From the Depths

From the Depths










The great fleshy thing shuddered and quivered as the once-screaming man passed through its throat towards its enormous stomach. It flexed its oddly disproportionate and skeletal arms, ever ready to grip onto its next meal, then belched contently. It gazed down with tiny eyes at the queue of terrified and naked humans that lined up before it.

A thin, bearded man stood in front of the thing, next in line. His eyes were glued to the great arms, waiting for them to make their move. Every part of his mind was screaming at him, telling him to run away, to escape this rotting chamber and flee for his life. But, no. He would not even attempt such a thing. He had seen what had happened to the men before him who had attempted an escape. They were now crushed amongst the fleshy thing’s insides, being slowly digested.

He gazed around at the chamber, at its great roof and the spattered walls, all glowing with an amber tinge. How long had he waited to die? It seemed like years, but he knew it was only a matter of months. Every minute passed like an hour of torment and terror at the prospect of such a horrific death. And the worst thing about it was that no one had ever been spared by the creature. The thin man’s eyes came back to the creature as it looked down at him, deciding. It wasn’t a case of if he was going to die, but rather when his time would come.

No one had a chance of escaping this horror. The creature had enslaved - or killed - the entire British population with its mind in a matter of months after all. With a single thought, it could stop anyone in their tracks with an intense pulse of agony. Then it would reach with one of its skeletal arms and drag the howling offender back towards it.

Everyone was at its mercy when it had emerged from nowhere, pulling itself through the earth somewhere in London. It had pumped unbearable terror and agony into all the human minds in its vile range, pain that could only be resolved if that person descended to the very same cavern in which the thing had emerged. Only then would they be relieved of their plight. And for those strong few that resisted the horror, the creature went after them, homing in on them with its mind and tearing them apart with its teeth.

But where had it really come from? the people had wondered. From the depths of hell, some had speculated. Others claimed it grew in the earth, manifested from all the evil in the world. Some said there would be more coming. Nobody knew for sure, and the creature wasn’t telling. It looked as though humanity would soon come to an end without ever knowing why.

The creature shifted slightly. This made the thin man uneasy. The last time the creature had moved, it had been to snatch an overweight man from the front of the queue before he even had the chance to plea and bargain for his life like the others had. The thing had not been able to resist the plump meat, fat being of a rarity amongst the dwindling ranks of humanity these days. It stripped him of his abdominal flesh and muscle with its teeth as he screeched like a stuck pig, before silencing him with a single snap.

The thin man looked down at his body, at his meagre frame. What had once been a muscular form was now eroded with malnourishment, leaving his bones to protrude unhealthily and viciously from his body. His eyes had darkened and sunken so much he swore he could see the rims of his sockets without a mirror, forever framing his vision.

He had been working on his plea, his shameless monologue, for some time now. The beast allowed this, with promise of freedom to anyone who impressed it. Everyone had this right, it seemed. Well, almost everyone. He intended to make use of this, even though he knew it was a waste of time; no one had ever gotten free. However, he would still try. Perhaps he would be the first one to gain liberty. He would explain how he was inadequate for its tastes, a mere layer of skin draped across bone. Hardly a snack. Maybe, just maybe it would work. Even if everyone else in the cavern was pretty much just as thin and pathetic as him, maybe if he could just word it right it would release him.

The plump man who had just met his end, he had been an obese mess when he had first been imprisoned. Months later, now half his original weight, and with loose skin hanging from his arms and legs, he was still overweight compared to everyone else around him. So much that the creature had not just thrown him in its mouth and swallowed him whole like he had done with the others. No, the thing had wanted to enjoy him, to savour him. It picked him up, gazed upon his kicking and wailing body, and had admired him for a moment, admired yet another fat treat. Most of them had been eaten already, the first to go en masse. Now, they were an occasional luxury from the dark caverns that swelled with spindly humans.

