could think properly.

Could he really win against Leigh? Actually… the better question was: should he win against her? Even if he did beat her, he knew she’d want another rematch. But if he threw this match too soon, she’d be furious. Better to time this just right… put up just enough of a fight for just long enough, to give her the most satisfying win…

“Certainly, nobody can accuse you of being lazy, Sam,” Leigh then said. “But you’re wasting your talents mopping up the vomit of these boozer losers. You should join the peacekeepers.”

Sam lost half an inch against Leigh.

“Me?! Join the peacekeepers?!” he said, struggling to regain lost ground.

“Heh heh… sure!” said Leigh. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of, Sam. You’re willing to put yourself in danger. You’re a solid fighter, even against super-tough guys. You know how to lead a squad. You know your way around guns. That’s all the big stuff.”

Gritting his teeth, Sam struggled against her arm… he would push it back the other way!

“Did I mention that being a peacekeeper gives you a way better work/life balance than three different bar jobs ever could? Pays better too!” said Leigh, increasing the pressure she was putting on his arm.

“But there’s a much stronger chance of me getting killed by some crazy Cursed criminal!” Sam pointed out.

Leigh rubbed at her nose with her free hand.

“Well, Sam, now might be a good time to ask yourself: what’s the best way I could kick the bucket? A quick bit of fangs and claws from some ‘crazy Cursed criminal?’ Or a long, slow, grueling death by overwork, in which you barely get to see the family you’re busting your ass for?”

Maybe his expression must’ve changed or maybe Leigh smelled a new emotion seeping through his pores. She grinned triumphantly even before slamming his hand down on the tabletop.

Some of the drunks let out moans of disappointment, others cheered Leigh; and she took a second to turn towards the cheerers and pump her arms in victory.

“Think it over, Sam,” she advised, and left the bar.

He had thought it over that night, long and hard. Three weeks later, Sam had completed his week-long training in law enforcement and began his first day as a Keeper of the Peace and Laws of the Great and Holy Langston the following morning.

A little over a year into his peacekeeper job, on a chilly December morning, Sam had stormed into Leigh’s office. She had been working at her computer, and had looked up when he slammed both hands upon her desk.

“Why do Ratrick and Joel have peacekeeper badges?!” he had demanded to know. “Bona fide peacekeeper badges?”

“Heh heh… Because they finished their peacekeeper training!” she answered, with a cheeky smile he’d wanted to strangle off her face. “They were inspired to follow in their daddy’s footsteps!”

“And you HIRED THEM?!” he’d yelled, feeling his face reddening. From anger, yes, but also from humiliation, since he’d only learned about this last night. “They’re BOYS! YOUNG BOYS!”

Leigh had nodded her head energetically in mock-agreement.

“Yeah, those darling little kiddies shouldn’t be working at such a tender young age! They ought to be having normal childhoods! Going to school so they can learn to be lawyers and astronauts and financial advisors!”

Then Leigh had overdramatically clapped a hand to her cheek.

“Oh wait! There haven’t BEEN any working schools since the Visit! And any chance of them having ‘normal childhoods’ went out the window the moment their bodies got Cursed!”

Sam couldn’t deny this was true. At the very least, Joel and Ratrick were lucky enough to live in a world where 98% of mankind was also Cursed. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to walk out on a public street.

“So what are those boys supposed to do with themselves? Sit on the couch all day playing old video games until you decide they’ve reached the right age?” Leigh had continued. “I’ve seen what those two are capable of during the Visit! Joel’s teeth might as well be an anime superpower! And Ratrick was shooting guns and tossing Molotov cocktails like a pro at the age of not-even-one! Heh heh… face it, Sam; it’d be a waste of their talents NOT to hire them!”

“Maybe…” Sam had growled. “But you went and trained them behind my back! You’re not their parent, Leigh. I am. So they’re not going to work for you!”

Leigh’s grin had wilted down to almost nothing. It was the closest he’d ever seen her come to not smiling.

“If they won’t, then you won’t, either, Sam.”

“What do you mean?” he had asked her.

“I mean that if you don’t show up to work tomorrow with your boys, I’m firing you.”

He’d wanted so badly to retort: ‘You can’t fire me, I quit!’ But the words died on his tongue.

The sad truth was, he loved being able to spend more quality time with his family than he had before becoming a peacekeeper. The people generally respected him more, and he felt like he was helping everybody out by doing his part to keep the peace. Also… the taxes and mandatory tributes to Langston wouldn’t be going lower anytime soon, so switching to a lower-paying job would be rough…

“Think it over, Sam,” Leigh had advised.

