His eyes opened to a horizon of thick darkness.

The uniform black saturated the space around him in all directions.

His knees were folded under him. Neatly positioned.

His stomach was still spinning from the inertia earlier, and the sudden change of scenery did little to placate it.

Where am I? He thought. What is touching me?

Looking down, his legs were kneeled on a floor of pitch black. It was warm and unnervingly sticky, like warmed bitumen tar. The floor was completely featureless, stretching out uniformly in all directions, though dissolving into the blackness only a few metres away.

Hesitant to leave, whatever that would mean, Patrick tried to stand up but to no avail.

He was stuck.

This wasn’t a case of his legs being stuck or fastened to the floor. No matter how hard his mind yelled at moving his limbs, they remained perfectly still.

Sweat was beginning to collect below his hair and his breathing shallowed. His questions began to rattle in his head, splintering and rupturing into more, none of which he had any answers to.

Still able to move his arms, he tried to push himself along the floor, only barely scooting a few steps before his breath collapsed in exhaustion. The sweat dribbled down his forehead and down his sides.

He looked around him again. He thought it was crazy, but somehow the uniform darkness felt closer than before. The void itself was gaining thickness. Every turn of his head felt the fluid swirling around on his skin. He felt his head was in a fishbowl.

Between the heavy labouring, his vision had been soaked in his sweat. He tried pushing himself along a few more times before giving up and sweeping sweat off his forehead with his palm.

After that, he noticed his hand was a bit sticky.

Looking down, he saw a hole in his hand.

No… the floor had adhered to his hand, colouring it indistinguishable from the darkness behind it!

He blinked just to register his disbelief, but upon opening, it had disappeared. The streams of sweat which were ticking down his forehead just a second ago, returned no feeling. The parts of his face that he touched earlier, he couldn’t feel.

His forehead was just missing.

As if it could sense his sudden realisation of fear, from the darkness grew hands. Each one coated in grotesque gelatinous darkness which adhered to his skin.

This feeling of void was pushed to every part of his body, infecting his eyes, nose, mouth and ears.

He tried to open his eyes as his vision disintegrated, but the very concept of sight was fading from his awareness.

Moments before the voice in his head lost its words.

Patrick shouted for help.

In his fleeting perception, a right hand reached down from above.

It was detached, and yet he could feel its presence as if it was his own.

Feeling something in his gut, he poured all of his remaining self into his right hand, materialising it just enough to clasp this hand. Moments before he dissolved into his surroundings, it pulled him back into the light.

"Patrick!"

A voice shook Pat, jolting his self back into reality. His eyelids re-established their connection, and opened them to blind them to the morning light. Ben was crouching over him.

"Are you okay!?"

Pat tried to speak, but ended up coughing saliva on his face. It was like he had a sock in his mouth, as his own tongue felt foreign between his teeth. After coughing a couple times more, could he speak again.

“Sorry for spitting on your face!” He reached his hand up to clutch his headache, but reflexively stopped it to check if anything was on it before continuing. “I… what just happened…”

“Nothing bad happened Patrick,” he reassured, checking the back of his head for any blood with his left hand. “Absolutely nothing.”

From across the road, John came running over.

“Pat! Are you okay? What happened?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I… I don’t know… what happened?”

“It looked like you tripped, but you didn’t get up. You said earlier you were dehydrated. Do you need some water?”

“I… I think I’m fine.” Ben tried to get up, but again his legs refused.

“Should I help you up again, Patrick?”

Feeling his face burn up, Pat ate his pride and asked through the shame. “Y-yeah. Thank you.”

Ben tried to hold Pat up with his left hand, but it was quite cumbersome. Unlike last time, his legs were almost completely disabled.

“Wait guys. Ben, I have an idea to carry Pat back”

“What?”

“Pat, do you want to ride a trolley?”

Lacking the imagination and energy to refuse, Ben sighed and agreed to stealing a trolley which John preemptively had ready.

Ben picked him up with one hand.

One hand.

Pat’s heart skipped a step as he tucked him into the shopping trolley.

The trolley was rather rickety, making much clanging noises as it went over the ageing campus roads. The loud noise attracted bystanders far and wide to observe the curious sight of an adult man pushing a full sized baby in a metal pram. Patrick found his face once again making friends with his palms.

John decided to alleviate some of the embarrassment with running commentary.

