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Run away

I let myself sink down into the blood-soaked grass, fatigue pulling at me as I tried to process everything. I… had died. Then I wasn’t dead… and now I’m some fucking monster. Yeah, my therapist is never going to fucking believe me.

I keep staring at the vast expanse of night sky above me, eyes drifting as I watch stars get swallowed bit by bit by drifting clouds. I’m in the middle of god knows where in the middle of the night, there’s a shit ton of bodies like 20 feet away from me, my clothes are bloody and battered, and god can I just go home? Today has been utter shit, and fucking hell I wish I could just go home. Feel the soft pillow of my bed underneath my head, my cuddly little bear plush in my arms, and my warm blankets embracing my body like a wonderfully warm hug. But their still wet blood clings to my body and the grass around me, slowly drying. Peace, is no longer an option.

Pain starts to claws up from my chest, up my throat, and out of my mouth in a silent choke. My head thumps as it shouts in a rhythm wreathed in emotion, home, home, home, I just want to go home! Each word is a howl, filling my mind and threatening to burst. My chest rises and falls in ragged gasps, tears pricking my eyes and blurring my vision. Fuck, I’m so fucking tired. Tears start to rapidly slide unchecked out of my eyes, soaking the ground on either side of my head.

No, no! I can’t break down here! I need to get up, who knows when that survivor will come back! They surely won’t be alone either, then this new life will be all for naught. I need to get up, get up! I try to reign in my grief, choke it down as I resign to shoving it down with my fatigue. There’s no time to cry, as much as I want to.

I try to peek back at the bodies, but just the sight alone sends a twist through my stomach. I quickly shift to my side, my hand moving to clutch the ground as a choking sensation rises in my throat. A dry, rasping cough forces its way out in a hard jerk of my body. But the heave comes up harsh and grating with a violence that feels like it should hurt.

Another retch follows, pulling on the nothingness in my stomach like it's trying to drag up something buried deep. A few ragged gasps escape me before the next one comes, this time making me spit up bile. The attempt after that doesn’t reach all the way, and soon the heaving leaves completely.

I resolve myself to not look at the bodies again. With my earlier more monster mind, it was easy to witness and even feel pride in seeing them. My current humanity retches.

I shift to look at the winding gravel path instead, shaky arms pulling me up to a wobbling stand. Today’s been a shit day, and fucking god I just want to go home. Ignoring my body’s cries in favor of trekking forward, I start my journey. Yet as I near the gravel and pass the man’s corpse, I pause. I… don’t have shoes. I’m about to go walking for god knows how long until either someone nice enough picks me up or I reach the city again. It… would probably be a good idea to… take his shoes, right? I mean, he doesn’t need them.

A deep breath rattles in my chest as I brace myself and turn towards his body. I tried to keep my eyes trained on his shoes as I walk over, but a simple flick of eyes full of morbid curiosity is all it takes to break that. I stumble as my stomach churns, closing my eyes tight so I can’t see it. Simply standing until the churning subsides and I open them again, quickly focusing back on his shoes before my eyes completely refocus enough to see.

It took a bit of willpower, and lots of turning away with clenched shut eyes, but eventually I manage to slip his shoes on. They’re not a great fit, a little too big, but they’ll do.

I’m grateful to turn back to the gravel path and walk up to it, the trees on either side twisting above to block out the moonlight. Yet my eyes see perfectly fine like it’s not god knows what hour of the night.

As I move further from the blood and death, I can hear the forest's sounds become more lively: a faint scurrying in the underbrush, a distant owl’s hoot, and the steady rustles of leaves as the breeze weaves through the trees. Beyond it, much further out, I can hear the hums and rumbles of passing cars. Distant but clear, the road threads beyond the trees like a lifeline back to civilization. But a different sound stops me before I can start going towards it.

Softer but closer, I catch the faint yet steady rush of water. A nearby river, and suddenly I’m far too aware of the blood sticking to my skin and clothes. A nice dip in the cold water would be a good cleanse. Not enough to remove the bloodstains from my clothes, but it’ll be enough to help me look less like a murderer.

So I turn towards it, letting the smooth and constant sound pull me away from the gravel path.

The trees thin out gradually, allowing silvery patches of moonlight to decorate the forest floor as I step over roots and avoid thorns. The forest slopes downward in a soft descent towards the river, the muddy ground somewhat clinging to my stolen shoes as I slow my steps. At the water’s edge, I can see it stretch on and on as a dark and glistening ribbon of night sky.

