The other morning I was groggy beyond belief but was thankful for that brief reprieve which attempted to shield me from harsh reality. I turned over on my side and wailed, then screamed, still unaware why. My body was raising all alarms and it prompted my mouth to do the same. I attempted to get up and faceplanted back into the metal ground. I tried and tried but just kept squirming. I could not get up.

I woke up without an arm. It just up and disappeared whilst I slept.

No, not sleep. This level of sluggishness came from drugs. I curled up onto myself on the good side and stared at the gleaming eyes beyond the glass. The assholes didn’t even bother to bandage it up. Why would they, with monsters?

Something massive was thrashing again. Were the other creatures tireless just like the one I had known? Even if they could heal themselves and not feel pain, I didn’t think they were having fun up here regardless. So why was I feeling especially miserable about my sorry ass?

The shutter behind the window dropped down and room I was in started moving. I groaned pitifully, not having energy to do much else. There was some small chance that they dissected my limb and found that I was fully human after all.

Was this sliding towards incineration? That… wouldn’t be so bad actually. I missed warmth. Jumping into a pyre was high on my list these past few days, as cold was so deep inside my bones by now I hardly felt it if not for uncontrollable shivers.

One of the walls fell aside and there was bigger space behind it. I raised my head to look, but that was it. Too lazy to brave it. Would I get electrocuted again? Probably, but until then I was not going anywhere. Maybe my heart could give out on one of those. Maybe I should just dig my nails into the stinging shoulder and open up the artery. Skin around it was so tender. I did not want to feel any more pain.

My eyes fell onto another new thing. There was slab of greenish monster meat nearby. Food? But it was all raw. However, besides that, I had no idea what else it could be for. They treated me completely like an animal, then. Chances were it was poisonous too. Touched it and my remaining fingers did not fall off, melt or rot away immediately. But it was warm. Did some other creature get my arm then?

I bit off small piece with some effort and it stung. Unluckily, that was it. I did not drop dead. Eating any more of it was not appealing. It did not smell or the taste edible. Perhaps I wasn’t starving yet, though I can’t recall a time when I’d eaten raw monster meat even as an unwanted orphan.

Hacking noise startled me. I looked at the newly opened room but it was still empty. And yet, something undoubtedly was there. For long minutes I waited but nothing happened. I was well aware it was another cage for a trapped monstrosity. It was either invisible, or… Sound came from the obstructed ceiling. Ha. Knew it. I guess I’ll at least die smug. Laid down and closed my eyes. Must have passed out because next time I awakened was when the cage was en route back.

Shortly after, I received delegation which had even more questions to ask. I had too big of a headache to be a smartass, so my ignorance was rewarded with more pain. Sometime later airtight chamber doubled as test tube for tolerance of pressure and strange gasses. I didn’t fare so well there either. I passed out. Then met some more monsters which sat on the ground and chirped woefully. I groaned at them in solidarity. They didn’t deem it worthwhile to kill me either. Pity.

When the chamber was wheeled back, lady scientist was on her lonesome and was restlessly looking at all the monitors.

Click. “You can’t honestly still be thinking this show is fooling us?”

Oh my. This sounded like a frustration rather than a preapproved conversation. I whispered from my corner, “How naughty of you, Miss Augusta.”

“What?” Woman got flustered as though I was referring to more than this minor lapse in protocol. What else could she be up to?

“Your crush will feel so left out,” I spoke quietly again but their microphones had no problem picking up on it.

“Well… He doesn’t need to get reprimanded for my whims,” her fingers danced on, then woman shook her head as if remembering this wasn’t why she was breaking the rules. “As I was saying, it’s a nice pitiful display but whatever you’re doing to stop your brethren from attacking you nullifies all of it. Just quit it and cooperate already. We’re not animals, nobody’s enjoying this. We, too, just want safety. You were human once, you should understand.”

I sighed deeply and tiredly. The permanent migraine made it harder to think than necessary. There was little I could say anyway, so I suppose I needn’t bother to expend my remaining brainpower.

“I didn’t do anything,” muttered to myself.

“So why are the others staying away?”

“Have you considered it’s because I’m still covered head to toe in what’s essentially another creature’s vomit? Who’d want that?” Mist and stray particles were a far cry from cleanliness. Would this be a good time to address a shower? Hell yes, I’d bash her face in with my severed limb for bucketful of warm water.

