Chapter 3: The Weekend Rot

Chapter 3: The Weekend Rot

The weekend began with silence. Not a peaceful quiet, but a heavy, charged silence that felt like a held breath. On Saturday, Leo sent Marc a text: You still alive? He waited an hour. Nothing. He tried again: Dude, for real. That burger hit me weird too. You good?

The single grey checkmark on his screen was his only reply. Delivered, but not read.

Leo tried to lose himself in a video game, the familiar cycle of respawning and dying a comforting numbness. But every quiet moment was filled with the memory of that apartment, the pulsating mound of eggs, and the cloying, sugary scent that had clung to his friend like a shroud. The five-dollar dare felt less like a stupid prank and more like a trigger being pulled. He kept thinking of Elias Vance's terrified, magnified eyes. Don't eat the ants. It was a warning, not a suggestion.

By Sunday morning, the silence had curdled into a thick, suffocating dread. Leo called Marc’s phone. It rang and rang, the cheerful, stupid ringtone—an 8-bit video game theme—mocking his anxiety before clicking over to a full voicemail box. He called again. And again. The same result.

"That's it," Leo muttered to the empty room, grabbing his keys. "I'm going over there."

The drive to Marc’s cheap, walk-up apartment complex felt agonizingly slow. Every red light was a personal insult. He kept rehearsing what he’d say. Maybe Marc had just passed out, a two-day gaming binge. Maybe his phone had died. There were a dozen rational explanations, and Leo clung to them like a drowning man to a raft.

He took the stairs to Marc’s third-floor apartment two at a time. The hallway smelled of stale cigarette smoke and boiled cabbage, the usual smells of a building slowly giving up. But as he got closer to Marc’s door, apartment 3G, a new scent threaded its way through the grime.

It was faint at first, just a whisper. Sweet.

Leo’s blood ran cold. He knocked on the door, hard. "Marc! Hey, it's me! Open up!"

Only the building’s groans answered him. He pressed his ear to the cheap wood. Silence. No TV, no music, no sound of movement.

"Marc, I'm not kidding, man! I'll kick the damn door in!"

He pounded his fist against the door, the flimsy panel vibrating under the force. Nothing. The sweet smell seemed stronger now, seeping through the cracks around the door frame. It wasn't the pleasant, bakery-fresh scent from Vance's apartment. This was different. This was the smell of overripe fruit left to burst in the sun, of honey and yeast beginning to ferment. It was the smell of decay trying to disguise itself as something beautiful.

He remembered Marc complaining he’d lost his spare key months ago, another casualty of his chaotic life. Leo fumbled with his wallet, pulling out his driver’s license. He jammed the plastic card into the gap between the door and the frame, jiggling it against the latch. It was a trick they'd both used a hundred times on cheap interior doors. After a few tense seconds of scraping, he heard a soft click.

The door swung inward, and the smell hit him like a physical blow.

It was overwhelming, a tidal wave of sickening sweetness that filled his lungs and coated the back of his throat. The apartment was a disaster zone. Dirty dishes with mold-flecked food were piled in the sink. Empty soda cans and pizza boxes littered the floor. But the chaos wasn't the focus. The smell was. It was coming from the bedroom.

Leo stepped over a pile of clothes, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Marc?" he called, his voice a strained whisper.

He pushed the bedroom door open.

Marc was in bed, tangled in a sweat-soaked grey sheet. The first thing Leo noticed was the sound: a ragged, wheezing breath that was too wet, too shallow. The second thing was the shape of him. Marc was wrong.

His stomach, the same one he’d been scratching just two days ago, was horribly distended. It pushed the thin sheet up into a grotesque, taut dome, unnaturally round and firm. It didn't look like bloat; it looked like something was growing inside him, stretching his skin from within.

"Marc?" Leo whispered again, taking a hesitant step closer.

He reached out and touched Marc’s forehead. It was burning hot, his skin clammy and slick. Not with sweat. Leo pulled his hand back and looked at his fingers. They were coated in a clear, viscous syrup, the same glistening residue that had covered the egg mound. It clung to his skin, smelling powerfully of that rotten sugar.

Marc’s eyes fluttered open. They were glassy, unfocused, the blue of his irises lost in pupils blown wide and black. He licked his cracked lips. "So… thirsty," he rasped, his voice a dry, rattling thing.

Leo was frozen, a cold, paralyzing terror gripping him. He didn’t know what to do. Call 911? What would he even tell them? My friend ate an ant egg and now he's turning into a… a beehive?

It was then, in the suffocating quiet between Marc’s ragged breaths, that he saw the movement.

Out of the corner of his eye. A thin, wavering line on the beige wall.

He tore his gaze away from Marc, his eyes following the line. It started at a small crack in the window frame, a point of entry from the outside world. It snaked down the wall, a living, moving thread of white.

They were ants. The same milky-white, ghostly insects from Vance's apartment.

Hundreds of them. Thousands. They moved with a disturbing, unified purpose, not scattering or foraging, but marching. The line flowed down the wall, across the stained carpet, a silent, disciplined army. Leo watched, mesmerized with horror, as the line reached the leg of the bed. It flowed up the wooden frame, across the rumpled sheet, a river of white insects heading for the heat, for the smell.

For the source.

They were marching toward Marc's swollen, glistening body. Some of them had already reached him, crawling over his syrupy skin, their tiny legs making no sound. They weren’t biting him. They were tending to him. Cleaning him. Worshipping him.

Leo stumbled back, his hand flying to his mouth to stifle a scream. This wasn't sickness. This was a transformation. A hostile takeover. The weekend hadn't been silent at all. It had been loud with the work of biology gone monstrously, terrifyingly wrong. Marc wasn't just rotting. He was fermenting. He was becoming a home.