1

Harrison Stypula
Dr. Nicole Peeler
SEL 155
3/25/23
Squelch!

I can’t say that I was the least bit surprised when I woke up this morning to see that

another one of my neighbors had jumped ship into the great beyond. By jumped ship of course I

mean jumped off the top of the neighboring apartment complex. I’m staring out my bathroom

window, my neck craned at an odd angle to try and get a good vantage point of the carnage

below. Some joggers taking an early morning run stumbled over the remains that splattered like a

rotting tomato on the pavement. One of them is sitting on the sidewalk in front of the opposing

structure hyperventilating into a brown paper bag. The other, of what I can see beyond a tangled

mess of dirty blond hair and orange striped track suit, is standing just in front of my building's

awning. Probably starring, I think, though it’s impossible to tell from the angle I’m at. They

could just as easily have their eyes closed in complete shock over the mess of human pudding

that’s splattered in the alleyway.

I honestly can’t imagine what made either of them stop to take in the scene. Normally

when there’s been a jumper the mess is spread out directly in front of the buildings, typically

stopping traffic from passing through the front doors and causing a general nuisance for

everyone. At least the splattered figure that decided to pop off from the next-door building did it

in the alleyway, slightly more out of the way and convenient for everyone else. This makes it all

the more concerning that the two passing joggers decided to stop and take a quiet moment of

observation of the scene. Not only that, but to remain there, staring and panicking as if that
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would do anything at all for the poor soul beyond help. The scene was far enough back into the

alley that it didn’t even touch the open sidewalk or city streets, and if they had been doing a

proper job of jogging they should have been moving fast enough to not even notice. Peculiar.

I draw my head back away from the cramped window and take stock of the situation. The

jogger giving himself a heart attack on the sidewalk certainly isn’t going anywhere anytime

soon, as for the one simply standing in reverence I can’t say. Though it doesn’t concern me in the

slightest I can’t help but feel a prickle of curiosity sticking its sharp burrs into my sides at the

thought of going down to the alley to speculate over the unfortunate situation. On any normal

occasion I would simply wait for them to pass before investigating, but the urge to go down

while they’re still there is incredibly strong. It’s natural I suppose, like any other car crash or

natural disaster, to sit and mull over with others the possible reasons for why such a tragedy

could occur and what the possible outcome might be. Making up my mind I leave the bathroom

window, my apartment, and any sense of distancing myself from the scene behind as the door

closes.

The stairs feel so much different under my feet in wearing overworn slippers instead of

proper shoes. In fact, the whole endeavor of going outside without having done any of my usual

morning routine besides looking out the window seems to be a bit ridiculous but given the events

of the morning it’s shaping up to be a (relatively) unusual day. The brisk morning air hits me as I

take the first brave steps toward the tragedy just fifteen feet to the side of the front doors. Given

the mood of the incident I start to regret my choice of going outside in a comfortable robe and

wooly slippers. Perhaps comfort around such an incident doesn’t send the best message but being

only a few steps away from the site I went ahead anyway. It isn’t as if there’s anyone besides the

joggers to judge me for a lack of respect.

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The first of the joggers I spotted out the window is still breathing into a brown paper bag

with a renewed sense of enthusiasm, and I’m quite certain if he doesn’t stop, he’ll blow the entire

bottom off of the bag. His gaze is pinned to the street as if the inky pavement will somehow

prevent him from seeing what’s around the bend. I quickly round that bend with the hopes that

being up close and personal won’t elicit the same reaction from me. The fellow who seemed to

have exploded violently in-between my apartment complex and its neighbor is exactly the same

as when I first looked out my window. Partially human, partially pudding, one hundred percent

yuck. I glance to my side away from the remains to see the other jogger who had before so

carefully hidden herself from my prying eyes, standing as equally still as myself. Her hair is

windblown and untidy, and her gaze on the goop is as curious and unphased as my own.

“It’s a bit much, don’t you think?” she says to me, without once taking her eyes away

from remains covering the alley walls.

