Chapter Text
Civility is dead.
A suicide pact betwixt it, and you. When one died, the other would follow.
The whole world is rotten and you're trapped in its seeping core.
Chapter 1: The Flangled Depths
The rotting stench must be the first to go, it offends far more than the invasive slippery tendrils ever could. One may plug their nostrils if they wish, but there is a heinous foulness to consuming rotten air with ones mouth, that seems far less preferable to intake of the nose. It is a foolish concept, that the nasal cavity is any more capable of filtering rotten particulates from the air than the trachea is on its own, yet my mind reels at the thought of unclean air upon my tongue.
Perhaps I will refrain from breathing altogether, as once I was. Why else does one breathe, but to think? I would prefer not to, in all honesty. I had long forgotten my lungs, left behind somewhere up above, I know not where or when. I did not care.
I did care, when they reinserted themselves into my sternum from below, pushing painfully upwards through the rest of the useless and crying internals of the abused cavity they called home. I asked them to leave once, they obeyed out of fear, or perhaps I pulled them out myself, it was so long ago I barely remember the altercation in detail.
A disagreement with my insides, skirmish with the stomach, wrestle the liver, untangling the intestines, fight with flesh. I thought everyone would be a winner, lose the heaviness from my gut, and free them from their prison. Yet they return, traveling all this way to refill the void they left behind. Perhaps I am not grateful enough, nothing has ever so categorically made known its desire to be near me.
The impotence of this train of thought is becoming increasingly apparent. My skull throbs with fresh blood and it is with no small surprise that I realize gravity has betrayed my trust by orienting itself to spite naturality. My hair falls upwards towards the sky.
Oh, perhaps I am the fool here, imitating a bat and judging gravity for my own lack of awareness. My legs are constrained by tissue, not of fabric, the biological kind which squelches and bleeds incessantly. I would say my ears were suffering the worst of this situation, if my nose were not still besieged by rot.
The urge to scream is welling up deep within my chest and the only thing preventing it's release is the library-like quiet which pervades the air. A shout seems far more vile than this flesh prison, though my reasoning for this conclusion is admittedly unsound and far beyond my minds capacity to resolve.
The humid air slides oddly down my cheeks and I realize I am falling now. It is a slow decent with little fanfare. Were my boots not tightly cinched I may have fallen out of them, as the sinew lowering me like a crane, appears to be attached only by the soles and nothing else. I count the seconds of descent through caverns of off-color flesh. The smell is only becoming more unbearable with each passing meter, and every time I believe I see the floor, another hole in the rotting meat reveals itself and I slip further down.
Down further still.
Further still.
Further.
What was once slick, soft red turns to dry, brittle black. Like sand melted to glass by an errant strike of lightning, it is tubes and tendrils and smooth, bubbling walls. I reach a hand out to brush against a nearby protrusion, it is hard and warm and sharp in places, such that a pinprick against my skin has me reeling back with haste.
In my musings, I miss the shift in support upon my boots, realizing all too late that I am falling faster, released from the meaty belay line. The scream tears itself easily from my neck now, no oppressive atmosphere to subdue its enthusiasm.
I am not so enthused. The floor is rushing terribly quickly and I have so little time to pray to whatever being is watching, that if I am to die here and now it would not be to a slow starvation, crippled upon the unforgiving ground of these hellish chambers with my neck twisted at a ridiculous angle, sputtering and dribbling drool, hoping for something to come finish me off. Please end me quickly and with nothing but the short sharp shock to provide the last unpleasantness before darkness permeates my mind. I know I have provided little kindness in my life, but I have tried to right my wrongs, if I am to be punished for ending a mans life do not let it be before I even set foot in hell, do not let me find him there, waiting with his disgusting grin.
Oh god, do not let my last moments be filled with the images of his face.