r/anxietypilled

No one really knows how it all ended, no one that's still around anyway. If it was a series of small pressures that built and built eventually overwhelming the system or if it was over in one dramatic instant. What matters is that, like everything that came before and everything that will come after, it ended. Some of us, a dwindling few, even remember what it was like before everything went to shit. We carry the corpse of that other world on our shoulders and in our hearts, weighed down by the chains of another time, another state of being.

   What no one was prepared for was the absolute silence that fell over the world after the initial riots and panic. It was, and still is, like a blanket smothering us all. Any infrastructure for communication fell on the first day or as close that it makes no real difference. We lost the world and our sense of community shrank. The villages you can still stumble on from time to time are thriving, not because of a global sense of "us" and togetherness but because the young there, the true denizens of what the world became, fill their days honing skills to survive, not longing for lands beyond their hunting grounds. The rest of us, the great yet forgotten Before, we are ill-equipped tourists.

   The room I'm in was mine in childhood. The house itself less ruined than the surrounding buildings, I couldn't say how but I'm grateful that it's mostly how I remember it. The kitchen where I fell and almost broke my leg when I was 12. I spent the entire summer on crutches and having all my food brought to me in bed, I felt like a king. The backyard where I got into my first fight because some kid knocked my sister down. I was terrified of my father's wrath when he got home, but he took me to buy a video game because he was proud I fought for the right reason. Even with the roof partially collapsed and the wallpaper long since peeled I know this place like I know myself. Every inch of this place is me and I am it.

   The view from my window reminds me that the gap between that world and this one continues to grow and may go on forever. The green taking hold of the buildings and bursting through asphalt like miniature rockets exiting the atmosphere. The wildlife grazing on those verdant shuttles with no fear of the cars long since gone to rust. I don't think I was meant to see such beauty and it is beautiful. That's something else we weren't prepared for, no one knew how breathtaking the end of the world would end up being. Nature recovering from the wound that was mankind. Consuming our great structures, our hubris, like a kid in a candy shop.

   The weight of it all has gotten too much for these old bones. Like everything else I'm not what I used to be. The deep brown on my head turned grey and then settled on white. The blue in my eyes become a little more dull with each passing year and my hearing is all but gone, not that there's much to hear these days. A weariness has taken hold of me and it goes past being bone deep. It's a weariness of soul. This isn't my world anymore and I went as far as my feet would take me. I think it's time I rest awhile in this old room and take the chains off.

If you happen to find this I stashed some supplies under the sink, I hope they help keep you going. Please don't move my body, I'm right where I need to be. I'm home. It doesn't matter how I died, what matters is that, like everything that came before and everything that will come after, it was time for an end.

Max Morsan, an office worker, had just arrived in Wespin. His car was nearly out of gas, the little meter sitting between empty and the bar just before. He looked up at the neon sign of a restaurant while clutching a piece of paper with both hands. It was a note, a simple piece of white paper that any other person would consider garbage. But it wasn’t to Max.  

This paper held a date, a time, and a location: Sven’s Restaurant, 8 p.m., October 5th. Max clutched the paper tighter as he reread the contents. He looked up at the neon sign (the N and the last S were unlit) with an Irish-looking man; he had a red beard, pasty-white skin like a ghost,was missing his two front teeth, and held a big wooden cup to his lips filled with what Max assumed was ale. 

He got out of his car, the parking lot nearly empty. He heard whispers in the wind that made goosebumps cover his skin. 

“Maxieeee.” 

His instincts kicked in like a horse in a race. His heart beat faster, his eyes swished around the dim parking lot, and his mind was keen on danger. “Who-who’s there?” he managed from his lips, but it wasn’t spoken aloud; he asked it in his mind. The wind seemed to listen either way. 

“Maxieee . . .come on down . . . . it’s a lot of funnnn, y’know.” A laugh croaked from the wind. 

Max cupped his ears and repeated himself like a young kid would when they didn’t like what they were hearing. “It’s not real! It’s not real! It’s—” 

“Max?”

A voice—a different, more calm voice— rang out along the breeze. Max turned to see who it was, only to have it hit him as he was halfway turned. It was Chris. Chris, wearing a brown leather jacket, a plain white T-shirt, and a pair of green sneakers that didn’t fit his outfit at all. He put a hand on Max’s shoulder as his eyes locked onto Chris’s. This close, Max could see more detail. 