“You mean jumping off? Pretty common these days I think, at least it feels that way.” I

analyze the corners of her mouth first for any sign of a sneer or smile or grimace. Anything to

gauge what might be going on inside her head emotionally. Given the state of her jogging partner

I feel as if she should probably have been doing something to help him escape the onset panic,

but then again, she might have been the one to produce the bag he was breathing into.

“Obviously not, I mean the spectacle of it all. The splatter, the sheer magnitude of it. For

one, there isn’t anything remotely close to a head,” she says.

I examine the goop, in more detail this time than from my window, and she’s right. There

isn’t even anything remotely resembling a head in the mess that takes up over half the width of

the alley.
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“It’s a bit like pudding, isn’t it?” I say, inching a few steps closer to my fellow observer.

She looks back at me, a strange look on her face. I feel as though I must have insulted her or

antagonized her in some way, given the way her eyes meet mine over the strange circumstances

that gathered us both in the alley. “Maybe a bit of raspberry jello too, you know, with all the red

bits,” I gesture at the remains in the hopes of clarifying my ill spoken metaphor. She ignores my

sentiments entirely and moves on to other topics.

“I’m just saying, it seems a bit unnatural, given the building is only what? Six stories tall?

Wouldn’t it have taken at least a dozen more than that to cause something like this?”

I lose track of her words as she approaches the scene for further inspection. Everything

about this morning has me all out of sorts. This strange woman’s behavior alone is enough to

make me question my sanity. Given the circumstances though, I can’t really find fault in the way

she’s handling the situation. Certainly, it’s better than the reaction from the man on the sidewalk.

Even discounting over-exaggerated hyperventilating, it’s not as if my own behavior is any less

unsettling than hers. It’s a peculiarity, although this sort of incident grows less peculiar by the

day, and such incidents demand to be acknowledged with at least minimal interest. It’s only

proper to give the newly deceased some form of much-too-late attention they obviously lacked in

life. That being said, regretfully, my own interest, despite my not negligible interest in the latest

fatality, was primarily focused on her more than anything else. If it wasn’t for her matter-of-fact

take on the situation, something I could read in her body language even from my window, I most

definitely wouldn’t have come down to get myself involved. A panicked man nearly collapsed

on the ground directly adjacent to yet another jumper, all before morning coffee, was not

something I would normally acknowledge other than by snooping out the window over breakfast.
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My thoughts about the strangeness are interrupted by my observation companion, who

during this time took it upon herself to stoop down over the remains. In search of what I’m not

certain.

“You didn’t happen to see it go down, did you?”

Her question, less rhetorical than any prior ones, strikes me further with her investigative

nature.

“What makes you think I would’ve seen it?”

“Well, unless you have a habit of taking to the streets in nothing but a robe and

underwear for morning strolls, I can only assume you’re neighbors.”

I glance down at myself. I knew it was a bad idea not putting on something proper. “I was

in a bit of a hurry,” I say, “to see the commotion. Didn’t exactly have time for suiting up.

Besides, I never like to dress before a shower anyways.”

“You’re an odd one, aren’t you?” Her track shoes are growing disturbingly close to

poking a toe into the pudding. I reach out a hand to try and usher her back from any evidence,

but the stare she shoots at me in return over her shoulder gives me enough a hint to retract my

outstretched hand.

“I suppose I am, at least under the current circumstances it seems that way,” I say. Given

that we’ve both acknowledged our strangeness I see no reason not to take it a step far and stretch

out a hand towards her again. “I’m Cade, by the way.”

She rises from the couched position she had taken up next to the remains, her shoes

narrowly miss dragging through the goop and I let out a sigh of relief as they enter a safe

distance from the mess. She grabs my hand with an emphatic tug as if to say we’ve bonded

permanently over the macabre scene beside my building.

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“Wren,” she responds, dropping my hand as quickly as she had taken it. Her eyes drift

behind me, and away from the scene for the first time since I came out into the alley. “Oh shit,”

her face drops the calm demeanor in favor of a much more annoyed one. I follow her gaze

behind me at the slumped, incredibly still jogger lying against the building.

