A lone dairy cow moaned as it bent down to pick at a weed jutting from a crack in the sidewalk. James Sourstack frowned at the beast from inside his hardware store, wondering the same thing everyone else was: where had it come from?

“Third in two days. That’s what, seventeen in total, ‘cross the entire town?” One of James’ regulars commented.

“Hnh,” James grunted in affirmation, both annoyed and bewildered.

The men sat in the store gazing out at the cow in the sun’s golden rays. After a long while had passed and the animal hadn’t moved, James stood. “Heard a few other towns are havin’ the same problem. Word is Brockton’s sightings’r in the eighties.” He paused, then, “You reckon these cows got anythin’ to do with the dairy shortage goin’ on?”

“Mm, I reckon,” the regular replied.

More silence as the men sipped at their coffee, then the cow broke it with another moan. “Welp, guess it’s time t’have Big Bessie relocated,” James shrugged.

“Guess so,” said the regular.

James struggled to dial for the station, still finding it a challenge to use a phone without raised buttons. Finally, “Hey there, sheriff… Yep, ‘fraid so. Popped up just outside the shop. Think your boys can take her off my hands so I can get some customers in here?... Sure appreciate it, I’ll see you soon.”

__________

The light from the refrigerator illuminated an otherwise dark kitchen as Charlie searched aimlessly for a midnight snack.

“I’m telling you, Char, people weren’t designed to drink milk this close to bedtime,” Charlie’s girlfriend, Sonia, warned. “All these unexplained cows showing up across the region? There’s so much more to the story.” Being a journalist for a small-scale media outlet wasn’t the most lucrative job, but the undisclosed intel certainly made up for it. She continued, “What the news isn’t telling you is that for every cow they find in town, there’s a body – a human body – found shortly after, near one of the local dairy farms. Every. Time. Though most are unrecognizably decomposed when they’re discovered.”

Charlie flicked a look at Sonia and she shot one right back at him. “Don’t look at me like that, this is serious! These corpses they’re finding, want to know what their common thread is? They’re all found with bedtime milk in their guts.”

On the verge of laughter, Charlie stared at Sonia dismissively. “Ya done?”

“Why do I even bother?” Sonia muttered to herself. Then, louder, “You want to die, be my guest.”

In a joking effort to antagonize Sonia even further, Charlie unknowingly made the biggest mistake of his life by taking two big swigs from the milk in the fridge.

It was a rough night on the couch that Sonia made Charlie sleep on, but his life shattered when he realized that Sonia had packed her things and left while he slept. I’m done, don’t call was the only thing written on the note she’d left on the coffee table. Charlie sat near-lifeless and tears flowed until his eyes were swollen. When he finally managed to make it to the restroom, he staggered back against the wall when he saw himself in the mirror. Sure, the swell in his face was a shock, but something truly frightening froze his blood.

Charlie stepped closer and pulled his bottom eyelids down. His pupils and irises had disappeared and his eyes had turned solid white. Lecherium Oculitis had found him.

His sight was clouded, but Charlie wondered how he was able to see anything at all. The curiosity, however, was quickly drowned out as a sinister power took over. The first to go was his fear and sadness, followed by all memories of Sonia until Charlie no longer knew that she existed. He let out a deep huff and became aware of an intensifying craving within him. He ran to the refrigerator and ripped the cap from the milk jug.

Skin steamed and hissed as he soaked himself in milk, giving the sensation of an ice cube placed on a bad sunburn. As he sizzled, Charlie’s sight returned to normal and his eyes regained their color, but only for the day. When night approached, the craving returned with more intensity. His eyes turned again and he had to ransack the grocer’s milk aisle, much to the horror of the public, to feed the evil inside him.

This is what Charlie’s life had become, day in and day out. Nothing else mattered; it was only milk. But even this new way of life slowly became insufficient. On one particularly ravenous day, Charlie scowled at the boring side of an empty milk carton, perusing the ingredients and the nutritional facts. It was then that he realized why he was growing increasingly unfulfilled. “This milk is processed. Diluted,” he retched.

The milk carton bounced along the floor and Charlie began pacing, his eyes dancing wildly in thought. If he planned to keep this up – which, of course he did, as if he had a choice – then he’d need something else. Something new. “Something pure,” he grinned evilly as he fixed his gaze in the direction of the nearest dairy farm.

The nightly feed was both adequate and euphoric. After milking a cow under the stars and drinking it up or sloshing around in it or whatever else the Oculitis commanded, Charlie would haul the cow to a faraway place, completely unaware that a cow can be milked more than once. After dropping it off, he’d leave it to be reported by the news and picked up by the authorities, and, undoubtedly, put out to pasture.

Eventually, Charlie had raided so many dairy farms that the entire Western half of the United States went milk-dry and people had to eat their cereal with water (though vinegar became a big hit for reasons unexplained). The shortage also created a hitch in Charlie’s routine as he found himself driving such great distances to undisturbed dairy farms that the time between feedings became too great and he had to enlist his father to keep his milk saturation at an acceptable level.

“I still don’t see why I need to—“

“JUST DO IT DAD! AND HURRY UP!” Charlie screamed at his ninety-year-old father who was sitting in the back seat. Veins bulged from both of their necks, one from rage, the other from old age.

Dad opened the ice chest beside him and trembled as he peeled back the opening to a cafeteria-sized milk carton, then splashed the milk onto his son in the front seat. Charlie shrieked with pleasure. “More! More! Faster! Can’t you go any faster?”

Truth was, Dad couldn’t go any faster. His arms were weak, his skin was paper thin, and it took everything in him to open each carton. It wasn’t long before his body began failing entirely and he slumped over the ice chest unconscious.

In a mindless fury, Charlie pulled over and heaved the ice chest onto the desert ground, but quickly realized that the milk in the chest was his only source of sustenance until he reached his dairy farm destination. He tipped the chest on end and began stomping the milk cartons until the area was a mess of milky mud. Brainmushed, he fell to his knees and began covering his body in the mess, lapping up any puddles of white that he saw. But it was still only processed milk – two percent – and contaminated by dirt. He knew his situation was not looking good for him.

After a while of soaking up the last of the mudmilk, the sun began its bake and Charlie began to curdle. He lay sprawled out on the ground as his skin split and his organs began slipping out of his body. The Oculitis that had infected his eyes had also turned his insides completely white, and it was only a matter of minutes before the feral monster Charlie had become was reduced to nothing more than a large clump of cottage cheese, alone and unwitnessed except by his father who had regained consciousness in time to weep as he watched it all unfold.