Golumpki - Part One
I'm not what you would consider a, “people person.”
It’s not that I don't like people, it’s just, I dunno, it gets weird. You meet people and chill but then you say something or do something awkward and then we’re not chilling anymore because now it’s weird.
But I’m fine with it. People, for the most part, are fickle and uninteresting, the little bit of human contact I get I often dread. My boss talking to me about the weather and his kids, my cube mate at the office, Lexi, all she ever talks about is her boyfriend and constantly refers to me as ‘sis’. I mean, I talk to my parents regularly but it’s typically the same thing over and over again. My hippy mother telling me what my astrological sign has to say about my prospects of dating and my father who is always asking if I still have the handgun he bought me to “stay safe in the city” in my purse. When was the last time I carried a purse
Nope. It’s usually just me and Louis, the cutest little puppers you ever met, just hanging out watching old movies. I mean sure, you know, loneliness sucks but it’s not as bad as dating in the modern world. Every once in a while, at my mother's suggestion that it might be best because, “Mercury isn’t in retrograde”, I download Tinder but it’s always the same.
Douchebag. Too old. Totally a fake photo. Too old. SWIPE SWIPE SWIPE SWIPE.
Oh, he’s cute...oh, he sent a dick pick…. oh, fuck me gently with a chainsaw
Delete app. Watch Heathers for the 100th time. It’s a vicious cycle.
I’m fine. I’m good. Perfectly content with my situation. Just me and Louis, I give him snuggles and he keeps me from being a weird cat lady, it's the perfect relationship, the two of us just hanging out watching ‘80s movies.
Right now, I wish I was on the couch with Louis watching Beverly Hills Cop but instead I’m face down on the bathroom floor because I have been violently puking my guts out for the last two hours. I blame Eddie Murphy. Not for the puking, but for how I got to be here. See, I’ve been on this kick lately of watching Eddie Murphy movies, so I watched 48 Hours, Trading Places and Coming to America, at the end of Coming to America there’s that scene at the end where Lisa gets on the subway and is uncertain if she should be with Akeem and she can’t make up her mind until like, the most New York woman ever yells at her, “go on honey, take a chance”. That scene just hit me so hard…
See, there’s this new guy at work, Mirko, who sits right between me and Lexi. He looks like a typical bro who I would stay clear of but it turns out that we had a lot in common. The country he was from was the former Soviet Union or something, I can't remember, something STAN I’d never heard of before, anyway, apparently over there they love ‘80s movies. He loves John Landis films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science but also likes the cheesy horror movies like Rawhead Rex. Usually if a guy at the office tried to talk to me I’d typically dismiss him. Dating a coworker? Yeah, no! That’s just weird. But for some reason when he asked for my phone number, I gave it to him.
Engage anxiety. OMG, is he gonna be weird? Is this gonna be weird? What if he messages me? What if he doesn’t? Oh, this is a mess…
Last night I get this text from a strange number. It’s him. He wants to grab a bite to eat at his cousin’s restaurant and he asks with a Say Anything gif. Who is this guy? What planet did he come from? The cute gif text plus the old lady from queens telling me to, “take a chance” was enough for me to say ‘K” and meet him.
EKKI BORDA at 7th and Charles. Red neon sign. Can’t miss it. Uber driver was a creep.
You definitely could miss it; the entrance way was a graffiti filled grimy door wedged between boarded up liquor store and a boarded-up TV repair store. Beyond the doorway I was met by Mirko and a tiled flight of stairs with a low ceiling sloping downward and around a corner to the right where an overwhelming murmur of mixed voices, cutlery scraping plates and billowing laughs could be found. It was a quaint little restaurant that you would not expect from the horrific entrance. There weren’t many tables but they were all full, four and sometimes five to each, mostly men and just about everyone was smoking. The tables had cheap doilies in the middle with a small candle in a sifter and a glass ashtray surrounded by folding chairs with beaded backs. Even though everyone was smoking the whole places smelled like warm spices wafting in from some unseen kitchen. As soon as we entered the room Mirko’s cousin stood up from one of the table and the two had a very loud conversation in a strange language while they were motioning in my direction. Awkward.