“A friend of yours?”

“Yeah. I guess breathing slowly into the bag was too complicated of a task for him to

understand.”

“Should you go check on him?”

She sighs, turning to face the remains and then back to her friend. “Probably should, I’d

hate to leave another body right next to your building.” She pauses, seemingly uncertain of

where to take things now that the initial novelty had mostly worn off. “Was nice meeting you,

Cade,” she gives me a pleasant smile before sidling past me to go lift up her unconscious friend.

There’s a moment of silence only punctuated by her footsteps until she reaches her

friend, evidently named Ron based on how she addresses him. Her tone of voice isn’t that of a

concerned lover, and I wouldn’t exactly characterize it as being overly friendly either. Perhaps an

irritating brother, or maybe a weak stomached running partner she’s working with. Her body

language as she hoists him off the ground, evidently groggy but not yet dead, doesn’t convey

much emotion either. Perhaps there’s some reasoning as to why the recently exploded body had

such a little impact on her, if she could display such indifference to a friend passing out on the

sidewalk. Physically the remains are so fresh that the smell is hardly much worse than the

general scent of the city, though with time of course it will grow much worse. Even within a few

hours once the sun hits its peak it will become almost unbearable to stand outside either my

building or its neighbor. The freshness truly is remarkable, and for a moment I feel myself
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overcome with an intense feeling of doubt over the cause of the apparent suicide. Wren’s

questioning over the scene pushed its way to the forefront of my mind.

“Excuse me!” I shout after her and the stumbling Ron, trying to restrain my arms from

flailing too dementedly.

Wren turns her head back over her unoccupied shoulder to look at me. Her eyes seem to

study me like the remains until I halt just a few feet in front of her. “Yes?” she says.

“I was just thinking, you asked me if I knew the time of the incident.”

“I did. What about it?”

“Well, I was thinking,” I say, slowing my words to try and lower the chances of sounding

like a lunatic, “I should ask you the same question.”

“If I saw the person jump?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Why would I have asked you if I had been a witness to it?” She turns herself and Ron

around to look at me properly.

I don’t know how to answer her question, because truth be told I myself don’t really

know what provoked me to ask. I hastily come up with something to say in response. “Because

you wouldn’t want to be under question as a witness?” My words that are more question than

statement don’t seem to have any good impact on her. She opens her mouth to respond, but not

before Ron opens his faster.

“I do think I’m going to be sick if you don’t stop speaking,” Ron says, his eyes bugging

out at the mess in the alleyway I assume for the second time that day, before loosening his grip

on Wren to go vomit in one of the potted plants outside my building’s front door.

“Well, that’s just lovely,” Wren says within moments of me thinking the very same thing.
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Ron’s evident discomfort and Wren’s annoyance makes me decide it’s best to leave my

irrational hunch behind and let her get on with what’s left of a likely ruined day.

“Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t mean to question you or anything. Just

a passing thought. Neither of us have seen anything though, well, excluding the aftermath.” Ron

heaved into the plant again. I force a smile across my face, though for reasons I don’t understand

I feel a deep sadness that our conversation has to end. It’s just that kind of day I suppose. Add to

the reasons why I observe from the window like a normal creep rather than coming down to get

my hands dirty.

“It’s alright, just don’t make a habit of interrogating people, yeah?” I can’t tell if Wren

senses my sadness or not, but she gives a true enough smile in return that lightens my spirits.

“Of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say with as much sincerity as I can muster.

“There you go,” she slaps my shoulder with a hand that minute’s prior had been hovering

over the human soup in the alley. Nothing remotely vile is on it, but such close proximity makes

me feel almost wrong. I can’t tell if it’s because of the remains or her touch in general that makes

me feel this way. “I’ll see you around then Cade.”

“Wait, you will?” I say after her as she collects Ron from the potted plant.

“Did I say I would? Huh, well I suppose we’ll both just have to wait and see then. But

maybe.”

