Bedbugs

When he opened his eyes, the bedside clock glowed 2:33 a.m. He watched as a digit snapped, to 2:34, and he flinched—in mind, if not in body. 

Morton hadn’t been sleeping; he’d been pretending, killing time. He was completely, utterly awake, as he usually was as night crept into its deepest, blackest corners. Morton’s insomnia distressed him. He still clung to the belief that he was a decent, upstanding guy; he felt that during these hours, people ought to be asleep. Good people like him, anyway.  

Tonight he also suffered from another chronic condition, a headache, which pounded each temple like a throbbing bass and released cascades of sweat along his brows, underarms, and back. Meanwhile, a nasty itch burrowed like something alive into his right foot. What the hell was that, he wondered.  But he lacked the will to bend his no-longer agile body to examine the irritation. He kept brushing it with his other foot, which didn’t help.  

Morton used to be a creature of habit. Repetition had kept him on task, ensured that at any given moment, he was doing the right thing. Like every week day the alarm buzzed at 6 a.m. to wake him; a shower, then a breakfast of Raisin Bran and coffee. At 7:10, he commenced his drive to work. And so on. (Back in the day he’d always been asleep by midnight—unless something amorous and or exotic was happening in his life.) A strict timetable provided his best chance to succeed, he thought—or at least, to get through the day whole.     

But there were drawbacks. When life’s unexpected twists disrupted his schedule, he grew frustrated and his nerves tautened like screws. His heart raced and his breathing got difficult. He couldn’t think clearly, fixating on what he thought he should be doing instead of attending to the issue at hand. Morton was ashamed of this weakness, and he tried to hide it. He pretended he was someone he wasn’t: a man with calm nerves, unflappable and always in control.  

But the charade was strenuous, and it wore Morton down. He was able to fool people for only so long. For example, his wife. He’d been 30 when they married; 39 when they split. More and more during their life together, his anxiety had erupted into anger, much of it childish and vulgar. He’d stomp around, cursing and spitting vitriol. Sometimes he couldn’t believe his own behavior. But he was unable to stop, especially as his outbursts seemed to ease his tension. 

He came to loathe his job, once a wellspring of status and accomplishment. By mid-career his professional advancement had stopped abruptly, like a cartoon figure running into a wall. Younger colleagues leapfrogged him for promotions, then sadistically ordered him around.  

At 50, Morton was fired, or “downsized,” as they called it. They claimed it was due to budget cuts, that he shouldn’t take it personally. But the simple truth was, nobody wanted his cynical, burnt-out ass around anymore. 

A year later, Morton remained unemployed. Without a profession or family to ground him, he felt fogged-in and unbalanced. Time was a sea of muck; it barely stirred—much like Morton himself. He spent days lurching from bed to couch to chair; drinking scotch and watching pornographic dreck on his laptop. 

***

Finally, as he lay, exhaustion found him. He went numb and dark. He dreamed: the next thing he knew, he was standing by his bed. A guy stood with him—one he recognized from work but whom he hadn’t seen in years, Tommy or Teddy, something like that. The man hadn’t changed, was still stubby with glasses and a cheerful gleam in his eyes. 

How far back did they go? Some 10 or 20 years?  The jolly eyes reminded Morton of the man’s demeanor, eager and energetic, and Morton at the time they’d known each other felt the same, certain he too had a promising future. The window near Morton’s bed filled with a dazzling sunshine that streamed through the room, and Morton felt an uplifting warmth as his former colleague said to him, “You know, all us guys were jealous when you and Debbie married. Damn, she was stunning.”

It was true. Debbie had always drawn a lot of male attention, from veiled glances to outrageous flirting. 

Morton grinned. “We’re still going strong,” he bragged. “In fact, we’re doing so well, she doesn’t need to work anymore.”

The guy said, “No surprise there, Morton. Anyone with eyes could see you were going places.”

Morton said something modest, but inside he was gloating, yeah, I kicked ass. 

