- Name: Mark Pendras
- Pronouns: He/him
- Date: June 10, 2020
- Occupation: Delivery worker
- City of residence: Anchorage, Alaska
- Date(s) of account: June 2019-May 2020
- Subject of account: Rotten food
Account
Do you have ant season in Atkins?
I know that's probably a stupid question, but I almost never hear people talking about it. I guess it's just natural enough that nobody pays it any mind. You know- summer starts, and ants start laying eggs in any house where the owners can't find the nests.
It was a lot worse when I was a kid, since, as my parents often pointed out, we lived in an old home. I think it was from the 50s or 60s. Point is, now that I've moved to Anchorage, Alaska for a job, I don't tend to get quite as many ants as I used to.
Then sometime in June of 2019, as I was about to pour my morning coffee into a mug, a huge black ant crawled out of it. I nearly smashed it, I was so surprised. Instead, I took a deep breath and went to grab some paper towel so I could pick up the ant and put it outside. When I went back to get the ant, it was twitching, but otherwise still.
I ended up putting it in the garbage instead of taking it outside. It was obviously dead.
Later that week, I went on a camping trip with my boyfriend, Caleb Barker. We were driving a ways away from our apartment building, so after an hour or two, we stopped at a drive-through to get some fast food. I wasn't very hungry at that point, but after a while, I decided to open up my food.
The bun was moldy, and the meat was rotten. I stared at it for a second. Something black appeared in the moldy bread, and after a second it became clear that it was an ant.
I didn't mention it to Caleb. Gross as it was, I didn't think it was that important, and he's the kind of person who would go back and complain about it. I just wrapped up the burger and threw it away at the next rest stop, where I got some candy and soda from the vending machines.
It went on like that for weeks. Some of my food and dishes would be fine, but the rest would be covered in ants, moldy, rotten, whatever. There was never a pattern, a clear reason why it happened. It just did.
I didn't tell Caleb about it at first. He and I hadn't moved in together yet at that point, so it wasn't like he knew about it. And the thing is, it only happened when I was about to eat something. If I had him over, the food he ate and dishes he used were always fine.
One day, a month after it first started, Caleb and I were eating together. I'd checked the food over and over to make sure it was fine, but as we were eating, he gasped. I paused and looked down at the meat on my fork. It was rotten through.
At that point, I finally explained what was going on.
He played it methodically. He made sure I was keeping my food refrigerated, rinsing off my dishes, all that. I told him it didn't seem to matter what I did. It just kept happening, even when I was eating at a restaurant.
Caleb ended up moving in for unrelated reasons, and while it was nice to have someone to check I wasn't about to eat anything spoiled, it didn't help much otherwise. And things got worse over time. The longer it lasted, the worse it got. It was gradual, but there. By September or December, it got to the point where almost none of the food I tried to eat was still clean by the time it reached my mouth. I got so hungry that at times I had to ignore the rot just to stay alive. It tasted about as good as you'd expect.
I had to start taking a lot of vitamins once the iron deficiency started leading to night terrors. Really, I should've taken them before that, but that's when it really hit me how little nutrition I was getting. Fortunately, drinks were never affected by whatever force was targeting me, so I had a lot of instant breakfasts, though they're not particularly filling. I spent a long time hungry like that.
At one point a friend of mine asked if I wanted to get lunch with her. I'm a bad liar, so I got halfway through my excuses before it became clear that she wasn't buying it. I didn't know what to tell her- that food just rots away around me? Sure, the concept's simple enough to explain, but it's not exactly something that comes up for most people. So I agreed.
And what little food I had ordered wasn't rotten.
The food was fine. Not too strange in its own right, but it really weirded me out for a second. What was I supposed to take from this? That there was still a one-in-a-million chance that my food wouldn't go rotten if I just got really lucky? That it was over? That I'd imagined the whole stupid thing in the first place?
That night at dinner, I asked Caleb if I could have a bit of his food, just enough to test whether it would turn rotten. It didn't. I got some more food from the kitchen. Still good when I ate it.
It was over.
I didn't know why, but it was over.
It was hard not to associate food with disease. Even after it was over, it took me a good deal of time to adjust to eating when I got hungry, rather than ignoring my hunger. In fact, it was only last month, probably May 10th or so, that I first decided to eat ice cream since things changed back. Up to that point, I hadn't eaten anything I didn't absolutely have to.
The container was empty. There was an ant in it, and there were hundreds of tiny black ants surrounding it. As I watched, they moved away from the larger ant, which was completely still. Less and less of the ant remained the more the smaller ones took from it.
At that point, I remembered something my mom had told me when I was younger: ants come back for their own.
I threw it in the trash.
It's hard to say how things will be from now on. It hasn't been that long since those ants showed up. So far, it seems like things are getting steadily worse again.
I don't know what will happen. I'm just scared.
And I'm so hungry.
Analysis
I'm not sure what to say about this. Theoretically, assuming this account is true, there's nothing to suggest supernatural involvement, but just writing it all off as a coincidence seems... unlikely.
Now, as to whether or not this account is actually true, that is another matter.
I was able to get in contact with Pendras, and Alex with Barker, on June 17. The results were not particularly enlightening: Pendras stands by his word but was unable to give further details, except to say that he still thinks the incidents surrounding him are getting worse again. Barker, meanwhile, agreed with Pendras's account, adding that he's worried for Pendras, who has been severely malnourished for some time now as a result of his prolonged refusal to eat more frequently.
Of course, Barker is not exactly an unbiased source, but Pendras declined to give the contact information of anyone else who might be able to corroborate his account. Evidently, once he realized he would be unable to hide his current state from others, he cut ties with many of them.
I'm worried for him, but there's very little I can do.
Maybe I shouldn't have taken on this job. It's not like it pays any better than working at a fast food place like I do now, as low a bar as that is.
But I feel like I have to. I just don't know why.