I kneel down, only somewhat noticing the lack of a pang of pain in my left knee. I’d injured it a long while ago, a bad fall to my left side that my knee took the brunt of. Ever since then it always gave me trouble, but today’s events seemed to have made it fully functional again. A small upside, I suppose.

My hands hover just above the water, feeling the way the coolness seems to rise and cling to my skin before I make contact. I dip my hands in, letting the water flow into my cupped hands.

Within it, I can see my reflection. I look haggard, my resting face holding a slight frown with half-lidded eyes staring back at me. Yet, there’s something… odd about how the light is reflecting in my eyes. They almost… look… like something..? I lean closer, and the glints become clearer. They’re not reflections of light, it’s a face. There’s a fucking face reflecting in my eyes.

I freeze up, body wound tense with alarm as I stare at the face in my eyes. It’s horribly pale, with nothing but eyes spanning from its forehead to its lower jaw. Jagged teeth seem to spew out in all directions out of its mouth, cheeks torn open and split through by them. Where hair would’ve been were instead long white feathers that ended in black tips. Its many eyes blinked. Lovely, like it wasn’t enough I have a face reflecting in my eyes, which already looks horrifying, no it has to be a whole living thing! Please let this be my first-ever hallucination.

Yet it’s not a hallucination, because of course, it isn’t! No, instead I have to feel some weird wriggling on my arms just to focus back on them and see that my fucking skin is raising like it’s trying to mitosis into two! Thankfully it can’t seem to be able to really separate itself from my flesh, I’d rather not watch my own flesh explode thank you, yet it’s still very much there.

My arms move beyond my command, knees shifting to pull me away from the water and to the mud just outside it. I watch my own hand draw in the wet soil, drawing something that could’ve been words if you really squinted and were fifty miles away. My other hand moves in, scooping in water over the mud to help to even out. My hands try again, and this time with more success. It’s still illegible, but it looks better. The third time’s the charm though as it finally managed to crudely write out a single word: Hello? Ah yes, my flesh is speaking to me. Is it too late now to go back and take back my fucking impossible revival? No? Great.

“Hello.” I greet back because well if this is my current life, I might as well try to accept it. It’s fucking crazy but hey, at least thus far on my list of traumas it’s a decent chunk of a way down. Believe it or not, my sudden kidnapping and death are not the most traumatic things to have happened to me. They’re still plenty fucking terrifying, just not the highest I’ve ever had.

My hands wipe away the word and replace it: Who? Where? ‘Who?’ I’m pretty sure is meant to mean ‘who are you?’, although ‘where?’ is tricky. Obviously ‘where am I?’, but where as in relation to what? Is it asking for the state? City? Name of this forest, which fuck if I know?

“My name’s Rowan.” I figure there’s no harm in telling whatever is beneath my flesh. I mean, what kind of harm could it do with my name that wouldn’t be worse than what it can do from within my body? It’d be better to answer its questions and not anger it unless I want to feel my heart being squeezed or something. “And where as in what? State? City? Forest?”

It clears the words and writes anew: Planet. Ah, lovely. If this is how I find out aliens are real, I will be suing god into oblivion. “Earth, this planet is called Earth.” If aliens are real, do they call our planet Earth too? Or do they call it something else? Would we even be able to translate it or- you’re going on a tangent dumbass, refocus! “I’m sorry, how- or why- are you uh, under my skin?” I ask, full of apprehension. I wonder if it can hear my thoughts since it’s in here with me? Wait no, it can’t, it didn’t start responding until I verbally spoke up. If it could hear my thoughts, it would’ve responded before that.

The mud reforms and is written upon again: Dungeon. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? “What?” I mutter out without thinking. Suddenly my hands are moving up, oh god is it going to strangle me?? Should I not have said anything?

My hands move against my will, and I only become a different kind of apprehensive as they unbutton a bit of my shirt. Then I see why, as it reveals a glimmering gem lodged in the middle of my chest.

It’s in the shape of a teardrop and looks perfectly cut, its foggy white surface staring back at me. My right-hand moves, adding another word onto the mud before pointing between it and the gem: Dungeon core.

This gem, fucking somehow lodged right in the middle of my chest, is a dungeon core? The kind of object seen only in common fantasy settings that I now assume does in fact exist because it’s right there in my fucking chest.

