Carnage

I came home that night and opened the door on a dark and empty apartment. It was dead quiet and still. No signs of life. No-one to greet me. I sat and took off my shoes in the dark.

Then turned on lights to a gruesome scene. I found the first body not far from the entry way. It was flattened; pressed into the floor as if something heavy had landed on it. It had semi-adhered to the floor.

The second one was in the hall. There was no visible head, just a mulch where the head would normally be. As i came closer i figured out that what used to be the head was bent forward and pressed down into the chest. Compacted. It was round and fat, belly facing up, arms and legs spread at odd angles. The belly, not hardened by rigor mortis, was pale and soft and squishy. It yielded horribly, like jelly, under my touch.

I found the third in the kitchen in front of the fridge. Limp and twisted, partially dismembered.

I found a piece of one in the bathroom, lying in some blood stains.

Eventually the cat appeared. Stretching, languid, waking from a deep sleep in which she hadn't heard me come home, so hadn't run to meet me at the door as usual. She seemed exhausted.

I picked the corpses up one by one and flung them out nearest windows. Body#3 landed on the stairs. I trod on it on my way out the next morning, then sighted #2 lying in the grass as i stopped to bend to tickle the cat. Its upturned jelly belly was still fat and smooth and shiny.

+ + + + + +

It was several days before I discovered a fourth.

There was a sort of unpleasant smell in the bedroom I just couldn't place. I wondered if my neighbour had been mulching the garden with a particularly rich fertiliser, but the smell disappeared outside the window. My nostrils kept flaring and sniffing around the room, knowing this was not the sort of thing that could be ignored.
And there it was, under the bed. Not as mangled as the others, but just as dead.