Andreas, Mirko’s cousin, sat with us at a table in the corner. His English was worse than Mirko’s so our conversation was half him talking to me and half him speaking in his language to Mirko, trying to find the right words.
“You like golumpki, yes?”
No. No, Andreas I do not like golumpki. I don’t even know what golumpki is. My diet consists mostly of cereal made for children at 1am as a snack. Chicken, but white meat only. Dark meat has this slimy texture and anything on the bones has those weird veins and tendons and gross skin. Ranch. Hot Cheetos and anything hot from Starbucks. I like peanut butter and jelly cut diagonally with no crust and the jelly has to be jam because jelly is all clumpy. I have a texture problem, that’s why I’m picky. No. I don’t like golumpki
“Y-yeah, sure! Love it!”
What. What. What. What. What? Why? Shutup!
Andreas left us and a portly old woman brought out two shallow bowls with a greenish red meat, something with a brown liquid around it. The steam rising off of it almost in a cartoonish way brought a strong earthy familiar smell to my nose. The smell reminded me of my childhood. The projectile vomiting I am currently experiencing looks exactly the same and smells twice as strong. Whatever it was, it was delicious, but something whether it be the plate, the fork, the glass, the waitress’ hands that were definitely not clean, has me now trapped, hugging the toilet bowl while Louis whimpers at the door.
“It’s ok Louie, momma is fi…blegh”
Omg. That was solid. Was that a kidney? Am I dying? This is terrible, I’m closing my eyes…
I was awakened by Louis’ frantic barking and a gurgling coming from the toilet. Dazed, delirious and aching I tried my best to calm Louis, but this dog has no chill. I reached to flush and that’s when I saw it. I thought I heard something moving in the bowl.
Holy shit. Holy shit I gotta call the doctor. I gotta call my mother. I’m seeing shit, I’m hallucinating, this can’t be good. Where’s my phone, where’s my phone.1:15am? Omg I was out a while, five missed texts from Mirko and one from Lexi. Ok, 2415, unlocked, contacts, mom…
“Ahhh! What the fuck!”
I dropped my phone and backed into the counter and hopped up onto the sink. A slim black hand reached out of the water and was gripping the bowl. Down the sleek black arm and into the water a round object lifted out and pale orange eyes peered above the waterline right at me. Screaming and with my straightener as my only weapon I sat in shock on the counter as this thin, black figure pulled its full body up from the water and began to crawl out the bowl. Now, on the floor, it unfurled itself from a small ball to a four-foot-tall humanoid figure standing where my head once laid. Its skin was sleek black and had a shine to it. It was thin, ghastly thin, with arms that seemed too long for its body. It stood motionless, dripping water. Louis entered the room to defend me and all at once the thing raised its head, its face devoid of all features but those pale orange eyes and it opened its freakishly large mouth, let out a screech and dove over Louis, into the darkness of my apartment.
What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? What do I do. What do I do!!
DING
My phone!
I dropped to the floor and scrambled for my phone, pulling myself into a ball into the corner of the bathroom, as far away from the door as I could manage. Louis shook, close to my side.
2115...ugh
2441...ugh
Breathe.
2415. Unlocked. Yes! Contacts, mom…
Text from Mirko: Mother can’t help you now Coralee
...WHAT!
Text from Mirko: It’s useless, just let it in
I screamed and tossed the phone across the room. What the hell is going on? I have to be losing my mind. I have to be hallucinating but Louis’ tense growling in my arms confirms to me that this is real. It can’t be! What was that thing? How did Mirko know about it?
DING
How is that phone still working?
