I still dream about it sometimes.
I open the bathroom door and am immediately assaulted by the pungent smell of artificial flowers and detergent. It makes me gag.
Everything is pristine, from the chrome of the faucet to the slight space between the porcelain tiles. The bathtub is so perfectly polished I can almost see my reflection in it. Every corner, every nook and cranny of the place has been scrubbed clean down to it’s barest, whitest bone with a ruthlessness that sends shivers down my spine. And as I am left shaking, eyes wide and breath short, I keep wondering: How can you do such a thing ?
My nightmares have gotten awfully specific since Evelyn and I started dating.
(It’s not her real name by the way, I would never disclose such information after what happened.)
I met Evelyn 7 months ago on a lesbian dating app. Her intro was sweet and funny and the conversation flowed easily by message, so we decided to go on a date. It was amazing. She was just as funny and kind in person and our common interest in cryptozoology and horror made it so our conversation never ran dry. We started dating quickly after and for the first few months everything was great.
Now, there were a few odd things right from the start.
For one, Evelyn had a perfect skin. And I don’t mean “you must have a really good skincare routine” level of perfect. No, I mean the “how can you look like you are photoshopped in person ?!” kind. Her skin was absolutely flawless. Never a pimple, a rash or a black head anywhere on her body no matter what she ate, did, or how little she slept. Some people might say it was the melanin but if it was, she must have had received the better kind because mine sure didn’t work the same. Frankly, I was a little jealous.
The other, more aggravating thing was that she would never stay at my place more than one night. She would hang out at my apartment all day, stay the night, and eat dinner with me the following day ; but as soon as the second day ended she would get back home faster than Cinderella after hearing the first stroke of midnight.
At first I understood, we had just started dating and I thought she must have found it awkward to stay with me for long periods of time. Or that she had a pet to feed. But as we kept seeing each other it became increasingly clear that her behavior wasn’t going to change.
Finally, she would never, ever, invite me to her apartment. And that’s what made me tick.
At first she said her neighbors weren’t very open-minded and that she was worried something would happen to me if I came to her place. But when I insisted that I would be careful or that I was ready to face them if it came down to that, her reasons for refusing to let me visit became increasingly ridiculous.
One time an homophobic family member was visiting, another pest control was treating the room against cockroaches, some other time there was a leak that had flooded the whole apartment…
Smelling bullshit, I sat her down one day and told her that I had enough of her lies. For all I knew, she could have been hiding a spouse and kids this whole time and I refused to stay in a relationship with someone who constantly lied to me.
To my surprise, she bursted into tears, told me she loved me and had never wanted to lie to me but had felt she had no other choice. Then she said: “If you’re going to leave me anyway, I might as well show you.”
And so, 4 months after we had started dating, I was finally allowed to visit my girlfriend’s apartment.
I don’t really know what I expected to find there by that point, but let me tell you, it was not what I saw.
The hallway looked normal enough at first glance, white paint, shoe rack, coat hanger. But it was very, very warm in the room. Warm and humid. I was about to make a joke of it and ask her if she lived with reptiles on the loose…
When I noticed the first lump.
It looked like the inside of a mouth or the inner walls of a vagina. It was a shocking shade of reddish pink, fleshy, pulsating and glistening with fluid. It formed some sort of root that was anchored in the wall and made a trail I could follow to the rest of the room. That’s when I realized: The entire living room, no, the entire apartment, was covered in the stuff.
It almost looked like it had been entirely made out of flesh: Capillaries carrying blood through something that looked like a sofa, walls beating rhythmically and floors oozing clear saliva like fluid that emitted no smell I could recognize.
I might have screamed. I don’t quite remember. I just know that I stayed there, rooted on the spot, clinging with all my being to the tiled floor of the entrance, and with it to my sanity.
I stayed there for what felt like ages but couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. Then I heard Evelyn say: “So, now that you’re here, are you going to visit my apartment or what ?”
I spluttered. Weren’t we going to talk about the giant living organism that was apparently her room ?
« We can do that inside. » Was her reply.
I blinked rapidly but she was already taking off her shoes and walking barefoot on the living floor, as if it was something she did everyday, while I simply stared at her in shock.