Her words take tiptoeing steps around my skull as she passes from my view, not jogging,

but ambling along with a human deadweight beside her. She spoke with such certainty that I

can’t say she isn’t right, and I will see her again before long. Perhaps she takes this path as a

jogging route more often than I’m aware, and her reasoning behind it was just a passing thought.

Nothing worse than my own questioning of her whereabouts at the time of the incident.
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Once she’s finally out of sight the rush of wind creeping up my backside from under my

robe shocks me out of the stupor. The necessities for the day I had only just started are still in

dire need of completion, and the ripening mess in the alley has lost the appeal of being new and

interesting. A warm shower calls to me to leave the chilly morning air for the necessities of the

indoors. Before I reach the door, giving a wide berth to the pot Ron had defiled, I can’t dissuade

myself from the possibility that something is audibly wriggling around back in the alley. I let my

breath out into the air in a rapid gust and turn my back on the pleasures awaiting inside the

automatic sliding doors and return to face the alley.

The scene is as placid and silent as when I first turned around the corner this morning.

My eyes shift over the contents of the alley, not limited to the thickening slime and carcass that

drew me to it, but to the whole filled tin trash cans and random bags of filth that are strewn

about. Deeper into the alley where the sun can only reach it from above, the shadows consume

the even larger piles of refuse, preserving them from my search. Schlop. The sound enters my

right ear canal again and draws me further into the alley, until I’m right on top of the fringes of

human ooze. My slippers, worn and tired as they are, would not survive even a slight toe tap into

the remains, and my bravery to examine the puddle up close does not extend to going barefoot in

a disused alley. Even so I want to get closer, closer than Wren even leaned in, but sacrificing my

only pair of comfort shoes isn’t an option. I know I would have to toss them among the other

garbage in the alley if they touched it. No amount of cleaning would be able to fix the stain I

know was there.

I listen harder, as close as I’m willing to get. I angle my head on its side as if it will

somehow make it easier for me to hear whatever slinking murmur is coming from the alley. I feel

utterly ridiculous, standing in the midst of a tragic incident with my head cocked to one side in a
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robe and slippers. No reasonable explanation comes to mind for how I could explain my actions

here. Saying I heard something slurping its way around the alley doesn’t sound like the sanest

answer, and to just simply say I heard something would do nothing but make me seem even more

unsound. Luckily no one passes by, not even any cars, and I decide to push my luck further and

go deeper into the depths of the alley.

The remains seem to have reached the extent with which they’ll spread across the alley,

leaving a short space maybe a few inches wide to traverse up and down the alley without

stepping in them. I take in a deep breath; the smell of decomposition has finally started to

become apparent. The cold breath of the morning air seems to lack the proper chill to keep the

remains from growing as pungent as they look. I inch along the wall of my building, listening

intently but hearing nothing close to the squish of moving, wet tissue that I could have sworn

came from down the path. I’ve almost passed the further reaches of the mess when the silence is

broken by an energetic series of car horn honks from behind me, rapidly followed by the swift

rush of a speeding car down the street behind me. I don’t turn fast enough to see it pass by, but I

can tell based on the alarming barrage of honks that there must have been something blocking its

path. The sudden slam of metal impacting something infirm followed by a solid crash gives me

the momentary impression another tragedy struck this morning, but I only manage to care about

it for an instant.

My foot slips and I twist my ankle. This is the first of two problems. The second is the

place where my twisted ankle lands, in the furthest, tendril-like reaches of red-brown pudding

that spread after impact. The damage to my shoe is much more wrenching than the throbbing

pain in my ankle. I groan internally at the tragic loss, sliding my foot back to safety as the goop

clings in stringy threads of dark saliva to the sole. With my mind freshly occupied and relieved
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of its focus, I hear an intense squirming noise scratching around the corridor of my inner ear. I

reel back towards the brick wall. The noise sounds as if it's directly next to me, which I imagine

it must be. Beneath the splattered surface of the headless carcass and the remains that surround it

I swear that I see crawling movement scrambling about in frantic spasms. Forgoing the rest of

my investigation I abandon the alley in a sprint, the sound of wet pasta still assaulting my ears.