“Why’d you cheat on her?” Tommy or Teddy said. “That was cold, man.” 

“What?” Morton was genuinely confused.

“C’mon, you and Jill. Everyone knew.” The guy playfully elbowed Morton. “You sly dog, you.”

Well, Morton thought. Maybe he had. Lots of guys did it, just part of the formula for go-getters. 

“And how you pulled off that media campaign,” the guy said, “while juggling two gals.” The guy kissed his fingertips. “Bellissimo! A masterpiece.”  

“Heh heh. Thank you. Thank you.” They shook hands, Morton preening with self- satisfaction. 

Quickly the sun dimmed, like a blanket thrown over a light, and Morton was alone. Shadows invaded the bedroom. The air chilled. Morton’s bed was stripped of sheets and blankets but wasn’t bare. Instead, the mattress was covered—infested—with small, writhing creatures. 

Morton saw glossy roaches and water bugs scurrying in circles. Their shells looked diamond-hard, yet suggestive of filth underneath. Carpenter ants, long as twigs, zig-zagged around. Furry caterpillars curled their bodies. Ink-black spiders revealed ominous patches on their bellies. Dozens of each type, rummaging wildly as if Morton’s bed was their natural habitat. He watched, mesmerized, as antennas scraped together and microscopic legs hurried. Some creatures dug into the mattress, gouging slits and disappearing as others followed. 

Morton oversaw the invasion without emotion, reserving judgment. Till he saw a new battalion of water bugs climbing up from the floor. They were of a different breed, as large as toads, with finger-length antennas that probed and prodded. Their eyes were black, round and dead as space. They began to eat the others, slurping them up like worms. Struggling legs protruded from the primordial slits of their mouths. 

Morton recoiled and his mouth hinged open.     

Then he was awake, horizontal in bed. Without bugs, but with his foot still inflamed. He no longer could ignore it; he sat up, reached under his covers and grabbed his foot. He pulled it toward his face. 

Morton was shocked to see the foot drenched in sticky, gleaming blood. Some patches looked scarlet, and there were purplish scabs. Blood bubbled from a slit in the middle of the arch, streaming over his ankle and onto his sheet. Pain sharpened, like someone was cruelly rotating an embedded spike.  

Morton released the scream he’d begun in his dream, a howl from beneath his belly that tore through his guts like bile.  

His voice faded. The bedside clock switched to 2:35.

Symbiosis

Keisha couldn’t believe what she was reading. Symbiote—the corporation responsible for 90% of today’s most innovative, if not beneficial or even benign technology—had chosen her to be an unpaid intern, making her literally one in a million. Swirling in exhilaration and adrenaline, she pinched her thigh; couldn’t feel it. Results inconclusive, the letter fluttered to the ground as she walked into her kitchen and set her hand on the stove. As she held it there she let the increasing heat serve as a reminder: this was no dream. 

 In another state, 2000 miles over, a mailman was running away from the house he’d just left. The unearthly screaming behind the front door sounded childlike, primal, and insane. He’d been alive a long time, and therefore wasn’t one for wondering, but rather just wanted to be back in the comfort of his truck, and of routine. Inside that house, a man fell to the floor rolling around laughing hysterically, screaming yes. He dusted himself off, went online, and booked a flight. 

Jenna had the opposite situation that fateful day. When a man dropped the unmarked envelope into her spare change bucket, she thanked the few stars that could still be seen that she lived in Sym City, the sprawling factoryland turned metropolis and that she was a brisk five minute walk from the headquarters. A mass Stockholm-Syndrome-like phenomenon befell the few who weren’t subjected to the corporations’ slave wages, and even many who were. She turned her only shirt inside out, to the clean side.

* * *

Five people this year had been harvested, all  from vastly divergent walks of life.  The only thread connecting them didn’t gleam like silver linings but was rather in fact the bleak, unassailable gray of poverty. 

Subsequently they were huddled in the lobby, now the de facto waiting room of the Sym headquarters. 

