A Glitch in Reality - Chapter 0039

Chapter 39

It’s four in the morning, and at this hour the morgue no longer resembles a hospital. The corridors upstairs still hold some semblance of life: the hum of a machine, the weary footsteps of a worker on duty, but down below, two floors below ground level, the bright white light of the fluorescent lamps is extinguished for the first time since dusk, and what remains is the thick silence of a place made to hold what no longer breathes. The tiled walls gleam with a dull glow emanating only from the emergency light at the end of the corridor, a weak red that barely illuminates, serving only to cast long shadows in the corners. The smell of formaldehyde and cold metal is ingrained in every surface, a smell that no amount of cleaning can remove, because it’s not dirt, it’s the place itself that smells like that.

Along an entire wall, rows of steel doors, each the size of a large drawer, each with a paper label stuck to the handle. Behind each door, a body. The only ones who truly rest there are them, and the newest inhabitant arrived just over two hours ago, his body completely lacerated, cut, crushed, hastily wrapped in a bag that the experts haven’t yet had time to open for formal examination. He was pushed into the drawer and the door closed on him like the lid of a sarcophagus, trapped in the darkness along with the others, just another number on a list that nobody reads at night.

But inside, nothing remains as simple as it seems.

In one of the middle drawers, in the third row, lies Doug. His body, already described in reports that none of the experts can reread without feeling their stomach churn, is completely destroyed. His eyes are closed. His arms are pressed against his body by the rigor mortis that hasn’t yet fully taken hold. His skin is gray, pale, stretched over his bones like that of any corpse that has already cooled. Apart from that, nothing distinguishes that body from the others in the row. Nothing, until something strange begins to happen.

In the stomach, the skin begins to sway. A slight tremor, almost imperceptible, the kind of movement any coroner would dismiss as trapped gas, decomposition, or some kind of post-mortem spasm. But the tremor doesn’t stop. It returns, stronger, and the skin stretches, molds upwards as if something underneath were pressing against it, testing its resistance, searching for a way out. The movement rises, falls, rises again, and each time gets a little closer to the surface, a little more impatient, until in the center of the stomach the flesh ruptures.

It’s not a cut. It’s a rupture, the skin opening from the inside out with a damp, low, almost indecent sound in the stillness of that place, and the blood gushing from the opening, still warm, still alive in a way no body should be there, spreads across the metal walls of the drawer and runs down the edges, dripping onto the floor on the other side of the closed door. From inside the wound, something rises. Long, pink, covered in mucus, with the wet, flexible texture of a tongue, but the size of an arm, it rises slowly, unrolling centimeter by centimeter, until it stands erect above the body, motionless for a moment, as if catching its breath from an effort no muscle should ever know.

The tentacle sways from side to side. It tests the cramped space of the drawer, brushes against the metal ceiling, retracts, stretches out again. And then it stops. It slowly turns to the right, to the drawer next to it, where another body has rested for three days, that of a young girl, the cause of death already conclusive in the report, which is why it remains there, awaiting the paperwork that releases it to the funeral home. The tip of the tentacle touches the metal door that separates them, and for a second it seems to hesitate, as if it could smell what is on the other side. Then, without any hurry, it begins to coil around its own handle.

The door gives way with a metallic snap, ripped open more than necessary, and the tentacle lunges inside, finding the girl’s body lying on the cold metal. It coils around her like a snake tightening its grip on its prey, making two turns around the torso, and pulls. The metal of the drawer creaks under the friction. The body slides, resisting the friction for a moment, until the tentacle, with a force that shouldn’t exist in such a thin appendage, tears it from inside and brings it close to Doug, laying it on the still chest of the corpse that is not yet breathing.

And that’s where the macabre unfolds completely.

The hole in the stomach, from which the tongue emerged, begins to open even wider, the edges of the wound slowly stretching, cartilage and muscle reshaping themselves into a geometry that no human body should be able to sustain. Teeth appear on the edge of that opening. Entire rows, small and sharp, white against the vivid red of the flesh, growing as if they had always been there, hidden, waiting for the right moment. And the girl’s body, which a second before rested on Doug’s chest, begins to be pulled into that mouth, bitten, dragged by the tongue with a frenzy that is anything but calm.

The sound is the worst part. It’s not just the grinding of teeth against flesh, it’s the dry crack of bones breaking, one after another, the torso giving way, the ribs splitting with short snaps that echo against the metal of neighboring drawers, the skull finally deforming under the pressure until it cracks. Blood spurts to the sides, soaking the inside of the drawer, trickling under the half-open door and forming a thin puddle in the hallway, a bright red thread slowly advancing across the white tile floor. And slowly, slowly, what remained of that body disappears inside the mouth, in the stomach, chewed, crushed, swallowed, until nothing is left. Not a shred of clothing, not a fragment of bone. Only the tentacle, now thicker, firmer, emerging again, and the teeth around the opening, covered in blood and small pieces of flesh trapped between them.

