by H.V. Patterson
(1000 words)
Peter gazed at the rainbow trout swimming incessantly in their raceway prisons. Their scales flashed pink, olive, and silver in the moonlight. They had such simple, mindless lives. Sometimes he envied them.
Peter’s stomach clenched, and his head spun. For almost a week he’d been nauseated and dizzy, waking in the middle of the night, sweating and paralyzed by nameless dread.
Gripping the cross his dad had given him, Peter willed the illness back. He’d been manager at Mountain Jude’s Fish Farm for ten years, and he’d never seen fish behave like this. They were aggressive and patches of their scales were missing: signs of infection. They could be unsafe to eat. Not that the asshole owner cared about anything but profit. It was the tenth anniversary of his dad’s death, and Peter would rather be home, nursing a beer, but if he didn’t bring fish to the Colorado Aquaculture Board for testing, no one would.
Andrew finally arrived carrying a net and a flashlight.
“Ready to party?” he said.
“This is serious,” Peter reminded him, frowning. The younger man was reckless, but he was the only employee Peter knew wouldn’t snitch on him.
They looked at the trout congregating around the beam from Andrew’s flashlight. The fish stared back at them, their mouths gaping dumbly, their eyes opaque.
“It’s some kind of infection,” said Peter. “Trematodes or flukes. Maybe a virus. It changes their behavior.”
Andrew caught one of the trout with the net and flicked it onto the dock. When he poked it, scales flaked off in raw patches.
“Gross!” Andrew grinned, poking it again. More scales fell, revealing pale green flesh.
Peter’s stomach lurched, and his vision blurred. When he focused again, Andrew had the fish’s mouth propped open with a stick.
“I knew I saw something. Teeth, in its throat!”
“That’s impossible,” said Peter. “Rainbow trout don’t have hyoid teeth.”
The trout lurched and bit Andrew’s thumb.
Andrew swore and yanked his hand back, spraying blood everywhere. He thwacked the net’s heavy handle on the trout’s head, killing it.
“First aid kit,” said Peter.
They hurried to the small bathroom in the deserted office and Peter cleaned and disinfected the puncture wounds no rainbow trout should’ve made, ignoring his rising nausea. The last time he’d thrown up at the sight of blood he was nine and hunting for the first time. Dad hadn’t slapped him, but his look of disgust had been worse than a blow.
As Peter started bandaging the wounds, his vision blurred again. Was there something moving in Andrew’s hand? Something undulating and wriggling?
His vision cleared. The wriggling stopped. He finished bandaging.
“It’s not serious,” he said.
“You’re a fucking lunatic, dragging us out here in the middle of the—”
Andrew stopped talking. His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. He screamed and clutched at his face, gouging bloody trails into his skin with his fingernails. Then, he stopped screaming, vomited, and started to shake violently.
Peter’s vision blurred again, and he saw Andrew’s face displaced by his dad’s face, red and contorted, on that terrible day when he’d had his final heart attack.
Something was wrong with Andrew. He had to get away.
Peter staggered from the bathroom. He slammed the door shut and wedged a chair under the doorknob just as Andrew hurled himself against the door. Peter leaned against the wall panting, his face hot and sweaty. Was he running a fever?
“Hey, who’s there?” shouted John, the night security guard as he charged into the room, flashlight raised.
“Infection,” Peter managed before pain shot down his spine, buckling his knees and making him black out.
When Peter floated back to consciousness, he was crouched by a pile of putrid vomit, sweat pouring off his face. John was tugging his sleeve, shouting something Peter couldn’t hear over the ringing in his ears. Peter’s vision went in and out of focus. He glanced past John and saw the grey-pink light of false dawn creeping in the window. Summers were like that here. Good time for hunting if you didn’t bother with permits. The light touched the dull horns of a mule deer, a cheaply preserved trophy mounted by the window.
Peter slid to the floor, his jaws clacking open and closed, his cheek resting on the warm vomit. He tried to clutch his cross but couldn’t move his arms.
John was still shouting, but the words bled together. Peter’s head hurt, and his heart was racing. He’d eaten some of the trout a week ago. The fish hadn’t looked sick then. He’d only stolen a few. They’d smelled off and he’d undercooked them, but he’d eaten them anyway. It was important to tell John this, to tell him to run, but Peter couldn’t remember why.
Andrew broke through the door and launched himself at John, his bloody hands raised, his mouth snapping open and closed. Peter saw him rip into John’s soft throat and tear open his carotid artery, drenching them both in blood.
Infection, Peter thought. It takes most parasites time to move from the stomach to the nervous system. It must’ve moved very quickly through Andrew’s bloodstream.
Peter shook violently as Andrew tore into John’s soft abdomen, swallowing blood-drenched clothing, skin, and flesh indiscriminately, his eyes opaque.
Peter could see the antlers on the wall, and, transposed over them, another more impressive pair that he’d taken from a stag on that last hunt with dad. He forgot what “antlers” and “hunt” and “dad” meant, but he saw the pride on dad’s face, felt a firm hand clap him on the back, and tasted a beer, sour and warm, sliding down his throat.
I’m proud of you, son. Then, Peter couldn’t see or feel anything. The lights went out for him. It was something else that pulled Peter’s body upright, something else that turned with snapping jaws towards the smell of bloody meat and fed ravenously as the sun crept over the horizon.
END
H. V. Patterson lives in Oklahoma and is obsessed with all things horror. She recently placed second in the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry’s Dark and Scary Poem Contest, and has a poem forthcoming in Monstroddities from Sliced Up Press. She’s published flash fiction in Not Deer Magazine and Horror Tree (Trembling with Fear). She’s a fiction reader for Nimrod International Journal and cofounder of Dreadfulesque. Follow her on Twitter and Goodreads at @ScaryShelley.