text: “I think he’s in here guys!” Jamie hollered as she waved to us up ahead. As we ran to her the carpet felt uncomfortably soft and damp under the soles of my shoes. The hallway lights, if the bulbs inside the casings worked, were so dim even the blind would take off their sunglasses. The wallpaper, an ugly shade of a patterned burgundy, peeled to reveal its years of weathering. All of it combined to create a cascade of dark colors in my peripherals as if I was running warp speed through the mind of someone on a bad trip. This was a bad trip. As we caught up to Jamie I could faintly hear what I believed was Leo’s ringtone playing behind the apartment door. Manny started rapidly knocking. The rusty bronze ‘C’ quickly succumbed to the forces of his fist. Somehow the ‘11’ continued to hang in there and take the beating, though you could hear its screws loosening up as it clanged against the wooden door. “Leo. Leo you in there?” Manny barked. I checked my phone--5:43am. “Around what time did we lose him?” “At like 2-ish.” Sofie replied. We then heard nothing behind the door. Sofie put her phone back in her purse, “Voicemail again.” It wasn’t unusual that Leo left us in the middle of a night out. He always did like going on a chase while we went out on the town. But he would always, ALWAYS let us know he was heading out. And almost always with glee. This time around it was nothing. Not a “catch ya later” wave, not a head nod and a smirk, not even a silly text. Nothing. I tried the door knob. It rotated about three quarters a turn to the left until it caught. But still nothing. “Help me shoulder into it as I turn it.” Manny provided the tag team. It took more than a few tries before it finally swung open. My face tightened up, my throat squeezed to close up, my arm covered my nose and mouth, my eyes squinted: The natural instincts have by the grace of God reacted to the deathly toxic skunky aroma. The apartment, a studio layout, was all dark but for the upper half of a window on the left letting in the faint orange hue of the street lamp and the open microwave in the kitchen on the right casting a dim yellow light. Residing inside the microwave appeared to be something slowly drooping out. Whatever it was, that’s where much of the smell was coming from. This apartment complex was right deep in the armpit of town. Even the homeless would look elsewhere for shelter. I could hear Sofie gurgling. She never did have a strong stomach. Jamie and Manny scanned the place. Jamie had her flashlight app on. Manny acted tough and didn’t cover up like the rest of us. But past his gruff exterior I could see his squinted eyes watering up and I could read on his face that he longed for fresh air. Along the back wall some several feet away from us laid what looked to be a bed rising some three feet from the floor. The bed looked empty from the doorway but it was hard to tell in the shadows. I also took my phone out and used the flashlight app to further scan the place. The floor was littered with empty convenience store drink cups and cardboard pieces varying in size and shape. It was all carpeted by many, MANY fast food bags. Every major fast food company was represented and all the bags looked empty... unless it was moving. “What a shithole.” Jamie astutely observed. Her index finger pushed her ruby red glasses back up before retreating to reform the defensive line her left hand made over her nose and mouth. “There’s his phone, I think.” as Manny pointed toward the bed, which we could now see was only two mattresses stacked on the floor without a frame. The bed had a dirty rag of a comforter on it. But still, it looked empty. I did see however what looked to be Leo’s phone on a makeshift night stand on the side of the bed towards that mess of a kitchen. We started tiptoeing nervously through the maze of trash. As those random few bags moved around I hoped that if there was indeed something not a hamburger inside them, that it was nothing larger than a nasty roach. But the dead blackbird on the floor to my left which I happened to flash over with my phone’s light told me that it was probably wishful thinking. I prayed the bags crawled way the hell away from us. “I always did hate going into the Halloween scare houses as a kid.” I caught myself saying it out loud. I still do. As we safely reached the bed I saw on the floor behind the makeshift nightstand some empty Four Loko’s and a paper plate ashtray with several already smoked joints. “Yup he was definitely here at some point.” I said. Leo was my roommate back in college. I knew some of his signs. “But where is he now?” said Sofie. We scanned around the bed some more. All four of our phones were now directing the spotlights. I spotted what appeared to be his jeans and one of his shoes to the left of the bed. I also noticed what looked to be a track of scratch marks on the back wall along the far side of the bed. The avenues it created revealed the poor drywall underneath its old beige paint. Manny pulled off the dirty brown comforter. Sofie’s natural instincts immediately took her in a dash towards the hallway oblivious to what she stepped on. Manny, maybe frightened for the first time in his life, paused for one second then ran to the door after her. Jamie and I couldn’t help but stare, frozen still. His uncovering of the bed revealed Leo, sunken deep into the mattress as if he was inside the lining of a coffin. His tank top was on but it was soaking wet and transparent enough to show his chest bruised in strategically delicate places as if he was loved on by an octopus. His lower half was wrapped in white bed sheets, also looking soaking wet. Thankfully nothing showed and I dared not to look further into it. However, two other things caught my eye and judging by Jamie’s shocked stillness, she like me has never seen something like this before. First, the body outline of the mattress wasn’t perfectly lined up to Leo’s body size. The hips and groin area looked as if they were disproportionally wide and medicine ball sized compared to the rest of his body outline that caved into the mattress. But what really has caused the shock in the room and Sofie’s puke in the hallway is Leo’s face. A deformed smile dominated the shape of his deranged face. It looked as if he saw the girl from The Ring come out of the TV and he fell in love with it. It was fascinatingly creepy as much as it was unfathomably grotesque. The Joker couldn’t look any happier. Jamie, being the pre-med student that she is, pocketed her phone and bravely went to check for a pulse. Her right hand shook nervously as it moved slowly toward the left side of Leo’s neck. Her index and middle fingers lined up to make the check for a pulse shape. I held my breath as she made contact. “He’s still alive.” Leo’s body remained still. ”Jesus, I’ve never seen this before.” Jamie said as she quickly retracted her hand and wiped her fingers on her leg. “I have.” Sofie replied as she returned with Manny. She looked paler than before, as if that was even possible given her Irish-like complexion. She looked distressed and anxious, but aware and alert. “Never in person before today. I came across something like this on Reddit once. Had pictures looking almost like this. Thought it was stupid photo-shop bullshit.” Jamie gave me a puzzled look. “I remember the headline that drew me to click it. *‘It walks amongst the bottle caps and cigarette buds during busy city nights. It preys on the lonely and broken hearted. Its breasts, pillows for the damned and depressed.’*” I noticed as Sofie spoke I had taken a couple steps toward the open door. “What are you talking about?” Manny said. Sofie stood at an angle that caused her body to silhouette with the window. “‘The Wildebeest’”. The bathroom toilet flushed, a shriek shook the floor with fury.