Hi I'm a Social Disease: Horror Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

animals. All stripped and thrown there like garbage, in various states of decay. Now was not the time to mourn them. He had other things to do. He had a purpose and now that purpose was renewed. Mama Hodap had felt it when she had touched him. She had said he was the one. She had said he had been brought to her. He had been chosen. He had not found them. They had found him. For the first time since entering the sewers, he was able to understand what she meant.
    He didn’t put himself together and stand up after falling forty-three floors for nothing.
    He tried to shake the vision from his head. It didn’t do any good. It was no longer just a vision. It was very real, slouching in front of him. The torches still burned. The bodies were still there. The rain continued to pour. Lightning continued to flash. He was in the belly of chaos. He was in the middle of Wall Street, adjusted to fit this savage world.
    He turned toward the Chambers building.
    This time he was going to enter through the front door.
    He had encountered Chambers. He was still alive. He still had his dignity. He was still an under man, still a resident down there at the bottom of the world. But he was not unequal. He knew that now.
    As he drew closer to the building he saw that it wasn’t made of brick and concrete like most buildings. Not anymore. Bones—gray, white, and black—made up the intricate framework. It was covered in a luminous membrane. The glowing, oozing tower contrasted against the black sky. He reached out to grab what may have been a handle or maybe just a jaw bone when the door opened to receive him.
    He passed through it into the cramped, humid lobby.
     
    12.
     
    The door shut behind him and Myron knew he wouldn’t be going back out that way even if he wanted to. He turned to survey the lobby area. It was arranged much the same as the old lobby area. The receptionist’s desk was made up of various bones. These bones, enmeshed with the membrane and bone meal, made up the interior walls, as well. They made him think of fossils covered in semen. The membrane coated everything with that glow. It had to be glowing. He didn>
    In front of him, the floor was moving, opening up.
    He stood rooted in place, staring at the disturbance.
    A pair of little hands reached up through the ashy floor, followed by a mostly familiar face.
    Joanie.
    He breathed the name aloud. “ Joanie .”
    This was Joanie after death. Gray and rotten but still mostly intact. She hadn’t really been dead very long. He reached out to help pull her from the ground. He took her hand and pulled gently. He could feel the bone separating from the joint and shuddered with the thought of the arm coming off in his hand. He released her.
    “ Joanie,” he said again.
    “ Daddy.” Her vocal cords didn’t work very well. The muscles of her mouth were mostly rotten. Dirt and insects filled her throat. It didn’t sound like Joanie at all.
    She pulled herself the rest of the way out. Black dirt caked her deteriorated clothes. He wanted to hug her but fought the urge. What good would it do? This wasn’t his Joanie. He knew that. It would be impossible for his Joanie to be here. He imagined hugging her and having her fall to pieces in his arms just like she had died under his watch. He fought the crippling wave of grief and guilt threatening to pull him down.
    “ Follow me,” Joanie said.
    She turned to his left, walking with a quick, jerking shamble. She disappeared through a man-size opening shaped like a vagina. He followed her, pushing the thickly dripping membrane aside, the thick lips of the vagina painting him in the substance.
    Once through the opening, he found himself in a claustrophobic chamber even more sickeningly humid than the lobby. It breathed around him. Slowly. A sleep breath.
    “ Joanie?”
    “ Up here, Daddy!”
    He looked up. A deep shaft ascended up through the building. Perhaps this was the elevator at one point. It didn’t make any sense. The shaft