Chris’s face wore a look of horror and shock. His eyes were sunken, and he looked slightly drunk. Below his right knee, Max noticed padding beneath the dark blue jeans; a picture-perfect, three-hole slash running down to his ankle with white bandages covering a wound. 

“Are you alright?” Chris asked. His tone was concerned, but his expression was one of terror. “What are you doing out here?” 

Max gave Chris a confused look.  Chris was a detective. Max had seen his face on the news before, but never thought he’d encounter the man himself in the wild like this. He flubbed his words as he spoke.

“Wh-what?” 

“I asked what you were doing here.” Chris’s eyes followed his as Max gripped the note tighter and looked down at it. “Oh, you got one too?” 

Too? Max thought. His mind, racing already from that awful voice, didn’t seem to catch up to the possibility of another person receiving a note. 

“Wait, y-you got one t-too?” Max flubbed his speech like he was stuttering, though he really wasn’t. His mouth just hadn’t caught up to his thoughts yet. 

“Why are you stuttering?” Chris asked. Now, his tone was compassionate. 

“I’m n-not.” 

“It sure sounds like you are. I’ve never heard you stutter before.” 

“I was just talking too fast,” Max said . It seemed he’d gotten the stuttering under control. “My mouth hadn’t caught up to my mind yet, y’know?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“You really got a note too?” 

“Yep. It’s weird, isn’t it?” Chris reached into his back pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper identical to the one clutched in Max’s hand. “No name of who sent it. Just a date, time, and location.”

“You think there’s some big event going on?” 

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s got me spooked all the way.” 

“It is October. Maybe something for Halloween?” 

Chris looked away from Max and towards the building. “Didn’t hear about it from anyone else. Even so, I don’t think it’s something like that.”

“What makes you say that?”

“For one, the note. For two, I would have heard something—anything—from the people in town. And three? I just have a bad feeling.” 

Max sat on his words for a moment.Quickly, it became clear that Max believed the same thing. He had the same feeling. It felt like something bad was gonna happen, something life-threatening, but he didn’t know what. Ever since he’d entered town, a fog had filled his mind, like something was purposely blocking his memories. He didn’t remember a single thing from his childhood, not even his parents. It was like he was born an adult and skipped childhood entirely. 

“Wanna head inside? Get some grub? Wait on the others?” 

“Others?” Max questioned, but it made sense that if it was an event, more would be coming. He had to believe it was an event because anything else would tear his mind apart like a paper shredder. He was already on edge, but this . . . this was something that could push him over it. 

“Sure,” Max finally answered, after a long and distilled silence. They walked up the marble steps, only three in all, and Chris held the door for Max. They both entered the restaurant. 

2

The decor wasn’t anything special. One wall was bright pink with flowers displayed all across it. “Dasies,” Max assumed. The room was big, covered with tables pretty much everywhere and a few private dinner rooms across the opposite wall. Waiters walked around speedily to fulfil someone’s order, likely a rich couple or someone famous. In the center of the room sat a big circular booth, like a teller’s booth at a parking lot. A man stood inside it, with broad shoulders, a beard that extended beyond his chin, and a waiter’s outfit.

Chris and Max must have been looking at the same guy because Chris spoke jokingly. “That guy should be a bodybuilder, not a waiter.” Max covered a chuckle underneath a cough. He didn’t do it too well since the booth guy turned in their direction. 

“May I help you?” he asked coldly. He sounded British, but mixed with a Bronx accent. Chris took the note out of the same pocket and handed it to the teller. “Hmm,” he remarked as he looked over the paper several times. “Wespin reunion?” 

Chris shrugged. “I guess so, big man.” The booth guy didn’t take too kindly to that nickname. 

“Right this way.” The booth guy, who was as tall as he was bulky, dipped underneath the ceiling of the teller door with several menus in his right hand. Chris and Max followed him to a room—Room 7, the gold-plated letters read. The colors, not the words themselves, sparked something in Max’s mind like a lightbulb flashing on. 

A voice came out of the letters. The number seven seemed to dance before Max’s eyes. The words spoke icily. “Maxie, Maxie, took a taxi. He arrived home, only to find he was all alone.” Max’s eyes widened as the number and the letters started to rot away rapidly. The words repeated themselves over and over, each time getting more and more scraggly, as if he was underwater. The last time, the words sounded forced, and the number and letters both let out a drowning cry at Max. 

