The flesh behind the beige wall pulsed, almost breathing. Seeing the straining, impotent, tentacles reach towards me made the burning sensation coming from the ground feel more like being digested. I could feel my body start to fail. I’m missing too much flesh, and it’s been too long since I’ve slept, drunk, or eaten. I can feel my organs protest, and throb as I pace the moist floor. The whispering is getting louder, and it’s harder and harder to convince myself the sounds rolling off the walls are the progeny of my mental fatigue, but still, I try to. A daydream starts to cloud my thoughts as I lose focus.

The motel looked normal when I checked in. The inoffensive muted colors displayed a clean exterior. The manager had called out from somewhere telling me to pick up the keys myself—room 208. The windowless room was bare and cheap-looking. There was a bed, a small but dense desk, and a cheap chair neatly tucked into the desk. The only thing on the desk was a beige landline. The bathroom was also minimalist. A cheap toilet, shower, and sink. The water was sticky, it stung the eyes. I felt less clean after leaving the shower, even if the dirt and sweat accumulated from the road were gone. The bed was warm despite thin sheets.

I whimpered in pain and meekly jumped back, leaving behind a think bloody film of flesh where I had been standing. I must have fallen asleep for a second while I was staring at the thing. I continued my fervent walk, desperately focusing on the broken cheap chair, the desk lying down on its side, or the pieces of drywall littered on the now glistening wet floor. I focused on anything to try and keep my mind awake, to try and keep moving, everything except for the increasingly loud esoteric whispers echoing throughout the room. When I slowed, when I stopped, I could feel the floor slowly break parts of me down, cannibalizing my already diminished frame. Any part of me that stayed in contact with a part of it for too long would cease to be a part of me. I envied it.

I don’t know how long I slept at first in that bed. It must not have been too long because when I tried to go up to use the restroom I hadn't lost more than some skin. When I got up, was when I noticed the congealed flesh, my flesh. I must have screamed. I remember running to the phone, frantically trying to dial, but it was unresponsive like it was just something shaped into a phone. When I saw my skin slough on the phone I ran, a stinging pain as I lifted my feet. I ran into the hallway and I didn't stop until I was out of breath, but all I saw was room 208, no stairs, no elevator, no escape. The rooms looked similar enough to the one I had slept in, only no traces I had been there. I tried to double back to my original room, to my stuff, but if I had found my old room, any traces of my being there had been absorbed.

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I don’t know how long I’ve been wandering, prolonging my suffering out of some basal instinct ordering perseverance, but it has been long enough that I’ve started to fall asleep between steps. At some point, I started to get thirsty. I started drinking the warm clear viscous fluid spewed by the spouts in the bathroom, trying to satiate my thirst with the soft burning of the liquid. Eventually, I gave up completely on the hallway and dedicated my attention to a single room. I checked every corner, every inch of the carpet, but I couldn’t find anything special. The

room felt like a TV set, like a hollow facsimile of a motel. I threw the chair against the wall, with strength that has since been robbed from me by the strain of this place, and watched as it broke apart. The desk did better, managing to leave a small hole revealing the pulsing mass of flesh hidden behind it. I managed to pry some more of the drywall off, leaving the flesh more naked, more exposed, but all that’s done is make the whispers more frenzied.

I can hear it. The sounds permeate the very existence of the room. They’re not exactly words, but I can hear esoteric truths, the forbidden knowledge, and feel the intent from something wholly alien to anything I’ve met. The information parsed by the sounds is reinforced, brought closer to completion by the rhythmic beating of the exposed flesh. The less of me there is the more room I have to understand the thing. Maybe it’s because of how long I’ve been awake, because of the blending of reality with dream, the ceasing of a hardline between reality and falsity allowing for this monster to exude its presence into me. The information I can glean seems best approximated by eating, or maybe hunger. It’s not trying to describe itself though, it seems closer to a command or a doctrine to live by. Even those words seem lacking descriptors compared to the palpable intent demanding a consumption of the essence of being.

I step closer to the amorphous flesh, leaving behind a trail of bloody circles as the floor licks at my stumps. Slowly, with barely contained desire, I push my hand into the flesh, ripping some of it out of the wall as it digests my hand. I push some of the flesh into my mouth, my hand now indistinguishable from the flesh, and bite down. I feel it burn as it goes down as the last remnants of my basal instincts cease to resist.