The tentacle retracts for a second. Then it rises again, and this time it turns to the left.

In that drawer, a fat man, dead the day before, his body still awaiting only authorization to be released to his family. The tentacle approaches, opens the door with the same abrupt movement as before, and wraps itself around the corpse’s wide waist, pulling with even more force than last time, as if the last meal had given it renewed vigor. The body slides out with a dull thud against the metal floor, and the mouth opens again. The scene repeats itself, the teeth sinking into the flesh, the tongue dragging piece by piece inside, the sound of wet chewing filling the empty corridor, fat and blood running down the drawer walls in thin streams that join the puddle already formed on the floor.

When the fat man’s body is completely consumed, something changes.

Doug’s chest, which until then had remained motionless, completely flattened like that of any corpse, begins to rise. Slowly at first, a timid, almost experimental movement, and then with more force, a gasp of air entering for the first time into lungs that had already stopped functioning. A loud, hollow sound, a double thud that repeats itself at increasingly shorter intervals, begins to echo from inside his chest. A heart beating, gaining rhythm, gaining strength, like an old engine that finally starts after several attempts.

The gray skin begins to change color. First, a pale, sickly pink spreads across his hands, up his arms, reaches his face, and then, slowly, that pink gives way to a warmer, more vibrant tone, until it reaches Doug’s original caramel color, as if the blood were returning to circulate vessel by vessel, capillary by capillary. His nose fills with air with a rough tug, his lungs expanding to their maximum for the first time, and his whole body shakes with the force of that breath.

And then the eyes open.

Completely black. No irises, no white, just a liquid, opaque darkness that fills both eye sockets from side to side, like the eyes of a shark, and the darkness seems to take over the rest of him as well, a heavy silence settling in the drawer while what was once Doug processes, for the first time in hours, the fact that he is alive again.

He raises his arms. The movement is slow, clumsy, his muscles still remembering how to function, but when his hands find the top of the drawer he feels the cold metal against his skin and something inside him reacts to that contact. He looks around, trying to recognize something in the cramped darkness of that space, but there is nothing to recognize, only metal and his own breath echoing back to him. Until, towards his feet, a small source of light appears, a thin sliver through which escapes the red glow of the hallway’s emergency light.

He drags himself over there, scraping his back against the low ceiling, until his feet touch the metal surface of the door. And with a single, almost lazy movement, he pushes. The metal crumples under the pressure of his heels as if it were cardboard. He kicks again, harder, and the door finally gives way, folding outward and falling with a metallic thud that reverberates throughout the hallway, echoing between the rows of closed drawers.

He crawls out, his body sliding over the pool of blood that has formed on the floor, and as soon as he falls into the biopsy lab, outside the drawers, he takes a deep breath, a pull of air so long and so intense that it seems like the first time he has ever breathed in his life. He lies there, on all fours, feeling the cold floor against the palms of his hands, his body still trembling with the effort of beginning to exist again.

He rises. His mouth, teeth still open, rests on his stomach, his tongue slowly swaying from side to side, as if savoring the air, appreciating his master’s return. He takes a step forward, but his legs give way, and he kneels on the cold ground, his head bowed, his hair stuck to his forehead with dried blood and sweat.

“I’m still weak,” he says, and the voice that comes from his throat is no longer the one he had in life; it’s thick, guttural, almost animalistic, dragging out the consonants as if his mouth hadn’t yet decided on the right way to speak. “I need more energy. Food.”

His nose twitches, sniffing the air in short, rapid breaths, and a smell reaches him, an intoxicating smell, as if it were the most appetizing food he had ever tasted in his life. He turns his head toward the row of drawers, and knows exactly where it’s coming from. He moves, still unsteady, two drawers to the left of the one he came from, and puts his hand on the doorknob, pulling with enough force to rip the door off its hinges.

Inside, an elderly man, clearly homeless, his body covered in faded tattoos that tell a lifetime of roads and prisons. Doug doesn’t hesitate. He throws himself upon the corpse, both mouths, the upper and lower one, biting simultaneously, tearing the flesh with a frenzy that makes blood gush onto his own face, onto his chest, running down his chin as he chews with his eyes closed, as if in a trance. He bathes in that blood, and when he finishes, nothing remains, not even the bones, only a bright red stain running down the drawer and dripping onto the floor in thin strands.

He turns to the other doors, his face still dripping, and says in a hoarse whisper that sounds more like a growl: “More. It’s not enough.”

