Fang 2022

23-year-old Billy Cochran is a cartoonist who shares a cramped apartment with his mother, Gina, in a crumbling industrial neighborhood on the edge of Chicago. He moves through days tethered to prescription pills like Valium and Oxycontin, a quiet crutch that helps him cope with a world that often feels overwhelming. His work life centers on a demanding, unsympathetic boss, Mr. Wolfson, at a meat-processing warehouse where every mistake is met with a cold eye and terse rebukes. The rhythm of Billy’s life shifts when Gina’s health suddenly tanks, landing her in the hospital and setting off a cascade of frightening truths.

In the hospital, the physician Dr. Decanthian lays out a brutal prognosis: Gina is facing Stage 5 Parkinson’s disease and will require round‑the‑clock care. The news hits Billy hard; he withdraws emotionally, a dissociative haze swallowing him as he briefly replays the moment in which he first found a dead rat in a field. The diagnosis acts as a catalyst, nudging him toward a mounting fascination with the person hired to help care for his mother.

That caregiver, Myra Valenti, enters the picture with a mix of warmth and boundary-pushing practicality. She takes note of Billy’s drawings, and the two begin to share a cautious, if awkward, connection. Billy explains in vivid detail the sci‑fi universe he has sketched, a world where alien hybrid beings called Graixians inhabit the distant planet Graix, a place that feels almost real enough to touch. Their burgeoning rapport is tempered by Gina’s interruptions and her escalating delirium—she hallucinates, insisting she’s already traveled through vast spaces and that she was at the Baltimore Airport, all while she’s trapped at home.

That night, fear and obsession intensify. Billy discovers a rat in his bathtub, triggering a frantic chase through the living room. He is bitten, hospitalized again, and given a new, mixed tetanus shot. Subtle, unsettling physical changes begin to appear—odd bumps and wounds mottle his skin—while a sense of impending peril tightens its grip. Billy’s boss, [Mr. Wolfson], lectures him about attendance, oblivious to the fact that Billy has just left the hospital, ducking the day’s shift.

A wrenching moment comes when Gina involuntarily urinates on the floor during a confrontation. Billy, overwhelmed, retreats to take a bath. In the mirror, he notices a strip of skin torn away and a strand of rat fur emerging on his body. He sketches the disturbing image in his notebook and shows it to Myra, who tries to ground him, suggesting it’s a paranoid reaction and encouraging him to dive into a self-help book.

The tension between Billy and Myra grows more tangled as Gina presses Myra into a grotesque game: a height‑measuring contest over who is taller. Gina ends up being three inches taller than Myra, triggering a full-blown panic attack in Billy. He rushes to the bathroom, stares at himself in the mirror, and discovers more extensive fur spreading across his back. A night at the bar with his coworkers Danny and Jeff brings a momentary distraction, only to be shattered by a vision of a Rat King—a humanoid figure with a giant rat head that rises from the TV as if it were a guest on a talk show.

Terrified, Billy hurries home as the line between reality and hallucination frays even further. Gina’s anger erupts again, this time fueled by a fantasy that Billy didn’t empty the dishwasher. A brutal argument ensues, in which she claims she never loved him. In a moment of heat and fear, Billy hurls a water glass at Gina and shouts before retreating to his bedroom. Gina somehow appears there wearing different makeup, recounting a younger life in which she was a Miss Indiana finalist. The scene makes it clear that Gina’s perceptions are being warped by her illness, and she proceeds to sexually assault Billy, mistaking him for his late father, Sam—an act that leaves Billy reeling and more traumatized.

The assault marks a new and terrifying physical transformation for Billy—rat fur thickens along his back, signaling the creeping blend of nightmare and body horror. He experiences a nightmare in which Dr. Rat, another humanoid rat figure, chants, “We need red meat.” The schism between what he sees and what is real widens, as Gina claims she doesn’t remember their earlier argument and the water glass on the table remains untouched, a visual riddle that gnaws at him.

Work pressures simmer as Billy learns that the warehouse is due for a health and safety inspection. Mr. Wolfson hints at a risky secret—he’s got $500,000 in cash stashed at home. Billy buys a lockpick and a hunting knife, confiding in Myra that he intends to break into that house and take the money for himself. Myra pleads with him to rethink, but Billy insists the plan is necessary.

During the inspection, Billy executes the break‑in, uncovering the cash in a bedroom closet. Wolfson is summoned away by a phone call, forcing him to hurry home. As Billy descends the stairs, the Rat King materializes on the living room TV, and he experiences a full mental breakdown, screaming in a torrent of fear and confusion. When Wolfson returns, Billy lunges and fatally stabs him with the hunting knife, the act sealing a brutal shift from desperation to violent action.

Billy staggers home, a figure soaked in blood, and discovers Gina immobilized in a strange, frozen pose. In a final, harrowing act, he stabs Gina again, pulls out her intestines, and cannibalizes part of her. In the aftermath, Billy briefly shifts into a humanoid rat creature, a moment that Myra arrives to witness as she calls the police.

The story closes with Billy confined to a mental hospital, where he is diagnosed with autism, schizophrenia, and severe psychosis. He speaks softly of a desire to heal, and a final image lingers—a drawing of a humanoid rat creature hanging on the wall of his padded cell, a stark, unsettling reminder of the nightmare he endured and the fragile line between imagination and reality.