Breathe—
Breathe—
Breathe, goddammit!
This smell!
Pwoh...
I'm alive. What! How?
My head is pounding, beating as a debilitating percussion.
My lungs swell with panicked gasps. Choking, Inhaling, gulping down this force-fed meal of turpentine and rot. It scorches, searing down my esophagus into my lungs, all until I heave it up.
Fuck! It just came out my nose.
Saliva bile dribbles forth, congealing across my chin. Too weak. Too heavy to wipe away.
My vision strains, blinded by a pitiful dark.
Is it getting hotter?
Move. I said MOVE!
My nails rake against the leathery confines. My body writhes, desperate for escape: wriggling, jerking, kicking, scratching—then, finally… some light!
Come here.
Reaching forward with my left hand I hurl myself at this pale but green light, shoveling aside each and every obstruction, desperately wrestling against this weight that would see me buried.
From out my lungs some guttural heaves leave, then plows forth that left hand. More nails split, it's wrist cracks, these continued sacrifices only drive me up and around to try and escape this ashen mire.
Like a dead bug I crawl, wading through this filth, this muck, I'm blinded by the mud, but eventually, through some space, my arms erupt into the consecrated cool of the flowing air beyond.
HAHAHA! Freedom! Delectable, delectable, just one more squeeze until—Thud!
White-hot pain sears across my crumpled nose. Crippled cartilage screams aloud, crushed against the smooth but unyielding obstacle that lay before me…
Just what fuck is this? Where am I?
Where am I?
I yank back my hands, they catch. Caught tight on the object of round curvature I feel the insides of its cagey embrace.
YOU DARE DENY ME UH!
Fine...
Let my mouth do what the hands cannot. Ivory over flesh. Desperation hath no dignity nor shame and nor do I.
My emerging smile is carnivorous, it digs its teeth down on a catchment in merciless vise. I feel chalk‑dust grit grinding across my enamel, working, faltering then failing hard to gain some proper leverage.
Ugh,My teeth, you'll regret that!
What remains of my jaw, trembles, still gripping onto that surface in a frontal bite. I, using the blunt impact of my jaw, continue chewing on it in efforts to adhere to its decaying but brittle frame.
Just try break me. I hiss, froth foaming at the corners of my mouth mixing with that powdery taste.
I forbid it.
I bite down, then copper gushes.
Again!
I nibble. I lick. I huff. I curse. I coax. I plead.
Nothing...
Nothing!
My eyes shut, my mouth moves, and from it nearly wriggles out a unconscious prayer.
Byack in there, worm. There is no god for you to reach out to, we are alone here.
Biting back my tongue I chew on my words in deep consideration. Raw, mashing their empty substance with visceral disgust, I spray their remains out towards the darkness instead.
Come on...
Come on...
A dry laugh rattles from out of my throat, breaking into a wheezing, wet, cough-filled phlegm.
Insanity! How could I even consider tempting those silent figures. They don't even seem to speak my language.
Damn it.
Damn it all!
Thud.
My forehead slams against that protruding thing.
Again.
Thunk.
My lips quiver. My vision blurs.
Useless.
A sob slips to the back of my throat.
I am alone.
This smell, the pounding, and now this new rash burrowing into my back. I… I-uh, just can't.
I let out some chesty air and slump back down. The light dims, the world grows lighter as if all ones burdens were suddenly lifted.
Entranced by this abyss, I stare. In it, comfort and familiarity settle.
Minutes pass. Hours pass too. Well… that's just what it feels like.
Time passes, or perhaps not. I don't really bother to care anymore.
Funny how all your worries melt away when you just, stop thinking.
My lungs deflate, my body follows. My mind wanders so as my body continues sweltering from heat.
Words, they carve themselves behind my eyelids. I see them and their structure.
A poem?
Ah yes… one of mine it seems.
'I raised their hearts, yet here I'm chained. Their freedom bought, my soul profaned. I carved their rights with blood and breath, And earned no gift, but, my living death.'
My final words. Too see them here, now, how awfully... comical.
I breathe out once more before my eyes roll further back, to black.
Awareness strikes but my sensations numb. My form melts, conjoining itself to this collective entity called the pile. I enjoy this, as my identity fades so do the problems of the mortal world.
