Ulick awoke naked, nestled beneath the hot wash of bleached-mint breath. Where the hell was he? Attempts to check were futile and only seemed to bring him deeper into the stranger’s embrace. Supernaturally so, considering the earlier thrashing. And by God, the heat. It was stiflingly warm, like a quicksand blanket worn in the morning of early summer. It had melted his leaden limbs, allowing it to coil them around their body. The image of streaming spaghetti twisted around a fork felt all too real.
Schools of late-night survival media binges swam through his mind, darting between frantic grabs for assistance. The mind eyed an older clip bogged down with age and integration into his psyche. It attempted to slip between remembrance of late Spring but failed. Caught and slapped within the working memory, Ulick made short, focused efforts to move. Treating it not as a person, but liquified earth. Eventually, his fingers shifted – sluggishly wriggling a snail’s pace into clenching. It was not enough. The depth had almost doubled. He was well and truly submerged.
Pausing, desperation fuelled a surprisingly radical notion. Calm, collected, communication. The idea was so mundane yet stretched the limits of consideration. To Ulick, he was dealing not with a person, but an inevitability. Did you debate with an Earthquake? It was an event, committed without malice nor regret – it simply happened. Sure, there was an internal logic. A cool chain of events unravelling within magma and tectonic plates. But there was no intent. Which makes this comparison a touch poorer. Because this one did. It was a forest whose roots snagged your foot on purpose, hail that sought windows – a summer that wanted you, and just you, to suffer. For Ulick, that was all the more terrifying.
“Excuse me?” he asked, frantically. “Could you please let me go?”
It spoke, without accent or thrum through the chest. “No.”
“Please?”
It hummed contently.
“I feel,” Ulick begun before his voice caught. “I feel like I’m dying.”
“You are,” it said with a sigh. “If I must.” At once, the heat dissipated to a pleasant, encompassing warmth. “First deaths should be semi-enjoyable.”
Relief washed over him. “Thank you.”
“You thank the one who kills you?” It asked voice coloured with the high notes of bemusement. “Truly as I remembered you.”
“Oh, you’re the one who’s…” He trailed off. “Wait, we’ve met before?”
It shrugged. “Some time ago.” A hum swept through him. “It was a one-sided affair, now.”
“Could yo-”
“Could I not kill you?” They interrupted. “Yes.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
The being smiled around him. “Because someone needs to die.” A fleshy something poked his nose, leaving behind slimy wetness. “And you are the man to do it.”
“Did you just lick me?”
“Indeed.”
“Is there a reason I am not,” Ulick paused, trying to find the right words. “Pissed off beyond belief?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Ulick.”
“You cause a lot of questions.”
“Touché,” it conceded. “Emotions require the body, and my talents in mimicry lie elsewhere.”
“Oh.”
It licked him again. “Indeed, hence why you are so embraced.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Weird emphasis,” Ulick replied, absentminded. Mulling their words over, he asked, “So what, am I like a soul or something?”
“Or something.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“Truly?
“Yes. So, what am – ow!” A bee-sting prick stung his heart, burning straight up and through to his sinuses. “Is that sup- oh, Jesus! Fuck!” Thud-thud. Pain bashed its knuckles on Ulick’s ribs, like a punch to the chest. The hurt loitered in knuckle-spot bruises. “Can you not!?”
“Yes.”
A few seconds passed, without change.
“That implies you are going to help me. So, do something!”
“Oh, my apologies.” It bore the yell with frightening disregard. “Then I change my answer to no.”
“Gah!” Ulick yelled, thrashing. Anger filled him, stripping reason for a mindless need to hurt. It was akin to standing, unaware something was overhead. The intense, visceral hatred – a primal reaction to injury. It festered like rot. “What happened to a pleasant first dea- no! What about no emotion! Pain is an emotion, right?”
“It is a sensation,” the being said, patting his head like a kindly Grandmother. “Unlike anger. That is there for theatrical flair.”
“Wh-”
Fingers snared his lips shut. “Listen well,” it said, grip firm but fair. “You may find solace in these words.”
“There comes a point in time where the perks of immortality run their course. When you become so bored of being bored, you find amusement in everything, but never the joy.”
