Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Bubblegum from a Wax Pack Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

BUBBLEGUM FROM A WAX PACK

4:13 AM, July 6, 2020

Parker looked up at Jesper as he kicked his left leg over the top of the rusty chain-link fence surrounding the quarantined area. Until recently, that word—quarantine—was a foreign thing, interesting and dangerous, like ordering one of those deadly pufferfish when the menu’s written in Japanese and you’re a corn-fed whiteboy with a limited grasp of your own language, never mind deciphering all those slashes and dashes. Quarantine was the word that amounted to both of them losing their jobs. Quarantine was also the reason they’d come to the cordoned area surrounding the Newtown Nuclear Facility.

“Ready?” Jesper said. He was the fitter of the two, despite being more than a decade older.

Parker adjusted the huge, empty pack on his back once returned to solid ground. “Yeah, lead the way.” His girlfriend had acquired the bag off Facebook Marketplace in exchange for the bootleg halter tops she said she’d never wear again, mostly thanks to being huge with pregnancy. Parker didn’t bother to note that she’d lose most of the weight after she pushed out the kid, as he needed the bag and he needed it to be all but free.

The men moved along the weedy ditch until coming upon a crumbled road. The morning sun still a wish far to the east; if all stayed the same as usual, they had time, though there was no sense dawdling in a place that danced the needle on a Geiger counter. The plan was to hit the two biggest houses, fill their bags with resaleable goods the former owners had to leave behind during the evacuation, then resell everything once back in society. They’d timed the security guards using a drone and a set of binoculars. At 5:00 AM the shift changed, and the guards rolled by the presidential homes and the employee apartments first thing, not returning to that area for close to five hours, giving the men enough time to go trick ‘r treating through historical ruins.

“Shit, I see lights,” Parker whispered.

“They’re early. Think we can make it to the door?” Jesper said, a suggestion in his tone—they’d better make it.

“Go on then,” Parker said and tried to keep up with his similarly sinking friend.

The vehicle, a Jeep SUV with scorching headlights as well as rollbar spotlights, drew closer, moving slow for a vehicle, but much faster than either man ran. Unlike the brunt of the quarantined area, no trees remained in this section, leaving the men without cover unless they reached the first house before the headlights fell upon them.

The route the Jeep was taking began to straighten and a white shine suddenly enveloped the pair. Parker began to swear beneath his breath—this had to work out, they needed money. Baby bonus checks from the government didn’t kick in until the mama popped the baby from the oven.

Jesper reached the door of the first home within seconds, but Parker was still two, perhaps three hundred yards away. His chest ached and his hips and shins burned something fierce. He wasn’t going to make it. He scanned the peripheries. Nothing, but in some areas, patches of ragweed grew to about four feet high. Jogging, at best, he headed for the closest patch of green amidst the sea of pale cement and lifeless dirt.

The Jeep was close enough that if the guards were looking with any interest, they’d almost certainly have seen him. Parker lay flat behind the weeds and closed his eyes. As he lay there, mind blank aside from terror, he listened to the Jeep slow, then idle. A spotlight fanned over his vicinity. He held his breath until tiny blue fireworks burst on the insides of his eyelids.

“Come on!” Jesper whisper yelled.

Parker looked around. Back by the fence they’d jumped over to get in, the Jeep’s brake lights glowed like demon eyes. Parker got to his feet and chased what had seemed like a smart idea but now felt downright futile as well as outrageously dangerous.

—

“Ryan, get out here,” Marc said over his shoulder from behind the desk of Powell Pawn. “Ryan’s the one who knows about this stuff.”

Parker had already hefted his share of the haul into the pawn shop—Jesper had big eBay plans since he had sufficient room on credit cards to live off for a couple months whereas Parker had but a few days’ wiggle room remaining—and came to an agreement on the silverware, a pristine Royal typewriter, six candelabras, and three soapstone sculptures. Marc, the only pawn broker in town, had offered a surprising fifteen hundred so far, and all that remained was an unopened box of 1981-82 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards.

