1._Forward, into Darkness

I wake up face down, with my head on hard, sharp stone. After a few seconds, everything comes into focus. All is dark but for a small light in the distance, coming from the sole window of the most dilapidated shack I’ve ever seen. I’m in some sort of cavern made of black rock, and the only way to the shack is bordered on both side by what seems to be a bottomless chasm. I woke up close to the edge, not even a meter away, and would have fallen without the light.

My stomach growl, it feels like I haven’t eaten in days. Judging by the state of my beard, it seems quite likely. So thirsty.

Only way is forward. Hopefully whoever lives there will have something to deal with hunger and thirst.

I wake up face down, with my head on something soft. Gods, what’s that horrible smell? It takes a few second for everything to come into focus after I open my eyes. I’m not on something but someone. I instantly stand up. It takes less than a moment to notice two things: that someone is dead, and they look precisely like me.

I take a step back in panic and feel my stomach drop when there is nothing to support my foot. I fall backward, into darkness.

I wake up face down, with my head in something soft and wet. Gods, what’s that horrible smell? I try to stand up but slip down instead. Seems like I was on a small pile of something. It takes about a minute for the world around me to come into focus and I’ve to get rid of some kind of liquid sticking to my face. The stench is unbearable.

Fear seizes me when I understand what, and who it is I’m looking at. I take a step back and hurt my back against the cave’s wall. I try to puke, but nothing comes out except bile. I’m covered in wet fluids. I steady myself against the wall with trembling hands and look around me for help. A small rundown shack in the distance.

Only way is forward. Hopefully whoever lives there will be able to explain what is happening to me.

I wake up face down, with my head in something soft and wet. I almost instantly faint because of the smell. There is something heavy on top of me. With some effort, I extract myself from the pile of whatever this is.

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After a few minutes of puking, crying and denying reality I start to walk toward the shack but stop myself before putting my foot on the stone path. I force myself to backtrack to look at the dozen of decomposing bodies. My bodies. A few looks like they fell from incredibly high, completely broken. But others are black, and more liquid than solid. I can’t bring myself to touch those and go back toward the path.

Nonetheless, I pat my pocket. I always have a small notebook and its pencil in my jacket. If something happens to me, at least I’ll be able to leave a message to myself. With any luck, future me will think to check the not…I go back to checking my bodies for their own notebook. All empty but the one which crushed me while I waked up. Only one word: Spider. The handwriting is atrocious, as if the hand putting that word on paper was shaking. Makes sense, mines already are.

Cold sweat runs down my back. I see things moving at the corner of my vision which disappear whenever I’m looking. Can’t stay here, must go to safety, the shack. Wish I had a weapon.

I wake up face down, with my head in something liquid. I can’t breathe, it’s inside my mouth and nose. The taste is so vile I start puking but nothing comes out. I can’t move, so much weight on top of me. So exhausted. After a minute I don’t even have the strength to struggle anymore.

I manage to extricate myself from the pile of corpses. I check the notebook. Spider and below “Old woman in shack, seen through window. Will try knocking.” Well, at least the path is safe if previous me managed to get close enough to see that. Let’s get closer.

The path isn’t safe. In the notebook: “Spider below path”. Fuck. I…can’t do it. I just can’t go there knowing I’m most likely going to get eaten by a giant spider. I can’t even understand how previous me found it in himself to write that while presumably getting hunted by it. I would rather starve waiting for help. I should probably write everything I can.

Looks like I did starve. Given how hungry I’m, it probably didn’t take long, but the thought that no one is coming not matter how long I wait is depressing. I consider throwing myself in the chasm and let future me deal with all this. I chicken out. What do I do?

Starve again apparently. Well, let’s put those bodies to good use.

I take one of my “starved” remain and throw it as far as I can in the middle of the path and wait. Nothing. I go forward and repeat the process, writing down each time how far and how many times I threw myself. The shack looks far, at least 1 km. Good thing I’m so light after that special diet.

When I reach the middle of the path, after waiting for about 5 minutes, something moves deep in the dark, in the abyss. It is gigantic, the light coming out from the shack’s window isn’t enough to reveal it completely. A single leg must be at least 10m. I’m frozen in fear and have trouble breathing. Can spiders hear? It starts biting my old body violently then slowly takes it down below. I involuntarily choke a sob while crying. It stops. I keep writing while feeling something hot running down my leg.

Turns out spiders can feel sound with hairs on their leg. At least progress is being made. Maybe if I feed it enough corpses it won’t hunt me? Or is this some kind of territory issue and I’ll end up dead no matter what? Do I even have enough strength to carry that many bodies? Curse being overweighed. Can’t know until I try.

8. That’s the number of bodies it requires for it to let me cross that damn path in peace. At least now I can finally

Never mind, 9.

Now that I think about it, how did I reach the shack the first time I wrote about that old woman? What did I do differently? Or maybe it was just the first time I bothered writing about it. Regardless, it obviously wasn’t good enough since the spider got me anyways, without me noticing anything if I found the time to knock and write about it.

I wait for what feels like an hour to make absolutely sure that the spider won’t get me like that again.

Nothing. Time to knock.

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