Max felt a hand on his shoulder. He yelped before meeting Chris’s eyes. “You sure you’re alright?” 

Max nodded at Chris. “I-I’m fine.” 

Chris shook his head like he already knew what they needed to do. “Let’s get to the table.” 

They both pressed onwards. It was a large room, fit for parties or some kind of celebration (Max, for some reason, instantly thought of a funeral). A funeral for a celebration? Must be one bad guy. Max thought with a childlike wonder. In his mind, he had completely forgotten what death was. I must be going crazy. His thoughts circulated around his mind, leaving his body in reality to stand still, unmoving. 

He felt a nudge from Chris on his right shoulder, waking him from his thoughts. “I need you here, man, can’t go anywhere else, you agree?” 

Max nodded his head and finally, the room took shape in Max’s eyes. He already deduced the room was large, but at that same time, he’d retreated into his mind so he never got a full scope of the actual size. It was big. It looked like two wrestlers could fit in a steel cage with no issues besides the ceiling. 

The walls were outfitted with wood panels like on an old station wagon. They had some photos and paintings hung up, but mostly it was just a wooden wall, corner to corner. Max looked a little closer at the painting, squinting his eyes to see more closely, but it looked normal. No dancing or name-calling from the painting. He did notice it was a Vincent van Gogh painting, The Scream. Max’s body tensed as he waited for the inevitable, but it never came. Instead, Chris looked at Max with a ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ look. Max could feel Chris’s stare, so he turned from the painting, but kept it in his peripheral vision to never let it out of his sight. 

The table with seven chairs was made with exquisite wooden parts. They seemed to be made from heaven itself. When Max caressed the wood and the softness of it shocked him. It felt like a pillow. On top of the table sat seven empty wine glasses. Seven pristine white plates sat in front of each chair; the plates themselves seemed to be made of glass as well, since they were transparent. You could see the table under them. The silverware, a fork and a knife (no spoon), lay on each side of the plates. 

Max took his seat; even the chair itself was fancy. There was a mat hanging off the top, leaning down towards the sitter’s back, providing comfort. The decor on it was strange. A dinner table with several people eating, they were eating pork and some kind of beef. There was a window next to the table, and the sun was setting, casting a cool orange over the dinner table. 

Max sat on the cushion and even that felt nice. Nothing about the decor was uncomfortable. 

“So, Max,” Chris said abruptly as he sat down on Max’s left. “Any idea on who might have given you that letter?” 

Max grabbed his coat pocket, where he felt and heard the crinkling of the paper. 

“None, Chris. You?” 

“Nah, it was on my doorstep a few days ago when I left for work.” Chris reached over to his back pocket and revealed his paper, looking at it more closely. After a few moments, he hid it back in his back pocket. “The only thing I can figure out is that if you and I got this note and we’re in the same town, then that must mean—”

“That others in the town got one too!” Max interjected loudly. His face flushed red for a bit before Chris snapped his fingers at Max. 

“Exactly. And since there are already two of us, and there are seven seats, then there are five more people to come.” 

“H-how can you be so sure?” 

“It’s pretty obvious, Maxie.” Chris’s face changed suddenly. The word ‘Maxie’ seemed to have lit a lightbulb that had dimmed many years ago, and his face became one of a dead man. It froze in time with a look of horror plastered over it. His mouth agape, he let out a silent scream. His breathing became rapid and his eyes wandered everywhere. 

“Chris! Are you alright?” Max sat next to Chris on his left side, so he reached over and shook his shoulders. “Speak to me, Chris!” 

Chris blinked rapidly before his mouth closed. He looked at Max with a fearful gaze, then he turned away from Max; he heard him . . .  sobbing. Chris wiped the tears from his face before turning back to Max. 

“I’m sorry. I-I don’t know what happened. I was here—” He put his hands on the table, and Max couldn’t figure out if it was to emphasize his point or to convince himself he was really here in the restaurant. “Then I was . . .  somewhere else.”

“Wh-where?” Max asked, his own breathing quickened. 

“I . . . don’t know. I-It was like I was a kid again.” Chris felt his side. “I was small, so I had to be, but . . . .”

“But what?”

“It’s not possible.” His eyes began to water up again. “I don’t remember anything from my childhood, so how was I there? What’s happening?” 

“Is this the right room?” A feminine voice cut the air like a razor-sharp knife. The two men turned to the doorway to see a woman. She was dressed in all black, her skirt reaching her knees. She wore leggings that covered most of her legs except for the point right above where the skirt stretched. She looked at the two men sitting at the dining table. “I got a note for room seven.”

When I was little, there was this tiny concrete building at the center of the town’s park that a bunch of kids in the neighborhood used to play with. We didn’t know how it got there, but we saw the opportunity to turn it into a sort of “clubhouse.” We called this clubhouse, "the box." Our parents paid no mind to it. They were all just glad we found something to do in our quiet neighborhood.

It was probably the simplest “house” you could have laid your eyes upon. It was this cement cube. It had two windows, one on each side. In the front was this tiny mahogany door. It had this golden knob and it seemed like only the kids under the age of 10 could fit through the door. Nothing was interesting inside the box. It was actually pretty empty, but I guess our imaginations filled the room instead. 

We did all sorts of things in it. We usually played typical games like cops and robbers, and other times, one of the kids would bring a lantern and a board game. We all remembered it. Any old friend that I had had a personal core memory about that box. But, no one seems to remember Brandon.

He was the kid who loved the box the most. It was his idea to get everyone to play with it. Yet, I feel like the only one who remembers the name, “Brandon Verde.” Not even his parents remembered him. 

One day, I got a text from Brandon. He told me to meet him behind the drug store. I didn’t know if it was a scam or not, so I deleted the text and paid no mind to it. A couple of days later, I got another text from the same number. I deleted that one too.

Then, the day after that, I got a phone call. I didn't bother to answer it, but immediately after, I got a voicemail.

I got curious. So I played it. The first few seconds were what sounded like soft sobbing. The kind of sobbing a child would make. Then, I heard, “Somebody please help… I think I’m stuck.” My eyes widened with realization, it was Brandon! 

Within a few moments, his voice started to sound more panicked, “Please, someone, anyone! Please help me! I think-. I’m stuck!” 

Then his voice broke into desperation. His breathing got more labored, “Please help me! It hurts! Please help me! Please! Please! I can’t move! I’m stuck! I’m stuck! Let me out! Let me out! Le-“, then the message ended.

The moment the message ended, I went to the police. Nothing much happened after that, because when they looked up the number, nothing came up. Not a payphone, nothing. The search came up blank. Putting the whole thing up as a scam, they sent me on my way home.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Every time I tried to close my eyes all I could hear was Brandon’s panicked whimpering as the soot stench filled my nostrils. Every time I would open my eyes, though. Everything would cease. These night terrors have been going on for the past week. They seemed to get more intense each night. Brandon’s screams would get louder and the stench of soot would get unbearable. 

One night, after deciding enough was enough, I got up, got dressed, grabbed my car keys, and drove to the drug store to get sleeping pills. The fifteen-minute drive was well worth it if it meant fixing my sleeping schedule. 

Once I got there, I froze in my car. I checked my GPS to see if I made it to the correct address, but there it was… The box. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was dreaming, and I wasn’t. There it was, perfectly centered and illuminated by my car’s headlights, facing the parking lot.  

It looked as if it hadn’t changed at all, it was just taller. I left my car to get a closer look and once I got there, I noticed that the mahogany door looked as if it hadn't changed at all. The wood was not rotted, nor did any of the finish wear off. It was like brand new. My hand reached for the golden knob and turned it. When the door finally opened, I found nothing. It was the same empty room with the same soot-like smell that plagued my dreams. It was dark and humid, like all the heat of the summer was trapped in this place. 

But then, I noticed something glistening on the floor in the center of the room. Curious, I started to try and wander towards the object, but the door seemed to try to close after me. I took off one of my shoes and propped the door open. Once I reached the glistening object in question, I heard the door slam behind me. The room darkened and the stench of soot polluted my nostrils. I looked behind me and my stomach dropped.

The door disappeared. The windows were gone. When I held my phone up as a flashlight, I saw something I wouldn’t believe. The corners of the room were slowly moving towards me. The room was shrinking.

