It’s a living thing, using the winds to waft itself to the heavens and beyond. Think of a graveyard washed through the overtaxed sewer system of a large city. If you’ve ever wondered if the living dead take dumps you’ll be in line to get into the ballpark. And the smell is worse because it gets cooked during the blistering sunlit days. It creeps up the sides of the buildings where we seek refuge, and clings to us when we venture outside—which we have to do, to determine if the tide of waste has risen any. From our vantage point atop one of the highest apartment buildings in the city we see folks in a similar situation. We watch as they heave corpses into the writhing muck, which opens like a mouth to receive the offerings. Sometimes the bodies are living, catapulting off the tops of buildings by choice or under force. Once we saw a line of people, men and children mostly, standing single file and jumping off one by one. A lone man in what looked like a nun’s habit supervised the ritual, then was mobbed by a group of women in skanky lingerie.

“Must have been a cult,” Key said after that particular spectacle.

“Whatever,” I had responded. The odor was making me nauseous, and I hustled to the side of the building to puke. This act was torturous, because with every inhale the vile smell found its way into my nose and mouth and clung there for days. I would be tasting shit and rot regardless of what I ate, and smelling like a dog that rolled in a pile of what horses leave, or used to leave, in the pasture.

I excuse myself and descend from the roof, leaving Key (short for Keyshawn—he had been an athlete of some kind before the shit hit the fans, literally) to complete the day’s survey. We’ve been lucky that the muck from the bottom of Hell’s shithouse hasn’t risen any higher, but there are rains in the forecast and, as you maybe know, shit floats.

I take the stairs down to what we’ve named the Exile Zone, where people exposed excessively to the crap sequester themselves until they’re safe to return to higher ground. It’s a given that anyone who does a survey has to spend a few days in one of the apartments, taking multiple baths and scrubbing hard to get rid of the stench. It does get lonely, but there are amusements. The internet has not crashed, some television channels are still operating against all odds, and the streaming services all went on auto delivery when it was determined that the great waste wave was not going to recede. I have a personal laptop, one of the few possessions I brought with me when I found my way into the city and ascended forty-five flights on foot to this haven, of sorts. I had arrived mere seconds before the first wave of shit splashed over the docks, pushing watercraft of all sizes ahead of it and drowning the souls unlucky enough to be outside, underground, or in buildings that lacked the necessary altitude. But now that I think about it, the dead are probably the lucky ones, drowning in the sea of ruddy brown-black sludge, or being dashed against the sides of buildings by the onrushing waves. We survivors found ourselves stuck wherever we’d taken refuge, and thus began the slow weeding out of the unfortunates who sheltered in places that had few resources. Rumors of descents into madness and cannibalism slowly emerged, highlighted by a shakily shot video of a young man carving up a cooked infant like a Thanksgiving turkey—it may well have been Thanksgiving when he posted it, matter of fact. The passage of time becomes less of a concern when your daily objective is to expose yourself to the outside world as little as possible.

My current home is a newer construction called Prestige Towers, a place that, in the times before everything went to shit, I couldn’t have afforded. Luxurious doesn’t begin to describe it, but this once-towering symbol of opulence is now mired in turds and offal. When the muck stopped rising about four weeks ago, it had overtaken the thirty-second floor. Now, it just seethes there, foul bubbles popping and releasing sulphureous clouds into the air. Occasionally, birds and bats—those that managed to survive the first wave—will try to fly away, but they don’t last long; seconds after takeoff they freeze midair and fall into the hideous mass of waste. I’ve seen videos of ducks and geese, not knowing any better, trying to swim in the muck, when tendrils of sludge rise up like the king cobra, strike, and pull the foolish fowl into its depths. At first, I had dismissed these scenes for cheap camera tricks. But amid my skepticism another, more insidious notion has crept in: that the waste is somehow sentient. And that would be bad, very bad.

Key, who resided in Prestige Towers before the feculence—he occupied the penthouse—eventually joined me on the forty-fifth floor, having exiled himself to an unoccupied apartment to keep his own domicile pristine. Floor forty-five has become the hub of activities, the gathering spot for survivors. We congregate regularly to play games, watch movies and tapes of Keyshawn’s games, and have orgies. So far, our little community includes seven men and twelve women of varying ages, as well as three children—the youngest was born the day after the mother arrived. One of the refugees, Mike, is a paramedic, and the closest thing we have to a doctor. He delivered the baby, and when tiny child’s mother died shortly thereafter, Mike adopted her. He confided to me that he’s gay, which is why he rarely goes to Keyshawn’s for our get-togethers, so he takes care of the kids during our debaucheries. Maybe he has a soft spot for children because he lost his entire family and all his coworkers during the first flood. He survived only because he was on a call in Prestige Towers with a partner. When the shit waves rolled in, his partner left to rescue her elderly parents, and he never saw her again.