Exclusive invitation of course. 

The air was ominous and the room a breeding ground for anticipation as well as a growing quiet tension that a machete of a voice carelessly sliced through.   

“Miss Marshall. They’ll see you,” it boomed.

The disruption seemed to have come from the receptionist’s direction.  

Prior to this, a couple of them had been convinced the man behind the desk was a statue. The woman in question, Sarah, scanned his face, but there wasn’t the slightest tinge of emotion.  She stood up uncertainly and his head snapped. A scarecrow smile stitched together the bottom half of his face in an uncanny valley effect. 

“Right this way,” he said, with a flourish. “Welcome to Symbiote, the only corporation that matters, because it’s the only one that exists. Society’s downfall and consequent self-imposed salvation.”

They vanished. The lobby was silent for an interminable time. There were no devices allowed, and none inside—not even a clock. The only exception a sharp eye could pick up were the various cameras, sensors, and detectors lining the ceiling like malevolent stars.  

 The silence was broken when the door burst open, Sarah was ushered out on a stretcher. Foaming through her teeth, her mouth had become a tub for a pink blood-flecked bubble bath. A spectacle accompanied by her seizing, twitching, and thrashing body. 

“First day jitters,” the man chirped, wheeling her out the door. “Follow me. Oh boy, we are delighted to have the rest of you here at Symbiote. Blessed be the companyyy,” he screeched in an attempt at singing as he escorted them up the elevators to the top floor. “It’d take something major to upset the shareholders for them to ever lose their monopoly. Their image is pristine!” Due in equal part to the overall secrecy and omnipresence that ran hand in hand with the mysterious crushing control seemingly maintained over dissenters, as there were none to be found—this of course left unsaid. 

“And voila, the fun center! This is where the magic happens.” 

 Keisha, currently the most reluctant of them, was letting that scene fade like a silly dream. She was skipping along ahead of Jenna who’d trailed the group and walked in last. There was a sensory overload. Her brain could not compute the sight at first. A man was naked in the corner with a robot and seemingly engaged in a heated argument over who was real. A conglomeration of holograms illuminated and animated the vast space. The very walls seemed to be a machine. She couldn’t process the intensity of the sheer amount of activity and visuals initially. Her eyes had to adjust, like when one was born. There were a litany of unidentifiable machines, people’s brains hooked up to screens transmitting constant data, makeshift laboratories, office cubicles that looked eerily like holding cells.  

A man entered, his face recognizable to all humankind as the eccentric billionaire and CEO, Mr. Baudelaire.

 “Let’s start the grand tour. Through this door is our weapons testing range; you don’t want to open that one. Incubation chambers to our right here; yada yada yada. You guys are lucky to make it this far. But only one will be chosen as a true blue employee after the mandatory 9 year trial period!” 

“Sir, if I might just add, it—it is an honor,” Jack, a nervous intern,  stuttered, burst forth from the group. 

Differentiate yourself. Stand out from the crowd. He’d chanted the mantra to himself over and over throughout the morning, resulting in an orange scarf, lensless sunglasses, and an unbridled eagerness causing him to trip over Jenna’s foot. 

“What the fuck. You interrupted me.”

“Sir, Mr. CEO, sir I—I—”

“Lick my boot while you’re down there.” 

The casual banter and cadence of a crowded room ceased suddenly. It was like the quiet before a category 5 catastrophe. 

He was invested now; he’d made it this far. There was no going back now. He stuck out his tongue tentatively, inching it closer to a vaguely brown sludge he hoped was mud. As the taste hit his tongue, the CEO cocked his foot back and slammed it into the bridge of his nose. His head ricocheted off the metal wastebasket, before rejoining his crumpled body on its collision course with the back wall. 

“Ha ha ha, we have fun here.” The boss giggled. “Awh, get up.”

 He wiped some blood and stood, resembling a newborn animal testing its legs for the first time. He gave a wobbly smile. 