“I saw on YouTube hockey cards are going through the roof lately,” Parker said, grinning and flushed. It had been a long day and he felt a lot less than perfect since leaving the radioactive zone.

“Some are—Ryan! Get the hell—”

“I’m coming! Gees,” Ryan said, stepping out through a beaded doorway. He was short, chunky, and all of four feet tall.

“Here, look at these,” Marc said, pointing to the crumpled and torn and dusty box.

Ryan frowned, suddenly an authority. He flipped back the lid of the box and immediately began shaking his head. “Moisture damage. Lucky if these aren’t just big gum bricks inside.” He pulled free a pack and tried to move the cards around without peeling away the wax wrapper. “Hardly anything. Bet we open one and we find maybe one good card. You’ll have eight cards in a former gum Jello mold, four cards covered in mildew, and maybe one that’s salvageable between the two sides.”

Parker frowned. “You can’t know that, and maybe there’s like a Gretzky rookie or—”

“You can pull Kurri, Moog, Anderson, Stastny, Ciccarelli, a few others, but you’re late on a Gretzky rookie by two years, a Messier by one, and four years early for a Lemieux. You need to get big money from these, clean off the packs and sell them online to people out of the province, that way you don’t get punched in the nose.”

Parker folded his arms. “Open one. If it’s like you said, you can have them; if the cards are okay, you pay me five hundred for the box.”

Ryan flipped the pack at Parker’s chest. “Go for it.”

Marc looked at his son, eyebrows about as high as they’d go, but he did not protest.

Parker took a deep breath, then peeled away the flaps. Ron Duguay and his curly locks was the top card. Discoloration marred the photo and crusty pink sludge coated the edges. Three cards on the back were loose, but greasy with mildew. Parker let the nasty sum fall from his hands.

—

Ryan sat in the living room, Reservation Dogs on the TV, garbage can next to his right foot, moldy box of hockey cards on the coffee table before him. His father had tasked him with finding anything salvageable amid all the ruination. He opened the second pack and there was a young Larry Murphy, a hall of famer’s rookie card. Trash. He tried to peel apart the card at the rear of the brick and chunks of ancient bubblegum trickled onto the back of his hand.

“Hmm,” he moaned.

He picked away a piece about the size of a pencil eraser. It was gum. He popped it into his mouth before his brain could interfere. Instantly, the gum lost consistency, mixing with his saliva, creating a chalky paste.

“Ugh,” he said, hurrying to the kitchen.

He swung open the fridge door and grabbed the jug of OJ. The rim went to his lips; the juice washed away the taste.

As Ryan stepped back into the living room, he spotted two more pinkish chunks of ancient gum on the back of his hand. He shook the nasty stuff away, flinging it across the room to the stolen aquarium his father had bought from a junkie and decided to fill with neon tetra fish. Four remained of the original school, mostly because his father had lost interest in the fish and put the task of minding them on his son—a son who was long sick of looking at the damned things.

“Hmm,” he said, watching the fish attack the disintegrating gum bits.

From the table he picked up the box. He began opening the packs over the tank and shaking out the pink and brown bits like food flakes. The fish feasted and Ryan mocked their eventual demise.

After ripping into the forty-eight packs, Ryan located seven keepers: two different Gretzky leaders cards, two Moog rookies, and a Savard rookie. The fish sat at the bottom of the tank, breathing and occasionally twitching their fins, but not really moving.

“Should just flush you now,” he said, but didn’t bother.

—

“I would literally murder you for a cheeseburger,” Tasha stood next to the bed where Parker remained. “Honey, you okay?” she said, looking closer. The blankets and pillow were drenched by sweat, but the man’s teeth chattered.

“I’m sick,” he whispered.

Tasha bit her lip. “Should I call the ambulance?”

There was a pause, one twice as pregnant as Tasha was herself, but Parker eventually said, “No…they’ll charge…I’ll drive.”

“Oh, gees,” Tasha said and got busy dressing. No way was she letting her man die on the way to the hospital when she needed him how she did. Oddly, she suddenly wished she hadn’t skipped out on her prom last year after Parker said twenty-five was just too old for him to go with her. Everything had gotten so, so serious since then.