I return to one of the holding apartments after my latest survey and immediately call Mike. Then I strip naked, walk out to the balcony and throw every scrap of clothing over the railing. Shoes, too. Trying to wash them is a fool’s errand.

Mike knocks and lets himself in. He’s decked out in a biohazard suit and carries his medical kit, set to do a general check of my systems to assure that I’ve absorbed nothing more than the odor. We found out the hard way what happens to people who ingest the mess, accidentally or deliberately. They devolve into ambulatory piles of shit, their human faces floating cockeyed where their heads should be, mouths mewling pitifully. If these crap-zombies touch you, you get infected. Once, we came damn close to an infestation, nearly losing a standoff with a growing squad of feces golems until somebody, out of desperation, doused one of them with liquid drain cleaner. The creature dissolved and was rendered non-lethal. We neutralized the situation and put some procedures in place so as not to repeat that particular mistake. Hence, Mike.

He does a visual inspection, prompting me to bend over and spread my cheeks so he can examine my anus with a pen light.

“You still constipated?” he asks as he peers into my nether region.

“Yep, been five days.”

“Are you using the suppositories?”

“Nope, I have this phobia about putting things up my ass.”

Mike snorts. “It’s a silly fear. I think you’re afraid of defecating. Want me to insert one while I’m here?”

“I’ll pass, as will the blockage eventually.”

“You hope. But you’re starting to bloat from the backup in your intestines. You really need to flush the pipes. I’ve seen people die of constipation. Bowel burst is no joke.”

“Actually, it sounds pretty funny, like an oral suppository.”

Mike shakes his head and gives me a what-am-I-gonna-do-with-you look. He disposes of the gloves he used to give me the anal exam, washes his hands, and pulls a Geiger counter out of his bag to give me a quick scan.

“Still clean, no elevated radioactivity counts. You eating and staying hydrated?”

“Eating less, hydrating more. I have the aftertaste and after-odor really bad today.”

Mike sprays his penlight with sanitizer and picks up a tongue depressor. “Open wide.” He holds my tongue down as he looks. I can see his eyes narrow, but he says nothing.

“Something wrong?” I ask as he drops the tongue depressor in a biohazard bag. He’s quiet as he moves the penlight to look up my nose.

After more poking and prodding, he swabs the inside of my mouth, dips the cotton tip into a specimen tube, swishes it around, then deposits the swab into the biohazard bag with the tongue depressor. He caps the tube and places it in another clear biohazard bag.

“What’s the deal with the extra tests?”

Without answering, Mike points to my cell phone on the counter and asks me to unlock it for him. I do so. He asks me to open my photo app. I oblige. Donning another pair of latex gloves, he takes the phone.

“Open wide again,” he says.

I do, and he snaps a series of pictures then hands the phone back to me, indicating that I should have a look.

“That’s what’s in your mouth,” he says stiffly.

Swiping through a dozen or so photos, I see brown pustules lining my inner cheeks and the roof of my mouth. I come to a video Mike shot in which they seem to be pulsating. Just then, I feel one pop open, flooding my throat with a taste of Satan’s shit.

“This is something I haven’t seen before,” Mike says as he packs up his gear. He fixes me with a pitying expression.

“So maybe I should just take a dive?” I say, eyeing the balcony. There’s a seagull perched on the railing.

Ignoring my insinuation, he asks, “Do you have any idea how long you might have had this?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“Food hasn’t tasted right for weeks. That’s one of the reasons I’ve lost so much weight. I can barely choke anything down because everything tastes of shit. I can drink water, and occasionally a diet soda, but all the other stuff has a similar taste. And don’t even offer me a beer.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I figured it was just part of the deal. I’m on regular observation duty, and I sign up for extra shifts in exchange for resources. Not that the perks have panned out. The food hasn’t agreed with me, the porn is pedestrian and unstimulating, the clothing no longer fits. It’s a whole lotta boring if you want the God’s honest.”

I hear my guts rumble and the gas eruption is long, loud, and malodorous. It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes and a gag to my throat. “You’re lucky you’re in that fucking bubble suit, Mike,” I say. “That one would leave a mark.”

“Oh, I heard it,” Mike replies, and I wonder if he’s aware he has taken several steps backward toward the door. “The entire floor probably did. Hell,” he says, pointing to the balcony. “You scared away the seagull.”

I look and notice a pile of feathers fluttering by the railing. By the time I turn back to Mike, he is holding his hands up, his face awash in panic as the suit dissolves at the fingertips.