​

The king of Bunnishberg is a noble man they say, he commands a great army, and his people are healthy and well-fed. The king of Bunnishberg has lands greater than most and has a knack for diplomacy, avoiding incidents with other lands and kings. His courtiers are academics, alchemy and magic are their expertise, and he has fondness for religion without claiming one as his own; well read and tolerant is the king who desires no blood be she on his land.

His army led by great warriors, mercenaries from nearby kingdoms who, while being from another land are close enough to share a similar language and culture avoiding any language barriers or cultural disagreements.

Yes, the king is well loved, but there are those who hate him, his children.

Beneath the castle the king holds a secret, the halls of dark sones and ancient paths imprison many wicked beings, all made by his own hand. He cannot, however, create life through magic, he is no god. The beings of this realm are corrupted having once been human and lost who they were.

The goliath knights guard the halls and anyone with out a permit is killed and fed to the creatures. There are beings here guilty of cannibalism, murder, cruelty, and perverse acts. The goliath are a mystery as they are giant in height, bigger than any man and stronger than any beast, well almost any.

There is an order known as the Leech knights, healers who help those in need and heroes to the downtrodden, this applies only to humans, of course.

As a knight of the leech I must travel to this gaol and drain blood from his ‘children’ this toxic substance can be used in slaying giant rats and lizard men who enter the land, the sewers and rivers have a lot of these beasts, this poison is potent against the vermin.

The knights of the leech are good at letting blood without killing the person, they are beats to us but to the king they are ‘favoured’. We don our armour and pick up sword and shield, with which we would only fight non-human combatants, and go into the lair of the most insidious being known to man, the first born.

Th first born is a brute, his size is bigger than a goliath knight and he is more depraved than the crotch-shivvers and the gutbiters, flesh and purity he devours for this reason no women may come with us and as we have enough men together we can defeat him if need be.

We walked through the arcane hall that held tomes older than the kingdom itself and we looked upon the dead scholars who died at their post studying these Accursed things. this path has no prisoners and is the only way to the prisoner, he sits alone in his cell, his lower half frozen in ice and his upper half chained by iron, he is fed the flesh of the fallen for every cemetery is a lie as all bodies are stolen and fed tot his great beast.

We came to the cell door, a great and illustrious marvel of architecture, two goliath stood At the door “hold, none shall enter without a permit” the one to the right of the door boomed, our leader, an old knight held out a small brooch that the goliath looked at “enter” he said throwing the brooch towards the other knight.

As the great door opened, we could smell the stench of the beast, no turning back now. We walked through the passage, and the door closed trapping us “we could hear the goliath knights conversing, muffled as it may have been the laughter of one was loud, we were going to die here.

We walked a great way, the corpses littered along the ground alongside rats and globule leeches made us stop and ponder, would we as a group of twenty knights be enough?

Further we walked into the lair and then we saw him. Illuminated by the moon and few lanterns he sat, giant and winged and disgusting. We cowered before him, the aberrant son. The leader walked to him and began letting his blood, he wailed and begged in an unintelligible tongue, we pitied him. We began the letting and soon before long we had vials of viscous, purple ooze.

He was no threat to us and we tortured him  for his blood, we turned to leave as the beast sobbed quietly and came to the door once again, we left the lair without issue and gave the vials to the army so that they could wipe out the lizard man population, men, women and children alike. We didn’t question our loyalty to the king but maybe…just maybe we should have,since his first son died in the war against the horde of Mu, he was never the same.

When I stop and think, pray to the gods or listen for a heartbeat…I can hear the beast…sobbing... like a child.

You had a nice, peaceful life, simple and easy. Everything you could ever want was within your reach. You provided for many, at no strain to yourself, your body innately bounteous to the world around you. You stood hand in hand with your kin, a tangle of long sinuous limbs forming a green canopy that kept your home temperate. You were life, at its purest and most content. 

