Dirty Clean Sweep, a Short Story by Jennifer Weigel
Wendell was a germophobe. His obsessions with cleanliness extended far beyond the reach of OCD and even hypochondria, because for all that he was totally infatuated with his own mortality and utterly convinced that he was sick, it was his peculiar obsession with germs that eventually drove him to an insanity that doomed the world to an unexpected and dire destruction. For Wendell was the reason for the Clean Sweep.
When the COVID pandemic happened, it only increased Wendell’s fear, and his germophobia worsened significantly. He started meticulously waxing all of the hair off of his body, even his eyebrows, and would shower several times per day, using an abrasive pumice to slough off any dead skin that might otherwise accumulate and attract mites. As his manners and habits surrounding cleanliness became more and more rigid and involved, he left his house less and less for any reason whatsoever. He began to treat his home environment like a hospital or chemical facility and reworked everything to minimize debris, personally installing air filtration systems that rivaled some of the most sterile industry environments and cleaning everything constantly (he had once worked in HVAC and now no longer trusted anyone else to be involved in his efforts).
He took advantage of all of the delivery services, with packages coming to his back porch once weekly. He had everything on video camera and would scream at anyone who didn’t follow his explicit instructions through a small speaker in the ceiling. If a delivery-person didn’t first sanitize their hands with the supplied wipes and then put on latex gloves and booties before turning the door handle to drop their package on the specified table, they were yelled at and reported, and a bad review was left for whatever service had sent them.
Wendell only order packaged foods, simple soups and cereals that would not come in contact with the world outside of their factory packaged settings. He meticulously researched processing plants to determine what he could and could not consume according to his own standards of cleanliness. When a parcel was delivered, he would leave it where it sat for two to three days time depending on the weather, all the while monitoring it. He would eventually suit up in a tyvek jumpsuit, goggled and gloved, and brave the porch himself in order to extract his needed food and hygiene supplies. Whilst there, he would spray and wipe down the porch, replenish the hand sanitizing wipes and latex gloves, and take everything that might have come into contact with the outside world out with his trash. The cycle would then repeat again a few days later. Every delivery included yet more gear to perpetuate his clean infatuation. More latex gloves, more wipes, more sprays, more tyvek suits… And every time his labors increased…
While Wendell continued to go about his business, ordering life necessities like soap and soup online, a slow and subtle change to his environment began to take over. It wasn’t obvious and, as he never put any distance between himself and his bubble world, he was unaware of the shift. It began because of a spore, well more of an anti-spore like blossoming of suddenly self-aware sterilization. No one really knows where it came from, or how it managed to get such a strong foothold, but perhaps it was because of Wendell’s meticulous cleaning habits. For this strange and unusual being, or beings as it were (for it was hard to tell whether there was a single individual or a number of them all acting under one consciousness), though unaffected by cleaning reagents and the like, had once been highly susceptible to bacteria and rarely survived at length when competing for resources with other species previous to its evolution in Wendell’s abode. But the bereft home was the perfect outpost for it to thrive, and it finally managed to gain a foothold. It grew rapidly and had soon infiltrated most every corner.
As mentioned, Wendell didn’t notice, or perhaps he welcomed the change. For this strange surface skimmer actually looked even cleaner than its surroundings, appearing as an even brighter less dingy white that almost seemed to glow. It embodied cleanliness, at least insofar as we have come to perceive the concept. And the more that it acclimated to its habitat, the more resilient it became, learning to alter its own surroundings to its gain by killing off any and all other life forms that stood in its way. When a small quantity of some bacteria or mite or other single-celled threat was introduced, say on a box surface or embedded in the cardboard, the newly evolved clean critter would attack and annihilate them almost as if it were itself composed of harsh cleansers like bleach and ammonia. It seemed to develop a memory for different organisms and found a way to destroy most everything. It steadily increased in size and became stronger and stronger.