—

“You put something in the fish tank?” Marc said, leaning into his son’s doorway.

“Fuck off! I’m sleeping!” Ryan said, covering his head with his pillow.

Marc stomped into the room. “You keep up that mouth and you’ll be living with your mother, and Doug.”

“Whatever.” Ryan put his back to his dad.

“You shit…just clean up that mess before you go anywhere.”

About an hour later, Ryan climbed from bed. As he stood at the toilet, he heard glass shattering. He stalled the stream, listening for more.

“Dad?” he said.

Seconds passed and he let the stream fly, all but forgetting what he’d heard.

“Dad!” he shouted, urgent now. “Dad!”

The man was already gone. His piss was fluorescent pink. The flesh of his genitals, of his thighs, of his hands had gone crumbly and brownish. Muscle memory had his hand reaching for the flush handle. He took one, two, three steps from the toilet before he recognized that the flesh from the palms of his feet were sticking to the linoleum.

“Dad,” he moaned, pink tears oozing down his cheeks like oil drops. “Daddy.”

He lifted a leg, pulling so his knee bent 90°. His bones were stark white amidst the muddy pinks and browns. He pulled harder, trying to see closer; his shin bones snapped, the muscles and flesh tore, and he fell backward, into the scummy bathtub. His mouth opened to scream, his foot and lower section of his left leg detached and grasped in his right hand, but nothing more than a gargle and pop left him as he thumped heavily, his body fragmenting and crunching like a dried chrysalis before melting as the gum had, the moment it met saliva.

For nineteen seconds, Ryan remained alive, his eyeballs roving wildly, attempting to drink in his liquid form. Finally, his brain succumbed to the transformation and melted away the last of his being.

—

“What did you say?” the nurse said, leaning close to the shaking man in the thick hoody and flannel pajama pants.

“Might be radiation,” he said again.

On the ride to the hospital, his body all but draped over the steering wheel, he’d told Tasha to follow his lead and mention nothing of his visiting the Newtown Nuclear Facility grounds. Told her he’d think of something.

“Why do you think that?” the nurse said, straightening.

“This guy, in Andover, I was helping him move stuff from his storage unit into a U-Haul…he said some of it was from Newtown.”

“Yee,” the nurse said, mouth spread in a toothy grimace.

—

Everything Parker had brought in had a grime to it, so between customers, Marc worked two basins, one filled with warm water and Mr. Clean, and the other empty where things might have a chance to air-dry. He used an old toothbrush to scrub what he could of the typewriter.

The day blew by quickly, but he was surprised that he hadn’t seen Ryan again since the morning. The damned kid would sit in front of the TV all day and night if he could get away with it. Normally, Marc would shoot upstairs to their apartment, force the kid to do something aside from video games, but since he’d proved himself so useful with the box of hockey cards—he could admit, at least internally, that he’d been thinking of offering Parker seven hundred for them, given the nostalgic push that had unopened vintage card values going through the roof—the kid could spend the day doing whatever the hell he liked.

At 6:00 PM, Marc stepped out from behind the counter to flip the sign on the door, pausing a moment to smooth a bit of packing tape holding cracked glass together behind a security gate. Sooner than later, he’d need to get the door fixed.

“Yikes,” he whispered. His hands were dish-panned and bright red. He felt a touch of something coming in his chest, but figured he was just tired and hungry. Maybe he and Ryan would go out for burgers and ice cream…then again, maybe he’d just order in.

A great huff left him as he reached the top of the stairs. Forget supper—for now—he needed a nap. He stepped through the door, kicking his shoes off onto the rubber mat. He continued into the apartment’s kitchen and was about to call out for his son but stopped to look at the strange pinkish brown foam mounding from the hutch in the living room where the aquarium had sat—he saw no signs of the aquarium now. The mound was massive, about the size of a Chevy Sonic. In the quiet of the home, a faint crackle was audible, and Marc was all but certain the mound was growing, though was equally certain his son had done one of those asinine YouTube experiments and at worst there was a mess to clean up.

