Gav took us to a parking lot so we could switch seats. It wasn’t like I was expecting him to go green again so soon after taking a hit of the green stuff, it’s just that I hadn’t been expecting it when it happened the first time. Better to be safe than sorry.

  As we each got out to switch seats, I passed him, and got to truly appreciate the new difference in size. He had been just over a head taller than me before, but now I barely came up to his chest. He absolutely dwarfed me.

  “How are you feeling?” I said, settling into the driver’s seat.

  “Bro, I feel amazing.”

  “You look amazing. Let's hope that keeps up.”

  “Yeah,” said Gav, staring at his hands.

  I started up the car and did a couple laps around the parking to get a feel for the modded controls. The foot pedals were still usable. They just had a bit more resistance than was expected.

  Gav and I passed the drive with minimal chatter. I was still in shock from nearly becoming a traffic statistic, and Gav was still stuck staring at his own hands. He kept opening and closing them, fixated on the flexing muscles of his forearm.

  I wondered what it felt like, to suddenly gain so much otherworldly strength.

  When we entered Michael’s neighborhood it was at sunset, or close to it. The sun had disappeared behind a row of houses, leaving a pink trail that looked like alien blood in the sky.

  Michael’s house was a clone of every other house in this neighborhood, only his looked like it had been allowed to decay. There were the remains of what might have been a white picket fence at one point, going by the flecks of paint that still remained, and the lawn was overgrown. Patches of some kind of weed grass grew in patches, growing taller than the other patches of grass and choking the life out of the surrounding area.

  The house was dark. There were no lights on, despite the fast encroaching night.

  Gav and I shared a look of concern, and approached Michael’s front door. As we walked closer to the front door we were assaulted by a horrible smell. It wasn’t quite smell, though there were notes of dead body in it. The smell was closer to a dumpster full of hot garbage. Where most of the garbage was spoiled salad.

  “Augh,” said Gav, vocalizing his disgust and covering his nose. “Bro, this is rank.”

  “I think this just turned into a wellness check,” I said.

  Gav nodded in agreement. There were tears in his eyes, but I don’t think it was the prospect of finding a body, but rather the smell. It was truly something else.

  I rapped on Michael’s door, and waited for a response that never came. I tried calling his phone, but just as before, there was no response, although we did hear it ringing somewhere inside.

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  “Well, he’s home,” I said, “at least his phone is.”

  “Smells like his body’s in there too,” said Gav, holding his nose.

  I couldn’t help but agree. So I whipped out my lockpicks.

  “Bro!” said Gav, whispering protest. “We can’t be caught breaking and entering when there could be a dead body inside.”

  “We’re not breaking in, it’s a wellness check,” I said, joking. Though that joke was only funny to me, because Gav remained mortified.

  “I can smell him from here,” said Gav, still whispering, but much more animated. He was speaking with his hands now. “He’s definitely dead.”

  “All the more reason to check the house out.”

  Gav was reduced to protesting only with his hands, waving them in the air as if he was producing esoteric symbols that would communicate how wrong he felt this was.

  He wasn’t waving his arms around for long. I had the door open in only a few seconds.

  The air that came out was magnitudes more putrid than the air outside. I knew it had to be worse, but I hadn’t expected it to be much worse. The notes of bodily decay were overtaken by the smell of spoiled vegetables. It was an overpowering moldy aroma that reeked of decay, no, . I could only imagine what kind of unholy microorganisms had taken residence within Michael’s decaying corpse.

  “Christ!” I said, pulling my shirt over my nose.

  The door had opened into the living room. It connected to a small kitchen, and along the wall to our left was a dark hallway.

  I flipped on my flashlight, and scanned the inside, half expecting to see Michael’s corpse just sitting in the corner.

  I called Michael’s phone again, and heard it ringing from somewhere down the hallway. I looked at Gav who seemed queasy, so I told he could stay put out here if he wanted to.

  Entering the hallway I found three doors, one of which led to the bathroom. Another was closed, and another was left ajar. The ringing from Michael’s phone was coming from the door that was slightly open, little flashes of light spilled out from in rhythm with the ringing.

  Cautiously, I crept forward, trying to keep my footsteps light, just in case this house wasn’t as empty as it seemed.

  I made it to the door, slowly pushing it aside, opening it as cautiously as I had crept to it. Inside there was no one, the blinking phone sat by itself on the edge of a dirty and bare mattress. The mattress sat on the floor, right beside several piles of clothes that seemed to be separated into clean and dirty piles.

  I picked up the phone. It had two sets of missed calls. Several were from me, and two more were from someone whose contact name was “El Putito Verde” . I cocked my head at that.

  “Huh,” I let out.

  I checked the lock on the phone, hoping that there wouldn't be one, but there was. The lock screen would accept a pin, but it also had a biometric lock.

  My thoughts were interrupted.

  “Nando!” called a panicked Gav.

  I put the phone in my pocket, and rushed back to the front of the house. Gav wasn’t there.

  “Nando!” He called again, his voice was coming from the kitchen. “Nando, look.”

  Gav’s back was pressed into a cupboard. He was looking at something on the floor.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Whatever he was looking at must have been the kind of horrifying that you can’t look away from, the kind of horrifying that demanded to be seen. Without responding to me, or looking away, he raised a finger to point at it.

  Whatever it was, I wouldn’t be able to see it without stepping into the kitchen.

  I sidestepped Gav, and entered the kitchen.

  As many magnitudes worse as the inside air had been to the outside air, the air in the kitchen was that much worse. One step past Gav, and the smell of hot garbage and rotting salad crossed the line of bearability. And why wouldn’t it? The source was right there on the kitchen floor.