Jim woke up feeling different. He had been having a crappy night. He drank too much, lost his wallet, and got kicked out of his apartment. He was forced to call a sketchy friend for a place to sleep for the night.
A worn down and urine-stained bed were what met him when he arrived. He had laid down on its uneven surface clutching his Jack Daniels and hoped his friend wouldn't come bursting in on him in the morning. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to sleep.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed, maybe an hour, maybe five minutes, but he felt pulled abruptly from sleep. It was like that sensation of falling and waking up from the shock. He found himself on a hard and boiling surface, he marveled that his body throbbed but not from pain. His heart was racing and clenching inside of him. He tried opening his eyes, but they were sealed tight with grogginess. When he moved it seemed he had gained a couple of hundred pounds.
Confusion wreaked havoc on his mind as his stomach lurched and twisted within him. He slowly opened his eyes to find a sickening sight. He lay in a hazy and tinted red room with black walls adorned in human limbs and parts. Legs, arms, hands, and lips hung cinched to the wall. His breath faltered. The air was thick with a smoky stench of burnt flesh and sulfur. He looked down at himself and froze with numbing terror.
His body was horribly misshapen and oblong. Murky scales covered it in various parts. One arm, in particular, was gritty like tree bark. He shrieked, the sound resembling a strangled gurgle. He touched his mouth to find that one corner drooped lower than its counterpart. He shook his head hysterically, 'this isn't real, this isn't happening,' he thought over and over again as he frantically touched his face, yet he felt nothing but leathery mush.
He stopped when he registered muted screams ringing out in the distance. They were overlapped by a sound that Jim could only vaguely associate with the cries and hissing of what may have been rabid animals. He pinched his hardened arm, 'wake up, wake up.' No pain, just a tingle. He did feel something. It was like skin rolling over on bone.
He heard a faint conversation a couple of yards away. The voices were guttural, deep, distorted, and angry. Jim's skin crawled. Suddenly an atrociously hairy creature materialized just outside of the room. Hanging onto the frame, it looked on at Jim with wide eyes. Its eyes stood out in stark contrast to the rest of its body. A body cloaked in pitch-black hair only distinguishable when its tendrils wriggled around chaotically. Jim shot back in fear, scrambling away from it.
It cocked its head at him, "Come," it said in a sloshy hiss. When Jim hesitated, it snarled, "Mavelin, we're waiting on you." Jim shot up and watched as it half walked half slinked away. Jim shook his head and continued his mantra, 'this isn't real, this isn't really happening.' He followed it at a distance, trembling, afraid that it would hurt him if he stayed put. Feverishly, Jim scrambled at trying to understand what was happening and make sense of where he was. This was a nightmare, he thought, it had to be. The air was thick, oppressing. The flesh on his stomach and shoulders moved like jelly. A lump on his neck would lurch forward every time he took a step. Jim felt like he was losing his mind; his heart, while it should have been beating frantically, sat still and swollen in his chest.
They came to a room with a long table surrounded by more hideous creatures. They were of different shapes, sizes, and colors. Each one was surreal: they all had distorted bodies, with some limbs larger than others, and each seemed to be melting or mushy in various areas. One's leg had an extra appendage hanging from the side that appeared to be melting and dripping black liquid. Others were hairy, oddly so. Like the creature that found him, their hair was dark as night and moved around in every which way. The tallest of the group stood at the head of the table, when Jim entered, it pierced him with a glassy stare. "They've gathered," its voice a shrieking guttural exhale.
