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he cool, still water embraced me as I jumped into it and submerged within it, leaving the sounds of laughter behind. The water wrapped its ever-changing arms around my shape and held it perfectly. I exorcized air—one quick blast to balance my buoyancy. Then there was the Calm; I did not rise, I did not fall. The dawn of time ended and then began again, churning the moments of now into a serum of rich thought and sensation. There, within the water, I hung within a suspended capsule, unknowingly engaging an energy hidden from the world within the secret place of weightlessness.
I mouthed a series of ancient words given to me through the passing and connecting of distant minds—words I did not know of a moment earlier or a moment later; I knew them only as I spoke them for the brief moments that I was a receptacle of realms. Each syllable came and went like lightning—precise, crisp, gone. My eyes were closed. My limbs were motionless. My essence roamed free.
A fey danced into my mind’s eye—so beautiful, so alluring. She twirled around my insides, caressing them with touches of deep tranquility. “How are you, my love?” she whispered to me, over and over again—not intending a question, but instilling a comfort. The peacefulness was beyond me; I was beyond my self.
Then, suddenly and shockingly, there came a sting—one beneath each of my feet—ending unpleasantly the euphoric reverie of weightlessness’ tithing. The stings immediately grew deeper, reaching through me as if I were a puppet filled by controlling hands.
I tried to open my eyes, but I could not, or if I could, I still could not see. And with the blackness, the nourishment of my breath depleted. Panic followed, coming for me on wings of dissolute hope, plunging through the surface of the water to make its kill.
Not death, I beseeched. Not death.
I gasped for air. I flailed my arms. Something anchored me down; something held me forcefully from within the weightlessness, keeping me.
Desperately I fought for escape while water poured into my lungs. The moment overcame me and I faded away. Death should have then rejoiced for the deliverance of its newborn, but there was nothing for it to celebrate—for I did not die.
My eyes opened, but there was nothing to see. Perhaps it was dark or perhaps the blindness was the result of poison running through my blood. Nonetheless, I hovered in a void of water, empty and unforgiving.
I tried to free myself from whatever held me, but again I was unsuccessful. In those efforts, I found my legs to be completely numb. Even stranger still were my lungs; they contracted and expanded although I had no breath.
I then remembered the stings beneath and within my feet. With the memory, a dark horror haunted me, but my mind’s clarity remained mine to possess. I extended my hands down my body in an attempt to reach my feet and examine their condition; after forcing my knees bent, I was able to accomplish the inspection.
At the bottoms of my unfeeling feet, my fingers despairingly met two thick veins attached into their soles. Each vein writhed with the passing of fluids and gases within its shell. Their surfaces were slick and slimy, and uneven and bulgy. The touch of my hands upon them caused my bowels to cringe and my heart to skip. The thought of their toxins running throughout me caused my spirit to long for separation of the physical and the ethereal.
Where do they lead? I asked the endlessness around me.
I decided to find out.
Under a slight manipulation of my body, I was able to twist myself upside down while using the veins as leverage. With a number of awkward pulls and bends, I straightened myself out, causing the veins to loop up and around. Then, I began to climb down; one pull after another, I walked myself along the length of the lines of veins into the deep below.
There were things with me in that void. I could hear muffled sounds and I could sense the currents of movement passing against my body. These subtle signs unsettled me and tore holes throughout my sanity.
It was somewhere around an hour before the currents and sounds surrounding me had begun to change. Rumblings reverberated throughout the water amongst intervallic concussions. Bubbles full of heat ricocheted and burst against me, releasing pockets of underwater fireworks. The environment was becoming livelier, but I still could not see. Sight, I realized, would not be returning—not in this place.
An equal amount of time passed again before I knew I was in the thick of the veins’ origins. It was apparent when veins like the ones attached to me started to rub against me on all sides; I entered a jungle of the things.
It was shortly after this when I arrived at the base of the disgusting lifelines. There were so many veins tucked together that I could barely slip my hand far enough between them to feel a handful of the huge mass lying beneath. In that touch, I felt the same surface as the veins, but I knew that whatever was there was massive. It was warm and it was animated, and I dared not to think what other regions awaited upon it and what they looked like.
Despite the discovery, I found myself at a stalemate; what more could I have done to escape? Defeated with misery, I began to think of my home and family—the very family I had been with on Lake Thesparona before being pulled through the hypnotizing portal of weightlessness into the uncanny resting grounds of the Scrounger—as I called it—the colossal parasite that had stole me away. I yearned for freedom and for rest; I yearned for a loving touch.
When my thoughts grew weary, I decided to act once more.
I started to climb back upwards, but this time following the lead of a different vein. There were so many choices, but I picked one without much deliberation.
Once I had broken free from the nest of veins, and once the space between each of the veins largely increased as they extended out into their unique directions, I found the second vein that paired with the one I had chosen to follow. This aided me on my journey, but, regardless, it did not span two hours this time around; the natural pull of the veins within my feet was up, so their lift accelerated my trek.
When I arrived at the pinnacle of the climb, I was lost to exertion and so I was not fully alert or prepared for the horrification that came when I collided with That Which Shared My Fate. What I did immediately know was that it was not human—a detail that was far from expected. I almost let go of the veins right then, losing everything I had worked for—but, perhaps, that would have been the more forgiving result.
A large, coarse claw-like hand tightened around my waist. And then another grabbed around my bicep, shoulder, and armpit. Under incredible strength, I was pulled away from the veins I climbed upon and placed before the face of the entity that held me. Neither of us could see, but each of us could sense the impious foreignness between our existences.
There was an intelligence surrounding That Which Shared My Fate that frightened me more than the parasite holding us. Elements—more than mass or life or death—exuded from its presence. Maps of unholy equations and chaotic dimensions came from it like breath.
I lost myself to its cryptography, and then it relinquished me to the hold of the void, sending me off to cope with the fate we shared, within the land of weightlessness. |
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