Fingers insistently tapped on, “Of course we did. They don’t care about the mucus.” Pause to consider revealing something she clearly shouldn’t. “It’s your flesh. Other creatures react adversely to the samples too.”

Curious, but they did take the limb that demon has restored with bits of himself. Now, how do I explain that to this nice lady without putting myself in bigger danger? “You’d probably do better with carcasses of the monster I was with,” keep them busy until I fall apart. Not long now.

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“No, it’s distinctly whatever you produce.”

“Because it’s dead! You’d do well to take better care of me, huh?”

Woman’s eyes narrowed, “I’m willing to give it some doubt because nerve gas could have degraded some essential component. Still, that only proves you are a foreign entity.”

I rubbed my face and tentatively sniffed the palm. It wasn’t an imagination, then. Tantalising scent of meat on my skin under all that grime and decay. My fingers dug into already carved up forehead. That bastard. He promised to keep me safe and miraculously did, but somehow didn’t factor in the oblivious humans.

I had no reply to that final argument. If I agree and reveal it’s probably the smell, they… what, exactly? Drain and quarter me? It’s already happening.

“It would be such a shame if your bunch of smarty pants accidentally killed off the only hope to save humanity from the monster plague,” I tisked with my best effort to convey contemptuous irony.

“You won’t die from this much,” she sounded as exasperated as I felt.

“But would it kill you to give me a sandwich? I see myself cooperating in that kind of situation far more willingly.”

“What’s wrong with the provided sample?”

“Would you eat that?” I had no strength to wave madly at the raw, now rotting lump of meat and just gestured that way with the eyebrows. Perhaps I ought to toss it to another monster’s cage to save myself from the horrible stench.

Woman rolled her eyes as though I was being obnoxious and not the other way around. “Just in case you are very new to this, entities don’t have to eat at all. You don’t have to eat nor drink, as witnessed thus far. Most formerly-human mouths ingest substances just to access rest of the body and restructure themselves.”

“Yeah… That clearly isn’t happening.”

“And why is that? Is your main body really dead?”

Numb hurt formed into a lump which settled in my throat and prevented me from speaking. Someone was for sure dead. All thanks to these humanity’s finest. Shifty-eyed woman probably saw some weakness in my expression and was about to push further, but door behind her opened and the colleague returned with a kettle. They exchanged some pleasantries and it seemed like Augusta pretended our dialogue never took place.

“Is that for me? Why, you shouldn’t have,” I stared longingly.

Mad scientists were discussing something with new fiery passion and I assumed I was not the only one who gleamed something from the quick clandestine chat. Nobody shared their hot beverages. I shivered and drifted off into dreams that were equally as terrible. It took me longer and longer to tell which was reality. Pain. Was it the raw space at the shoulder? Did they catch me shoplifting again? Or was this winter? No, rotten meat meant I was in the basement. A monotonous voice kept droning on, did I fall asleep listening to the radio? I sank into that latest sensation with all my might. It was still from the bleak days but I at least had my friends by my side. They all must be sleeping as well. I better keep quiet.

During my lucid moments I no longer craved or hoped to ever return home. Ruby’s problems were no longer in my hands. He’d do fine, as always. It was peaceful kind of complete resignation. Frankly, I had given up on that first time I was at the mansion already, so all in all, the fact I got to spend few days with the gang was already an incredible bonus.

Vertigo. The steel cage was moving again. The floodgate opened and I bothered to look what kind of monster it was today.

I snickered, for it was a massive snail. Absolutely grotesque, coppery thing that slithered and left red trail after itself. Multiple stalks swayed to some beat I did not hear but my fingers joined in. It wasn’t a shy one either, slimy critter wasted no time passing threshold into my cubicle. Great, I’ll be squished underfoot. And by that I mean not great. Entirely awful. I whimpered and prayed to pass out or get a heart attack.

A stem stretched towards me instead of the whole thing steamrolling me. It hovered and continued to twitch in a manner I could not decipher. Morse code? Nervous tick? I kept staring and looking for other signs to indicate whatever was going on. Snail kept drastically redecorating my room whilst keeping that one tentacle near my face.

Fine, I’ll bite. I sat up – or tried to, and failed. Sighed and gave up.

“Welcome,” I muttered stoically. “Make yourself at home. Help yourself to the just slightly rotten meat – hope it wasn’t ripped out of your buttock… Mm… Doesn’t look like it, you seem to lack a backside.” Snail slipped sideways and even further up. Gravity, what gravity? Stalk swayed in front of me.

