ᵍᵒᵈˡʸ • ˢᵒᵘᵗʰ ᵖᵃʳᵏ

[6]

⇾ AFTERMATH

You took a deep breath and panicked. More like tried for a deep breath, but there was no air to be found. Your head was in a fishbowl, or maybe the ocean. That would make sense, the salt water causing the constant stinging in your eyes.

Or no, opening your eyes you realized you weren't underwater at all. All around you was wide open space. Nearly wide open, you were in a field of dusty greens and sickly browns. The tall grass dusted your cheeks, you were flat on your back and could feel the grooves of the earth against your naked spine. The sky was dark yet deathly pale. It looked like tornado weather, felt like it too. You couldn't shake the uncomfortable warmth.

Just when you'd started feeling numb, a low growl started somewhere in the distance. You had to sit up slightly to peer over the tall razorblades of half dead grass. You couldn't feel anything, but it seemed to be coming from the treeline a couple hundred feet away at least. The ground began to tremble under the force of the terrible noise, it crawled in through your nose, ears, and pores and made your body clench and tear up from the inside.

It felt as if a dozen razor blades were inside your stomach and spreading to every last one of your atoms, being thrashed and ripping through the tissue within yourself. The feeling gouged down your throat, flooding your stomach with an inescapable nausea and forcing you to scream. The sound was loud enough to make your ears bleed, but never loud enough to drown out the mysterious growl that never seized.

With it came the knowledge that something terrible was upon you. Something so unimaginably vile that it made you violently retch, heaving over yourself and grasping tufts of rocks or grass on the ground as you felt you would topple right off the earth if you didn't.

You didn't want to see the creator of your torment, but it revealed itself to you still, darting out of the woods and coming towards you at the speed of a bullet. You couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was, partly because of the blur that fell over the animalistic creature with it's intense speed, but mostly because it looked like something that couldn't exist, or that you had definitely never seen before.

At first glance it was some kind of dog, maybe mixed in with reptilian genes and the eyes of death itself. It had the body of a boar and was huge, at least eight feet tall with pulsing muscles armoring it's entire beefy body. Massive horns adorned it's head, curling up and slightly forwards. They looked to be stained with the blood of enemy's past.

It's mouth was not open, but it still emitted the disabling sound. It buzzed inside your head and split your skull down the middle, pools of blood spilled out of your ears and became sticky on your neck. You put everything you had into trying to scramble backwards and get away, but the beast was already on top of you.

The smell of rotting flesh brought tears to your eyes and you could taste it on your tongue when you opened your mouth to scream. It heaved over you for a moment, catching it's breath and preparing to prey on you. You'd have to guess you looked pretty tasty lying there in a pool of your own piss, because a massive splash of drool fell onto your forehead and dripped down over your eyes. Your arms weren't free to wipe it away and hopefully numb the sting that came with it's mucus dripping into your eyes, but you figured you'd probably rather have them closed anyways than to witness it kill you.

Another skull crushing roar and you could feel it's hot breath suddenly at your neck. It plunged it's long jagged teeth into your jugular, you could feel the flesh ripping apart. Too shocked to even scream, you lie there and died. Slowly of course, waiting in agony as the beast dug in for another bite, making a mess of your fresh carcass and enjoying the taste of your pulsing meat. Seconds more and everything went black.

-

You rose with a sharp gasp, both hands flying to your throat, expecting to find an empty, gaping wound in its place. Your neck felt smooth and sweaty, but definitely not damaged. It was hard to catch your breath, almost impossible with the added stress of the teardrops that started to pour out of you like a busted pipe.