“So here’s our HR department.” He motioned toward a line of virtual assistants, nodding their heads mechanically with simulated sympathy responses in automated intervals. 

“Oh and look here is our diversity director!”

“Hola, aloha, and hi! Welcome I’m, #Xë-Æéø-U 1A. Lovely to meet you all!”

Eyes twinkling with a red dot above, and smirk that spit in the face of God, the man in front of them had on a sombrero over a hijab over a yarmulke and was bespeckled with tribal tattoos. His garb seemed to be some combination of a sari ripped at the waist to display a cross between a kimono and kilt. 

“Okay.” 

“Sure.” 

“Pleasure,” they muttered. 

“Konnichiwa.” Jack bowed. 

“You don’t want to be like Rufus. The smartest mind of our generation— alas his enthusiasm was not up to our standards.We do regret his fate. Horrible…just horrible, what befell him—but hey, that’s what you get for not giving a sincere hello and a warm goodbye,” he chuckled. We’re handling important matters, so you all can shadow him. We’ll circle back. 

“Well kiss my lips and call me Tom Brady! Golly, I’m sure glad to meet you all. Huyuck! 

He had the radical enthusiasm of a youth pastor. He felt like Mickey Mouse tripped face first into a meth and crack amalgam some skeletons of men were losing their minds looking for in a Tucson parking lot. He could ‘How’s it hanging, big man, beautiful weather, right, shahhh, plants are gonna love this, alright back at ya and finger gun into the sun all day long. 

Somehow the metal BDSM collar and accompanying leash curled in another worker’s, introduced as Sue’s, hand was less off putting than this. There were staples and cigarette burns interspersed on his baggy flesh dotting up his collarbone like corporate kisses. His shoes were a bed of needles, inverted cleats. 

What looked like a brand in both senses of the word, poked out on his navel from his ripped suit. The intern closest thought they could make out property of SYMBIOTE LLC. 

For all his enthusiasm he would not meet their gaze. 

“Oh, boy oh boy, I can’t wait. Before I kick us off and go over our funtivities, AKA challenges for the day in our glorious establishment, the only place worth seeing and being, pardon me while I use the little ladies room,” he gushed, before lifting a leg and pissing through his business formal grey trousers. 

Sue petted him. “Aw, who’s the Rufus the wittle doofus? You are, yes you are.” She jerked the chain upward to bring him to her height and kissed him, ripping out a chunk of his lip. She licked hers, teeth stained. One ruby red spot punctuated her perfectly white blouse. 

“Once you’re a member you get to leave your past life behind. We make machines, but in a bigger sense we are the machine, one which one of you few will be lucky to be a cog in.”

“You.” Like a hawk that could detect the slightest twitch in a desert of stillness, she lasered in. One of the intern-hopefuls who’d been appearing to steady himself with a breathing exercise froze, red cheeks puffing up like a chipmunk.

Feigned interest adorned with a sinister drawl.  “Tell us about yourself! What are your hobbies?”

“Of course Sue, I—I’d love to! Well I do love walking my corgi, funnily enough um heheh,” he blabbered with a nervous chuckle, “uh along the simu-river. Yeah he tries to drink the water. It’s so cute. I also have a blog where we find homeless people and rate their fits. Vogue actually subscribed to it and uh—”

“Wrongggg answer! That was a trick question to keep you on your toes. Every second of your life should be dedicated solely to maintaining the status quo. Meaning you will eat, sleep and breathe the company.” She sighed. “You know, I almost let you live because that was amusing. Not quite enough though, darling. Not as much fun as my boy here,” she tugged the chain. 

She flipped a switch and before any semblance of protest could form in his mind, a thick black substance oozed from the drain a few feet away. Globules detached, corroding his flesh, first consuming his ankles, then quickly eating its way up. 

A disembodied voice announced, “Disposal process complete”

“Oh shit,” Keisha muttered. “Shit!” she said, slapping at a drop that’d attached to her jeans. 

