(Don't) Panic

IV - Slaughter Bay

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*trigger warning:

+ suffocation + helplessness + humiliation + vulnerability + excrement +

*the full warning and list of triggers to be found in part 2

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Gaining consciousness felt like a band aid being ripped off. Not slowly like waking up but all at once and not at all pleasant. Sensation flooded her, light and weightlessness and a horrible mixture of smells. Something bumped into her and then off again. She sensed motion but could not place it. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see hundreds, maybe thousands of people all drifting around a gigantic white sphere aimlessly. A wordless scream pierced the eery silence, just one at first but like an avalanche the first scream of terror caused more and more to follow. It made her anxious in the unfamiliar environment, she had no control over the direction she moved in. She reached out for someone drifting by, it didn't matter that she didn't know them – just to hold onto something and not being so alone and helpless anymore. Her head was spinning from the situation she was in, the incomprehensibility and the enormity crushing her. Her stomach tightened and she curled in, holding herself and heaving. The vomit stayed in front of her mouth and nose, forming a bubble and preventing her from breathing. In panic she waved her hands to make the bubble go away and let her breeze again. A kick caught her in the side, knocking the direly needed air from her but also moving her away from her own sick. Small bubbles of yellowish liquid passed her by, some of them sticking to her as she drifted in their path and when she recognized some brownish lumps as faeces, she knew that the liquid had to be urine. It explained the smell that became more and more unbearable with every passing moment.

Once again she felt herself get kicked. It turned her around and another part of the sphere came into view. It was even bigger than she had thought at first and there were a lot more people here together with her. Relief flooded through her: If there were that many people they couldn't possibly be kidnapped. At least the police would have to search for them... if they were kidnapped. But who could do something like a kidnapping at this scale? Maybe she had been slipped drugs at the concert. The concert... she had been there... with the others... where were they now? If this was some drug induced trip there was no point in looking for them, she decided. She would just have to wait for it to wear off. The next kick she received to the midriff changed her mind however. No trip through crazy land should hurt that much. She instinctively reached out her arms and legs, intending to swim through the empty space and head for the other side of the sphere but unlike water there was no way for her to propel herself forward. She just paddled, remaining in one spot and turning on herself slightly. At one point she hung upside down and she felt the anxiety strengthen within her until she noticed that there was absolutely nothing that would mark which way was up and which down – there certainly was no gravity. She still hadn't managed to move from where she was hanging in mid-air when she heard a blood curdling scream. Craning her neck she could see that by grabbing each other a kind of balloon of people had amassed in one spot. Like ants they were crawling over one another, grabbing hold of whatever they could reach. At this point it must have several people inside of it, judging by its size. Even while she watched more people attached themselves to the ball, making it grow and more people vanished within. The scream was cut off without preamble, without any decline, as if the person had died all of a sudden. The thought chilled her to the bone.

A few people were drifting around aimlessly, without moving. One of them was quite close to her and even as a lump of waste bumped into his face the man didn't even attempt to push it away. She was close enough to see his chest rising and falling, or at least she wanted to believe that she could see it expanding. She had never seen a dead body in her life and the situation frightened her enough already without the added horror of corpses floating about.

There were more screams that just stopped as if cut off, as if the person at their origin had used up all the air left for just one last scream and died with it. There were also more human balloons. Droplets of blood were mixing in with the shit, the pee and the vomit. She tried to steer clear of it but it was unavoidable. What she could do was making sure that she herself wasn't added into one of the bundles. Another young woman that had somehow managed to propel herself forward and was aiming for her received a heavy blow to the jaw as well as severe scratches to any part that was within arm's reach. She screamed at her to stay away, to leave her alone, to get going. She didn't know where this rage came from. It wasn't like her. Usually she was calm and composed. If there was nothing she could do about a situation, there was no point in agonizing over it, better to analyse the situation and try to turn it for the better. Usually, however, she wasn't panicking. Usually she wasn't floating alongside thousands of screaming people and their piss.

At that point a hole appeared in the boundary of the sphere, not far from her. Someone else had noticed its appearance too and was closing in on it. Contrary to her, the man was not just floating about. He had worked out how to move and was now diving for the hole in the wall.

When his head and arms had vanished he didn't move any further for a moment. Then he seemed to want to get out again, struggling erratically. Then he went completely limp and was then sucked in entirely.

She watched curiously, would he reappear? Would he come back and signal to the rest of the people in the sphere that this was a save exit? Would a swarm of piranhas be expelled from the hole and gnaw them all to the bone?

The lifeless body that moved towards the hole on its own accord wasn't what she had expected. The level of noise rose even more when another guy was gripped by an invisible force and dragged to the hole kicking and screaming, injected into it head first and stopped struggling instantly, as if knocked out.

As more and more people were taken away in this manner, she grew more and more desperate to move away from the hole that seemed to be the source of the force. She paddled around, thrashing her arms and legs but to no avail. She too was taken. It felt as if she were enveloped by a big length of heavy cloth and encased in a bubble exactly her size. There was scarcely any air within it, leaving her gasping while struggling to escape the grip.

She was pushed into the hole head first.