Finally, one day, it had grown large enough to determine that Wendell himself was a threat, for no matter how clean his environment or person was, he still harbored a myriad of organisms required to keep a human healthy and fully functioning. He was inherently dirty and had to be eliminated. And so the creature he had fostered at length, by providing a nearly sterile environment for its incubation, rose up and destroyed him. It did so while he was sleeping and so he had no awareness of what had happened; had he realized a blanket of seemingly sudsy foam was suffocating him he would have panicked thinking it was some sort of bacterial infection or the like. But he blissfully slept through his untimely death, and the aggressive new organism worked to dispel all of the unclean bits and detritus of his being.
After finally taking over the whole of the house, this new creature began to spread, much like a fungus or a rot, dismantling all in its path in order to leave a wake of clean sterile nothingness. Although it has been said that nature abhors a vacuum, somehow this void had become powerful enough to negate that and continued on its path of complete and utter destruction, leaving nothing living in its path. Before too long it had absorbed the two neighboring houses, and then the houses just beyond those, in a sort of reverse infection that defied logical explanation. The local health department and center for disease control were perplexed; these spaces seemed too clean to harbor such a deadly silent killer and yet something was slowly annihilating everything in its path on a microscopic level. It almost acted like a slow progressing chemical spill but yet there was no evidence of such either.
Before long, word had gotten out and samples had been taken and distributed across the globe. One of those samples was eventually leaked intentionally, as a weapon of mass destruction, and was unable to later be contained. The Clean Sweep was upon all and the world began to be disinfected wholly as it spread. Life was literally in the balance, slated to be eradicated and left to a sort of shiny surface devoid of substance. All was being cleansed, slowly but surely. What started with Wendell, whom would never be known or acknowledged as the source of this new terror, had grown to be much larger.
If you enjoyed this tale, here is another creepy story about cleanliness. And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigelâs work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
What if ours weren’t the only reality? What if the past paths converged, if those moments that led to our current circumstances got tangled together with their alternates and we found ourselves caught up in the threads?
Marla returned home after the funeral and wake. She drew the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, the looming dread of coming back to an empty house finally sinking in. Everyone else had gone home with their loved ones. They had all said, “goodbye,” and moved along.
Her daughter Misty and son-in-law Joel had caught a flight to Springfield so he could be at work the next day for the big meeting. Her brother Darcy was on his way back to Montreal. Emmett and Ruth were at home next door, probably washing dishes from the big meal they had helped to provide afterward, seeing as their kitchen light was on. Marla remembered there being food but couldn’t recall what exactly as she hadn’t felt like eating. Sandwiches probably… she’d have to thank them later.
Marla had felt supported up until she turned the key in the lock after the services, but then the realization sank deep in her throat like acid reflux, hanging heavy on her heart – everyone else had other lives to return to except for her. She sighed and stepped through the threshold onto the outdated beige linoleum tile and the braided rag rug that stretched across it. She closed the door behind herself and sighed again. She wiped her shoes reflexively on the mat before just kicking them off to land in a haphazard heap in the entryway.
The still silence of the house enveloped her, its oppressive emptiness palpable – she could feel it on her skin, taste it on her tongue. It was bitter. She sighed and walked purposefully to the living room, the large rust-orange sofa waiting to greet her. She flopped into its empty embrace, dropping her purse at her side as she did so.
A familiar, husky voice greeted her from deeper within the large, empty house. “Where have you been?”
Marla looked up and glanced around. Her husband Frank was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. Marla gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her clutched appendage took on a life of its own, slowly relinquishing itself of her gaping jaw and extending a first finger to point at the specter.
“Frank?” she spoke hesitantly.
“Yeah,” the man replied, holding the now-dry bowl nestled in the faded blue-and-white-checkered kitchen towel in both hands. “Who else would you expect?”
“But you’re dead,” Marla spat, the words falling limply from her mouth of their own accord.