Now, in the present day, Sam grabbed the chair that was right next to him. As Leigh’s body hurtled towards him, he swung the chair straight into the center of her enormous grin. Like a baseball struck by a bat, she flew backwards into the front of her desk. When she rose back up, they all saw that she her head was bleeding in several places.

Naturally, this had made the grinning woman more excited. Joel, Ratrick, and the Roaches all got out of Sam and Leigh’s way as she charged at Sam, laughing like the maniac she was.

Leigh had been their boss long enough for them to know not to interfere when she was in the middle of conducting a physical assessment test on Sam.

She stretched an arm towards Sam’s stomach, but it was a feint; instead, she grabbed his only arm and swung him directly into the wall. Then Leigh spun Sam around to face her, but he headbutted her, dazing them both!

She sent a left hook into his mouth…
He kneed her in the stomach…
She kicked him in the shin…
He elbowed her hard in the nose, making it bleed…
She tried to bury a right cross into his gut…
He blocked it…
She bit down on his arm…
He bit down on hers…

Leigh shoved Sam away, and parts of her skin split open, showing extra eyes and extra mouths. Sam and all the others drew their weapons, bracing for the worst as her body expanded…

But then she grinned as though she’d just pranked them magnificently, and all the openings on her skin closed back up as she shrank down to regular human size.

“Heh heh heh… okay, Sam, you pass. Go drink some water.”

Sam let out a long exhalation then helped himself to one of the spare plastic water bottles and several bandages from the first aid kit. Leigh did the same.

“As for the rest of you,” Leigh told the others, when she was ready, “Ten jumping jacks each.”

One by one, they did the jumping jacks. She nodded at Joel when he finished his set, grinned warmly at Ratrick after his final jump and patted his head, but was much less impressed by how the Roaches performed.

“Those barely qualify as jumping jacks!” she’d sneered. “You all need to eat less junk food! I’m docking your pay if I don’t see some improvement next time!”

“LiKe tO sEe yOu jAcK-jUmP WiTh mILLiOnS oThEr hUmAnS sYncHeD aS oNe!” the Roaches muttered.

“Didn’t quite catch what you said there, Roaches!” Leigh said, leaning uncomfortably closer to them.

“wE dO oUr bEsT, wILd-FriEnD!” they chirped.

“Heh heh… good!” Leigh chuckled. “Well, now that we got THAT out of the way, everyone take a seat. It’s time for our daily briefing… we got quite a day ahead of us!”

Chapter Text

In this post-Visit world, one of the greatest potential threats to the continuation of life on Earth were Depictions of the Visitor.

A “Depiction” could take any number of different forms.

Videos. Photographs. Drawings. Even words – if a sufficiently skillful wordsmith were to utilize the spoken or written word to describe the Visitor and paint an accurate picture of its physical form in his audience’s brains… that would do the trick.

With something like a nuclear bomb, you at least knew that the bomb would blow you up. With something like a supervirus, you at least knew that the virus would make you gravely sick.

But there was just no way of knowing for sure just how a Depiction of the Visitor would transform you.

It could drive you crazier than a sack full of rabid weasels.
Or it could leave your sanity untouched.
It could reduce you to a literally brainless, inert lump of algae.
Or it could bestow you with bizarre superhuman abilities.
You might even grow big and mighty enough to become a new Hundred God!
And you didn’t even need to be human.
Animals and insects were just as susceptible to a Depiction’s unpredictable effects.

But… there was always the worst possibility to consider.
The possibility that made it absolutely necessary to destroy even single Depiction of the Visitor in existence.

The possibility that a Depiction might transform you into a genocidal and apocalyptically powerful superbeing capable of wiping out every form of life on Earth. And perhaps the rest of the universe, as well.

“I guess I’ll begin today’s briefing by breaking the big news,” Leigh said, nosily plopping herself down in a chair facing all her seated subordinates. “Some psycho’s been breaking into people’s homes and leaving Depictions of the Visitor for them to find.”

The looks of stunned dismay this put on the others’ faces was simply priceless!

“When did all this happen?!” squeaked Ratrick, all his fur standing on end.

“Last night, around two or three o’clock in the morning,” Leigh answered.

“How many – hhh – people have been affected?” asked Joel.

Leigh ran a long, sharp fingernail in between two of her teeth, using it as a toothpick. “Twenty-three. So far. That we know of. One guy got cursed and the other twenty-two got super-cursed.”

Getting ‘super-cursed’ meant that a person who was already Cursed had mutated even further by getting re-exposed to the sight of the Visitor. Some Cursed individuals were more physically and mentally resistant to re-exposure than others… but in the end, absolutely nobody on Earth had a complete immunity to the sight of the Visitor.