“Ryan!”

Marc stomped through the apartment. The boy wasn’t in front of the TV in his room, wasn’t on his phone, wasn’t on the computer in the office, and wasn’t in the bathroom. A shiver played through Marc and he suddenly felt ready to topple. He pulled out his phone and shot off a text to his son before heading to his own room.

As he dropped his pants, he heard the ping of his son’s cellphone but was too exhausted and weak to put the facts together. He flopped forward, linen pants still wrapped around an ankle, and luxuriated in the welcoming softness of his mattress.

—

“Did he answer?” Parker said from his hospital bed, lips blue and pallor grey from the medicine they’d fed him.

Tasha shook her head. She’d been tasked with calling Powell Pawn, hoping to warn Marc to be careful with the goods, but he didn’t answer and the only number they had was the one they found via Google. A landline that went straight to voicemail.

“Did you leave a message?”

She shook her head again. “What if he’s sick too, and you said his kid was touching the stuff?”

Parker sighed. “Yeah.”

“It’s not so far, I’ll take a cab.” She pushed out her bottom lip. “Wish I’d learned to drive.” She’d never been pushed to acquire that skill as it never seemed all that important, not before walking became a royal pain. Mostly, she rode buses, but that took planning and was wholly averse to emergencies. “Going in there was stupid.”

“You’re telling me,” he said.

Tasha leaned over and kissed his cheek, her billowy dress playing softly against his unnaturally dry flesh. “Do you want me to come back here or just…” she yawned, “go home?”

“Go home.”

She started away.

“Love you,” he said.

“You’re lucky I love you.”

—

Marc had to rush from bed. He didn’t make it to the toilet, instead opted for the tub, vomiting on top of a mysterious pink sludge littered with chunky white bits. The metallic scent of the stuff made him gag further and a fresh rush of partially digested food and drink barreled up from his guts.

Near-blind from the steady tears, he reached for the faucet. He turned it to about halfway; he waited five more seconds before pulling the shower plunger. The patter was warm and clean smelling. By and by, his tummy settled and the tears ceased. He looked at what remained in the tub. Most of the pink stuff was gone, but those white chunks remained. This included the better part of the face of a skull. The features were clear.

“What the hell?” he whispered as he reached for the white, white bone.

From the living room came a strange series of crunchy cracks, almost like the breaking of Styrofoam chunks. Marc paused a few seconds, listening.

“Ryan?”

He pushed to his feet, feeling dizzy and wobbly. The sounds continued, adding in a third new noise, something like slurping with a straw at the dregs of a fountain drink.

“Ryan?”

He shuffled, shoulder leaning against the doorway and then the hallway wall. The sounds were much louder now. Marc swiped his forearm over his eyes just as four blop, blop, blops sounded over the other noises.

“Ryan?” he said, though what he meant was what in the hell?

That bulbous growth he’d assumed to be a YouTube experiment had blown open and amid the crackly mess were four…things. They were pale blue with bright pink bellies. Their mouths were huge. Their eyes dead and black. Each had four flimsy looking feet, two on either side, and a fin running along their backs.

“Fish?” he said, finally recognizing the four survivors from the school he’d purchased after he’d cleaned up the aquarium. “How?”

His five-centimetre-long fish had grown to about eighteen inches in length each. They’d sprouted feet. They could breathe without water.

“How?” he said again.

Almost in unison, the fish curled back their fat lips to reveal uneven, jagged protrusions jutting from their gums. Marc recognized a threat when he saw one. His legs, though no steadier, were suddenly filled with drive and energy. He pushed off the wall and spun to race to the end of the hall, his bedroom. His phone was in his pants and a loaded Winchester .243 rifle was in his closet.

He got a step inside when he felt the first two fish latch onto his calves, toppling him. The sudden pain made him forget all about his phone, which was in his pants pocket on the floor not two feet from either of his hands. As he turned his upper half to assess and act, two more of the fish leapt to his chest. A wordless scream barreled from Marc’s dry lips as he grabbed hold of one of the fish. With a double-fisted twist, the thing became nothing more than a chunky, oatmeal-like puddle of pink gunk in his grip.