A brief moment of bliss.
Pound. Pu‑Pound. Pound. Pu‑Pound.
Who is it! Who started construction at my burial? I won't stop haunting you even after I kill you.
Grasping at a nearby object, I throw it vaguely, directed at the sound.
Bouncing, I hear it land with a faint tumble. However, that's all, nothing seems to follow up from its landing as the loud noise resumes squawking on again not moments later.
Pound. Pu‑Pound. Pound.
Again, I just died and now you want to disturb my new grave home. I feel nothing but contempt for you noise polluters. Go on, take me of my clothes you little snots, part from me my last mortal possession and plunder from me the last of my dignity too.
Where is your respect for us dead. I warn you leave now grave digger before you have to smell my shit as it falls out from my dead body.
Lifting my pinkie I attempt to wriggle myself around and attempt to avert my gaze, but, nothing happen.
Fine, continue then, like I could even care. My neck rests back down completely limp.
…
Pound. Pu‑Pound. Pound. Pu‑Pound.
What even are you doing, Digging... I remember times I used to dig big trenches at the beach and watch people trip over them and fall over, good times.
A small grin curves across my face.
If I find you're also doing that, I might give you some ounce of my respect.
Digging huh.. I tut. Then a flash of inspiration strikes.
My head swiftly perks back up, I feel as the tip of my nose bashes itself once more.
FUHK
Letting out a raspy groan I scrunch up, my eyes open up.
I apologise for my ignorance earlier; please, come dig me out stranger. I don't really want to die like this haha, it was just a joke, a fun game if you will, I would never disrespect a hard labourer such as yourself. Pplease, please, please.
"Just get me the hell out!"
A smile creeps itself onto my face, then, as if just raised from their slumber my hands open up, reaching up I grasp around violently.
Hahaha… Leverage.
I cast my chin against the rubble to make it pop. My jaw hangs loose, hooking around once again.
Gripping, pulling with my spine as a leash, I rein in my most rabid bite.
Woof, Woof. I've been told I make a good dog. Come over here now and I'll show you why.
My butt wags as my mouth muscles tear, taut with tension, weaving some half-matted expression of phony submission across my face. Compounding this, the rush of being forcefully pushed from my neck then shoulders up scrapes throughout my entire body from my legs, causing the surroundings to crack then collapse away, giving way for my timely escape.
The world spins. Then falls.
Tumbling down around then out, I pound on that bony tail above my arse, for a bout of bad landing.
"My back." I groan softly, cupping around my injured cheeks. My body straightens itself out with an awkward stretch.
Laying still now, I look to the endless sky above, its darkness stares down on me with its empty gaze.
Wiping my eyes of their tears, I continue still, noting how some plumes of smoke above are coloured with a purple gloom as they rise from the ground beneath. Following their path to their causes origin, there lay more and even more piles, then pits too, chock filled up with the bodies of the dying dead.
Shifting my neck around, my head wobbles over. The grounds wet dirt sticks to half my face as I can only look forward, watching those gloomy remains lit up by some purple fire burn to chalky ash.
I breathe out, my jaw tightens, and out falls the remains of that mysterious object.
It was someone's rib.
I feel my heart as it continues thumping, its unsteady rhythm shakes my hands with an unsettling jitter.
I breathe in, slowly, those same two hands that once covered my face move to block my thumping ears.
Not again.
My head continues pounding, my ears battered and bruised by this relentless hammering of my own rushing blood, catch a faint squeak of quiet sound from resting against my palms suction.
Then, I hear it, faintly. Footsteps, approaching.
I better be careful here, they could be anyone. How do they carry themselves; soft, rhythmic or light? Tsk, I can't hear anything to go off.
Then, my very ears shattering like glass, rending my silence asunder. Chaos pours in; filtered through the sounds and scents of this world's morbid plane, between which I catch two barely audible voices as they chat in the nearby domain.
Oh great ones, please have mercy on this pathetic lamb! Lead them to where the grass is green and food is plentiful.
My senses grow with increasing clarity. Gradually, those wisps of foreign and strange elements settle down into my weary body; forming the world around with me kneeling at its center.
Minutes of this prolonged penitence are suddenly interrupted by a piercing sound, that turns my blood instantly cold.
Screaming?