SCREECH
That thing is in my front room, okay Coralee what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? THE GUN! Oh my god, Dad, I love you so much right now. Ok, just gotta get to my bedroom it’s in my closet somewhere, I think, but I’m not going out there with that thing out there, not without a weapon. Oh, the towel holder…
Yank...Yank...Yank…
Damn, these things are really on there! The movies make it seem so easy to just rip these things off the wall, okay the straightener will have to do. I grabbed my phone as a flash light and with Louis by my side I shuffled out into my dark apartment, terrified, looking for the creature. A few steps out, then straight to the left and into the bedroom. As soon as I made my way to the room the thing dove over the couch at me with a loud screech, panicked I threw the straightener at it missing completely. I slammed the door shut, locked it, but that black thing, that shiny black thin, ugly thing with those long arms and those pale orange eyes that I think I puked up was banging and scratching at the door. I jumped across the bed and frantically started tearing through my closet looking for that little silver gun my father gave me two years ago when I decided to move to the city. Louis was at the bedroom door barking his head off at the thing trying to make its way into my bedroom. Found it! Stuffed inside a shoebox filled with old pictures and charging cables for old phones was the little tiny gun in a leather holster, I pulled it out and spun around, the damned thing had clawed its way through the top of the bedroom door, I stuck my arm out, turned my head and closed my eyes…
Click...click…click…
WHAT THE HELL! This thing isn’t working, my dad wouldn’t give me a broken gun, oh my god the safety! I turned the gun over in a panic looking for a button or something, one eye on the thing ripping more and more of the cheap door that guarded my bedroom, there it is, a switch this has to be it. I flipped the switch and stuck my arm out at the thing that had now broken through and was manipulating its thin, lanky body through a narrow-jagged hole in the door. The thing pulled itself through and dropped to the ground before leaping. As the thing dashed across the room at me I pulled the trigger…
BANG...and the little pistol leapt out of my hand.
The thing knocked me over and started scratching at my legs, screeching, while I kicked and punched wildly. One good kick in the chest knocked it off the foot of the bed, I rolled off the bed and onto the floor where the gun was. I grabbed it, two hands this time and turned flat on my back right as the thing was jumping off the bed and flying at me. I screamed as I pulled the trigger repeatedly until the gun stopped making noise, the creature being flung backwards onto the bed. There I laid, out of breath on the floor, still woozy from all the puking, exhausted from the struggle and my legs stinging from the scratches. It’s gotta be dead, right? It couldn’t have survived. Slowly I sat up and took a peak at the creature on my bed slumped in a heap, pale orange blood soaking through my comforter around where its body lay. I poked it with the gun, it didn’t move so I collapsed to the floor relieved and started to cry, Louis licked my hands from underneath the bed where he had been hiding. All bark and no bite, he was shivering just as bad as I was and whimpering.
“It’s ok Louie, momma is fi…”
DING
My phone...two missed texts from Mirko
Mirko: It will be painless if you don't fight Coralee
Mirko: Just let it in
“FUCK YOU!” I screamed at the phone screen. Frantically I texted back to him…
What the hell is going on!? What was in that food? What was that thing? Who tf are you!???
The sudden urge to vomit overcame me and I ran to the bathroom. Hunched over the toilet, drool clinging to my lip, my head began to throb and my stomach made a noise like a large door creaking open. Oh my god, what if I puked another one of those things? I quickly started digging my hands in the murky water splashing everywhere, nothing solid, oh thank god.
I checked my phone, he left me on read, fucking jerk. I dial my mother…
Tone…. tone...tone…”I’m sorry, all circuits are busy”, the robotic voice tells me as my heart drops.
911...tone...tone...tone…” I’m sorry, all circuits are- “. I end the call, what the hell is going on?
DING
Mirko: I’m sorry, all circuits are busy
What the hell! Is he watching me? I gotta get out of this apartment, and where the hell are the cops? I shot like…. six shots, certainly one of the neighbors heard all that noise and called them. That’s right, I’m out of bullets, my dad gave me more to, “take to the range”. I’ll go grab those out of my bedroom just in case that freak comes over here.
DING
Want to subscribe to our newsletter so you won’t miss the next short story? Just sign up HERE
Want more frightful fiction? Just search below:
