Catch ThirtyThree

Chapter Eight (In Death-Is Life)

So imminently visible; this cloaked innocent guilt

                  Sentenced to a lifetime, a second of structured chaos

                  Trampled by the ferocious, raging crowds of solitude

                  I’m the soil beneath me soaking up the sustenance of my own death

                  Extradited to the gods of chance, the deities of all things random

                  Alive, multicolored, twitching in their dead monochrome world

 

They plucked my body parts away. A hand had a grip on my head and twisted, popping it off from the neck up like a bottle cap. I saw my body disassembled, and I screamed in horror. How my vocal cords worked without lungs attached baffled me but only for a moment.

“YOU’VE ABANDONED THEM”

The voice was booming, deep, loud, shrieking, high-pitched, everything all at once.

“YOU WILL NEVER GO ANYWHERE”

“YOUR LIFE IS MEANINGLESS”

“YOUR WORK HAS NO PURPOSE”

I cried out. “Who are you?!”

“YOU ARE YOU. I AM I.”

I frowned and I felt a tear fall down my face. The arms were continuing to take apart the rest of my body; limb from limb, finger from hand, nail from finger, and joint from joint.

“What did I do?”

“YOU KNOW. YOU ALWAYS KNEW YOU WILL ALWAYS KNOW.”

Tears continued to stream down my face. Who was this being?

“YOUR FAMILY HAS BEEN LEFT AND YOU LEFT THEM AND YOU KNOW, YOU ALWAYS KNEW YOU WILL ALWAYS KNOW”

And with that statement, the hand gripping the top of my head threw me, and I felt impact. My temple cracked against cold stone, what felt like a wall, and I began falling. The rest of my body caught up with me and reassembled itself, and now I was whole, but falling. I felt myself choking. Drowning. As I fell, I grasped at my throat, but nothing changed. I continued to drown until I surfaced, gulping in breaths of air and splashing in the water. It was warm and smelled disgusting. I swam forward, not knowing where I was going. I just wanted out, out of this vile place.

I felt a concrete ledge. I gripped it and hurled myself onto it, rolling over and gasping before vomiting violently. Whatever I had just been swimming in had entered my mouth, but now it was out. I forced myself into a standing position. I was in a tunnel, and the top and walls were pulsing blue and green, faintly but beautifully. It was entrancing, and I found myself staring for many minutes, completely forgetting all the previous events until noticing a glimmer of light shining from above. It was just within reach; obviously the ceiling in this chamber was very low. I pushed upwards, and whatever I pushed on nudged but naught else. I then realized where I was; a sewer system. I vomited once more, now with the knowledge I had practically drank rainwater and sewage. If it was indeed a manhole above me then there should be a ladder nearby. As I felt along the wall to find it, I heard a light moaning coming from behind me, and I whipped around to face whatever the noises birthed from.

Bodies.

They were faceless, featureless. Where their faces should’ve been, it was as if someone had shoved a grenade in their mouths. Empty, bloody craters upon every head. They stood and moved about but did not move; one second, a body would be in front of me, the next it would be twenty feet down the tunnel. They were crawling out of the water and from the blue-green ceiling, walking, crawling, limping towards me. I screamed and bolted down the sewer in the opposite direction. Now their moans had turned to wails, comparable to screaming mountain lions.

Oh God why me…

I turned and looked, they were gaining…

Why me, why me

Closer, closer…

I’m going to die down here

And with that thought, my surroundings transformed into the surface world.

I found myself casually sitting in a park, hungry, while small children and families wandered about.