Selección Terror: Tiempo Muerto

"Tiempo muerto" by Lou Carrigan follows Wade Rittman, a twenty-eight-year-old resident of Cleveland, Ohio, whose morning takes a horrific turn when he discovers a rat's head at the bottom of a milk bottle he has been drinking from overnight and into the morning. Disturbed and nauseated, Rittman wraps the bottle and heads to the supermarket near Timberlake where he purchased it, intending to lodge a complaint with management. There he meets the beautiful and composed Mrs. Pitts, the supermarket director, with whom he discusses the incident. Mrs. Pitts expresses concern that without the bottle sealed, they cannot definitively prove the rat's head was present during manufacturing rather than placed afterward. The narrative combines elements of body horror and mundane complaint procedures with romantic subplot details as Rittman finds himself attracted to Mrs. Pitts.