The 66-year old man looked around confusedly and turned to face Marla, his silver hair sparkling in the light from the kitchen, illuminated from behind like a halo. “What are you talking about? I’m just here washing up after lunch. You were gone so I made myself some soup. Where have you been?”
“No, I just got home from your funeral,” Marla spoke quietly. “You are dead. After the boating accident… You drowned. I went along to the hospital – they pronounced you dead on arrival.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said. “What boating accident?”
“The sailboat… You were going to take me out,” Marla coughed, her brown eyes glossed over with tears.
“We don’t own a sailboat,” Frank said bluntly. “Sure, I’d thought about it – it seems like a cool retirement hobby – but it’s just too expensive. We’ve talked about this, we can’t afford it.”
Marla glanced out the bay window towards the driveway where the small sailboat sat on its trailer, its orange hull reminiscent of the Florida citrus industry, and also of the life jacket Frank should have been wearing when he’d been pulled under. Marla cringed and turned back toward the kitchen. She sighed and spoke again, “But the boat’s out front. The guys at the marina helped to bring it back… after you… drowned.”
Frank had retreated to the kitchen to put away the bowl. Marla followed. She stood in the doorway and studied the man intently. He was unmistakably her husband, there was no denying it even despite her having just witnessed his waxen lifeless body in the coffin at the wake before the burial, though this Frank was a slight bit more overweight than she remembered.
“Well, that’s not possible. Because I’m still here,” Frank grumbled. He turned to face her, his blue eyes edged with worry. “There now, it was probably just a dream. You knew I wanted a boat and your anxiety just formulated the worst-case scenario…”
“See for yourself,” Marla said, her voice lilting with every syllable.
Frank strode into the living room and stared out the bay window. The driveway was vacant save for some bits of Spanish moss strewn over the concrete from the neighboring live oak tree. He turned towards his wife.
“But there’s no boat,” he sighed. “You must have had a bad dream. Did you fall asleep in the car in the garage again?” Concern was written all over his face, deepening every crease and wrinkle. “Is that where you were? The garage?”
Marla glanced again at the boat, plain as day, and turned to face Frank. Her voice grew stubborn. “It’s right here. How can you miss it?” she said, pointing at the orange behemoth.
“Honey, there’s nothing there,” Frank exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice.
Marla huffed and strode to the entryway, gathering her shoes from where they waited in their haphazard heap alongside the braided rag run on the worn linoleum floor. She marched out the door as Frank took vigil in its open frame, still staring at her. She stomped out to the boat and slapped her hand on the fiberglass surface with a resounding smack. The boat was warm to the touch, having baked in the Florida sun. She turned back towards the front door.
“See!” she bellowed.
The door stood open, empty. No one was there, watching. Marla sighed again and walked back inside. The vacant house once again enveloped her in its oppressive emptiness. Frank was nowhere to be found.
So I guess it’s goodbye for now. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigelâs work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrickâs Days⊠though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I donât know how you managed to find me after all this time. We havenât been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, youâve managed to find me every St. Patrickâs Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. Itâs a little disconcerting, like Iâm starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hutâŠ
Anyway as Iâd mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And Iâd already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrickâs Day. Hell, heâd already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Montyâs crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didnât want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew theyâd want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livinâ the dream.  We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick âem. Itâs like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least itâs not high maintenance women who wonât toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldnât know, Iâve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isnât all that itâs cracked up to be, and it doesnât work like in the movies. I wasnât bitten, and I generally donât bite unless provoked. He says technically Iâm a wolfwere, to which I just reply âWhere?â and smile. Whatever. Itâs the little things I guess. I just wish everything didnât come out as a bark most of the time, though Montyâs gotten pretty good at interpretingâŠÂ As long as he doesnât get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livinâ the dream. There arenât all that many rabbits out here but itâs quiet and the locals donât seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like heâs gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantryâs stocked itâs no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that alreadyâŠ
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigelâs work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.