The Flucks is my (Ed) first novel and an experiment. We are independent creators, publishing chapter by chapter as a podcast and text. It’s designed to be heard. We’d love to receive your feedback so we can tell stories better.
Continue reading for Chapter 3, go back to Chapter 2, or start at Chapter 1.
Audio performance by Anthony Michael Malec
Text copyright © 2025 Ed Herrington
⚠️ Content Warning: Death, body horror (yes, even more), existential crisis
Last time on The Flucks
Dammit—there was that white light again.
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I heard sounds before the light faded. Birds and… monkeys? I’m no zoologist. I looked up. Trees loomed over me. A jungle, of course. What is this, some sort of Minecraft-biome bullshit? If I die again and respawn in the plains, I’m going to have some words to say to God… or Satan… whoever’s running this farce.
The jungle presses close around Slacy, thick with heat, rot, and breath. Something moves, stalking. When the trees clear, all he finds is dust and the bones of a dead world. He finally realizes where he is—but all he wishes for now is death.
Chapter 3 — This is fine
I started to walk yet again. Why pick a direction? I just put one foot in front of the other, tripping over roots every step. The canopy above was thick, strangling the sunlight into narrow shafts. There wasn’t much plant life growing on the forest floor.
It was, however, teeming with other life. Insects whizzed by, but not all of them. Half of them tried to eat my flesh like it was a newly discovered delicacy. Swatting them away, I soldiered on.
Hey, at least I should be able to find water this time. My mouth was no longer dry—probably the humidity. The air clung to my skin like a wet towel. It’s not the heat, you know, it’s the humidity that will get you, or so I’ve heard. I was starting to believe it because I was missing the dry heat of the desert.
Did I just hear a growl?
Does Heaven /(slash) Hell have wildlife?
I noticed the birds and insects, but I didn’t really think of them as wildlife. They’re just the background noise of life.
The noise rattled my bones, low, guttural. Yep, that was definitely a growl.
I spun around and saw…. nothing but trees.
Our ancestors could climb to evade predators, so I thought I’d give that a try. I started trying to climb the tree closest to me. The lowest limb was at least ten meters above me. What kind of forest has trees you can’t climb? This afterlife business was really starting to suck.
There I was, scraping my arms against the bark, trying to get even an inch off the ground, when it hit me. Something gripped my throat like a vice and dragged me backward.
A warm liquid slicked down my face and got into my eyes. I tried to wipe it away with the back of my hand, but my hand refused to respond. I moved my other arm to feel for my unresponsive hand. It did not budge.
Spots filled my vision, and the sound of teeth crunching my bones shifted into a high-pitched ringing. I had a clarity of thought about how great adrenaline is at masking pain.
When the light claimed me this time, I was certain I was in some simulation. This felt too much like respawning in a game.
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The light receded. I hoped I would be in a nice, cozy bed this time. Instead, I found myself on pavement. Skyscrapers loomed over me instead of trees. Are there skyscrapers in Hell?
The street was abandoned. Windows were busted. Cars littered the road—half of them burnt shells. Your typical post-apocalyptic scene.
I’d never been to a big city, but this looked vaguely familiar. I walked block to block–they’re called blocks, right? I saw no one.
That was good, because I was still naked. I saw random clothes lying around in piles, but I didn’t grab any. None were my style. Who am I kidding? I have no style, and I was terrified of looking under them.
Automated delivery trucks moved about, delivering boxes to empty stores. Yeah, I’m certain Hell does not have self-driving EV vans.
The wind picked up and blew dust everywhere. The dust was fine. Like, not “it’s fine”, but tiny particles. It scratched my eyes, dried out my sinuses, and cut my lips. Every breath felt like I was scrubbing my lungs with fiberglass. You guys probably don’t know what that is—we stopped using it a long time ago.
I gave up and picked up a scarf lying by itself to cover my nose and mouth. I found a pair of wraparound sunglasses to shield my eyes. I still didn’t grab any clothes, even though I should have, because the dust was going places you don’t ever want. Who’s got style now?
Every sidewalk, street, and store had the same thing: small piles of dust. The wind was smoothing them into an even surface, like walking on moon dust.
I was starting to think this was another game level, but I had seen this not too long ago.
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I was watching Yeoman on VidVid. They were always talking from the streets in some city or another. I didn’t grow up or live in the city, so it was always fascinating to watch—seeing how people lived in a jungle made of concrete.
They were showing scenes of their city right after the Flucks hit. First, there were protests. There was no shortage of food or supplies. People were just pissed that no one was doing anything. Then, when people started to die, the riots started. Cities burned. There were piles of dust everywhere.
I thought the dust was from the fires.
✹✹✹
As I said before, I had outlived everyone. Friends, relatives, nearly everyone. But I had one friend who was there with me until the end: Chuq.
For those audio listeners, that’s “Chuq”, with a “q”. Her real name was some old Boomer thing, and she felt like no one from our generation took her seriously. So I christened her “Chuq”. That’s what our parents would do: take a name from the past, swap out a letter with a Z or Q or X or whatever. Instant Zoomer name.
Anyway, we were roommates. Her wife had died a few years back. We both caught the Flucks at the same time—nearly the whole world did. What the streams didn’t show, at least not by the time I stopped watching, was how the Flucks killed you. It didn’t kill me, but Chuq wasn’t so “lucky”. I said that with air quotes—you couldn’t see.
First, you get the virus. I guess it’s a virus, who knows. It’s not like the flu or COVID. I had plenty of those. With this flux, your body starts leaking fluids from all sorts of places—some I didn’t know I had.
But I recovered. I thought that was the worst of it. I felt fine after a few days.
But not Chuq. The virus triggered something—a runaway reaction that made the molecules in her body unravel. Bonds that were supposed to hold proteins and tissues together just… snapped. The scientific term might be “de-molecularize”—I dunno, I’m not a biologist either.
Your organs fail, and that’s the good part. Your insides go from a warm, squishy mess to a fine, powdery mess. Cells didn’t just die. They fell apart in waves—whole body parts collapsing, like watching city buildings implode one after another.
I watched Chuq slowly crumble, and she still tried to cheer me up. On the last day she spoke, she said through cracked lips, “Slacy, don’t look so grim. You’ll outlive this, too.”
“That’s what I’m worried about, I’m too damn old—”
“Yes, yes. You’ve been saying that for years, you ol’ grump.” Her voice rasped, dry as paper, but her eyes were steady. “You’ll never be too old.”
There were a couple more days of agonizing pain and confusion for Chuq. She coughed dust. Her skin cracked and peeled in strips, each breath scattering more of herself into the air. Then she just… stopped.
But the Flucks didn’t. Over the next few days, the rest of her body disintegrated into a pile of dust. All the atoms that make you you, no longer bound in molecules—just a heap of loose elements.
A body is something like sixty percent water. And water, when broken down into elements, is just oxygen and hydrogen. The gases floated away. What was left was mostly a fine pile of carbon and ash-gray dust.
For days, I watched as Chuq’s body slowly disintegrated. I didn’t dare go outside while the world was ending.
Chuq had a hip replacement a few years back and a pacemaker. Apparently, the Flucks doesn’t touch non-organic material. Lying there on her bed in a pile of dust were her hip joint and the small metal circle that once kept her heart beating.
✹✹✹
These weren’t ashes. Those weren’t randomly placed clothes. This wasn’t Hell—it certainly wasn’t Heaven. This was no video game or grand architect simulation. This was the same world I went to one last slumber on my deathbed.
Now why the hell can’t I die in peace?
Continue to Chapter 4.
