Their desperate retreat through the swamp put an immediate strain on their legs. If it'd only been the waist-high water they fought against, it'd be a little more manageable; however, each step they took landed their shoes in dense mud from which they had to uproot their feet. They were both athletes who'd relied on the power of their legs, but that only went so far when off solid ground.

Dead-green water splashed about in chaos as they separated from each other to utilize their entire body for escape. Flailing their arms forward and back with the frantic movement of their legs.

Wide-eyed and breathing rapidly from his open mouth, Vin lost connection with his thoughts. His inner voice was usually calm and reassuring, but even it had fled in that danger. He moved thoughtlessly forward with no plan in mind.

The water was dark. There was no way to tell what was below him, and Vin, despite already struggling, blundered.

He put his weight down upon the ground that should have just been slimy, should have sucked his foot in. However, he landed on something solid, somewhat slick. His right foot slipped back from under him, and he flung face-first into the water.

Vin struggled to collect his bearings underwater. His left hand landed in the mud, but the right touched what he immediately recognized as the acrylic skateboard he'd dropped in the air when falling.

He was already in a losing race. There was already little chance of outrunning something adapted to live in that specific environment, and his tumble cost him time, a currency he'd run out of.

The rotting, slug-like monster was even more terrifying up close; it caught up, eyed him with blood-lusted irises, and snapped at him with its sharp teeth.

Vin couldn't process how to act. Just move. He unlodged his skateboard from the mud, then quickly yanked it in front of his body to act as a shield from the creature's jaws. He didn't know what he'd hoped to achieve, but luckily, the monster's teeth didn't breach the board. Nonetheless, he was far from saved. The monster's heavy charge thrust him back into the waist-high water, knocking the wind from his lungs and submerging him entirely.

Most of the slug's upper body weighed down on him and pinned him into the mud. His lungs were already emptied, so there was no point in holding his breath; he just screamed noiselessly under that disgusting dark liquid. That warm, dead water flooded Vin's mouth immediately. It was vile and tasted rotten, like the juices of a heated dumpster. He couldn't stop himself from puking, but that liquid rot only continued to funnel down his throat.

The only thing keeping him from outside the belly of the best was his arms, which had begun to tremble from sustaining the creature's weight. His muscles had never cried so desperately to be relieved, burned, and ached to the point of near breaking.

Vin held on. He needed to keep his arms alive if it was even one second longer.

But Why?

There were no signs of the monster letting off its attack, and he wasn't going to suddenly become able to bench the weight of a beast, so why struggle?

Sometimes, the answer was simple. 'I don't want to die.'

His tears were assimilated into the infected liquid, but he cried. Vin regretted everything that had led up to that moment; he wanted to live.

The moment he found his inner voice, the faces of his family were so vivid. They weren't all smiling; for some reason, the image of Macy, his younger sister, glared while she prepped to thrash him.

'I won't change the channel to sports while you're watching your soap operas anymore.' He responded to that memory of her as if it'd make a difference. It wouldn't, but he could be a better brother, a better son, and a better person.

Vin made another promise for every ounce of water that suffocated him: If only he could be given a second chance, he would be so much better. He would go out more, make friends, and do everything ordinary boys did. There was no way he could die without even having his first kiss.

It wasn't like he could see to begin with, but his vision began to wither further from lack of oxygen. It was impossible to track how long he'd been under. Probably not long, but it felt like an eternity in that heated, disgusting, rotted blackness. By all rights, his body should have been given out; he was lucky to fight as long as he had.

The monster had a hungry, single-tracked mind of digging him into the mud while biting. Maybe it was just too unintelligent to take another approach, perhaps too starved to think. But that changed when it had a slight but sudden shift of position.

Its weight displaced, and in an unfortunate instant, the decaying slug heaved away with tremendous might. Vin's tortured arms had been so focused on the motion of pushing that when the creature pulled in the same direction, the skateboard was easily ripped away.

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With Vin's defenses stripped, nothing stood between his flesh and the monster's maw. After that, a swift sensation clamped onto Vin's hoodie. He was happy that it could be described as a simple sensation; the pain of fangs penetrating his flesh sure was different while on the verge of death.

Fangs? What gripped his outerwear was considerably smaller than the creature's mouth. Much more intentionally, shaking and tugging at his body in an effort to dislodge him from the layers of mud he'd been dug into.