“Fuck, shit, fuck!” he yells as the fabric melts from his hands and the sleeves of his hazmat suit begin to disintegrate. I catch a glimpse of his eyes, wide as saucers through his protective visor, before the polycarbonate mask begins to shimmer and with a great sigh, the plastic collapses inward and fuses to Mike’s face. He screams and claws at it, then stumbles toward the sliding door of my balcony. He hits the glass, bounces off, and fumbles at the latch. I try to pull him back, but he throws my hand off.

“What the hell are you doing, Mike?”

His voice is ragged, as if he has inhaled some of the melted face piece. “Must, go home.” He manages to pry the door open, falls to his knees, and starts to crawl toward the railing. I go after him, but stop when the seat of his biohazard suit starts expanding like a balloon. Then come the muffled sounds of very wet farts, and a browning yellow stain spreads quickly across his ass.

He struggles to pull himself up to the rail. I watch, helpless, not daring go nearer because of the putrid stench, which the rising wind is driving higher, the fumes swirling in the air like a fetid fog.

Mike hoists his legs over the rail, holding on behind him as his feet negotiate the small ledge. The seat of the suit ruptures, spattering my balcony with his shit. I blink in shock as the spatters flow into each other and form into a crouching homunculus about the size of an action figure. The creature is featureless and misshapen. It’s also moving. Toward the apartment.

I find my feet and manage to get there and yank the door shut just in time. Mike’s bowels let go with the force of a firehose, splatting against the glass door hard enough to create a spiderweb crack. The expulsion pushes him off the ledge, and I hear him screaming almost in relief as he plummets. I don’t hear the splash; I just hope that he went quickly.

My concern now lies with the door, where Mike’s Hershey squirts have gathered and started to form into a bulbous body shaped like a snowman with eight spindly legs and a set of raised bumps and mandibles where its head should be. Yeah, it’s a spider—an arachnid from the output of Mike’s ass, and as big as half the door. Wasting no time, it starts to spin a web. Fine strands of brown, yellow, and black oozes from where its anus should be, attaching to the railing and the cracked door. It works fast, and before I know it, an egg sac the size of a basketball appears in the upper right corner of the balcony. I watch, paralyzed and unable to look away, as its abdomen expands and contracts, slowly filling the sac with its offspring.

Outside, the wind is picking up and dark clouds are rolling in. The shit spider has finished pumping the egg sac full and has begun to spin something that looks like a parachute. It creeps up the railing and points its ass outward. The rising winds catch the parachute and pull the gruesome thing away. I watch as it rides the air currents and lands on the roof deck of a higher building close to us.

Something that sounds like a driving rain jolts me out of my trance, and when I look toward the window I see the glass streaked with brown liquid, pelting it in sheets. I remember the security cameras I’d installed to monitor the levels on the ruined thirty-seventh floor, and wake my phone up to view the footage. Winds—could they be hurricane-force?—are kicking up the shit flow into massive waves, and the sludge has begun to rise.

I can barely register the shock of this when I look up and see a flood of brown things cascading down the side of the nearby building. No, not cascading—crawling. Shit-spiders, legions of them. I watch in horror as windows break and people dive out, disappearing into the torrential shitstorm.

I turn away, muttering in shock and fear, and spot the package of oral suppositories Mike left for me. I snatch them up and stumble toward the bathroom, where I paw under the sink, looking for something that might save my worthless ass.

I find it, shake the container, and am rewarded with some sloshing sounds. I take it out, uncap it, and thrust a handful of the oral suppositories into my mouth.

I know the cure will be worse than the disease, but I refuse to be reduced to shit. I chug the remains of the drain cleaner. Almost immediately the cramps start hitting, sending the contents of my intestines surging up and down. I wonder if I was wrong.

But does it matter?

In the end, we all end up waste, the product of an almighty’s attack of the trots.

Gases to gases, shit to shit.

About the Author:
J. Rocky Colavito, aka Dr. Damned, is proud to call himself an ex-college English professor after thirty-plus years on the tenure track (and eleven years previous to that, teaching during graduate school). He has relocated to the desert Southwest and is devoting the rest of his days to reading, viewing, and writing horror of all kinds. He is the creator of Buck Neighkyd (porn star turned occult investigator), Vinnie Dark (PI and studio fixer in 1960s Hollywood), the Stoned Cryptid series from Twisted Dreams Press, and writes horror so far ranging that it boggles the mind. His brand, All the Genres of the Dark, finds everything from quiet horror to screaming volume extreme stuff that got him barred from a tattoo parlor in Indiana (they shoulda read the trigger warnings!). He’s the one they warned you about, and is proud to carry that mantle.