How many humans were left in the cavern? How many more to eat before the creature moved onto another feeding ground? They had been depleted by more than half in a matter of months thanks to the thing’s unmatched appetite. And speaking of the human’s appetite, their pathetic food supply was also running low, and some of the survivors had been thinking about cannibalism. After all, they were all going to die anyway. Why not add some variety to the punch?

The thin man wondered what the other countries had been thinking when everyone in Britain had disappeared. He wondered if they even knew of the beast’s presence, if they had tried to fight it with their weapons and failed. When the creature left the caverns as it did every now and then, who knew what it was doing? Maybe they had blamed the disappearances of the population on some sort of disease, or something just as dark, and Britain was under quarantine. Or maybe only the government knew of the thing, and the citizens of their countries were told a compromising lie to keep them in order. Would they even believe their leaders if they told them the truth?

The thin man closed his eyes. The thing’s chamber reeked of torn ligaments and spilled organs. Affected by the anticipation, and having all of his emotions nullified after them being exploited so grossly, he finally gave up. He decided that now he just wanted to die. What awaited him outside of this chamber and the maze-like caverns that was worth living for? The surface of the country had been long emptied of humans, and he had no way of knowing how the other countries were doing. Perhaps there were more of the things dotted around the world, sharing the population of Earth among another in some kind of sick agreement. If that were true, then there was nothing worth leaving the cavern for.

And as for his family, well, they were long gone. It had been a long time since he had seen his wife and daughter, and the will to find them was just not there anymore. Sure, he hoped they were all right. Hoped they were still alive. But, apart from that, he was completely indifferent. He doubted under the circumstances that anyone still held onto their humanity.

With his eyelids pressed together so tightly, the man was suddenly more aware of the noises of the cavern: the whimpering of the people behind him, the shuffling of their feet, the crackle of the crude torches, the squelching of the creature’s insides. Even without his sight, the image around him was as clear as day. There really was no escaping the horror. He opened his eyes again and faced the creature. It had seemed to follow his example, now sitting with its own beady eyes shut.

Suddenly, the thin man’s ears began to crackle like television static, and he knew the same was happening to the people behind him; the creature was transmitting a message, as it had done many times before. It ordered everyone to go back to their damp cavern; it would summon them again tomorrow.

The thin man was not relieved that he had narrowly escaped a horrific death by the skin of his teeth. He let out a sigh and his shoulders sagged even lower in despair. Another night of waiting to die, another eternity of terror. A large part of him had been hoping the creature would finally take him that night, to release him from the darkness that plagued his mind after being here for so long. The same charade had been happening for weeks now: the creature picking up hundreds of skeletal humans and swallowing them like inadequate buffet food, occasionally finding a plump treat and eating it with gusto. The thin man had noticed this, had recognised this emerging pattern.

Well, he thought, if the thing wanted real meat, why didn’t it just grind up some of the humans and use them to fatten up the others?

Suddenly, static. Another transmission. The departing mass stopped in unity. The thin man froze too. He realised that the creature had read him, it had been tuned into his and everyone else’s thoughts the whole time. Everything it had ever read in the past, it had ignored. Until now, nothing had been worth the thing‘s attention. The thin man felt himself being summoned. He turned and walked to the creature as it gazed down at him. He did not feel fear, nor horror. Just curiosity. The quivering people watched him as he approached the great thing.

The thin man’s head was still fizzing. The creature patched in directly, a one-to-one. The man felt the thing’s thanks and congratulations for giving it such a great idea. He knew the creature would actually follow it through. He also knew that the creature intended to reward him. It recognised the apathy and emptiness and the desire to escape everything in the thin man‘s mind. It felt the blackness of his thoughts, and felt, in its own heart, what could be very loosely identified as a minuscule trace of pity.

The thing gazed at the worn man that stood before it.. It decided to release him.

With a long arm, the thing lifted the man precariously, placing his head in its great mouth. Thank you, the man thought, warm in the creature’s jaws. Thank you so much.

The great fleshy thing bit down hard, and the thin man emptied into its mouth.





1832 words.