“Seven victims have been quarantined and placed under observation,” Leigh continued, after glancing at a piece of paper in her hand; a detailed report about last night’s incident. “Four hospitalized. Ten had to be killed. Two suicides.”

She lapsed into momentary silence, reliving the memories of last night… all those people she’d had to fight, and everyone she’d had to kill. What an electrifying feeling they brought to her heart!

“Have the Depictions all been destroyed?” Sam asked.

“Yeah… all the ones we managed to find, at least.”

“wHo dOnE iT?!” the Roaches asked, their many bodies crawling over each other much slower than usual.

“Heh heh… no idea!” Leigh snickered. “That’s one of the things we need to find out! Fortunately, we have a lead. Remember how I just said that four of last night’s victims were hospitalized?”

The others nodded.

“Well, I called the hospital a little while ago, and guess what? Two of those lucky ducks are well enough to talk… so I’m sending you to Riverside General Hospital to learn what you can from them. Ryan Wedgewood’s in Room 1208, and Natalie Meade’s in Room 114. Now let’s get a move-on!”

Sam was already quite well-acquainted with Riverside General Hospital. He had spent his first year and a half as a peacekeeper returning here, day after day, helping his fellow peacekeepers go from room to room and clear out every doctor, nurse, patient, and lowercase-v-visitor who had transformed into homicidal creatures, until the hospital was no longer a monsters' lair, and could be used as a medical facility once more.

But it was such a terrible pity that hospitals were always so desperately understaffed, these days. It would probably be quite a while yet before enough people developed an expertise in medicine to replace all the ones that had been lost to the Visit! Every doctor and nurse Sam and Ratrick saw was either busily tending to patients or rushing to tend to other patients, and every one of them was clearly fatigued.

Considering the countless assortment of diseases and disorders and injuries human beings were capable of suffering, hospitals had already had so much to deal with back in the old days. After the Visit, though, hospitals – indeed, the entire field of medicine – had become a thousand times more convoluted.

As they walked down the hallway of the hospital’s first floor, Sam and Ratrick passed a room where both a doctor AND a mechanic were working together to treat a living vehicle; a minivan that was bleeding terribly through her radiator and flat tires. Then they passed a room where a nurse was chopping thick, grapefruit-sized mushrooms off a woman’s face and back... and the mushroom kept trying to bite the nurse as she did so. Next, they passed a room where the doctors were injecting syringe after syringe of medicine into a man who had thick green mucus gushing out of every pore of his skin.

Finally, Sam and Ratrick reached Room 114, and went inside. The others – Leigh, Joel, and the Roaches – were several floors above them, interrogating Ryan Wedgewood in Room 1208. Earlier, they’d all agreed to meet up with each other again after they were finished with their interrogations.

“Hello, officers,” spoke a large mound of boneless, almost pudding-like orange flesh heaped on the hospital’s bed.

“Hello,” Sam greeted the patient. “Are you Natalie Meade?”

“Yeah, I’m Natalie,” Her voice was rather deep, and sounded around fifty years old. It took Sam the better part of a minute before he spotted her mouth, jutting out of a random fold of flesh.

“My name’s Sam, and this is Ratrick.”

“Hello!” smiled Ratrick, waving at Natalie. “How are you feeling, Miss Meade?”

“I’m on lots of painkillers,” she answered flatly.

“We’d like to ask you some questions about what happened last night, if you’re up to it,” said Sam.

The mound of orange flesh squelched.

“I’m up to it,” Natalie then said. “Ask away.”

There were a couple of chairs by Natalie’s hospital bed which Sam and his son sat in. Ratrick pulled out a notepad and a pencil.

“Tell us what happened,” said Sam. “From the beginning.”

Her oddly-located mouth drew in a long breath. “Last night, I got home from the Orthodox Church of Langston at about two in the morning…"

“What were you doing at the church at such a crazy hour?” Sam interrupted.

“I work there. I’m a cheese-mopper. The priests had performed the Rite of Cheddar.”

Sam and Ratrick nodded. Both of them were well-aware that a cheese-mopper’s job was to mop up all the cheese which inevitably splattered on the walls and floors during the Langstonists’ religious rituals.

“So as I’m pulling out some leftovers from the fridge, I hear the sound of glass shattering from my TV room. I run into the room to see what going on, and find that an intruder has broken my window and slipped in through it. I realized, right away, that it was a guy I used to know!”

“Really? Who was it?” asked Sam, as Ratrick wrote down Natalie’s words with commendable speed.