Another scream left him, this one a warrior’s cry. He grabbed the other two fish currently chewing the meat of his chest. After swinging his arms out wide, he clapped his hands together as if playing cymbals. The ruined gore of the fish sprayed out in a dead wash of putrescence. The final fish that had been on his calf was smooshed by the time he got to it.

Chest heaving, he pushed himself along the floor until his back was against the bed. He rooted through his pants for his cellphone. He dialed.

“Nine-one-one, what’s the nature of your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance…there’s been an…animal attack. I can’t know for sure, but I think my son might be…” Marc swallowed an invisible ball of anguish, “dead.”

“You’re in Powell Valley?”

“Above Powell Pawn…I’ll come down. I can’t stay up here.”

Marc rolled to his knees to push to his feet. Then he saw it, a final fish, this one smaller than the others. Marc sneered and reached out a hand, forgetting his phone a moment.

“Come here, you prick.”

The fish leapt, slapping its flimsy legs, parkouring off Marc’s arm, and spinning three quick revolutions before its fin sliced along the left side of Marc’s neck. Instantly, a tremendous splash of gushing blood demanded he put his hands to his throat.

“Marc!”

He heard the word coming from somewhere, and he knew he had to reach it or he’d die. Hands still tight to his neck, he forgot the fish and ran down the hall, over the crunchy mess of what had grown from the tank on the mantle, and through the kitchen that met with the staircase down into the store. The moment he swung open the door, the security system began to beep. Foggily, he thought, Good, bring the cavalry.

“Marc Ashby! Marc Ashby!”

His vision grew steadily narrower. His legs were weak. His adrenaline sputtered. From the bottom of the stairs, he glanced back. The fish was right there, bouncing from step to step. He tried to scream for help but instead received a mouthful of hot, hot blood for his trouble.

“Maaarc! Ashhhbeee!”

He pushed on, chasing the main door and a chance at survival.

—

The lights were out and the door was locked. From the upstairs window, Tasha saw a light. She looked around for a pebble to throw and decided it would be too much trouble trying to pick one up. She cupped her hands around her mouth instead and shouted, “Marc Ashby! Marc Ashby! Maaarc! Ashhhbeee!”

From down the street, but drawing closer with each breath, were emergency vehicles, sirens wailing, lights flashing against the dark of night. The pawn shop door swung out hard enough to shatter the glass in the top half. Marc stepped outside in a tee and boxer shorts, covered in strange, pink gunk and holding his throat. The shoulder and collar of his shirt were black with blood.

Tasha was stunned and suddenly terrified the radiation had melted the man somehow. She stumbled, away from the sight. Her foot slipped off the curb and she fell straight backward, her ass hitting first, then her shoulders, and finally her head, which had whiplashed violently. Her vision fluttered, moving in and out from the shore of consciousness like lapping waves.

Marc dropped next to her, his hands coming away from his neck, his eyes glazed, staring blindly into the void. Tasha blinked at him, light from the arriving vehicles haloing the man’s form. Then it came: cloth tearing, a scratch, a pinch, and slimy moisture between her thighs.

—

“Your wife is in a coma,” the doctor said.

Parker had been awakened by a nurse half an hour prior, explaining that his wife had hit her head and was unconscious, and given the moisture, the strike may have induced labour, but they’d need to examine her properly to know for certain.

“Is she in labor?”

The doctor shook his head. “It appears not. There’s clouding in the ultrasound, but we see movement, so as far as we can tell, everything should be all right. We’ll run more tests to be sure.”

“Can I see her?” Parker said, then attempted to swing his weakened legs off the bed.

The doctor sighed. “It probably couldn’t hurt her, but you…I’ll get a nurse.”

The doctor disappeared, then reappeared about two minutes later. Parker managed to get himself to the edge of the bed, his legs dangling uselessly. A nurse arrived shortly after the doctor, pushing a black wheelchair. Together, they got Parker seated and the nurse took over as tour guide.

