We want you to decide...

...what this piece of shit does next.

Nov 26, 2024

Baddest Bug Kris Jerome will be writing monthly horror short stories included in our newsletter. The best part though? YOU get to vote on how it ends! That’s right, read on to the end of this first entry in BUGTIME STORIES and vote for what happens next…

There were only three bodies on the floor in front of me. There should have been four.

“Where the fuck did he go?” I thought. “He was just here.”

No matter how much weird shit I’d seen in my day, dead junkies didn’t just jump up and walk away—definitely not with two rounds in their chest. The warehouse was eerily silent around me, as if even the hustle and bustle of the city had paused to mark the passing of the four—three—men. The coppery scent of blood mingled with that of piss and other unmentionable odors.

I checked the clip of my Glock (fuck you, it’s cheap and everyone’s got one) to make sure I would be able to finish the fourth guy off before he could get out and set about looking for him. The warehouse was filled with ancient heavy machinery, untouched since the economy tanked two or three recessions ago. Nobody came in here but the homeless, and addicts.

That’s why I was here. These motherfuckers were easy targets. I’d find a place that had a bunch of users flush with the product, maybe even a small-time dealer, knock them off, and then take the drugs and the cash. It was an easy living, except when one of the bodies wandered off.

“Come out, man,” I called. “Don’t drag this shit out. You can’t possibly survive long enough to get to a hospital. Let me put you out of your misery.”

Ahead of me, chains with hooks hung from the ceiling. Stray sunlight from a broken upper window almost made it look like they were swaying in some invisible wind.

“Freaky shit,” I thought. “Must mean I need to take a break.”

I walked further into the warehouse, giving the hooks a wide berth. Now I really needed to ice this guy before someone thought I was becoming a bitch. One of the few lights that still functioned in this shithole was focused on a folding table covered in spent needles and bags of what I imagined to be drugs. I stopped to look it over. Most of it I recognized; the normal junk you’d expect in a place like this: crack, some heroin, crystal. But there was something I had no frame of reference for: a bright green liquid in a jar like someone’s fucked up grandma canned water from Chernobyl. Beside it were five needles, one of which was full of the same mystery drug, and the other four looked like they had too, just before being shot into a vein.

Without thinking, I grabbed the full needle and stuck it into my jacket pocket so I could look at it closer in a few moments. I’d come back for the jar after I iced this motherfucker.

A noise startled me back to the moment. A crate or something shifted and fell to the floor in the darkness to my right. I leveled my pistol in the direction of the noise and took a steadying breath.

“Are you really gonna make me come to you, you piece of shit?” I called out.

I didn’t expect an answer, but I got one. Not words, so much as a groan. I’d heard plenty of death rattles in my time—that sound of air escaping a punctured lung—and this was similar, but not as wet. Just like I figured, this guy wasn’t doing very good. I could probably just bounce and he’d be dead before I even got back to my car. That wasn’t smart though, and I consider myself a smart man.

I took a few steps forward, keeping my gun trained on the darkness where the sounds had come from.

“What’s this green shit?” I asked, my voice chipper for someone about to kill the dude I was talking to. “Some designer drug, but I’ve never seen it before. Good high I hope?”

There was no groan this time. It most likely meant I wouldn’t need to waste a third bullet on this guy. Feeling a renewed confidence, I pulled out my cell phone and tapped on the flashlight. Sure as shit, there was an old wooden crate shattered on the floor along with a puddle of something dark. While I couldn’t see the guy, there was only one place he could have been hiding, which was behind the other two crates that the third one must have fallen off of.

I stepped around the crates and pointed my pistol and phone light down at where I expected to find my fourth body. There was nothing but more of the dark puddle. In the limited light from my phone, it looked more black than red.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

Then I heard another of the death rattles, this time coming from behind me. I whipped around so fast I dropped my phone into the puddle. Reflexively I brought my now free hand to steady my Glock. Standing in the light next to the table was the guy who should have been dead but clearly wasn’t.

His head was cocked to the side like his neck was broken. His tattered clothes were stained red in the front where I plugged him earlier. It was clear that there was no way this guy should have been standing, let alone moving as fast as he had. His jaw was slacked and his eyes rolled back like he had just had a stroke. The weirdest part though, was the black shit that was running from the corners of his eyes and mouth, his ears, his nostrils, fuck—even his pants were wet and stained black like this shit was leaking from his dick.

“Holy shit, man,” I said.

I squeezed the trigger three more times; each round ripping a hole in his chest near the other ones. The guy staggered backward but didn’t drop. His neck twisted and the whites of his empty eyes seemed to be aimed in my direction. The dead guy’s mouth opened and a low gurgle escaped his lips. Then he was running at me in a flailing sprint of floppy, broken bones.

When the next four bullets didn’t stop him, I panicked and tried to run. The floor was slick with the black shit leaking from this guy and I slipped and fell—hard. With the wind knocked out of me, it took me a moment to notice the smell of that black shit, but once I sucked in a painful gasp I about threw up. It smelled like roadkill that was days old. It smelled like maggots in a dumpster. It smelled like death.

Looking up I realized the drooling motherfucker was nearly on top of me. I struggled to clear my head and raised my gun again, hoping somehow this time it would actually do something. I squeezed the trigger at the last moment, snapping his head backward with a thunderous crack. My ears were still ringing by the time he hit the ground. It seemed like it worked.

“Thank god,” I thought. “Thank fucking god.”

I scrambled up out of the puddle and retrieved my phone. Tapping the light back on (and trying to ignore the oily black sheen on my screen) I approached the now twice-dead-guy with caution. He was lying at the center of another quickly spreading pool of that black shit, but didn’t so much as twitch. The center of his forehead was cratered where I popped him.

“This is some sick shit,” I said aloud.

I put my gun back into my waistband and stuck my phone in my pocket quickly.

“Goddammit!,” I exclaimed pulling my hand back out and shaking it wildly. That needle had pricked my finger. Without thinking much of it I put my finger into my mouth and sucked on it.

Freaked out more than I had ever been in my adult life, I hurriedly walked past the table and back toward the safety of the door I had entered the warehouse from. There was no way I was gonna stay here any longer, and I needed to get out of these clothes and away from this black shit. I had nearly reached the door when I remembered the table of drugs; the entire reason I was in this mess.

My laugh echoed throughout the empty room. This had been some weird shit, but that was life on the streets. I turned and looked back at the table under the lone light on the opposite end of the warehouse. Then, feeling the throbbing in my finger, my mind wandered back to the dead guy who had somehow gotten up and walked away. My eyes drifted toward the spot in the opposite corner, hidden behind a large machine where the other three bodies should still be lying in regular old red blood.