Vincent was vaguely aware of warmth spreading across his chest, accentuated by gusts of bitter cold. The driver's seat began to phase out of existence, as if it were being dissolved by invisible acid. He was barely conscious of what was happening: he was dying. But he was too far gone, far too tired to be truly horrified. His body could not summon enough energy to feel fear or pain.
He felt himself leave the world. His body fell through the car, then through the asphalt. Soon, he was passing through the dirt and sediment that held up the asphalt. But he was also falling upwards, through the roof of the car, ascending through the whirling snowflakes, soaring above the clouds...drifting...drifting.
He could not actually see any of this or hear any sign of his departure. But he felt himself tumbling through the barriers of reality, drifting until he found himself floating in a void. He opened his eyes and all he saw was darkness. He was weightless here. Sensation inexplicably returned to his extremities, and he found that he could move his arms and legs. He reached up to touch the side of his cheek.
“What...” he whispered.
He was floating, falling, drifting in a realm of nondescript shadow. He could not tell whether he was upside down, right side-up, or sideways. There was no gravitational reference by which he could orient himself. He could feel his limbs flailing as he tried to search for some sign of solidity, but all he found was air.
He tried to call out for help, but the void absorbed his voice, his words devoured by the impermeable darkness. The silence was so dominant, the ringing in his ears sounded like a siren in comparison.
If this is what death was like, the experience was underwhelming. He half-expected his life to flash before his eyes like they depicted in all the movies and novels. Instead, there was a heaping pile of nothingness. Soon, there would be nothing left. No fear, no pain, no happiness, nothing. He would not even know he was dead when his brain finally died.
This “realm” was his last episode. Any second could be the last, Vincent was simply waiting for the tide to come in and wash the remnants of his broken mind away. He was just surprised...he felt nothing. No fear, sorrow, he was simply numb.
But then something appeared in the void. He could not hear it, he could not see it, or detect it with any of his five senses. Regardless, he knew something was out there and it was headed right for him. Was there an angel of death after all? Had it come to take him away?
Then he felt his skin tingle, he knew the presence headed towards him was the same one that had been watching him on the road, that had been tailing him for weeks. It was the Stalker.
He knew he was in danger, but he could not do anything to save himself. As it closed the distance, he thought he could discern more details about the presence. It had thousands of limbs and yet none at all. It had a gargantuan body, and yet lacked one. It slithered like a snake and skittered like a spider. It was everywhere and nowhere, its nature being one of constant confusion and contradiction. Yet if there was one thing that remained constant, it was malice.
He tried to escape, but his efforts were fruitless considering he could not grab hold of anything. There was no wall to push off and no floor to run on. Before he could figure out what to do, the Stalker was upon him.
Cold claws clasped his arms and legs and pulled him close, his screams were sucked into the void. The attacker held him in place as something large stung his chest. It felt like a glowing hot knife piercing his ribcage and he cried out, beating his hands against his attacker.
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But it held firm as the spike pumped. Vincent swiped through the air, thrashing through the insubstantial confluence of his assailant, but it was like attacking smoke or attacking an idea.
Finally, it withdrew its spike.
But the pain did not leave. A fire spread from the point of contact, as though somebody was pouring molten lead into his wound. He clutched at his chest, hyperventilating as the poison circulated through his body. His teeth clenched and his whimpering fled into the void.
The flames came in waves as he was scourged from the inside-out. Thick beads of sweat ran down his cheeks and drizzled into the weightless domain.
However, the pain began to lessen, dulling into a mere ebbing and pulsing. His trembling shoulders heaved with his labored respirations. Every inch of his body felt as though it had been both bruised and sunburnt.
Every movement hurt, every breath he took ached, but it was fading. The fire was still in him, but it had cooled somewhat. However, the Stalker was still with him, its presence thick and shapeless. It grabbed him again and pulled him close.
“No...stop...” he groaned as it raised a second spike, smaller by far than the first. He could see it because it had a dull glow. “Please...don’t–”
Heedless of his words, it stabbed him a second time, though this piercing did not hurt anywhere near as much as the first. It pumped a new venom into his chest and withdrew the stinger. At first, nothing happened. But then Vincent felt his arm click.
It was a subtle thing at first, the popping of a joint in his elbow. Several more like it followed, clicking all over his body as if he had gotten up to take a stretch. His neck cracked, his spine clicked, and even his jaw popped. His entire body felt like a house settling in the winter, creaking all around. This was all but a prelude to what was to come next.
It had been years since Vincent had experienced something so terrible and horrendous that it reverted him to a child-like state. Life had taught him how to handle pain and the threshold required for reverting to that kind of helplessness was high. When a man was injured, he screamed and swore, but he did not cry out for his mother. But what happened next turned him into a terrified child.
After a minute of the weird clicking, his arm snapped. There were a few seconds of shock as bones jutted through his elbow, then he shrieked. The acid in his blood began to contort him, breaking bones and limbs, entering a new, more horrific phase. His fingers twisted and his shoulder blades jut out of his back. The poison broke him, jerking and twitching his body like a marionette.
The venom broke bone and shaped new bone in its place. Ribs fractured and new ones grew. Alterations were made to his skeleton as the poison sculpted his form. He screamed, begging somebody to help him, somebody to stop this. But nobody answered. He became a religious fanatic, praying for any god listening to have mercy, but only the silence of the void greeted his prayers.
He begged for his attacker to stop, to let him go, but its essence held him firm. He cried out because he had no idea what else to do, screaming until the poison broke his jaw and clamped it shut. It ate into his innards, dissolved his organs, flooded his lungs with blood and fluid until his muffled screams became a stifled gargling.
All he could do was roll his eyes back in a silent shriek. He should have died by now, yet he was kept alive to savor a glimpse of hell.
The Stalker grabbed him for a third time and raised two stingers dripping with venom and energy. Two simultaneous strikes triggered a third phase, more terrible than the second and first. These poisons, acting as catalysts, became as threads, weaving the substance of Vincent’s being into something new, changing the axioms of every cell in his body.
Nerves exploded until agony was all that he knew. It robbed him of his pleading, of his ability to even think of mercy. It filled his head and substituted his thoughts until even the idea of relief was wiped from his mind.
Eruptions burst forth from him, extrusions of flesh and bone, while his skeleton continued to meld into new forms. His skull cracked, his spine stretched, and something tore out of his backside. Static filled his head until his mind went blank.
It was difficult to gauge how much time passed, for every second of this hell was stretched into an hour, an hour into a week, and a week into an eternity. Eventually, the poison began to subside and leave him. The Stalker had vanished, leaving him alone, flayed and scourged in the void.
Gravity took hold of him, and he felt his body being deposited face-down on a stone surface, his head hanging over a ledge. He wanted to scream, but he felt too numb to do so. A lethargy immediately began to overwhelm him. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.