“Feeling any better?” the nurse said.

“Not now.” He shook his head, fighting back an ache at his soul. “I sent her to see Marc at the pawn shop. Marc Ashby.”

“Yeah, they brought him in too, but he was already dead. It seems there must’ve been a struggle. Maybe a robbery. But what’s really weird, there were bones in his bathtub.” The nurse paused for dramatics. “Human bones. And, and he told the emergency operator that he thought his son was dead.  Jerry—he’s a janitor—was listening in on the CB and heard the police talking about blocking off the whole building until someone went in with a Geiger counter.”

Parker groaned.

They rode an elevator to the third floor and continued down a dim hallway. A gentle moan came from one of the rooms. The nurse picked up her pace as they passed four, six, eight doors. The nurse pushed him into a dark room—the moans much louder this close up—and flicked the light switch.

The nurse gasped.

Parker stiffened.

Tasha lay on a bed in a room with five other beds, cotton dividers separating each, though leaving those along the far wall visible from the doorway. Her belly was massive. The blanket had fallen, and her gown had split. The flesh of her belly was a sea of veins and angry red cracks. Beneath the surface, things bumped around, bulging the ovular canvas grotesquely.

Tasha’s eyes opened. “Parker?” she said, her voice high and pained.

Parker reached for her.

Tasha’s tummy began to thrum, vibrating like a strummed guitar string.

“Parker!” she screamed.

For a moment, the motion of her belly ceased, then POP! Tasha burst, guts and bits of bone firing out in a wave of splattery shrapnel. Parker continued reaching, arms stiff with shock. The nurse broke from the room, her sneakers squeaking.

“Help!” she shouted.

Above the bed, pink fog floated on air. Parker’s arms dropped to his lap as he gawked at the lumpy stain that had once been his girlfriend and the fetus they’d created. The fog hovered a few moments before targeting Parker. He had no defense to offer as the fog enveloped him, seeping into his pores. Instantly, the water in his body mingled with the fog, thickening within his veins and organs. His flesh began to balloon.

“Dear god,” the nurse whispered, covering her mouth, a moment after rushing back into the room.

Parker, bloated and misshapen and vibrant pink, floated up from his wheelchair. The nurse spun and began to run, Parker hot behind her, floating like a comic book thought bubble. She reached the elevator and stabbed the button for the main floor. The doors began to close. Parker shifted sideways and slipped within. He opened his mouth, stretching it wider and wider. The nurse covered her face, cowering in a corner. Parker took her into his mouth, chewing all the way to the main floor before blowing a great bubble, the nurse’s face stretched and distorted upon its paled pink surface. Parker spat her free and she floated by his side, two bulbous pink freaks, floating toward the automatic doors of the hospital.

—

The reporter holding the microphone beneath her chin wore head to toe radiation-ready PPE. Her mask was foggy, but faithful viewers would have no trouble recognizing Nalah Odeh.

“Just an hour ago, a hoard of bubble people appeared above this beach, taking three fresh victims and injuring several others in the process. This brings the number of confirmed victims across Canada up to nine hundred twelve. Worldwide, it’s projected the number of victims will exceed ten thousand by next week. As it stands, the victims are assumed deceased as a complete metamorphosis occurs almost instantly after what’s being called ‘bubble consummation.’ If you should see—”

The camera’s lens tilted away from the reporter and the cameraman said, “Jesus Christ,” as a ten-metre shadow played over the tall evergreens at the south end of the grounds. Hundreds of bloated, bumpy, hideously humanistic bubble people floated closer.

“There’s a hoard floating overhead now. My cameraperson and I will have to take cover,” Nalah said between panted breaths as she broke for the CBC van, cameraman losing ground with each step. “Hurry! Forget the camera!”

The visual fell, clanking to the ground, giving a sideways view of the reporter entering the van and slamming the door a moment before two bubble people converged on the cameraman. Consumed and blown out in matching bubbles, the cameraman, joined the hoard, live on the six o’clock news.

XX