…I awake with a jolt, lying in dying herbage. I do not know why or where or when. I see a path through the choking, perishing growth.

The earth walked upon is formless and damp. I tread here with no specific reason I can recall. The smell of rotting vegetation lies heavy. My soles sink with every step.

As I travel a figure soon approaches. Disgusting and mangled the creature shouts. “Turn back, the path is dead”. Met with silence it falls and convulses.

As I walk my soul begins to sink. Every step becoming cold and lonesome. The dank and filthy air garrotes.  I fall into a muck.

With all my strength I push myself up. Bisecting myself from this ick. It tastes of licorice and stinks of misfortune. I bellow in anguish. Unthinkingly leaving an opening for them to flock in.

The swarm, disturbed from their home, march into my lungs. Still stuck in the muck, I cough and I wheeze. They sit with ease. Internal infernal grinding. Please take this life.

I pull myself to my knees, then crawl. I begin to walk. The parasites still procreating. With every step my soul rots. The pain is slow and chewing. A figure approaches. I collapse to my knees.

An emaciated decrepit one, consuming a portion of corpse. It raises its hand. I weakly stare into its voids. Eternal happiness and misery; both in different directions, I see.

It grabs my head. Clamps my jaws, prying them open. Vomits then chants. My mouth and nose forcefully held shut. My world spins and goes to dusk.

I cough…cough again. I open one eye. Expecting to be safe. Alas I wake, feeling a shake. A thump. Then another. Internal thwacking.

I open my mouth. Fermented pulp flows forth. The hive! There they lay, each on their backs and sides, dying. Rejoice.

I shamble and shuffle. Up from my knees. Continuing forth. Feeling a random caressing breeze.

I walk further. Stumbling only once. I see a shimmer. I rush. A flattened and still calm. A hideous substance. Be this water?

The brown porridge, thick with sediment. Mire on top. It must be water! This sister to a swamp!

The fetid substance provoking knots. I navigate the shore. Until I see what I have aimlessly been looking for.

A structure floating! Thanks be to it. It reaches across, all the way. I’ll be out by the end of this ****** day. Flat and a few feet wide, it will be my perpetual ride.

Halfway done and in the thick froth I see a slither. I ignore it and press on thither. Be it my mind? Illusions being made, by the weary?

I see it again, the slinking. Long, thin, and horrid. An foul long line. Sidlingly. Soon to have me skewered with fear.

I begin jogging, then a crack. A creak! A crumble! The path disintegrates in front of me. I about-face. The damage becoming symmetrical and identical. Front to back.

I see them, the creepy living lines. One. Two. Five, then twenty. They emerge from the liquid crud. All staring.

Their eyes, tiny and cloudy, cream colored and lifeless. All staring at me. All oozing grime from their clay colored skin.

I feel the flat slab below me. Vibrations, then knockings.

Please do not let this be it.

The living lines are drumming. A solo for dinner, I know what is coming.

The slab below my feet. Breaking. I fall backwards into the liquid peat.

I begin to swim for my life, impaled by panic. The disgusting slop, nearly holds me in place. I am almost at the shore! Those things will bother me no more!!

I kick and ****** through it. Something stops me.

A dull ******* pain. Then burning and ripping. The flesh from the right of my neck, gone with a peck. One monster, slurping away my skin.

One. Two. Five, then twenty. All maws slowly filled, my body plenty. I tear one off, biting its head; my only means of attack. I will soon be dead. They slip between my bones and tendons. I am still alive. Genitalia mashed in their mouths, consumed in a flash. They squirm through my abdominal wall to feast on my gall. A beast, long famished, its appetite replacing an arm. I scream, shout; pain coursing throughout. Then a bold one, ascending through my backside. Feasting. Death imminent, I can only hope. Movement is halted. Their gluttony leaves me halved. I feel myself sinking down into the muck. One swallows my eye, continues inward through there. Another eats at my lips and tongue, more slide down into my lung.

My world finally goes black…

I awake with a jolt, lying in dying herbage. I do not know why or where or when. I see a path through the choking, perishing growth.

The earth walked upon is formless and damp. I tread here with no specific reason...

∞