But one day your peace was disturbed by something foreign and invasive. For the first time in your life, you found yourself scared as in the distance you heard the roar of a beast you’d never known. The only thing you could do was wait and hope that its hunger was sated before it got to you. Those terrible noises grew closer and closer until you could hear the crack as your kin hit the ground over the restless stuttered roar. You knew it was a matter of time before they found you. The trees that you’d grown beside fell away, leaving you standing naked and vulnerable in front of the metal beast and the small angry men. Though you were larger than them, you were powerless to stop their aggression as they tied their cord around you and prepared you for execution. The teeth of their saw were still hot as they pressed against your skin, your family's remains coating their blade as a white dust. The low mechanical hum broke into an insane screech, as the blade started to life and began ripping through your brittle flesh and into your soft, moist insides. A thin plume of gray smoke blew ethereally out of your wound, and looked like your soul billowing out of your body. A misty spritzing of sticky liquid geysered out of the opening and spat on the face of your assailant. You began to fall, your massive frame hunching over itself with a thunderous crack tearing down limbs with you in your collapse. A blast of wooden shrapnel bursting off of you as you collided with the ground with a wet thud.

“TIMBER!” The deep scream echoed through the seemingly endless forest, sparking a sudden stirring in the tree tops.

“Aight boys, you chop this ole’ log up and store it. I’m calling it a day, y’all try to hurry up for once, then follow the trail back to camp.” The foreman said, patting his hand against the tree as he walked by.

He pulled away his hand suddenly, pressing it against his mouth. 

“Goddam splinter, a big one.” He looked down at his hand, and only saw a prick of blood.

“Huh, I guess it fell out.”

Terry Andre Mcgee had worked as the foreman for this logging company for twenty five years. In that time, he’d grown to hate this job and everything about it. He hated the bugs that swarmed him everywhere he went. The muddy ground he slopped his tattered boots through, and all the strange plants that struck him as foreign to what he’d grown up around. Terry wobbled his hefty frame along the thin trail, as the grasses and shrubs seemed to reach for him from the treeline. He made sure to stomp the plants that reached past the boundary of their path, feeling a sense of contempt for these foreign plants violating their civilized boundaries. 

He took out a flask from his shirt pocket, taking a long deep swallow to numb the stress of the day. The warm stench of the liquor near his face was a brief respite to the smell of wet earth he’d grown to hate over his years in this business. The warm booze stewed in his belly under the humid heat, feeling as though its contents were bubbling to a boil.

“Buncha’ damn morons, if that crew added up to half a brain we’d be done with this bullshit and on the way home already.” He gruffed to himself before spitting a thick clob of chewing tobacco onto the ground and squished it into the earth with the toe of his boot.

A tingling itch started at his palm, and began working its way down the length of his arm. But working here, he was no stranger to the occasional rash and wrote it off as being from a brush with one of the various plants that he’d trampled over and through during the workday. Terry’s fingernails filled with dry dirt and sawdust as he scratched at his beat red arm, careful to avoid the bulbous raised moles lining his forearm. As he walked, he began to feel like he was hearing something, an indiscernible murmur in the distance. 

He shot his head up in alarm, tearing his attention away from the frantic scratching fit to check his surroundings. He turned and swiveled his head, looking for a source but saw nothing. It’d seemed like someone speaking but he couldn’t seem to decipher the syllables, they sounded fuzzy, distant, and directionless.

“Hello? Somebody there?” He went silent and turned his head from side to side looking for a potential source of the noise.

“If one of you boys is tryna play a prank I promise you’ll be looking for work next week.”

He went on, and tried to convince himself he’d just heard a distant animal's call, but still the distant noise persisted in his ear. He subtly hastened his pace, matching the beat of his heart. He had the insane thought that whatever was making this distant noise was more aware of him than he was of it. The mud he trudged through felt especially deep today, seeming to pull at his feet, saying stay and wait for whatever this noise was. 

He felt relief as he saw the path ahead opening to a clearing. As he stepped into the camp, the smell of wet earth became faintly overlain with that of salty sweat and cigarettes. He approached his tent, larger and distant from the rest, and grabbed his bottle of Jack Daniels before sitting in his foldout chair. He reached under his shirt and began scratching at his chest as he pressed the bottle to his lips to take a deep swig. He gave a quick scowl at the rest of the group, who were warming up to a small party next to the fire. they all seemed so happy to be out there, and that annoyed Terry.

“Ain’t no fucking reason to celebrate being out here.” He mumbled to himself, as he placed a fat pinch of tobacco behind his lip.

You wanted to scream as they cut you into pieces, your leaves still fresh on your limbs you could feel every second of it. Sap wasted away, puddling under your body as your innards showered down on you as a flaky dust.