“The dungeon core is how you’re here?” I ask, completely puzzled. Yes. Alright, that just makes this whole thing more confusing instead of less, lovely.

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“Are you the core?” It’s response is fast: No. Welp, I have no more guesses.

“What are you then?” My hands pause as if thinking for a moment before writing again: Incorporeal. Is this thing just allergic to giving answers I can make sense of? What am I meant to do with this? What does it mean for fuck’s sake, it’s like a ghost? But maybe not quite? I don’t know???

“Um, alright? Well, uh, can you get out of my body?” No, stuck. “You’re stuck inside my body? Why can’t you get out?” World magic, unsuitable.

“This world has magic??” I ask with heavy confusion. How do we have magic? And how does that make my body trap this thing?

My hands don’t move, I guess it doesn’t have an answer either. Alright, I’ll ask something else then.

“How does that make you stuck in my body?” Body convert.

So, my body converts it to magic that is suitable for this thing? By that, I can assume it needs magic to live. I mean I technically could’ve guessed from the ‘magic unsuitable’, but that could’ve also meant that the world’s magic rejects wherever this thing came from.

Going back, it’s an incorporeal? It’s like a ghost that needs magic to live?

“Alright, um, is it safe to assume you won’t kill me?” No, need you.

That would sound sweet if it wasn’t some kind of ghost thing stuck inside my body. “Well okay, I uh, is it okay if I continue washing myself? I'd kinda like to get some of this blood off...” No response is written this time, but the stretched skin recedes back down. I guess I’m free to move?

I wipe the mud smooth one last time and shuffle back up to the water. I dip my hands back in, ignoring the face in my eyes, and splash the water at my face.

The sudden chill sends a jolt to my brain, shoving some of the fatigue back. I then shift down, bringing my body into the water so I can more easily scrub at my limbs. I’m not trying to do a good job, after all this shit I’m too tired for that. But I do it so at least only the pink stains of blood on my clothes remain. Once I deem it done I rise from the water, watching it cascade down as I walk back onto the river side. The clinging cold of it barely felt at all as my feet carry me in the direction of the distant road.

I can hear the cars so clearly, moving and passing like they’re just barely beyond my line of sight. Yet every few steps reveal that to be false. My mind tries to focus more on the sound, trying to tell more exactly how far away the road is. It’s like the distance grows as I focus until it comes to a stop, finally staying in place. So that’s where the road actually is. My feet carry me slowly but surely towards it, legs straining a bit as sleep threatens to pull my eyelids down as I walk.

Eventually, I come to a long stretch of road. Skidding tire marks can be seen coming off from the gravel and taking a hard right. I feel a tugging that way, a faint yet persistently thumping, like an instinctual beacon towards home. Home, home, home, home, home. God I wish I were home and today was just a bad dream.

I force my feet to keep going, delaying my steps and letting my body slouch to give off the impression that I’m bogged down and exhausted. With pink blood stains and somewhat ruined clothes, it’d be best to look like the victim instead of the murderer. I’d kind of appreciate someone being nice and picking me up, not calling the cops.

A few cars rumble by, none bothering to stop when I shout and wave at them. Which is fair, I wouldn’t want to pick up a guy with torn and pink-stained clothes in the middle of nowhere either.

Time slowly passes as I keep walking, hope keeping me strung up as I keep going forward. My feet are starting to feel tired and sore, and the begs for home are getting louder and louder in my mind. To the point I nearly can’t keep ignoring them.

A decent distance passes, maybe a mile or two, maybe not, I can’t tell. But the shouts nearly reach a crescendo when a rumbling finally comes up, my half-hearted shouts getting a little beat-up blue car to actually slow to a stop next to me.

I lean down to the window, a tired smile on my face as the old lady inside rolls it down.

A smell immediately buffets my face, and I nearly puke. It’s so sweet, much too sweet! The kind of sweet that if you tried to eat it you’d spit it out because of how overpoweringly sweet it is that you hate it instead. Fuck this smells awful.

“Oh my god, are you okay?!” Her fretting feels nice, a bit of care stirs deep in my heart.

