A Fear Response
He was afraid. He was not often afraid, and yet he was currently quite frightened. Why was he frightened you ask? Well, fear is a rather common reaction to seeing your insides on your outside. You see, he had been disemboweled by a rather strange being earlier that day. Strangely, though he was currently making quite the fashion statement with his lung earrings and intestine necklace, he was still marginally alive and well. Admittedly, he was rather less than intact, but he was still alive. For the most part…
Now he was confused, as anyone who found themselves suddenly wearing a liver glove and a heart bracelet would be. However, he did not let his panicky, confused terror get in the way of his cold, hard, pragmatic logic; he would never allow himself to lose that, no matter what. His logic is all he had, and he refused to give it up without a massive, bloody fight.
So he decided to see if he could stuff his insides back inside. Several minutes and one disturbing numbness later, he had got most of himself back in the generally correct place. In the process, he discovered that he didn’t really feel much of anything, especially not pain, just an even more disturbing numbness to fill the void of sensation.
As he was attempting to get up he suddenly fell right back down; an incredibly strange (yet not painful) sensation coming from his insides confusing and disorienting him. It felt like many things were moving and rearranging themselves inside him. At first he couldn't figure out what it was or could be, thinking that maybe it was parasites or some small animals that got stuffed inside him when he was pushing his organs… his organs! That was when it hit him, his organs were rearranging and repairing themselves inside him, trying to go back where they belong, most likely.
When the sensation (his organs repairing and replacing themselves) finally settled down he got back up and decided to head home to think about this development in a less stressful place. He was halfway there when he got blindsided by a semi.
He woke up to find that he was lying on his back in the grass and his legs were numb–in fact his whole lower body was numb… Oh, thats probably why… His lower body was crushed between a burning, ripped up semi and a rather thick tree, attached to him solely by his intestines. He looked towards the drivers seat and found that the man was very, very dead. Like, partially turned to red paste, dead.
As he watched he felt something strange; similar to when his organs rearranged themselves and looked towards his crushed bottom half to see his intestines were seemingly writhing and swelling as his lower body was absorbed into them. When they were finally finished he noticed something disturbing (and coming from a guy who got disemboweled and crushed by a truck all in the same day, that's saying something). His legs hadn’t fully grown back. With this horrific revelation in his head, he tried to crawl away from the burning wreckage with his hands and less than a fourth of his legs.
Before he had gone very far at all, he felt the stumps of his legs moving; more like writhing, actually. When he looked back at them, strange reddish tendrils of various sizes slowly wound out of his body. As they grew, he felt his body seeming to unwind itself to fuel them; an unpleasant sensation indeed. When the tendrils had grown to a certain length, they paused for a moment almost like they were gathering their bearings. By this point he barely even had most of his brain left; the rest having been repurposed into the strange tendrils, and he had long since blacked out.
After a moment, the tendrils seemed to notice the crushed remains of the truck driver, and as one they surged forth towards it, spiralling around one another. When they reached the partially liquidized corpse, they plunged into it without hesitation, tearing it apart and devouring it; mouths and sometimes eyes growing to assist in rendering the corpse more easily digestible for the strange fleshy mass. After the corpse had been consumed, the reddish mass of writhing fleshy and at times bony tentacles surged forth into the forest to find more prey.
Several mutilated and devoured deer, birds, rabbits, and hunters later, the mass stopped. It was just inside of a camp; a half eaten hunter held in its tendrils, its screams long since silenced. The mass suddenly surged into the partially devoured hunter, condensing inside it and changing it to its original form, with some slight improvements, of course.
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When he awoke, his head felt fuzzy; his thoughts muddled and a bone deep hunger filled his being. He scoured the abandoned camp he found himself in, barely even questioning how he got there or why it was abandoned in his disoriented state of mind. He rabidly consumed any food he could find. When he finally ran out of rations, his head had cleared enough for him to remember that he had to head home, somehow instantly knowing which direction he had to go. He set off into the dark forest.