And he goes. From drawer to drawer, tearing off doors, dragging bodies out, hunger screaming inside him louder than anything he’s ever felt in his life, an emptiness that no meal seems capable of completely filling, only of easing for a few minutes before returning, insistent, demanding, tireless.

The next drawer holds a middle-aged woman, her face still marked by yellowish bruises that tell the story of a car accident, her arms covered in plaster casts that no one had time to remove before closing the door on her. Doug doesn’t even bother to pull her out carefully. He shoves both hands into the drawer and drags her by the plaster itself, the material shattering into white pieces that fly across the floor as her body slides straight into the open mouth on her stomach. The sound is the same as always, teeth clenching, bones cracking, but this time he chews more slowly, as if he were beginning to regain some sense of taste, and a low groan escapes him mid-meal, something between pleasure and relief.

On to the next one. And the one after that. With each body consumed, something about him changes almost imperceptibly. The muscles in his arms swell a little more beneath the skin, the veins become more visible, darker, pulsing with a rhythm that isn’t quite that of a human heart. His fingernails slowly lengthen, hardening, darkening at the tips until they gain an almost metallic sheen. He doesn’t notice these changes as they happen, too absorbed in his hunger, but each drawer opened leaves him a little more upright, a little firmer on his own legs, his voice becoming less and less slurred.

There comes a point when he stops in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by ripped-off and flung-open doors, the entire floor covered in a thin layer of blood that reflects the red emergency light like a broken mirror. He wipes his face with his forearm sleeve, cleaning what he can, but the gesture only spreads more blood across his skin instead of removing it. He takes a deep breath, testing his lungs, and feels that the weakness he felt when he left the drawer is no longer there. In its place, a new, almost electric energy runs beneath his skin like a current that needs somewhere to discharge.

He looks at the last drawers still closed, calculates, without really thinking about numbers, how many more meals he would need to feel whole again, and decides that this is enough for now. There is another kind of hunger beginning to speak louder within him, one that no amount of meat can satisfy. The desire to be seen. The desire to appear before those who judged him dead and observe, with all the calm in the world, the exact moment when their certainty crumbles.

He climbs the service stairs at the back of the building, his bare feet leaving red marks on each step, and exits through a side door that the night shift security guards forgot to lock properly. The street is still dark, the morning air cool against his soaked skin, and he stands there for a moment, head held high, feeling the wind as if it were the first time he had ever felt anything. Then he begins to walk, unhurriedly, southward.

* * *

South of San Diego, in a place controlled by the cartel, the music still plays, too loud for the time of day. It’s six in the morning, and the sun is already beginning to paint the horizon orange, while the last inhabitants of the night stagger out the front door of the music venue, their feet dragging on the hot asphalt. But anyone who walks inside will notice that no one there is celebrating. Quite the opposite. The faces are serious, furrowed, as if something had soured their night hours before, and the venue, which at this hour is usually more crowded and noisy, is visibly emptier than usual, the remaining bodies leaning against the walls with the tense posture of those waiting for bad news to get even worse.

Deep inside the house, in a VIP room isolated by a thick door, a group of men are gathered. One of them, tall and strong, in his forties, with black hair combed back, a gold cross hanging from his bare chest beneath his open shirt, throws the bottle he’s holding against the wall mirror. The glass shatters with a crash, the shards scattering across the floor along with the last remnants of the drink, a strong smell of whiskey filling the air.

“How could this happen?” He shouts at the men around him, his voice cracked from yelling. “Miguel and Doug were just supposed to warn the dogs. That’s all. And now this?”

No one answers. Everyone there knows exactly how short the boss’s fuse is, and none of them wants to be the next target of that fury. The man walks to the middle of the room, where a coffee table is covered in empty bottles and spilled glasses, picks up another bottle and throws it against the opposite wall, shattering it and spilling the drink all over the dark carpet.

“Now Doug is dead!” He roars, his fists clenched, his chest rising and falling with heavy breathing. “Our only chance of surviving the coming war, and he’s gone and died!”

Deep down, he knows that no one there is to blame for what happened. If anyone is to blame, it’s him. He’s the one who allowed Doug to go out that night; he should have forbidden it; he should have kept that thing locked up somewhere safe instead of letting it loose in the city like some guard dog. But how do you forbid a monster that size? How do you give orders to something that no longer understands what fear is?

He rubs his eyes, trying to organize his thoughts amidst the anger that still pulses in his temples. One of his men, perhaps the bravest there, or perhaps just the most reckless, steps forward.

“Sir, what about Miguel and the others?”

The silence that follows has the weight of someone who already knows what’s coming next. And it truly does. A bottle flies through the air, hitting another man standing near the door squarely in the face, the glass shattering against his cheekbone and splattering blood as he falls backward, his hands reaching up too late to protect his face.