After several frantic yanks, Vin felt the mud give, and he, to his unbridled astonishment, was drawn to the surface.

His fading mind defined the shape controlling his body as hands. Those hands savagely shoved into Vin's gut, over and over, without relenting, and continued until everything from within him began to expel outward.

While Vin coughed violently, he found moments to gasp for air, his lungs burning. Soon, the series of blows to his body ceased. He was glad it did. Vin felt that if any more levels of torment afflicted him, he'd die of sheer shock.

Little by little, his perception returned. He was sure the person holding him afloat was Lynn. Her entire form quivered, and her feminine voice was rash and demanding of him.

Vin, covered in mud and fighting to hold consciousness, couldn't understand any of it. 'What is she saying…'

Even noisier than her was the decaying slug's rampage. It furiously thrashed around the swamp, ramming into the already eroding trees that'd been falling to pieces. Mystic blue blood flushed from its left eye into the water.

Vin could narrowly make out a half-split branch that'd fallen from one of the dying trees, sticking out from the monster's eye. As much as Vin wanted to watch it suffer, there was no time. Lynn cast his arm around her shoulder and tugged him in the opposite direction of the decaying slug.

The high grass provided cover, but tragically, Vin's increasingly cold, nauseated body was far from stealthy. Even after he'd spilled every last drop of matter from his insides, he continued to dry heave uncontrollably.

His breathing never returned to normal, even while amidst that life or death situation, he felt his heart beating slowly. 'Tired…'

So incredibly tired. More and more of Vin's weight fell onto Lynn, whose face swelled with tears and desperation. The side of her body that supported Vin slumped downward so far that his face occasionally slapped against the high water.

Vin despised the way she trembled and hated the fright in her voice when she grievously repeated, over and over, "Please, Gavin."

"You have to move."

He abominated the truth that her burdens were his fault. Nevertheless, his mechanical functions were shutting down.

He was poisoned.

Lynn carried Vin along, barely able to keep him above the water's surface. The overgrown foliage and the thick fog meant she couldn't see where they were headed; it was just anywhere else but there.

The girl took her eyes off their route for a moment to look for anything beneficial, and that's when, from beyond an incredibly dense cluster of grass, a large, floating hollow log arose. She tried to pull away from it, but Vin's hanging head crashed into the log and split.

Crimson sap oozed from a new wound at the top of his head, and a sudden moment of clarity awarded him enough consciousness to howl in pain.

With a regretful jolting movement, she strained even more to sacrifice her one free hand to quickly cover his mouth and muffle his outcry. Sobs and tears fled her. At the same time, she peered at his agonized face and cried under her breath, ruefully telling him, despite everything, "Please, be quiet!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she repeated, strenuously holding her palm over his mouth.

Dastardly screeches, shuffles, and violent splashes sounded from where they'd just fled. The creature was moving again, likely toward them, so they couldn't stay still.

That nightmare had a keen sense of hearing despite only having protruding lumps of flesh where its ears would be.

Lynn heard the monster when it began to dash toward them and acted. Her prior survey of the area may have distracted her and led to Vin's fresh injury. Still, she noticed a slim sliver of hope in that bleak situation.

She tossed Vin's upper body onto the floating log to alleviate the weight on her, and then she pushed it like a small raft.

After taking a knock on the noggin, Vin became slightly more responsive and began to move his legs on his own. He was too out of it to know or even think about where they were headed; he just moved in the direction he was guided.

A few meters away was a married pair of trees with limbs that intertwined like a branch stairway. With the creature hot on their trail, they moved as fast as humanly possible through the swamp. When the two arrived at the trees, Lynn placed the log against the left tree, whose branch was lower than the right. With the log secured, she directed Vin to be the first to climb the makeshift ramp.

Lynn quickly climbed after him, and to their fortune, the branch held, and they were out of the water. Since that tree had been holding hands with another, they crossed over the intertwined limbs to the right tree, which was higher off the ground and had a thicker, more stable branch.

They landed themselves almost one story above the ground on a rough, stout tree branch. It was just wide and long enough for them both to lay flat with little wiggle room.

The decaying slug tracked them to that location. However, Vin had cuffed his own lips, combating the powerful urge to cough and retch. Eventually, the creature slipped past them, though not in defeat. It'd begun to search, awaiting any signs of its prey.

It disappeared into the dense fog from their sight, but the certainty remained that it existed in that swamp.

Always listening.