Now, I want you to understand: Had it been anyone else in that apartment, I would have ran for the hills. But this was Evelyn, my lover, and if she was acting like everything was fine well… Maybe it was.
So I took off my sneakers and my socks and I followed her.
Have you ever walked on someone’s back ? I did when I was younger. My dad was convinced it helped with the back problems that run in our family, even though I’m pretty sure modern science would disagree… Anyway, if you have, it felt roughly like that, without the feeling of fragile jutting bones, and more disturbingly, without skin. But the warmth and the firm yet yielding sensation of muscles were strikingly similar. It was weird, and my feet soon felt like they were covered in slime.
Evelyn was used to it, she walked around easily. She took off her clothes, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do under such circumstances, and put them in a plastic bag that I assumed was dedicated to her laundry. She then sat down on the flesh sofa and waited for me to join.
“I… I’d rather not.” I stammered. She shrugged:
“Suit yourself. If you change your mind we can put your clothes in a bag. I can even lend you a swimsuit if that makes you more comfortable.”
“Evelyn, what the fuck is going on here ?” I finally asked. She sighed:
“This, she said gesturing at the entire room, is my flesh. When I stay in the same place for more than a few nights this happens. It’s gradual of course. The first thing that forms is the cocoon. Then it just expands.”
“The cocoon ?” I repeated dumbly.
“Wanna see ?”
“Well… I might as well.” I was in too deep anyway.
The cocoon very much deserved it’s name though it felt more to me like a pouch. Or a womb. It was maintained about three feet off the ground by numerous cartilaginous cables and it was big enough to fit Evelyn’s entire body standing up. In the middle of it ran a vertical slit, roughly the size of a door, from which a different type of secretion dribbled.
To demonstrate its use, Evelyn pushed the lubricated sides of the slit until she could slip her entire body inside the cocoon. The opening closed behind her, shielding her entirely from the outside world.
Then a few minutes later, she reappeared, covered in fluid. I was bewildered.
“What… Why… How do you even breath in here ?!”
“I don’t need to.” She explained: “The fluid keeps me alive while I’m inside. It also heals me, up to a certain extent.” That explained the skin.
“What are you going to do when you move out ?!” I thought wildly.
“If I stay in a different place for over a month a new cocoon forms and the old one withers away with the rest of the flesh that surrounds it. After that well… It’s a lot of cleaning.”
She laughed at that, as if she had just made some hilarious inside joke I was supposed to understand. But I just gawked, dumbfounded. Everything was too surreal for my brain to process. I was beyond fear, beyond disgust and my legs were shaking so much I felt like a new born calf. So I said:
“Can I have that swimsuit you offered earlier ?”
I changed quickly then sat down on the sofa with Evelyn, and that’s when I finally started feeling grounded again. Because this, this was familiar. Sure I was in a cave of living flesh and there was a regenerative cocoon in the bathroom. But sitting down with my girlfriend to have a chat while in various state of undress, that, was normal.
And now that I felt like myself again, I could ask her questions that actually mattered. Such as:
“Are you an alien ?” she gave me an apologetic look and a half smile:
“I wish I had a simple answer to that question. I wish I could tell you ‘I am an alien from Planet X’ or ‘I was bitten by a radioactive animal’ or even ‘here is the mythical specie I belong to, wanna check out our Wikipedia page ?’. But the truth is, Andrée, I don’t know what I am.”
I thought about asking her if her parents knew, but then I remembered Evelyn had been adopted and as far as she knew her biological family was dead.
“My childhood was perfectly normal.” She explained: “All of this started when I moved out of my parents house and started living alone. At first I thought it was the place I rented but as I kept changing location it became obvious I was the one causing the apparition of the flesh.”
“So this thing follows you… But how can you be so sure it’s part of you ?”
“Because at first I tried to clean it while it was still alive… Believe me, the sensation of bleach burning under your skin is not a pleasant one.”
Never underestimate the things a person can get used to.
We sat on that flesh couch for hours, kept texting through the night and a few days later Evelyn came over to my place as usual.
She still didn’t stay more than one night, but now I knew why.
For a few weeks everything was as normal as it could be. Occasionally I would go back to her apartment, especially when winter rolled around. It was surprisingly comfortable, like going to a sauna.