“I’m alright ma’am, my car just failed and I took a bad tumble.” I throw out a quick excuse, a car wreck could explain my appearance and lack of a car. “I lost my phone during it and just can’t find it again in this dark. Can you be kind enough to drive me home? I plan to call a tow truck in the morning, that tumble just took too much out of me.” I come up with these lies easily, each one sliding out of my mouth like second nature. Because to me, it is second nature. After all, lying can keep you from getting hurt.

“Oh yes, I can do that! Get in, get in! It’s far too cold out and you look exhausted.” I smile warmly at her and open the door she’d just unlocked, she’s at least right about me being tired. I don’t have to fake that.

She keeps worrying over me as she drives but I just keep brushing her off, telling her I’m fine and I just want to go home. But every breath of her words just hits my face with its sickeningly sweet smell. God, can she please stop talking? It’s starting to make me feel nauseous.

Right as I started to see the city in the distance it’s like I can already feel it. All the lives and beating hearts, their scents and smells make a hunger that’s not my own rise in my stomach. Shit, I’ll need to move, won’t I? At least the nauseating smell in the car helps to blot some of it out. I wonder, why does this elderly woman seem to radiate this awful scent? Is it like a life amount thing? Like things that are alive will smell sweet to me, but the less life they have left the sweeter they’ll smell? Maybe? I don’t know.

Anyways, staying in the city can only spell disaster if I can already feel monstrous urges when there are not even that many people out. Yeah, first thing in the morning I’ll have to try and move.

I nod to myself. I had been planning to move soon anyway. This city holds… too many memories of people I’d rather forget. I just hope I’ll be able to find a place.

On instinct, my hand goes up to adjust glasses that no longer exist, so I transition to push my fingers through my hair instead. I’d worn glasses from second grade up until last year, which was when I finally got the surgery to fix my eyes so I only needed to wear glasses sometimes. But as my gaze now can easily see trees until the distance makes them disappear, I have a feeling I won’t be needing them at all anymore. Still, old habits die hard.

Hm, I wonder how worried I should be about those cult people. I mean, they attacked me on my way to work in an alley, so I somewhat doubt that they know where I live. If they did they could’ve instead ambushed me there while I was asleep, it would’ve been a safer bet than snatching me outside where their actions could be too easily seen. Still, I’ll note to stick to public areas and making sure I’m not followed on my way home. Also, if any of you out there even thought for a second ‘Why aren’t you going to the police?’, are you an idiot? I got taken to a ritual and got turned into a monster that seems to love killing people, I have a very obvious gem in my fucking chest, and those cultists were clearly killed by something nonhuman. So really, what the fuck am I going to tell the police? The truth, which would probably get me killed again or experimented on, or lies that they could easily find to be false? Hell no, I’m not that kind of stupid!

I stare out the window, watching the thinning treeline whiz by. My hands fidget in my lap, repeatedly trying to crack my knuckles every minute or so. It’s a nervous tick. Not the fidgeting, I’ve always done that. The constant attempt to crack my knuckles is the nervous tick.

We eventually turn into the city. Even with fewer people and being inside a car I can smell them so easily, a deeper part of me salivating at it. I can hear their hearts, their breaths, like they’re right next to me. Beckoning me like pies on windowsills, just waiting to be eaten. I try to shove the thoughts down, but they fight me. Can’t you see it? All those warm bodies, all so full of blood and flesh and life, it’d be so easy to take them. To gorge yourself upon their deaths until-

“Is this where you live sweetie?” The old lady spoke up, breaking me away from my thoughts. A perfect distraction. I looked out the window to see my apartment building right next to us.

“Yeah, thank you so much for this by the way,” I say while opening the door and shuffling out onto the street. I barely catch her saying something before I dart in and close the door behind me, I can’t stay on the street for long.

In my haste, I don’t notice how the corners of her mouth turn down the moment I’m out of sight.

A quick input of the pin lets me into the lobby, and I gun it for the elevator. Sure I could take the stairs and I’d probably be faster, but I just had the weirdest night full of a lot of shit. So let me be a little lazy.

Soon I reach the third floor and pat down my pockets out of instinct, only to be surprised that my keys are actually still there. Really? They took my phone, but not my keys? I mean I have a spare hidden inside the welcome mat so it wouldn’t have been a big issue, but why would they leave my keys?

I elect to ignore it for now and quickly unlock my door, scurrying in and quietly closing it behind me. The weight of all that happened feels crushing, threatening to force me to crumble but I ignore it as best I can. All I want is to collapse into bed and forget everything for a few hours until the sun rises.