“Right, right. How rude of me,” I took a hold of the squishy skinless tissue to shake it and successfully did not shudder - had no spare energy to. “Hello, my name is… Well, just call me handsome devil.”

The appendage twined around my hand with unexpected vigour. I felt it go beneath my skin and up the arm and that time I did shudder, although it must have appeared more like a convulsion. Unlike my devil, the snail did not disengage when I tried to back out of my failed joke. Sensation was intrusive and painful, as though every nerve got brushed along the way. Fool, what did I think would happen? Getting assimilated probably beat getting slowly crushed. Probably. To be seen, very soon.

I smelled him and it forced me to calm down. Him. The specific sort of electric fleshiness. It wasn’t remotely how the snail first wafted. I racked my brain for what that could mean when I started to take notice of the persistent odd thoughts that kept cropping up. Especially since they didn’t seem to be attached to anything.

I cleared my head and concentrated.

Image of me, handless malnourished heap on the floor through many, many eyes. Monster snail was trying to communicate, but I could not grasp what it was trying to say.

It showed me a nose. Smell? Was I the one who smelled of brain matter? The notion solidified on its own, although there was a lot more nuance to the scent than I could ever describe. Insistent images stopped. I must have guessed right. How does one communicate with alien snails? Was I to fart and imagine something negative in reply?

“No, I am not him,” I eventually settled on whispering. Wait, did it even have ears?

A close-up of my parched mouth. Did not need to see that. Seeing chapped lips increased thirst by about a thousand percent, give or take three.

“Nope, not a mouth either.”

It had to have some access to my thoughts to do this, right? I concentrated on showing devil restoring my hands. Perhaps me being a mouth was the only thing that stopped me from getting eaten, but at this point, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, considering monsters – a lot. But I was past caring.

I remembered field covered in white gas and horned corpse. “He’s dead,” I clarified just to be especially clear. I felt a surge of surprising amount of anger. How dare he? Just peacefully fucked off and left me to deal with yet another imprisonment.

Snail’s body started quivering as it worked hard toward making fresh new streak of paint. Was it sad? Happy? No idea.

Concept of something massive. Continental. Underwater. Floating. Charged. Dangerous. There were many, many branches of a dead forest reaching towards the sky. Nuances of the scent started crystallising into something akin to gargantuan slumbering brain matter.

Fear and awe blossomed in my chest and heart did dangerous flutter for someone this malnourished and exhausted. Were those my feelings or alien creature released some cocktail into my system? We’ll never know.

But I did figure out what it was saying. There was no way the wee little puff neutralised something that sizeable. That sprawling landmass was Parkinson’s body. Real one, not the human sized ant he marched around for fun.

As soon as I worked that out, I got an image of underwater forest clawing through the landscapes of this planet, wiping mountains in its path and then opening this underground joint like a tiny can of singular bean. Snail showed something a little different, but I preferred less gory visual.

I mean, I could understand why monster like that would just fearlessly stroll into an armed encampment and be so brazen the whole damn time, but… why would it bother coming here?

Snail recycled an image of my arms getting restored.

“So?” I said sceptically. His good deed of the day was done.

Image of a nose.

I did not understand logic of monsters, and was too tired to bother to. “If you say so,” I muttered and closed my eyes. If horned devil (no longer horned? spiky rolling landmass?) decided to be clingy enough to come around and seek me out…

I waited for my knee-jerk reaction of wishing to be dead and long gone by then, but instead hope sprouted in its place. I curled tighter into myself. I just wanted to be anywhere but here. This cold coffin was awful. I wanted him to keep his promises. I wanted to be able to stop clawing onto survival with all my might and let somebody else take care of it for once. There was nothing I could do here to save myself anyway.

Snail must have been doing more sensual dancing for I felt the part which connected to me twitch too. It then showed me my deaths. The restless, thrashing creature which would just stomp me to pulp without meaning to. The other slug which speared its victims and lugged them around like a shell, all still somehow living and screaming. The beautiful plant room with shapes of animals in it. The…

“Geez, enough, I get it. Fuck,” I tried to pull my hand back, not wanting to see anything else. It did not let go.

It then showed itself eating me… Oh, great. I groaned, but it went on. Snail then regurgitated me upon Great Nervous System’s arrival. One way or the other, it beat slowly dying of thirst and this creature deigned to ask first.

“Okay,” I said and sent it unclear instructions to have me sleeping through the unpleasant part. I hoped it understood and meaning wasn’t lost in translation, I very much...