Once I got over my shock I was fascinated by how this whole thing worked. For example, all of Evelyn’s power outlets were still functioning. The flesh had folded itself into some sort of gutter to drain the fluid away from them. Same with everything cooking related. The toilets were completely devoid of flesh as well.
“Avoiding electrical or flammable things it does naturally. As for the toilet it took me a while to figure it out, but if I use a specific type of paint it prevents the flesh from growing on a surface.” Was her explanation on how she kept some places flesh free.
But then, five months in, Evelyn arrived to our date and she looked… Haunted.
Her skin was still picture perfect mind you but she kept looking behind her shoulder and couldn’t focus on anything. After an hour of that, I finally asked her what was wrong.
“I think I might be in danger.” She said.
She started to explain that recently there had been a van from a cleaning company parked down her street. And that regularly people dressed as exterminators, and or cleaning crew, would come in and out of it and walk into the neighboring buildings.
At first she paid it no mind but then she noticed the van had been here for days and that looked shady.
And then, they started entering her building.
“I talked about it to my neighbors.” She said: “They present themselves as an extermination and cleaning company and say that there is a pest problem in the building. Since we received no notice from management my neighbors were suspicious, especially the older ones you know, with all theses scams targeting old people. But they gave them pamphlets, governmental certificates and even offered them free cleaning services… So some accepted. They must have done a terrific job because my neighbors only swear by them now. And they are visiting every single apartment in the building.” I tried my best to reassure her:
“This happened before though, right ? You just need to tell them you don’t want their services and will deal with it yourself, just like with the rat problem you told me about. They can’t force you.”
“I think that might be what they expect… Andrée, I don’t think those are regular exterminators. And I don’t think they are here for regular pest either.” I shivered. Evelyn looked terrified.
“Do you… Do you want to stay at my place for a while ?” I offered: “They can’t make you let them in if you are not here, they’d have to break in.”
“I’d love to, she admitted, but you know I can’t stay for long or else a cocoon will appear.” She continued, mortified.
I stared at her a few seconds, did she really think I would abandon her now ? If the flesh thing had bothered me we would have broken up weeks ago ! I grabbed her hand and told her:
“Evelyn, it’s fine. We’ll just find you a spot, yeah ?” Her jaw slackened from surprise, but then, her expression of shock turned into a smile.
“Yeah, ok, thank you. Thank you so much Andrée. I love you.”
“Love you too.” I replied, her smile never failed to make me smile in return: “Tonight ?”
“Yes please.”
And so Evelyn started living with me.
True to her words, on the third day, specs of flesh started appearing on the bedroom wall. Within the next few days some cartilaginous structure grew out of them, anchoring a round lump of flesh that grew in size with each passing day.
Evelyn didn’t go back to her apartment. She started commuting directly from my place. Which meant she couldn’t sleep in her cocoon anymore.
It showed immediately: Her skin lost it’s unnatural glow and smoothness, bags appeared under her eyes from stress, and so did blackheads on her nose. She was overly conscious about it, as you can imagine. But I assured her over and over that stepping down to our mortal level didn’t make her any less beautiful in my eyes. It helped, a little.
She didn’t even dare retrieve her belonging herself and asked me to do it for her.
It was on such a trip that I had my first, and what I hope to be the last, close encounter with Miller Home Solutions©️.
As Evelyn had told me, a white van was parked close to her building. It looked brand new and was perfectly immaculate. On its side, in cool pastel colors, you could read the name of the company and it’s slogan in a modern medical looking font. “Miller Home Solutions” it read “for a cleaner and brighter tomorrow.”
I had barely reached my girlfriend’s apartment door when a white man in an exterminator outfit called me out. He looked like he was straight out of a commercial: young, smiling, clean-shaved. He was nothing like the kind of people you’d usually find in this line of work: ragged middle aged men who reveled in the look of horror on their clients’ face when they told some particularly gross story from their job.
“Good morning miss. Are you the tenant of this apartment ?” Even his voice felt clean somehow. I lied on the spot:
“Yes. And who might you be ?”