I shuffle in the darkness, my eyes easily piercing it as I come to my bedroom.

Huh, the door’s closed. Did I close it before I left? I don’t remember, but I don’t think I did?

I carefully push it open, full of apprehension until my breath hitches.

Oh… oh you have got to be fucking kidding me. There, hanging from my ceiling by a fraying rope is a fucking body. But not just any body, a body that looks exactly like me. An exact copy, hanging lifeless and pale. I try to check it for anything wrong, but it’s certainly me. From the slight overcrowding of teeth on the lower jaw to the slightly redder patch of skin on my right hand from when I burned it by accidentally lighting a piece of paper on fire. Don’t ask me how.

It can’t be a fake body either, something about it tells me it was once actually alive, which is fucking terrifying. Shit, this is probably the work of those weird cult people. They’re the only ones could possibly do this. That means this targeting was predetermined, then why jump me outside? Why risk being seen?

They know where I live, shit, that probably means they’d keep some way to trace me too. Shit shit shit shit, fuck! Shit, I need to leave now.

I’m frantic as I grab a duffle bag, I don’t know how long I have but simply rushing out with nothing but torn and bloodied clothes is not a good idea. My hands shake as I stuff the bag with as many clothes and blankets as I can find. I can’t bring food, I don’t have any nonperishables and anything else would too quickly go bad. I also quickly change my clothes while I’m at it. I change into a black t-shirt, my favorite red sweater, some sweatpants, and some shoes that are actually mine. I leave the dead guy’s shoes where mine were. With a body hanging there, they definitely wanted to have police discover it and rule me as dead via suicide. I hope that by leaving shoes that aren’t mine behind it could put the cops on their tail.

Soon the duffel bag is full, and I refuse to waste more time. I won’t be going out my front door, no the window is a safer bet. The halls would be too limiting, getting outside as fast as possible will get me the chance to run.

I shove it open, take a breath, and leap out. The landing should hurt, but it doesn’t. The concrete beneath me cracks a little, the sound sharp in the quiet alley. I barely glance at it before sprinting to the manhole cover in the alley. My heart pounds as I yank it open and climb down, the stench of the sewer hitting me like a wall. Yet I force myself to take deep breaths, trying to adjust to the reek. The sooner I get nose-blind to it, the better.

I start running as fast as I can, legs pounding on the concrete like I hate the ground, all while I rely on my mental map of the city to keep going. The tunnels twist and turn, but I move with speed and purpose, all until I reach a dead end near the outskirts.

I climb up the ladder with a surprising ease despite being full of fatigue. My hand carefully goes up, pushing the cover up just enough to let me peek out.

My eyes fall upon an empty alley, good. So I entirely pull myself out, closing the cover quietly behind me. To my left is my target, an old abandoned building with shattered windows and walls streaked in graffiti.

It’s been empty for as long as I can remember, only growing more decrepit as the years flew by. It’ll do for the night. By morning I plan to take off into the patches of forest, and keep running until I reach someplace sufficiently far.

I do have a target in mind, a town decently far from here where my grandparents on dad’s side used to live until they died. No one who lives there should know me or recognize me, and the old couple were never known to be social.

I slip inside the old building, the heavy air hitting my nose with smells of dust and stale decay. My footsteps echo faintly as I make my way to a corner and slump down, using my duffle bag as a makeshift pillow. Exhaustion pulls at me and finally, I embrace it, letting sleep take me.

For a while, my dream is normal. Well, as normal a dream as I can get. I’m at some backyard party, people are all around with music thumping. A bit of a distance away I spot a table completely full of food, so full in fact any slight bump with it would surely send lots of it tumbling to the ground.

I feel my mouth water. Well, I am pretty hungry. So I make my way over to it, shuffling around people chatting and dancing.

But when I finally reach it, it’s like I got knocked in the head. For no reason my vision turns black, like my eyes are clenched shut with a pain like I’d been knocked hard in the head howling out.

When my eyes open again, I’m surrounded by darkness—vast, endless, and… alive?

This thick, black mist swirls around me, shimmering with streaks of gold and purple as it curls around my body. Somewhere in the depths of my mind something stirs, a pull toward something complex and unknowable. But a wall stands in the way, solid and unyielding. A sense of wrongness creeps over me, it feels horribly suffocating.

What… is going on…? Something… isn’t… right…

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