“Miguel, the others, the dogs, they couldn’t do anything!” the boss yells, spitting out the words. “And you expect me to do something?”

He turns to one of the men closest to him and points to the fallen body. “Get this trash out of here.”

A tall man, who until then had been leaning against a corner without saying anything, goes to the fallen man, now with his face covered in blood, and drags him by the arms out of the room, the wounded man’s heels scratching the carpet in a red trail.

The boss paces back and forth, the fury still trapped in his chest, but gradually more controlled, the outburst passing like a storm that breaks as quickly as it arrives. He stops suddenly and turns to another of his men.

“Did they get any information from Miguel?”

The man hesitates before answering, his body leaning slightly back, as if expecting another bottle to come his way. “The police aren’t letting us in, sir. Our lawyers have approached, but they’re actively breaking the law just to prevent access.”

“And what about our informant?”

“He can’t get in touch either. It seems the captain’s faction has custody of Miguel and the others.”

The chief’s face flushes red again. Doug’s death isn’t enough; now he has to deal with a police captain willing to break his own rules just to keep him away. He runs a hand over his face, feeling the cold sweat already clinging to his palm, and looks at the men around him, each avoiding eye contact with an almost choreographed caution, honed by years of dealing with that temperament.

Outside the room, on the now-empty dance floor, the music continues playing softly, a remnant of the party that no one dared to turn off. The deep bass rises through the floor and reaches the VIP room like a distant pulse, almost a second heart beating within that place. One of the younger men in the group, leaning against the wall, stares at his cell phone, the screen blank for minutes, too afraid to turn it on again and check if any new messages have arrived. Everyone there knows, without needing to say it aloud, that the war that had been approaching weeks ago is no longer a distant threat. It has arrived. And it has arrived taking with it the only trump card they had to face it.

He paces back and forth across the room, trying to find some solution amidst the chaos that has ensued, until a sharp knock on the door interrupts his pacing.

He simply raises his arm, a brief gesture, and one of the men closest to him goes to the door, opening it just a crack. And in that instant, the man freezes.

The boss isn’t paying attention. He’s too focused on his own rage, pacing back and forth, Doug’s death shaking something inside him that he didn’t even know could be shaken like that. Everything is lost, he thinks, everything.

Mas a porta se abre a completa.

He turns around, ready to yell at whoever dared enter without permission, but the words die in his throat before they can escape. Standing in the doorway, walking slowly towards him, is exactly the person he least expected to see in that room, in that life, in that early morning.

He was absolutely certain of the information he had received. The informant who provided it was someone he trusted completely, someone who had proven his loyalty enough times that his word was taken as fact. And what this man guaranteed, with all the certainty in the world, was that the person now crossing the room towards him was dead. He saw the photo. They brought him a photo taken at the scene: the body stretched out, the chest sunken, the skin gray, lacerations and cuts covering every visible inch, in addition to the gunshot wounds—one in the head, one in the heart, one in the lung.

But there, right in front of him, Doug is walking towards him.

The boss’s chest begins to pound harder, to the point where he feels a sharp pain pierce his sternum. Doug approaches and smiles, those teeth completely altered since waking up, always making anyone who looks at them uneasy, the enamel stained red, tiny bits of flesh still stuck between one tooth and another. He turns briefly to the other men in the room, a slow turn of his head that makes them all take a half-step back without realizing they are taking a step back, and then returns to approach the boss.

“What was that?” Doug asked, his voice coming out thick and slurred. “Are you seeing a ghost?”

The boss, whose name is Juan, takes a step back, his body reacting even before his mind has finished processing what he is seeing.

“I thought you were dead,” he says, his voice cracking mid-sentence.

Doug smiles again, and this time the smile stretches in a way no human face should be capable of, the corners of his mouth parting until they almost reach his ears, the skin stretching over his jaw in a way that looks like it’s about to tear. A distorted voice, almost overlapping his own, comes from deep within his throat.

“It takes a lot more than that to kill me.” He takes another step, now very close, close enough for Juan to smell the scent of dried blood and raw flesh emanating from him like perfume. “So, where’s my hug, brother?”

Juan, his face pale, his back drenched in cold sweat, stares at the body before him, still bathed in the blood of everything Doug devoured that morning, without a single piece of clothing on its skin, completely exposed and utterly indifferent to that exposure. He approaches and embraces it.

It’s not because a brother has returned. It’s not because a friend is back, and there’s nothing in this gesture that resembles joy. It’s because he feels, with the cold clarity of someone who has seen enough of that creature to understand the rules of the game, that if he doesn’t embrace it, the predator in front of him won’t be happy.

And so, with arms around a body that has already died once and returned reeking of someone else’s blood, the night finally ends in that room.