The wooden dinner table I'd been seated at vanished, its dusty brown hue swallowed by a creeping cold darkness. Overhead, a lonesome black sun lit the void-like sky.
It stings.
"Aurgh..." I tried to sit up, but a dull, strangely sharp pain pinned me down.
The dark sun filtered through the sky's dense void, its eerie luminance casting sickly light over the street's hard, grey asphalt.
A lurching figure staggered toward me, jerky and unstable.
A person—or rather, what was left of one.
Chunks of its body were gone. The once-living skin, vibrant with colour, now hung in patches of morbid grey.
Others soon followed, dragging their mangled bodies toward the unmoving sack of flesh that was me.
I have to move. Move. Move. Move. Damn it—I don't want to die.
Before I could even shuffle back an inch, one of them reached me. It sprawled over my chest, gnashing its uneven, yellowed teeth.
They broke through the skin of my left shoulder.
Every inch of me screamed as it bit deeper, tearing muscle, sinking in like rusted nails through wet cloth.
It hurt.
It hurt.
Unimaginable pain—indescribable. Fuck.
Instinct kicked in. In a haze of agony and panic, my body moved on its own.
I bit down on the bloody bastard. Pain became rage. I tore at it like it tore into me, jerking my head back with a mouthful of rotted meat.
A fist-sized chunk came free.
Blood gushed from its neck—dark, thick, old. But it didn't fall. Midair, the liquid frothed, clotted, became something fuzzy.
It looked like mold. No—like moss.
And then, as if reacting to that mass, the flesh in my mouth began to foam too. The moss spread along my tongue, down my throat.
I couldn't breathe. I spasmed, clawing at my neck.
The other two had reached me. One sank its teeth into my leg, tearing open my thigh. The other lunged, biting deep into the side of my neck.
"Auegh—!"
It hurts. Hurts. Hurts.HURTS.
My mind… dimmed. Cold. Clouded.
Was this death?
Am I dying?
I don't want to die. No. No. No!
Huh?
Warmth. Fuzziness. Where... am I?
************
I opened my eyes.
A scene I never expected: I lay on cold stone, night above me, harsh sea wind slapping my face.
Voices murmured nearby.
Where was I? I was dying .In the streets—wasn't I? Then what the hell is this?
Wait no I was in the cave with sunny and the cohort?
"Silex! Help me out!"
That voice—familiar. Like mine.
Sunny—my boss. My "technical dad," in every joke and metaphysical sense.
Boom.
A bolt of lightning tore through the furious black sky, casting harsh light across something wrong.
A massive, looming skull stood before us, hollowed sockets staring through reality itself. A third eye socket gaped open in the center of its forehead. From the base of the skull, dozens—no, hundreds—of tentacles spilled outward, anchoring it like roots or chains.
I stared.
Something twisted inside me. My nonexistent guts clenched. Something raw and ancient brewed in my core.
Disgust?
No.
Terror.