Chapter Text
Kim felt the wind on his face, biking down the road from buying groceries. The clouds obscured the sun today, but it felt warm, unusual for a typical northern European morning. Walking in the door, he started putting the food in the fridge before sitting down. This was the first time he smelled it. The warm, overripe, fruitiness in the air overwhelmed Kim’s senses, he coughed and went back into the kitchen to see where the smell was coming from.
Nothing. There was nothing there. No fruit was sitting on the counter, nothing was rotting. Kim even checked the fridge to see if something was making the smell. He walked over to the sink and turned on the garbage disposal for a few seconds, just to make sure he didn’t leave anything in the caverns of the sink.
Kim decided that it was just a trick of his nose, so he went back into the living room. The oddness of this scenario churned his stomach and eventually ended in nausea, so Kim got up and went to the bathroom. Before Kim could reach his destination, he heard a noise that sounded like wet squelching mixed with bones breaking.
He ran towards the noise, preparing himself for what he might be scarred by in the next room. There, on the stairs going to the basement, there was a small, white, and wriggling line squirming in place. Kim knelt down, examining it. A sudden commotion came from the kitchen and he smelled that same sickly sweet smell from earlier. He stood up and followed the smell, forgetting anything he was doing earlier.
Kim arrived in the kitchen and saw a young man leaning against his kitchen counter. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, dark hair, and striking eyes with white irises. The man gestured for Kim to come toward him, and he complied.
“Kim, is it? I’ve heard a lot about you. Why don’t we go downstairs for a bit?”, the man said with a thick and sultry voice, which was too old and too attractive for his body. Kim nodded dumbly and followed the man, unaware of the maggots falling out of the man’s coat sleeves.
As Kim followed the man down to the basement, several things started to seem so very wrong that he almost started to turn back and refuse. However, the man reached back and gripped Kims arm, nice and firm, and he slipped back into whatever trance the man had put him in. The man turned around and shook his finger at Kim, silently scolding him for his refusal.
“Not yet, Kim. I have plans for you,” the man said and slipped his hand into Kim’s. Kim’s hand loosely fell into the other’s and kept walking. Reaching the basement, Kim did a double take. This wasn’t his basement, certainly not one that was covered in velvet and housed a wine cellar or a lavish sofa in the middle of the room.
“This- This is wrong. You shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here. I lost the key to the basement door months ago.” Kim said, eyes darting around the room in abject horror and possibly awe.
“Oh, my dear, you shouldn’t have done that. I was going to try and slide you in, but I guess force will have to be necessary.” And with that, the man snapped his fingers and the fanciful room was gone. In its place was the original basement, covered in maggots, beetles, flies, mold, fungus, all manners of FILTH. In the corner of his eye, Kim saw something that looked suspiciously like a bone, scratch that, a full skeleton. He started to struggle more in the man’s grip, but only succeeded in twisting his wrist.
The man pulled Kim closer and he felt something wet and moving falling onto his skin. Looking down, Kim realized that it was a maggot and the same squiggly thing that was on top of his basement stairs. His eyes widened and struggled even more, not wanting to end up like the previous poor soul that had gotten stuck in the basement.
“No, no, no, nO, NO!” His voice gradually rose to a shriek as maggots and bugs began to crawl up his legs and into his skin. The moment he felt one enter, Kim screamed and the other man let go. Kim backed into a wall and fell to the floor, screaming as a wriggling mass slowly covered him, head to toe, to become one with the swarm.