Living Hell

    He found himself there again, the dark place.  A place he found himself increasingly often. A place of unnatural smells.  A place of blackness.  A place he felt he could not return from.

He opened his eyes and saw blackness, nothing else but pure darkness

"Dark here is different" he thought

    It was heavy and oppressive, he felt like he was wearing a steel suit complete with cinder block shoes.  The darkness alone was enough to weigh him down, then there was the floor.  The ground was covered in sludge that smelled and felt like thick, soupy vomit.  He stretched out into the blackness above him, not sure if he wanted to touch what lay above him and snapped up nothing but hot, wet air. He fell back onto this feet with a wet plop, he could feel the warm slop all around his feet, it felt thick and gritty. There were blobs of some unknown solid amongst the disgusting, foul smelling liquid.  He looked ahead and saw nothing, he listened for any trace of anything except himself and heard nothing.

"Its so....
         How did.....
Where am...."

    It was so hard to think that he thoughts escaped as soon as he began to hatch them. He would never want to describe the smell, there were no words for it, he had to use every bit of strength he had not to add to the sludge he was standing in  He head spinning and stomach sour, he pulled his foot out of the soup and slowly moved it ahead of him with a wet slap. 

"I'm nowhere" he thought quickly before the smell again claimed his every thought

  The silence was almost as heavy as the air the only noise was the wet slap of his feet as he pushed ahead. With each step he felt heavier and heavier, he knew that his body should have given up on him by now but he couldn't stop his feet from slowly cutting through the gruel that lay beneath him.  He had no idea how long he continued forward, time seemed to be as hopelessly lost as he was in this place.  He stopped and turned to his right

"Walls" he managed to think "Has to have walls"

    He stepped cautiously as not to fall into the digestive juices below him and slowly outstretched his hands. After a few moments his hands collided with something that felt....alive.  A soft flesh-like solid pushed back against his open palms sending a dare to push harder. He stood frozen in terror, the Flesh Wall began to slowly cover the tops of his fingers in a sticky hot substance that began to burn his skin.  Before he got the chance to reel his hands back in horror the Flesh Wall oozed a hearty helping of the same gruesome soup that covered the floor up to his ankles.  He pulled his hand back from the Flesh Wall and stood in terror staring into the blackness at the Flesh Wall, the organ, thats the only way he could describe it, shot a wet gurgling laugh in his direction and regurgitated more of the vile liquid on to the floor  He said nothing and thought nothing, he couldn't have if he tried. This place wouldn't allow it, his hands shaking and his heart pounding he turned forward once again and continued his trek through this horrible maze.

    Each step was harder than the last, the floor seemed to be getting softer and the swamp of bile thicker.  Home seemed such a far away memory that he couldn't remember much about time before this place.  He knew he hadn't been in this place his whole life but strained to remember anything but the dark place.  He remember the sun, above all else, the sun stuck out the most.  The warmth, the light, illuminating the entire planet, that is except this place.  The thought of the light of his past struck a cord of despair in him and he stopped knee deep in the filth.  He was going to die in this place, slowly digested until he was nothing more that a heap of human slop, little more than the putrid liquid that lay before him.  He felt a tear fall down his face, slowly at first, then picking up speed until it mixed with the liquid beneath him. 

    Just then from far ahead of him a small noise, so small that at first he thought it was just his mind yearning for something else to be trapped in this living prison with him. Then again a small voice was crying, he couldn't anything more than it sounded like a child.  He began running as quickly as the floor would allow towards the cry.  The cry emerged closer this time, the floor seemed to be hardening, impeding his efforts to find the voice.  He ran harder and harder, he legs close to giving out but the thought of another person in this place with him gave him hope and he was willing to risk everything to find this child.  Together they would escape this place, together they would return to the sunshine and the cool, crisp breeze.  He suddenly crashed into something solid and hard within the thick slop on the floor.  He landed headfirst with a wet crash into the digestive bile, he felt the liquid enter his throat and rip its way in to his stomach.  He quickly ripped his head above the still solidifying bile and suddenly got a taste of what he had ingested.  It was unlike anything any of his senses had experienced before.  It was like a knife wound to the heart, worse than the smell of rotting garbage, the sight of your family being slowly ripped to pieces in front of you, the taste of vomit and the sounds of a million crying children.  All of these feeling hit him at the same time, the pain was unbearable, slowly spreading throughout his body.  Starting in his stomach and slowly, agonizingly, creeping outward.  Then the heaving started slowly at first but quickly building until he was vomiting the pain out.  He stood up, wiping the remaining bile off with his sleeve and began to attempt to put together what just happened.

    Suddenly, a great booming laugh echoed through the darkness.  The small voice screamed in terror at the deep laughter.  He tried to move forward but the floor had completely solidified around his knees. "AHahAHahaHAAhaahahaAhAha" the strange laugh was closer now.  It wasn't human, he was sure of that, it sounded almost manufactured.  Something that sounded like that couldn't be real, the thing that the voice belonged to had be some kind of machine. Nothing natural is that terribly dark and sinister sounding. The small voice echoed out again further away this time. "AhahAhaAHhhahhaaaaHAhahahaAHHAhhaa" The laughter was deafening this time, it was right on top of him.  He looked up and saw two dark eyes above him, barely lighter than the darkness he was surrounded by but they were there.  The eyes glared at him as they floated around out of unison, like each one belonged to a different creature.  They floated closer to him and danced around him mockingly, the liquid was around his torso now and his arms were locked underneath the digestive cement.  He could see a sparkle in the eyes, they were enjoying watching him slowly sink into a rotting bile filled trap.  The bile covered his neck now, the smell burned his nostrils, the thought of taking anymore of the liquid into his body was unbearable, he struggled against the liquid but it was to no avail.  The last thing he saw was the eyes smiling back at him as the bile covered his face, his last memory would be a muffled laughter coming from somewhere above him.



                                       To be continued