Two of the men in the back had been inching toward the door. While everyone was fixated on the atrocity in the center of the room the two, sensing their chance, exchanged a look and bolted. The mass of rotting black pudding that still, horrifyingly, was eliciting noise.  

 Unintelligible shrieks, that became wet gurgles as his skin remaining patches dripped into black wriggling gooey ashes that formed and fell again upon themselves amidst jittering calcified bones.

The two men made it to the hallway they had passed through what felt like millennia ago just before lasers sliced them into chunks; torsos, mouths, and arms joined the circus act parading the floor. 

“Well, it’s fun to toy with new flesh, but the CEO has been waiting for his coffee far too long. Who thinks they’re up for the task?”

The genuine eagerness that had been fueling the enthusiasm of them all had been replaced by fear a while ago. It was now the only motivating factor behind their instant compliance. In unison heads nodded so fast she wouldn’t be surprised if they snapped off their necks. But that’d be no fun. 

They sprinted for a door nearby labeled “break room” Keisha hoped there was no sinister double entendre awaiting.  

She turned back to look at Rufus, whose standard hollow expression had been replaced for a split second with anguish, and eyes that had never risen from the floor caught and held her gaze intensely wider than the old oceans. She thought she caught a glimpse of a cage in the black of his pupils. She either saw or hallucinated a microscopic version of him inside shaking the cell. Wracked with sobs. Time without change—an open air prison that many wasted their lives in. She thought his fate was worse than an actual one and the kind that many welcomed themselves into with open arms. She knew no amount of money could brainwash her into staying in this incubator for insanity. The direness of the circumstances fully seemed to dawn upon her, and she abandoned all hope of the notion that this was all some elaborate charade. Some super technological sleight of hand and light intended to haze or single out who could keep calm under pressure, whose spirit the most impenetrable. She’d quickly realized that in desperation her mind had conjured a delusion, born from sheer incomprehensibility and disbelief. Her and the other intern. Julia. Or maybe Jenna. How irrelevant trivial niceties like names were in a place like this. The two of them and that poor man still trapped here were the only people here she thought might still have a soul. What was once a human now a sick mockery. She shuddered. She grabbed the woman’s arm when they’d reached the coffee machine. We have to do something, she said, her voice a frantic whisper.  

But they were in the epicenter of the despicable jaws of all that powered society. Happily wandering into the heart of the beast. 

“Ah, ah, ah, too slow. The boss sauntered in. “I didn’t get my mid-morning fix and now I’m groggy. This won’t do. I’ll make a note to chat with the maker of this year’s algorithm. Whoever was assigned to picking these candidates, I sense a … demotion,” he cried with a whimsical cackle. 

“You’re right about that, Jenna replied.”

“They did fuck up. And now you’re fucked.”

“Two words—live-streaming, bitch.”

The air drained from the room as he realized the vulgar gravity of what she’d said. 

“Or is that three. Either way, the truth and depravity of what really goes on in the Sym Headquarters is out. 2.3 billion viewers this very second and counting. Your downfall is thanks to one of your own technological wonders, by the way. The freckle implant. Too small for detection. 

“Sir, stocks are plummeting, they’re—shit, they’re in the negative. How is that possible!?” 

All around them technology powered by the world’s belief in advancement and innovation, harnessed collective energy, began to power down and fall to bits. The conclusion everyone knew was inevitable—ultimate ruin. Fueled by the pieces of their own disintegrating spirit, a vessel picking up speed unburdened from the weight of morals strewn out the window.

Rufus jerked upright, tearing a scrap of metal from his head, and ripped the collar from his neck. “I’m free, holy shit. Shit. Thank you.” 

“But—but I said no electronics allowed. We’re the giant shadow over the world so ever present you’ve ceased to notice it’s there, as water is to fish. We can’t have lost!” His face crumpled; he sniffled. “You—you signed a form. The three of them walked out as he lay sobbing. “My money!”