“Well… the guy used to be a neighbor of mine, back when I lived in that apartment complex on Reiter Road. We weren’t next-door neighbors, but our apartments were both on the second floor. That was YEARS ago, mind you… I’d moved out of that apartment right after the Visit… or was it a week aft…?”

“I feel like we’re getting off-track,” Sam cut in. “The intruder… your ex-neighbor… what’s his name?”

“Oh! Sorry!”

There followed an embarrassed pause which lasted a few moments.

“Sorry, but I don’t know the guy’s name. Don’t think he ever told me to begin with. But I know it was him, because I recognized his curly hair and the tattoo of a hammer on the right side of his face. Though his hair had turned completely gray. It used to be blonde.”

“Would you say he was Cursed?” inquired Sam. “And if so, could you describe his Curse?”

Natalie’s boneless body made another squelching noise, much deeper this time.

“Oh, he was definitely Cursed. Lots and lots and lots of hands. I wish I was better at describing things. And his eyes…”

She shuddered.

“How many eyes and where were they on his body?” Sam asked.

“Just two,” replied Natalie, “and in the same place yours are, officer… but his eyes were just so wrong and so mentally unwell. Sorry I can’t explain it better.”

Sam smiled understandingly. “So what happened? What did he do? What did you do?”

“I yelled at him to get out of my house, and began spitting acid at him. He only smiled as my acid burned his body, and he brought out…” Natalie gulped in air. “…brought out that statuette, and he placed it on the ground and then jumped out the window.”

“A statuette, you say?” asked Sam, leaning forward in his chair.

“Yeah. It was shaped like... like the Visitor. The first time my body changed during the Visit… I got ugly, but I grew huge and I was suddenly able to spit deadly acid… it was pretty cool! But I looked at that statuette, and my body changed all over again, turned me into… this. Guess I lost the mutation lottery this time.”

As the mount of orange flesh unhappily slumped in on itself, Sam and Ratrick shared a silent look between themselves.

“It was made of clay, I think… about the size of a wine bottle… it was painted… very vibrantly… such extraordinary attention to detail…”

Concern rose up sharply within Sam. Natalie’s voice had suddenly taken on a strangely languorous, dreamy quality which he didn’t like at all. Her mind was growing too focused on the memory – on the mental image – of that Depiction of the Visitor.

“Uh, Natalie, I think that’s enough. Let’s not discuss the statuette any further, okay? Instead, I’d like to know about…”

But then Natalie’s whole body shuddered, first slowly, and then faster and faster, as though she were experiencing some kind of gelatinous seizure. Then a new mouth – a log, doglike snout – sprouted out of the top of her body. Its lips, teeth and tongue were all as black as coal.

“ITS EYE IS ENORMOUS!” she suddenly shrieked through her new snout. “ALL THE COLORS OF A RAINB…!!!”

At that moment, Ratrick leapt off his chair and onto the back of Sam’s head, pressing two paws as hard as he could against both of Sam’s ears.

“DON’T LISTEN, DAD! DON’T LISTEN, DAD! DON’T LISTEN, DAD! DON’T LISTEN, DAD! DON’T LISTEN, DAD! DON’T LISTEN, DAD! DON’T LISTEN, DAD! DON’T LISTEN, DAD!”

His ratty son’s screaming blocked out Natalie’s screaming; it was impossible to make any sense of her words. And while he screamed, Ratrick unholstered his tranquilizer pistol with his third paw, firing every tranquilizer dart it held straight into Natalie’s body, until she flopped over and went still.

There was a bathroom right next to Natalie’s bed. Sam ran into it, to check himself out in its mirror.

“You okay?!” Ratrick asked, hopping off him. “Do you feel… different in ANY way?”

Sam shook his head, though he studied his whole face very intently for anything that didn’t belong there. After all, Natalie had begun describing that statuette of the Visitor, something about rainbows… No, no, no, NO!

He squeezed his eyes shut. Forget, forget, forget, forget, forget, forget…

He reopened his eyes.

“Give me a moment, Ratrick. I’m going to check the rest of myself.”

Ratrick scampered out of the bathroom to give Sam some privacy. Then Sam stripped down to his underwear, and carefully checked every inch of himself for any mutations… finishing by looking at what lay inside his underwear.

Nothing. Natalie hadn’t described that Depiction of the Visitor thoroughly enough to curse him.

Sam put his clothes back on. When he stepped out of the bathroom, he found his son was staring up at him with great worry, ears flattened and tail twitching.

“I’m fine, Ratrick. I promise.”

Ratrick let out a shuddery breath, releasing his hold on his guns.

“Oh, I’m so glad I don’t have to kill you, Dad!”