Chapter 5: The Last Voicemail

Chapter 5: The Last Voicemail

The growl from the bed was low and wet, a sound that didn't belong in a human throat. It was the sound of a predator guarding its kill. Leo stood frozen in the bedroom doorway, trapped between the monster that was once his friend and the living, writhing carpet of white ants that blocked his only escape. The air was a suffocating soup of fermenting sugar.

Fight or flight. His body chose for him.

With a choked cry, Leo lunged forward, not toward Marc, but straight through the sea of insects. The feeling was indescribably vile. A soft, popping crunch squished beneath his sneakers, a thousand tiny bodies bursting under his weight. A slick, syrupy residue instantly soaked through the canvas of his shoes. He didn't dare look down. He just ran.

"MINE!" The roar that erupted from the bed was a layered, guttural sound, part Marc's voice, part something else—a chittering, resonant buzz that vibrated in Leo's bones.

He scrambled for the apartment door, his hands shaking so violently it took him three tries to work the lock. He could hear a heavy, dragging sound from the bedroom, the sound of Marc pulling his horribly changed body from the bed. He didn't wait to see it. He wrenched the door open and threw himself into the hallway, slamming it shut behind him. He didn't stop running until he was in his van, fumbling with the keys, the engine roaring to life with a desperate screech.

He drove on pure adrenaline, his mind a white-hot static of terror. The world outside his windshield seemed unreal, a placid dream of people walking dogs and carrying groceries, completely oblivious to the Lovecraftian horror unfolding in Apartment 3G.

Back in his own apartment, the terror followed him. He tore off his sticky, contaminated shoes and threw them in the dumpster outside. He stripped off his clothes and stood under a scalding shower for twenty minutes, scrubbing his skin raw, but he couldn't wash away the feeling of those insects popping under his feet. He couldn't wash away the memory of Marc's paranoid, possessive eyes. He couldn't get the cloying, sweet smell out of his nostrils; it was a ghost in the air, a phantom on his own skin.

Night fell, but sleep was impossible. Every shadow in his room seemed to writhe with unseen movement. The gentle hum of his refrigerator sounded like the chittering of a million mandibles. He kept picturing the ants' offerings: the dead bee, the lollipop fragment, the June bug carapace. A grotesque feast for a burgeoning god. He sat in the dark, wide-eyed and shaking, until sheer physical and emotional exhaustion finally dragged him under. He didn't fall asleep; he crashed.

He woke with a gasp, the morning sun a painful slash of light across his face. His head throbbed, his mouth was dry as desert sand, and for a blissful, disoriented second, he thought it had all been a nightmare.

Then he saw his phone on the nightstand. The screen was lit.

2 Missed Calls: Marc Riley

Leo’s heart seized in his chest. He snatched the phone, his thumb hovering over the notification. The calls had come in the dead of night. The first at 3:14 AM. The second at 3:16 AM. He had slept through them. A wave of guilt and a fresh, sharp spike of fear washed over him. He had run. He had left his best friend in that hell, and Marc had tried to call him.

His finger trembled as he tapped the voicemail icon. Two new messages. He took a deep, shuddering breath and pressed play on the first one, holding the phone to his ear with a white-knuckled grip.

The message was short, only a few seconds long. The connection was filled with static and a strange, wet, rhythmic clicking, but the voice was unmistakably Marc's. Not the monster in the bed, but his friend. The voice was thin, strained, and filled with a pain that tore at Leo’s soul.

"...Leo? Leo, help… please…" There was a choked sob, a sound of pure agony. "It hurts. It's… it's hatching. God, help m—"

The message cut off.

Hope, terrifying and fragile, bloomed in Leo's chest. It was a stupid, irrational hope, but it was there. Marc was still in there. He was fighting it. He had called for help. Maybe the fever had broken. Maybe he had come to his senses. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't too late. He had to go back. He had to help him.

His resolve solidified. He would call 911 from outside the building, he’d tell them his friend was having a psychotic break, that he was violent, that they needed to break the door down. Anything to get him out of there.

Driven by this new, desperate purpose, he pressed play on the second voicemail. He expected to hear more pleading, maybe directions, maybe just the sound of Marc passing out. He was ready for anything.

He was wrong.

The second message began with a scream.

It wasn't a human scream of pain or fear. It was a long, drawn-out shriek of anatomical violation, a sound of tearing sinew and snapping bone, stretched past the limits of human vocal cords. Underneath the scream was a chorus of wet, sickening noises. The sound of a butcher shop. Ripping. Tearing. A thick, syrupy squelching, like feet stomping through mud, but organic, intimate, and horrifyingly close to the phone's microphone.

The scream finally broke, dissolving into a series of agonized, wet gurgles, as if the speaker were drowning from the inside out. The tearing sounds intensified, becoming frantic, voracious. And then, through the cacophony of gore, a new sound emerged. A voice.

It was a garbled, inhuman chant, spoken through a throat that was no longer a throat. It was slurred and distorted, punctuated by clicks and wet pops, as if the words were being forced through a shifting, alien anatomy.

"I'm-k-k-k-k-k…" the voice stuttered, a sound like a million cicadas trying to form a syllable. "I'm'antsssss…"

The word was a long, sibilant hiss, bubbling and wet.

"I'M ANTS!" the voice suddenly roared, a clear, wet proclamation of triumph and transformation. "I'M ANTS! I'M ANTS! I'M'ANTSSSssssssss…"

The chant dissolved back into that horrific, insectile buzzing, woven through the sounds of relentless, wet consumption. The message ended with a final, sickening CRUNCH, and then, mercifully, silence.

Leo stood frozen in the morning light, the phone still pressed to his ear. The silence that followed the voicemail was more terrifying than the noise itself. The hope that had flared in his chest just moments before was gone, extinguished and replaced by an icy, black certainty.

He hadn't been listening to a call for help.

He had been listening to a birth announcement.

He dropped the phone. It clattered to the floor, the screen cracking. He didn't notice. He was already moving, grabbing his keys, his jacket, his wallet. He wasn't going back to save Marc. Marc was gone, consumed and repurposed by the thing he had so foolishly welcomed into his body. He was going back because he had to see. He had to witness the end result of that five-dollar dare. He had to look into the abyss he had run from, even if it meant it would swallow him whole.