In honor of Jason Sanford's upcoming novella, We Who Hunt Alexanders, out on July 22nd, we at Apex hosted a microfiction contest inviting you to describe your own blood-maw pocket hell. We got some amazing submissions, and after much trial and tribulation, narrowed it down to a top three. In third place was "The Rot" by Lyndsey Croal. You can read the piece and learn more about Lyndsey below! Congratulations to Lyndsey!
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"The Rot"
The rot begins at dawn. Well, it's a kind of dawn—the light that peeks through the boarded-up window welcomes a different sort of morning. Not one that offers the promise of sun-kissed skin, the sound of birds chittering. I used to go to the woods near my house on those days, feel the crunch of leaves beneath my toes. Sometimes I went alone, but most often I had company. Sometimes they even came willingly.
The only sound now is the creaking of my neighbours waking to their own torment. Sometimes Room 13's bleeding drips through the ceiling, leaving a stained puddle on my bed.
I look at my hands, the skin already raw. My fingertips are blackening. My nails will fall off within an hour. Then the skin.
Two of the walls in the room are mirrored, so I can't even avoid the reflection as I disintegrate. The creature I will become reflects back at me now. A skeletal horror.
I've tried starting it early, scratching my skin, peeling fragments away. But rot takes its time.
It's quicker, I suppose, than those I left in the earth. The ones who never made it home from our walks.
I don't know how I ended up here. The last thing I remember is falling into a hole full of bodies, at various stages of rot. The smell of my own making was overwhelming, as was the pain at the back of my head.
I reach to my scalp now, hair coming away in my hands. Something is writhing under the skin—will it be maggots or earthworms today?
A droplet of blood from Room 13 falls on my cheek. I lick my tongue up to catch it. The only meal I'll have all day. It's no less than I deserve.
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Lyndsey Croal is a Scottish author of strange and speculative fiction, with work published in over eighty magazines and anthologies, including Apex, Analog, and Weird Tales. She's a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee, Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award Finalist, and former Hawthornden Fellow. Her longer works include Limelight and Other Stories (Shortwave) and Dark Crescent (Luna Press.) Find her on Bsky/Instagram as @lyndseycroal or via www.lyndseycroal.co.uk.