The itch had spread all over his body, and now felt more intense. It felt like hairline needles were pressing out of his flesh and trying to squeeze through his pores, like a reverse acupuncture. He felt sick, his stomach heavy, like it was starting to brim into his throat, despite barely having eaten that day. He scratched ravenously around his body, looked frustrated and nauseous, his vision fixed on the ground. Patches of sun-blistered skin were swollen to a strangled red and smaller bumps rivulet blood after he’d popped them under his fingernail. The sound was louder now, the volume of someone talking at a conversational tone from twenty feet away. But he still couldn’t understand it. 

“Did one of you boys say something?” He shouted to the group huddled around the fire.

“Uhhh no sir, we’re just over here taking it easy before bed.”

“Well, just keep it down.”

Terry started to drink more, desperate for relief from the effects building in his body, and the impression of words that floated through his mind. At seven o’clock he was already drunk, but his inebriation did little to soothe the pain or the mumbling that slowly grew more audible.

“Maybe I just need to get some sleep.” He said, frustrated and sick as he crawled into his tent.

The aches in his body were continuously growing and though the mumbling was still gibberish to him, it was growing closer and clearer. It sounded like a garbled radio just outside of his tent. There were intelligible syllables discernable in what was otherwise scrambled nonsense. He laid for hours tossing and turning in his sleeping bag, but unable to rest, he decided to go look for the source of the noise.

He stepped out of the tent groggily and started to shout for his workers to go to sleep, before he saw the camp entirely empty.

He took a large swig of his bottle as his eyes wandered the quiet grounds, his mind unable to reconcile the sourceless ramble.  

He decided it must be in his head, and that he’d drink until the noises and the pain that coursed through his body ceased. He once again sat next to his tent, and began taking long chugs from the bottle that only seemed to increase the intensity of his symptoms. Every inch of his body ached, it felt as though his skin was starting to splinter, like something too large was trying to crawl out of his pores.

He could hear it now, the words plain as day.

“Who the hell is talking!” He shouted, standing to his feet suddenly.

He lost his balance and fell face first into the dirt. But as he laid flat in the mud, he noticed that it seemed to cool the pain in his face and forearms. He took off his shirt and began rolling around smearing the thick wet mud around his naked flesh. He laid on the ground covered in mud and swarmed by insects, enjoying the relief, but that relief would only be temporary. Yes for Terry, much worse was to come.

“What? What do you mean? What’s gonna happen?”

Terry began to feel his skin tearing, feeling blood pool under his heavy frame, he looked down at his body to see the thick brown prickles of a pinecone, peeking out of his torn skin. His skin was stretching off of his body and tearing around the sharp prick to look stringy and fibrous.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Terry knew what he had to do.

“Yes. I need to go deeper.”

The spines on his stomach snapped as he crawled forward, chunks of flesh tearing as they popped out. He knew what he had to do, he left a bloody snail trail behind him, turning the clay mud a dark crimson. He headed into the forest and began to dig. Mud started to cake in his fingernails and between his teeth as he clawed and bit at the ground. The mud felt good in his mouth, so he started swallowing it, feeling it clog his throat as it slowly rolled down. With one hand he coaxed the mud down his throat, while the other shoveled handful after handful into his mouth. He ate and ate until he’d made a hole his size and twelve inches deep, which he climbed into.

As he laid in his tomb he could feel his bones stretching out, it was the most unimaginable pain he’d ever felt. He could hear his brittle bones breaking, a frenzy of cracks and pops crying out as his limbs bent and twisted in on themselves. He tried to scream, but as he did a thick layer of sweet sap began coughing out of his throat and nostrils, he swallowed and hacked it out but it seemed to have an infinite reserve in his lungs.  Face on the ground, he continued biting into the dirt and swallowing it down with the thick sap, until he could feel his stomach tear open inside of him. His bones, now dexterous and limber, began to curl in on themselves like worms, tearing through meat, mud, and sticky sap as it dug tunnels through him. The bones pierced through his skin and dug into the dirt, stretching deeper and deeper. His body laid limp and helpless. He watched as his flesh seemed to decompose rapidly, turning a disgusting soupy black. A sapling bearing one leaf stabbed out of his chest, and began slurping at the soft pile of flesh, growing as the pile diminished.

You have a simple life, you do not want for anything, you stand tall and firm. You hear the revving of an engine approach.