She woke up to an odd noise like a raccoon had gotten into the house. Grabbing the baseball bat that she kept in the closet, she headed down stairs toward the source of the noise; the kitchen. As she got closer to the kitchen, the sound increased, in direct contrast to her confidence.
When she finally reached the kitchen where the noise was at its loudest, she was having serious doubts about actually entering. Steeling her nerves, she opened the door, cursing as it squeaked loudly. Luckily, whatever was causing that noise, didn’t seem to notice as the noise didn’t stop.
What she saw when she opened the door was not what she expected, not at all. Open, and empty, food containers were scattered everywhere. Vegetables were all over, most with a bite mark in them, and anything containing no meat was very quickly discarded by whatever did this. And there, bent over and digging through the refrigerator, was her husband. “Honey,” she called uncertainly, “Are you alright?”. He paused, and the noise stopped.
When he turned his head towards her, she couldn’t stop the scream that rushed out her throat, splitting the quiet night with the sounds of her disgusted terror. His face was barely recognizable; his jaw had far too many needle-like teeth and way too many tongues. His lower jaw was distended, hanging nearly a foot off of his head, with his neck coming with it. His neck was open and had teeth inside and on the edges. Blood from, she hoped, the raw meat he had been eating, nearly coated his front side as he turned to fully face her.
He had far too many mouths and arms and eyes; the mind-breaking horror of what he had become, nearly drove her to madness as she screamed yet again, backing away as he approached her, moaning with too many voices. His moan sounded like crying children, tortured dogs, the screams of the innocent and the tears of the wicked.
The horrible monstrosity that was once her husband, approached her; his many arms and tentacles, several ending in yet more mouths, reached for her; the alien hunger in his eyes screaming his vile intentions to her as clearly as a neon sign. She swung her bat at him, no it, and managed to drive one of its many tentacles, this one having gnashing jaws on the end and sides, away from her. However, another tentacle managed to wrench the bat from her.
In her panic, she ran for the knife drawer, turning on the stovetop when she tripped into it. When she reached the drawer, she started to fling some of the knives at him desperately. When she noticed the hot, stove she tried to heat up the blades in an attempt to cause more damage to the abomination that once was her husband.
Flinging the heated blade at the monstrosity, she watched in satisfaction as it gave a far greater reaction, until its ear-raping inhuman scream tore through the air, nearly driving her to her knees. When she recovered she found that her ears were literally bleeding from the piercing sound.
“Ha, you don’t like heat do ya, ya ugly bastard!” she shouted triumphantly. From that point on, she would heat up the blades, each one driving the horrid creature back just a little further, until she ran out of knives. As she began to panic trying to figure out what to do, the creature, which she noticed seemed to have many different faces that bubbled up to the surface of the disgusting creature’s flesh, seemed to consider whether or not it was safe. Unfortunately for her, it was considering this while standing in the doorway. The kitchen only had one exit and no windows; if that malevolent being didn’t move she would be incapable of escaping.
Then it hit her; those faces were distinctly different and each one was constantly in the throes of agony. Each face was one of the monster’s victims. If this thing got out of here, it would continue to feed, and more faces would be added to that nightmare’s horrid skin. She could not allow the monster to leave here and devour more innocent people.
“You don’t like fire do ya…” she muttered to herself. She looked at her stove; a gas stove, She turned off the fire and turned on the gas. “Well I’m sure you’ll hate this,” she shouted at the aberration. She knew she had to buy herself time so that she could flood the house with as much gas as possible, so she started to throw random stuff at the defilement of nature in an attempt to slow it down. Just before the shambling beast grabbed her, she lit the stove.
Days later, one of the firemen who had been there when the house burned down, woke up. Now, waking up is a rather strange thing to do after being shot in the chest over thirty times and twice in the head. He was afraid. He was not often afraid, but yet he was currently quite frightened.