Spawn of the Pickle Loaf

Part 10, In Which Our Tragic Hero Scratches an Itch

We sat utterly still for fifteen minutes straight, myself in my easy chair and the plastic bin standing deceptively still where it had landed. Locked in a war of attrition were the bin and I. Whoever made the first move would be at a disadvantage, assuming our beast really was trapped inside and assuming the trap hadn't slipped of its own accord. There was a decent chance it had, for I'd balanced the shaft just to the point of tipping, and sometimes gravity bides its time. But I wasn't about to let my guard down. Chances were just as high that the creature was curled up within, waiting to strike like a viper once I pried open the seems. 

But maintaining my position was torturous, dear reader, because I'd developed a crook in my back from sleeping at an incline and, worse, because an itch had begun traveling up my nose and along my left eyebrow. It took all my resolve to keep my hands rooted in place, and eventually I began to feel the futility of the entire exercise. 

I was only a man, after all. Not a beast with the survival mechanisms to stiffen and transform into a stump or a rock. The itch was proliferating throughout my face, sliding down my cheek and wrapping around my chin. I was practically on fire. Hundreds of ants were moiling beneath my skin. I had contracted the measles! That was it! My death would be slow and painful and irritating, unless I found some method of scratching away every goddamned sub-dermis needle.

I did it slowly. My hand crept up the leather armrest, one centimeter at a time. It slid along my leg and over my belly and up my chest. It began creeping up my chin, yes, and the hand's journey was nearly complete, when a crash detonated from the floor beside me. I knew in that moment that I would die of heart failure before the pickle loaf ever manifested itself. 

But I was quick to pinpoint the source this time. You see, my hand had abandoned the television remote when it began migrating, and the remote had slowly slid over the edge of the armrest, compelled by gravity's dogged advances, and smashed against the small circle of floorboards I'd dredged up during my campaign earlier. Emitting a truly deafening sound.

The kind of sound which could wake the dead, or at least alert a certain protoplasm to my presence. I froze completely again, forefinger resting atop my nose, little grains of sweat breaking-out all over my forehead. All that effort, and now I'd become as inconspicuous as a car alarm. 

The bin remained still, however. It didn't move an inch. No sound emanated from inside. No scurryings or scratchings or slurping sounds. It was enough to allay my pulse for a moment. The snare had fallen by itself, I thought, I hoped. I remembered the terrible blight coating my face and, feeling safer, began scratching furiously at my neck, my chin, my cheeks; and for a brief instant, I experienced utter ecstasy. I chased chased away all the ants, and they burrowed deep inside, nestling in my bones, where they lingered (and linger even now) as a faint tickle.

Still the bin was inanimate. I wondered if that was part of the pickle loaf's new plan--luring me in with silence and inaction. There was only a slim chance it hadn't noticed me already, I thought wryly (and with a surge of dread.) Wherever it prowled. A slim chance it hadn't seen me sleeping, splayed-out like a beached elephant seal, as vulnerable a target as a comestible predator could ask for.  

Was the creature toying with me?  I would never know, if I stayed frozen like that; never know, unless I mustered the courage to venture across the room, raise the bin, and unleash that terrible mystery. There lay my only way forward. My alternative was remaining confined to the easy chair for the rest of my life.

So I moved, dear reader. I sat up slowly and deliberately, and every fiber of the leather seat groaned. Loud enough to drown-out a tectonic shift. (Perhaps it was simply my anxiety, but that horrible rubbing sound was one of the loudest things I'd ever heard. All that leather scraping and grinding like a stone mill.) 

I tried to stand up gracefully--the whole affair was more of a lurch, I suppose--then I creeped across the room, paying careful attention to my steps, toes landing between the boxes and the scattered paper, objects that would emit a whole another clamor, if prodded. I still believed (stubbornly and perhaps foolishly) that I could catch the monster off guard. It had undoubtedly detected my every move hitherto, but maybe, just maybe, it wasn't expecting me to be so brazen. It sat smugly in its hideout, fancying me still frozen in place ten feet away. Little did the pickle loaf know...

"Yaaarrgghhhhhh!" I yelled. (In my mind, I envisioned something more adroit, like "Peekaboo!" or "Time's up!" But a rebel yell would suffice. I was too terrified to emit anything else.) I had nothing with which to assail the barrier, so I utilized my own body. I leaned backward and kicked the bin with all my might, and with a "thunk!" it was airborne, sailing across the kitchen and meeting the opposite wall with a similar "thwack!" 

Meanwhile, I was half leaping, half stumbling backward. My leg snapped around and sent my momentum askew, and I must've looked like a deranged ballerina for an instant, spinning wildly with the leg extended. It was all I could do to evade the imaginary tendrils erupting towards me. I didn't collapse, but I came close; took several frantic steps, finally caught myself on the wall, and scanned the contents of the trap from a distance, panting like scared animal. 

My quarry was nowhere to be seen. But everything was wrong, dear reader. Horribly, shockingly wrong! The pork n' beans had scattered everywhere, forming a shallow swamp of bean sludge, and the paper plate had disappeared. I know what you're thinking, dear reader--the bin's violent displacement must've disrupted my arrangement, and, of course, I thought something similar, until I scanned the slough more closely and spied an uncanny embellishment. 

Know that  I'm not completely devoid of self-perception. I understand. My anecdote so far has likely sounded like the delirious ravings of a lunatic, barred from human interaction and thus straying farther and farther from healthy psychological rituals. "He hasn't even seen the monster yet!" you might be scoffing to yourself. Or, "All these phenomena are happy coincidences!" I understand the smugness of my sentient narrative device. I understand how deranged you must think me at the moment. But the tides are about to change. The subsequent events were unmistakably supernatural. 

Something had disturbed the surface of the bork n' beans. There were patterns, runes. Writing! I giggled to myself, for surely I was the victim of some mirage or illusion. My line of sight had distorted the image. I was still caught in a dream. Anything but the preposterous truth. 

But I mustered my courage again, crept cautiously forward, and the patterns only became more pronounced. Legible, dear reader! I stopped a foot away from the circle of debris and began trembling. My stomach was traveling again, stretching and tugging inside my abdomen. Reaching downward toward the netherworld chasm beneath the floor. 

Two words had been etched across the surface of the mire in a primary schooler's scrawl. 

"Eat me."

I had no time to ponder the message's implications, for a thunderous racket suddenly erupted down the hall.