David Wong - John Dies at the End

“I can’t get out of my apartment, Dave.”

“What?”

“I’m scared, man. I mean it.”

“What are you scared of?”

“It can’t be real, Dave. It can’t. The way it moves, the way it’s made… this is not a product of any kind of evolution or anything. It’s not real. No. But it still managed to bite me.”

What?!?

“What?”

“Can you come over?”

One time, John wound up in the hospital after he blacked out behind the wheel of his car. He wasn’t moving at the time, thank God, but was in line at a Wendy’s drive-through. This was after five sleepless and foodless days of vodka and some combination of household chemicals he was using for speed. I didn’t know about it until a week later because he didn’t tell me, knowing I would have kicked his ass right there in the hospital.

But I told him if he ever got into that kind of trouble again without telling me I would not only kick his ass, but would in fact beat him until he died, then pursue him into the afterlife and beat his eternal soul. So John being spaced out on crank or crack or skank tonight wasn’t reason to declare a national holiday, but at least he came to me this time.

I said, “I’ll be there in twelve minutes.”

I hung up, pulled on some clothes I found draped over a chair, almost killed myself tripping over Molly the dog curled up in the doorway. I went out the front door with the dog in tow. It was raining again now, fat drops of April ice water that tingled down the back of my shirt as I ducked into my car. I was halfway to his building when my phone sang again. John’s number popped up on the glowing display.

“Yeah, John. You okay?”

“Dave, I’m sorry to wake you up. I got a problem and I need you to listen-”

“John, I’m on my way over. You called me five minutes ago, remember?”

“What? No, David. Stay away. There’s somethin’ in here with me. I can’t explain it. I don’t think it’ll kill me, it seems to just want to keep me here. Now, I need you to go to Las Vegas. Contact a man named-”

“John, just calm down. You’re not making sense. I want you to sit down somewhere, try to chill out. Nothin’ you’re seeing is real.”

A pause, then John asked, “How do I know this is really you?”

“You’ll know in just a few minutes. I’m comin’ up on your block now. Just chill, like I said. John?”

Nobody there. I sped up, rain drumming the windshield and boiling up into puddles on the passing pavement.

I was pounding on the door to John’s apartment seven minutes later, still pounding on it five minutes after that. I considered going down and waking up his landlord when I tried the knob and realized the door had been unlocked the whole time.

It was dark. No use looking for a switch-John’s only light was a floor lamp across the room and far be it from John to do something as rational as putting the light source where you could reach it from the door. Memory told me at least two pieces of furniture and probably twenty empty beer bottles stood between me and the lamp.

“John?”

Nothing. I tried a tentative step into his apartment, my shoe kicking over a stack of magazines. I tried to step over them, cracked something glass or porcelain on the other side.

“John? Can you hear me? I’m going to call the- ooomfff!!! ”

I was hammered by either a flying body tackle or an unnecessarily aggressive hug. My assailant and I landed hard on the carpet, pounding the breath from my lungs.

“It almost killed you!” John screamed, inches from my face. “You’re an idiot, you know that? You’re an idiot for coming here. We’re both gonna die now. You could have brought help but now we’re both gonna die in this room.”

He sat up off me and in the darkness I could detect his head whipping back and forth, as if searching for a sniper. He put one finger up to my face.

“Shhhhhh. I don’t see it. When I say ‘go,’ we’re goin’ to the other side of the room as fast as physically possible. You can clear it in three steps, dive at the end. Move like the Devil himself were after you. Ready?”

“John, listen to me.” I paused, forced air into my lungs and tried to think. “You can’t miss any more days at work. If you let me take you to the hospital, we’ll tell them you’ve been poisoned or something. I don’t think they’ll go to the cops. We can get a note from the doctor there. If we’ve got a note I could talk Jeff into keeping you on.”

“Go!”

John pushed himself to his feet, sprinted across the room and flung himself over an overturned sofa next to the wall. He sailed over it, arms flopping about like a rag doll, smacking into the wall behind it with a heavy thud.

I calmly stood up, walked to my right and turned up the floor lamp. I looked over to see John peer over the overturned sofa. Next to it was an armchair, on the other side a capsized coffee table. The man had built a furniture fort on that side of the room.

“John…”

He stood up, eyes wide. He put his hands out to me, fingers splayed.

“Dave, do not move.” He spoke flat, low and dead serious.

“What?”

“I’m begging you,” he said, almost whispering now. “I know you don’t believe me. But when you turn around, you will. But do-not-scream . If you do, you’re dead. Now. Very slowly, turn around.”

Very slowly, as asked, I turned.

For a split second I was sure I would see something. I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, as if swept by a puff of warm breath.

There was nothing there. I sighed, pissed at myself for getting sucked into this.

I faced John again, my raised eyebrows telling him I saw nothing more threatening than a very large and very naked poster of what appeared to be a female professional wrestler.

“No, it moved,” he said. “There.” He pointed to the corner, near the ceiling.

Very slowly, I turned and craned my neck, eyes following his pointed finger to the spot on the wall he so desperately needed me to see.

Still nothing.

“John, you can either come with me to the hospital, or I’m calling an ambulance. But what I’m not going to do is-”

“The door! Go!”

John hurdled the sofa, then ran and threw himself through the open door. I stood watching as he tumbled onto the carpet and then smoothly unfolded into a dead run down the hall outside. I faintly heard him thump through the stairwell doors, shouting victoriously.

I sighed and looked around his apartment. I found and pocketed his keys, then poked around some more and found his jacket on his bed. I grabbed for it, then yanked my hand back in pain. Something jabbed my finger, left a dot of blood on it. I reached into the jacket’s front pocket…

A syringe.

It was one of those cheap disposable ones they sell to diabetics. There was residue inside and it was fucking black. Like used motor oil. I broke off the needle in the trash and stuck the rest of the syringe in my pants pocket. I had never done this before and I didn’t know if a doctor would need it or not, to examine the contents. If not, I was going to shove it up John’s ass.

I rooted around in his pockets for vials or pipes or anything else that would indicate what he had in his system. All I found was an empty pack of Chesterfields and a wadded-up FedEx receipt for something he sent to a Nevada address.

I stopped myself before I drifted into the area of what could be called “snooping” and locked up the apartment behind me. I went down and found John pacing back and forth in the parking lot, rain pelting him, fists clenched, ready for the dark god Cthulhu himself to come flopping out of the first-level doors. I tossed him his jacket, told him to get in my car. He opened the door, and froze in fear.