Nightcrawlers

43

Wetness.

Dripping.

Pain.

Numbness.

These were the things Chipney had been feeling for some time now as he swam in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t sure when he was dreaming and when he was awake. But now as he concentrated, focused, forced his brain to the surface of the mire of confusion, he remembered. The light. The fresh air. Then falling into that pool of rushing water that threw him against rocks and stone walls and then vomited him onto a muddy flat of dripping water.

He was not alone.

He knew, in that tomblike blackness, there was another. He could hear the low, rumbling breathing. A clotted, congested sound of tubercular lungs sucking moist, thick air.

He tried to move, but could not.

There was no feeling beneath his waist, just a frightful rubbery emptiness. Paralyzed. Yes, he knew then with a manic, building hysteria that he was helpless.

But he was not alone.

The other moved towards him, pressed its fungous, soft bulk against him and he went mad at its touch, its pressure, its nearness… for its flesh felt like, if anything, the flesh of a mushroom, bloated and warm. Pendulous breasts brushed against his face and he knew it was a female. He could feel larval things squirming in those heavy teats.

His hand fumbled at his tac vest and pulled out a flare.

He had to see.

He had to drive her away.

He had to keep that horror off him.

The flare ignited and the brilliance made his eyes burn, but he saw what hovered over him, that swollen face with its bubbling growth of pink fungus, the flies lighting off it, the bones jutting from the fungous hide. It was barely human, but it was very lonely. Its face lacked eyes and a nose, it was just a shriveling, puckered chasm like a blowhole that suckered open and closed.

This is what he saw in the light before she knocked the flare away with a huge, fleshy hand of clear, glistening tissue. The fingers were slats, purple and black veins like wires beneath the skin.

Then the light was gone.

He began to scream as she tended to him, licking him with a rough and narrow tongue, cleansing his wounds with her own secretions, picking parasites from his hair. She cooed at him with a weird, shrilling sound that set him to trembling.

He thought she was going to kill him, devour him.

But as her hair fell over him like rotting kelp and that oozing, puckered mouth found his own, he knew she wasn’t going to hurt him.

And he was certain of it when she shoved something between his lips that she had plucked off her own body. He tried to spit out. But she wouldn’t have it. She wanted him to eat. He didn’t know what it was, but its texture was soft and repellent… then his tongue became aware of its delicate, almost nutty flavor and he found himself biting into it. The juice that filled his mouth was sweet, fermented, and almost effervescent… and he squirmed as it filled his body with chemical fireworks.

She made a grunting, slobbering sound.

But he understood. “Yes,” he said, everything inside him beginning to take flight. “It’s… it’s very good.”