“You can call me James, I’m from Miller Home Solutions, we have been informed that there was an infestation in the building and…”
“I didn’t hear anything about that from the landlord.”
“Ah yes, this is because we have been mandated by the city miss, apparently this spans over several apartments buildings and…”
“So what do you want ?”
“We’d like to examine your apartment if you don’t mind. There has been complaints you see, smell, leakage, stuff like that.”
My brow furrowed, Evelyn had never had any problems with her neighbors, the flesh didn’t smell particularly strongly and its scent was pretty neutral anyway. As for the fluid it simply went down the bathroom drain.
“I think you’ve got the wrong apartment sir. Now if you will excuse me.”
“I’m sorry miss but I must insist. If all the units are not cleaned properly it may affect the building as a whole.”
“Well then tell me what kind of pest we’re talking about and I’ll just take the necessary measures myself.”
“This is the problem miss I don’t think you can, it’s in the walls and…”
“Then I’ll ask a professional that isn’t some shady dude in an hazmat suit. And if you don’t leave right now I’m calling the police.”
That was an empty threat. I would never have called the police to help me against a white man. Especially not given the circumstances, but the threat alone usually worked to dissuade people. Usually, because James seemed to know I was bluffing. His toothpaste commercial smile took a dark edge:
“Please miss, do so if that makes you feel safer. Then they can watch over me while I work. I’ll even throw in some free cleaning service for the trouble I’ve caused you.”
“Whatever, I am not opening that door with you here. Guess I’m sleeping at the hotel tonight.” And I left.
I did go to an hotel after that. I looked up the closest and cheapest one and checked in, paying upfront. Then, in the middle of the night, I sneaked out, went back to the apartment, took all the things Evelyn had asked, and got back home using the most convoluted way possible.
I was absolutely terrified the whole time.
What if the exterminators had followed me ? What if they already knew who I was ? What if someone called the cops and they broke into the apartment ?
Evelyn was just as scared and we spent two weeks dealing with constant low key anxiety.
But nothing happened, and after a while we settled.
The cocoon was the size of a child and one wall of our bedroom was covered in flesh when it happened.
We were watching The Naked Feast, eating popcorn and giggling at the practical effects and how ridiculous they looked compared to the real thing… When Evelyn let out a blood curling scream.
A high pitched wail that made me jump clean off the couch and drop the popcorn bowl and its content all over the floor.
“Evelyn what the hell ?!” I said trying to catch my breath. Her face was pale and big drops of sweat were running down her forehead:
“I… I don’t know… All of a sudden I just felt that pain in my leg and… Ah ! AH ! AAAAAHHH !”
She rolled into a ball, all her muscles locked into place and she screamed. Louder and louder. The sound so terrifying I was frozen in place.
But she didn’t stop and after a few seconds of deafening cries my thought process finally caught up. If she kept screaming like that, someone was going to call the police. I had to do something.
I took a hand towel, tied it into a knot and put it in front of her mouth. She immediately bit into it with all her might. She was crying now, her eyes swollen and red. Streams of tears were running down her cheeks and I could clearly make out the shape of veins on her temples. I could still hear her moaning, muffled as it was by the makeshift gag.
She was in pain, I had to find a way to help her.
What I didn’t understand was why she was in pain. And why now… Until I remembered the apartment.
As long as the cocoon in our bedroom wasn’t fully formed, the flesh at her place would still be alive. Which meant that any attempt to removing it would hurt her directly.
Miller Home Solutions had found a way in. And now they were “cleaning” her room:
Killing the flesh with chloride and detergents before scrubbing it off. And Evelyn was feeling all of it.
I had to find a way to stop them somehow, I had to go there and convince them that they were hurting, maybe even killing, a person. That there was no reason for them to do such a thing.
Evelyn wasn’t hurting anyone, she wasn’t even bothering anyone !
And if they wouldn’t listen well, I would try and stop them by force.
I couldn’t just watch my lover suffer.
But as I rose from the floor on which I had been prostrated, Evelyn’s hand shot out to grab my leg:
“Please don’t leave me alone.” She croaked.
“I have to stop them.”
“Please… I don’t want to die alone.”
Her words broke my heart in half and I started crying too. I fell down on my knees and gathered her in a tight embrace.