“I’m looking forward to drinking some coke and amaretto tonight. A nice celebration to start university, don’t you think? That guy going past us has a rucksack. What do you think he is going to buy? Oh! The no trolley sign had also been stolen! I wanted that! It must be the rucksack guy!”

“John. Calm down,” Ben said, single-handedly pushing the trolley himself.

By the time they got back to the hall, either through the public humiliation, or the absurd amount of time that had passed in his head due to the public humiliation, Pat’s legs had recovered, and he crawled out of the trolley.

After John’s insistence on giving the roof trolley a friend was unsuccessful, the group went inside to store their groceries. Pat sat in the corner while the remaining two unloaded into the fridges and cupboards.

Ben bought a kilo of frozen peas, which went along with his other frozen vegetables. On closer inspection, half of the shelves in the freezer were Ben’s frozen vegetables.

“Are you going to use those any time soon, or are we going to have an iceberg of peas by the end of term 1?”

“I am using them.”

“For what?”

“They are just easy to use. I don’t want to peel carrots every time I cook.”

“You have the mass of 4 babies stuffed into the freezer! How are you eating this many vegetables?”

“I-I just want a variety, okay?”

Ben ignored John’s further inquiries, and went to put his tofu into the fridge.

Upon opening it, he immediately gagged and closed it.

“Hmm? What?”

“Oh… god… there is a box of grey beef in there…” His eyes crossed from the stench and with a hand in his pocket, he had to roll a constitution save to catch himself tripping backwards.

“Grey beef? Wait, how did that get there? I didn’t see it yesterday, so how did it turn grey in only one day?”

“It’s stunk up the entire fridge! I’m not touching it.”

Ben averted his eyes upwards to the top shelf to put his tofu.

“Hmm?”

“What?”

“Whose are those… meal replacement drinks at the top shelf?”

John took a quick glance at Pat. He didn’t want to tell him yet. “It’s my shelf, remember Ben? Top John? They are mine!”

John scrunches his nose, and pulls out the beef at arm’s length, dumping it in the collection bin outside.

“No one in their right mind is eating that! Thank me now for cleansing this world of evil!”

Ben looked at him weird. “Yeah… okay man… I’m going to put everything away now.”

Throughout the entire conversation, Pat had been sitting there crouched. As much as the two of them tried to talk around him, he seemed more down than either had ever seen him. There wasn’t the right mood to discuss anything, with

John twirls a bottle of amaretto in his hands thinking of a solution before lighting up with a set of convictions on his face. “Hey Pat, do you know what would cheer you up?”

Pat looked up from the floor as he ran over to the fridge and pulled out the cola mixer. “Alcohol!”

Ben looked at him expecting a punchline. “Wait… don’t I… doesn’t he… don’t we *all* have a lecture tomorrow?”

John nudged him with his elbow. “What? You telling me you’re a lightweight? Can’t handle a little drinkie?”

“I very much can, thank you very much! Fine, I’m showing up!”

He turns to Pat. “You are showing up too.”

He leaves to his room, slamming the door behind him as usual.

As Pat wondered why Ben’s attitude to them being around each other changed, John interrupted his thoughts.

“Aww, he wants to see him in big boy drinker mode.” Not even 5 seconds passed, and John was being snarky.

“John… you know I can’t drink on antibiotics. Now… Ben wants me to go… and I can’t say no…”

“I’m going to give you coke mixed with water. Ben will be so out of it he won’t even tell you’re sober, I bet you!”

Sensing his low energy, he just sat next to him in the kitchen.

“Just think of the drinking as relaxing. It’s just going to be me and Ben speaking into a wall, and it will be great.”

“...”

“I know that breakups can be hard, but Ben is a great guy, and I see no reason why the two of you can’t be friends once all of this is over.”

Pat rolled his legs on his ankles. “Yeah…”

Staring just a little longer into the distance, John pivots topics. “Anyways, Pat. Do you know what happened to Ben’s right hand?”

“Hmm?”

“Huh? Okay, nothing happened then. Strange.”

“Huh? What happened?”

“It’s just in his pocket since the shops.” John thought about it a little. “Maybe he’s learning how to be left handed or something.”

He said that with such seriousness, Pat chuckled. “Yeah… haha… that must be the reason… Thanks.”

“I’m here all evening!” He said with a smile, giving Pat a hug.

Meanwhile, inside of Ben’s room, he winced in pain as he pulled his hand from his pocket.

“Shit…”

On his right hand, was a sticky black goo with the consistency of tar.