Lyle struggled to pull Ezra’s limp body through the halls; his eyes darted from corner to corner, hoping to spot the creatures that howled in irritation in the shadows. Perhaps he would have heard the screeching die down slightly if he hadn’t been hurling insults throughout the entire ordeal, primarily at himself.

Ezra was growing heavier. The peculiarity of that change was completely lost in the moment, written off by Lyle as fatigue catching up to him at first. The blame quickly shifted when he felt Ezra’s body shaking, with spasms and sounds of choking following soon after.

“Not now, you gangly fuck. Don’t fucking seize up on me now!”

Out of the dark, not too far, one creature approached. Even under the sparse light, it looked different. The wet coat of mucus, now having much more in common, with a thick coat of foam clinging to its body. While its movements were awkward compared to before, drunk and less coordinated, Lyle was hoping for more. Signs of hurt, of pain. Not the steps of a creature scorned, such as it was.

“You see that asshole? We’re gonna be swallowed up by the walking fucking cockhead over there. And you got the audacity to have an episode?! Fuck you,” He looked ahead, facing snarls, voice laced in pure spite, addressing the lumbering Wormhead directly, “And fuck you most of all, you ambulatory cum-tube! At least have the decency to look hurt!”

He did his best to sound genuinely angry, but the shakiness of his voice, the labored, erratic pull on Ezra... nails hammering the truth into Lyle. Terror, cold and all-consuming, gripped him like a physical force, threatening to overwhelm the last frayed edges of his courage. One wet step, and Lyle gasped. He knew the end was coming. Another wet step, and he shuddered violently. And then... nothing? No third step. Just otherworldly stillness. As if the world had held its breath. Lyle only felt the beating of his heart and the pressure of the blood behind his eyes, almost like a hummingbird trapped inside his skull, wings frantically beating against bone. Something changed.

He remembered when he woke up, remembered the distinct shiver deep inside his spine after he had wandered, something announcing its arrival. Right now, it was just like then. Lyle’s thoughts raced so fast they blurred into meaningless fragments. Wordless warnings from within. Then the memory flickered: a wall of writhing flesh... the stench of burnt copper... and a single word whispered over and over in a voice like shattered glass—“Run.”

And he would have, that was, until Ezra took an audible breath, and with it, hell let loose. Everything happened in fractions, one after another. The Wormhead shuddering, chunks of the foam from its body flinging all around, a ghastly shriek following, but it wasn’t the mindless rasp Lyle had come to expect. It was a choked sob, almost a strangled whimper, laced with a chilling human edge.

With a thud, the creature’s head came crashing down on the ground. Even in the dim lights, one could see the drool dropping from its gaping maw, the flaps threshing back and forth in some grotesque parody of labored breath.

Impossibly fast, a blur of foam and dripping jaws It wasn’t so much sliding as exploding across the slick floor; Lyle couldn’t even properly register how fast it was until it seemed too late. Instinctively, he tried to throw Ezra to the side and close his eyes to the inevitable. He heard a choked whimper escaping him even as it was swallowed by the noise. This was it. The last thing he was going to feel would be the wet slap of worm-flesh against his face. The crushing weight of it all—the stench, the terror, Ezra’s uselessness, the echoing, hollow certainty of death—pressed down on him. This was where it ended.

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And then, wailing. Pained and so incredibly loud. And the stench, by God, the stench... but with all of that put together, why wasn’t he getting swallowed whole? Why wasn’t he dead? Lyle cracked open one eye. Nothing. Just the grimy, chipped paint of the hallway walls under the flickering fluorescents overhead, the smear of blood across one of the illusive doors just ahead.

What got Lyle to open his eyes completely and to look to the front was a deep growl, so distinct that he knew it wasn’t the Wormhead. That growl came from the only other person in the hall. When Lyle looked in front of him, Ezra was towering over him. His oversized black long-sleeve shirt stretched thinly on his body. Tiny rips marred the black cotton, ripping further and further with every passing moment. It was like watching a stop-motion film where the photographer had forgotten to take pictures at even intervals. Ezra’s frame seemed to jerk and spasm, muscles bunching and relaxing in quick, violent bursts, as though something was trying to escape the confines of his flesh, just to be pulled back over and over. His hands, what was visible of them anyway, were buried right in the gullet of its maw, forcefully peeling back two of its flaps, digging into the flesh bit by bit. Obscene cracks followed the jerky motions, little sounds of something hitting below, not unlike pebbles meeting the ground.

Ezra held the creature in place, not budging the slightest. The humanoid part of the Wormhead tried its hardest to push forward, only to slip and slide on the foamy bile it was leaking. Each time it gained a little ground, Ezra would convulse again, his hands digging further into the creature’s flesh It was almost comical how helplessly it flopped to the ground over and over, wet plops and smacks echoing through the halls.

Lyle retreated, his boots scraping against the concrete as if the floor itself recoiled. Just seconds before his second step, he watched as the creature’s struggle grew more desperate. It flailed helplessly in Ezra’s grasp, trying to twist and turn out of his hold, trying to latch onto him. Its wails pitched obscenely high, erratic, coming in bursts. Feral pleads hitting deaf ears.

The foamy substance of the creature flew all over the hall in bursts; the now ever more hulking form of Ezra wrangled the Wormhead on the spot, wrangling it as if dealing with a simple pest, culminating in a bout of strength that boggled the mind. Ezra exhaled deeply; the chill of the air fractured by the notion alone. Suddenly, as if shaken out like a blanket, the Wormhead shot up towards the ceiling, chunks of foam flying off of it, the lights around revealing twisted bits of flesh within the hardened substance.

Like thunder, it sounded when the entire length of the creature was smashed against the wall after that. It was impossible to tell whether the cracks that echoed through the halls were from bone or concrete. It didn’t matter. After Ezra had painted the hall, he immediately intimately conjoined the Wormhead with the wall to his right, destroying it, creating an impromptu way into one classroom. The steps he took after the flung creature were deliberate and heavy. Genuinely heavy, as the ground beneath them gave in, leaving massive prints. That moment of pure triumph wasn’t meant to last. Just before Ezra could have followed up for a hopeful finish, the constant flux his body was still under seemed to reach a critical point. Random parts of his body increasing in size, only to be reduced the very next moment. Protrusions extending from below his skin, just for him to push them back in with his hands.

Even now, despite everything that was happening, despite what he was seeing, Lyle’s focus didn’t go towards finding a way out for himself. One of the Wormheads was being kept busy. Emphasis on one. “Where the fuck is the other one?!” he thought to himself. As if waiting for him to say those words, even without saying them out loud, his neck hairs stood up. More and more, it was obvious by now, that exact reaction, like someone whispering to you. Whispered: “Something new has come.”

And when he looked towards the furthest depths of the halls, the already half-dead lights even weaker. Eyes, so many of them, staring from afar. Even from that distance, the intent was etched into them so damn clearly that it almost rubbed off. Ravenous Hunger.

“Oh, fuck off” was the only thing he mustered.