Ulick’s focus sharpened with supernatural clarity. Each word ringing like a church bell brought to the ground floor.
“Ego death worked for a time, but curiosity always leads us to crack the shell of what was – no matter how hard the past begged. Eventually, the thought of making another I go through eternity became too disgusting a burden to bear,” it said, before pausing – passing him the impression of pacing.
“See, regret is easy to carry – it just whispers what could have been and the hope of lost opportunity. Guilt is that, but it eats you from the inside out. Until you find yourself lying awake at night reaching for a trigger to pull because there is nothing you can do to fix it.”
It curled over, brushing a hand through his hair with the tender care of a lover resigned to a sinful desire. “In truth, I want to die,” it whispered. “And our selfish desire for selfless abstinence another’s inclusion has passed.”
A soft press of serene screaming bundled in mossed stone rolled across his forehead. It tingled, sending a shock through the system like a fly crawling up your nose. Ulick’s face felt flush, sickly heated as though a fireplace was mere seconds from burning his lips. It crawled in, a vomit-impulse went down his throat, swimming through melted snot. Like a cold glass of water sapping heat from its steaming-neighbour, sorrow transfused into his stomach. It was the kind of sadness that made each breath hot with the threat of tears.
“You will doubt, and take these works as manipulation,” it said, voice a peach-sweet tea marred with the croak of a twice-quit smoker. “But I am so fucking sorry.”
A struck, mattress spring drone heralded a sloped tug of vertigo. Strength fled Ulick’s limbs, dropping resistance from his martyr-passioned grip. It turned inwards, past the liver and lungs – torrenting into his heart. It thundered. Racing towards a heart attack, it pumped like a swelling storm of screeching cicadas. The noise – or was it the pressure? It trickled past his ears and eyes, beading in little red drops. Ulick tried to scream, the expression of pain trapped between unmoving vocal cords.
At once, it stopped.
In those calm, surreal moments of nothing, he languished. Relaxing back into comfort thought lost, anticipation grew. A building tension behind the nose, a pressure in the chest that grew crushing. It ripped through, not through the nose, but between the ribs. Prying them open like thin, aluminium bars, it escaped. That vital organ flew, blasting through clenched muscles like a hard-fought climax.
Ulick flew, unshelled and unwilling.
He crowned – pushing through a tight-knit barrier that felt like wet, inner-nostril skin. Emotion grated upon the shores of his consciousness, as though the hairs inside. With a noisy gasp, it overwhelmed him. A hundred pulses, beating a two-tone rhythm drummed through Ulick’s veins. Feelings paired, congealing by halves. It was sweet, that wholistic mix of emotion without borders or distinction. The whole of halves bubbled, settling into place until no space remained. A dopy smile gashed his lips.
Full and without consent, Ulick passed out.
--oO0Oo—
Ulick awoke naked, toes dangled past the muggy heat and into a clotted, tepid pool. Sweat rolled freely, treading well-worn tracks. The traitorous drops shared mutual agreement, namely, to avoid his mouth’s desperate call for moisture. Each breath tickled and swallowed foul air, stained with blood, rotten wood, and overripe fruit. It churned his guts, quietly repulsing it as the terrible mixture wormed through his mud cracked innards. His eyes were the worst off. They peeled open as if a finger ran across skinned-grape teeth.
He should have kept them shut.
Large, gnarled trees twisted and clawed their way from murky depths out of sight. Intermingling overhead in an unforgiving canopy, they allowed four threadbare rays of light to pass. Such generosity left all else beyond sight. In truth, the only reason Ulick saw much of anything, was a ring of orange light, haloing the edges of his vision. Sitting up with an aching hiss, he looked to behold the light-bearing angels and vomited.
Sat atop an autumn-hued pillar of salt, Ulick beheld an encirclement of a hundred corpses. Laid out in parallel clumps of robed horror, all but their chests were garbed from sight. Veins bored to breaking point suspended over hollowed ribs, akin to unfinished pipes. Absent of organs, the red-filled cages donned an identical adornment. Thin, hooked vines threaded through arteries, a clump of weaved reeds hooked into place where the heart should be.
“What the actual fuck?!”