“You’re not going to die.” I promised. “I won’t let that happen.”
But if she heard me, she didn’t reply, she kept shaking, crying, and trying to muffle her screams.
After a few minutes of that I realized that I could maybe ease her pain. I still had a box of tramadol somewhere from that back thing I shared with my dad.
I looked for it frantically. There were only two pills left but it would have to do.
I gave her one and it did seem to help. She calmed down, and though her skin was still pale and clammy, and her eyes unfocused, her jaw relaxed and she fell asleep.
I dragged her to bed and tried to create a makeshift cocoon with our blanket and my own body. I didn’t know wether it would helped her in any way but I couldn’t stay still.
The night was hellish. Evelyn would wake up every few hours, feverish and delirious from pain. Several times I wondered wether I should call an ambulance even though I knew perfectly well no doctor could help her.
Around 11 the next morning she finally relaxed. It felt like her entire body was breathing of relief when she told me: “I am not in pain anymore.” Before falling in a deep slumber.
I watched over her for a few more hours to make sure she was actually asleep and hadn’t passed out, or worse.
But her breathing and pulse were fine, and so was her body temperature.
Once I was sure of that, I rushed to her apartment.
The first thing that hit me was how cool and dry the room was.
Then it was the flooring. The perfectly waxed dark wooden floor, shiny as a mirror.
The sofa we had sat on was disgustingly bare, the naked dry threads of its fabric out for all to see.
Everything was dead, cold, unmoving. And so very clean.
It all felt wrong in a way that I might never be able to articulate.
Shouldn’t there be blood after such a massacre ? Fluids ? A speck of skin that had been overlooked ? Anything left of the entire living being that had been here ?
Life couldn’t possibly disappear without a trace over night…
There was no way…
But then my shaky legs took me to the bathroom. To the room that had once housed the cocoon, its huge, ovoid shape mounted on its dozens of ties.
And there was absolutely nothing left.
I was about to walk out, still trembling, when I saw it. It was simply put on the repulsively angular and hard table of the living room:
A note.
I got closer and looked at it in horror.
It had, of course, the same cool pastel tones and the same medical font as the one I had seen on the side of the Miller Home Solutions van.
It was an absence notice. It read:
“Dear Miss Evelyn Jones.
Unfortunately, we’ve missed you.
We did the most we could do in your absence.
But rest assured, we will come back whenever you are home again.”
Horrified, I ran out of the apartment as fast as I could, not even bothering to lock the door. And once again, I took the most convoluted way home I could think of.
The first few days after that nightmarish night, Evelyn looked half dead. Which she was, in a way. He skin was three shades paler than usual with a jaundice shade of yellow, and always covered in a thin layer of sweat. Despite our best efforts to hydrate and care for her skin she had huge and sudden outbreak of acne, or rashes that would cover entire limbs. On top of the discomfort it caused her, she could barely stand to look at her reflection.
Not sleeping in the cocoon also took a mental toll on Evelyn. Most nights, she didn’t sleep more than a handful of hours. She started getting depressed, anxious.
She even had to take time off work to heal, and got fired as a result.
Luckily I could afford to support us both until she found another employment, especially after she had broken off her lease. The phone call to her landlord confirming that he had never called anyone about any pest trouble. Assuming he didn’t lie of course…
The cocoon looked healthy at least. It kept growing until one day it finally reached the size necessary for its intended use.
Evelyn nearly wept with relief when it did.
We’re both doing fine now.
Evelyn recently passed an interview that will enable her to support herself financially again.
She looks just as unreal as she did when we first met and so does our bedroom. She sleeps in the cocoon most night but always sleeps in the bed with me twice or three times a week.
I tried going inside the cocoon once but the fluid doesn’t seem to work on me so I almost suffocated only to end up feeling tacky and ridiculous. I guess I’ll never not be jealous of Evelyn’s skin…
We also painted the door frame to avoid the flesh from spreading everywhere.
All in all, we are learning to live together and respect each other’s space the same way most couples do.
But sometimes, my mind goes back to that apartment. To its perfectly clean walls and polished floor and I have to suppress a shiver as I wonder what would have happened had Evelyn been at her place that frightening night.