What Happened In Paradise?

First Visit: Rotten Plantation

Jess and Maxwell are locked in an embrace for over an hour; both consoling, both making the grief more bitter.

“I have to go.” Jess releases him, sniffles, wipes her cheek, and dabs at her nostrils with the back of her hand. “Adam’s probably worried.”

“Yea.”

“Tomorrow? We’ll try to get some answers. It’s best to know. If…” Jess sobs again. “It would be good to take them home.”

Maxwell nods, closes the door behind her. He tries to sleep once he’s alone; sleep doesn’t find him. The smell from Jess and Adam’s old room finds him instead. It has crept beneath his door and suffused the room. He chokes on the smell, coughs; he can taste rotten eggs: thick and foul. And filling his lungs. He pushes the windows open. Cool air rushes in, but the foul odour isn’t ushered out. It has sat on his bed, seeping into the bed linen. The smell is on him, in him, all over him. He coughs again, opens the door to his room. It doesn’t make sense for him to let more of the foul air in, but he’s gagging on the air in the room.

He hears a scream; this time he knows for sure it’s Jess. He runs to her room. He throws himself at the door; it easily pushes open. Jess is on the bed, climbing backward, towards the headboard. Thick red ooze is crawling from the wall; the blob grows and collapses to the floor with each attempt.

“What is that?” Maxwell asks.

“Kill it! Kill it!”

Kill it? What is it? And what will he kill it with?

“Come here, Jess.” Maxwell stretches his hand towards her. “Just come to me.” Jess doesn’t move; Maxwell doesn’t move. Biological or chemical, whatever the ooze is, they both know it’s not supposed to touch them.

“Jess!”

Jess shakes her head. “What if it….What if it catches me?” Her words make no sense; they make a lot of sense. The thing creeping across the floor does seem to be after her.

“Jess, come now. Before it gets closer.”

Jess retreats further up the bed. Maxwell runs into the room and grabs her by the arm. She lands awkwardly on her ankle and has to hobble from the room. Once they’re out of the room, Maxwell looks back, trying to get a better look at the blob…ooze. Whatever it is. The only trace of it is the red spot on the wall that marks the point where the thing has crawled from.

“It went under the bed,” Jess says.

“Or maybe it’s gone.” Maxwell is certain it’s gone. It didn’t accomplish what it had come to accomplish…now it has left. “Where’s Adam?”

Jess falls onto Maxwell's shoulders, lifts the hurt foot, balancing on her toes. “I…I don’t know. I woke up and he wasn't here.”