Up until this point I still expected something normal. Another town with average looking guy whose face betrayed all the debilitating weariness the unending servitude caused. This, on the other hand, gave me a sneaking suspicion I’d be encountering another snail that trailed crimson mucus all over the place.

“Right. Thanks,” I muttered. I had no idea where we ended up at, but we had passed a road with a lot of old signs on it not that long ago. “That way should be another big city,” I pointed. It didn’t move. I was a little glad - going forth all on my own into a haunted demesne was just a little daunting. Something was off here. I felt watched but there was nothing besides sparse trees. I would very much have liked to turn back abound about ten steps ago.

“Knock, knock?” I called out into the morning fog. Nothing. Why was there fog anyway? How typical. Not like seeing would aid me in any way, but I could have done with less eeriness.

I crept on forward carefully. Right until I found out I can’t lift my legs anymore, only barely keeping myself upright at all from the force which gripped me.

“Now that’s a little rude,” I muttered discontentedly and yanked the foot again, then got an idea. “Of me, of course. Haha. Tracking mud all over your wonderful carpet. Kids these days, huh? No manners.”

I unlaced the boot and stepped out of onto the red grass. Brief relief being out of the bulky military boot and then the ground clung to me like superglue again. As delayed pain hit me I realised it was worse than just that – and worse than the constricting heavy footwear. The grass clung like a million teeth. Panic blinded me. I’d be eaten, and then this creature would be eaten, and everything would have been for naught.

I calmed myself. This was always a possibility. And if nothing else I’d be the fodder to a thing which would be taking a bite or two out of the Nerve Matter. This was fine. None of this was real anyway. I was likely already eaten, probably ever since witnessing that girl plop down onto the ground like an overcooked noodle.

All this pain though!

The teeth ripped deeper into my flesh and I exhaled, forcing myself relax. “I really need to talk to your body. It’s in danger. I might be able to help,” I insisted but the pain hadn’t ceased. Perhaps increased. Darts of pain were up to my knee now. I screamed internally. Was this perhaps the snail and it wasn’t taking kindly to me, the cause of its current problems? Damn, I hadn’t thought about that.

Failed plans tore down my stoic façade and I gripped the knee, hoping to strangle the agony. Tried to rip the leg upwards again, lost balance and steadied myself by plunging palm onto more of that damned ground. Tongues of pain twined around my fingers and reached bone immediately. It leapt upwards. I inhaled to scream when it all stopped. The pain, the constriction and I plunked backwards onto my butt.

Little brother, I thought out of the blue and suffered confusion immediately. There was nothing to remind me of such a thing. I’ve never had anyone to consider as such. Ruby was closest to a brother I’d ever have, and he’d be the elder one. The rest of the kindergarten was his, so… little nephews as far as I was concerned. All of whom were dead now. Emotion clouded my eyes momentarily and I blinked it away. I need to make him pay.

Right. There was a single percent this wasn’t a delusion, or a dream, or a very intricate trap therefore I need to get a grip. As much as reality tried to slip away from me these days, I need to cling to this.

I heard fire roar some ways behind me and saw pyre sway violently closer than where I’d left it. Red grass around was singed and wittered. Was this why I wasn’t yet eaten?

“Thanks,” I waved to it.

My foot dripped red too. The sock was shredded. Not that I cared, being so close to finish line, but I’d need to hold onto my consciousness for little while longer and blood loss did not go well with that. Undid the scarf, twined it around injury and stuffed the chewed up leg back into its boot. Mistakes were made. Monsters weren’t great at horsing around. Got it.

And yet I wasn’t glued to the surface anymore. My hand was also hurt, but much less so. I reluctantly touched the pain grass with it yet again. So perhaps I hadn’t gotten anything from the very recent and still vivid exchange from just minutes ago.

Little brother, I thought again and it finally dawned upon me those weren’t my thoughts. Random words interjected into my sentences and nothing made sense. I had to pull away the hand, because the swirling mess of two consciousnesses talking at same time gave me a brain freeze and perhaps even a seizure.

It was very unlike how snail talked, who provided mostly images. And snail did not hijack my own processes to convey whatever it needed to. This felt very crude and was definitely speech. I had little doubt a human was on the other side of the phone.

“Can we meet eye to eye?” I asked looking around and seeing nothing else. What if there was nothing human about this mouth anymore at all? What if he was the red grass and black shiny trees?

I touched the ground again and heard yes. My mind was clear as a lake on windless day. Come, voice said. Leave your friend there.

Does it still want to eat me and the fireling was what’s stopping it? Very likely, but I just needed fifteen minutes of attention anyway.

Why would I eat you when we’re part of same body? The distorted echo asked and I pulled my hand away, snapping the malleable threads that burrowed inside my throbbing flesh. The bloody landscape clearly did not know certain things and that would be hard to explain. Perhaps I did need backup for the conversation.

“Could you maybe come over here?” I asked the still air. Wherever it was, the mouth clearly heard me. “Or we can just shout at each other. I don’t mind.”

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There was no reply. It didn’t discourage me – chance to speak uninterrupted was exactly what I needed.

“Great! I’ll go first,” I considered telling him that I wasn’t a mouth and that was why I can’t come closer, but it could be very short intro. How do I even begin to retell that major clusterfuck? I rubbed my forehead with wet fingers and now my face was all bloody. “As I’ve mentioned, your body is in trouble… It tried to help me, and in process seems to have angered… uh, another creature which supposedly laid claim on my flesh first. Or something.”

I looked at my - thus far – unbloodied, merely baked hand and put it down onto the toothy grass. Perhaps snail’s mouth would just figure out the rest without me talking about things I could barely comprehend.

Grass dug into my palm and I kept my mind blank in case snail’s minion had any additional input. No words came, it just gripped me tightly. Just like at the start. Except there was no pain. No tearing into the bone, just… holding?

“I… knew… some… thing… was… wrong… but… not… what…” the moor exhaled each word and I felt spiders crawling up my back. I tried to yank my hand away and back up, but no give. Fingers gripped it in place. Not very human-looking, but five strings that I had no other word for nonetheless. “Not… your… fault…” Grassland labouredly exhaled again.

Surprise dyed me just like the colour red the land. This person was trying to comfort me? As though I was a little brother. I gripped boneless appendages and squeezed back.

“It is,” I insisted. I could have refused and had decency to just die. Now everybody will become fodder because of my selfishness.

“It… knew… what… would… happen…”

“Even so, the snail is a good person and doesn’t deserve this!”

A small amused exhale that came from… a rising bump in front of me which I didn’t even realise to be forming. “I call it that, too,” much clearer but still malleable, dragging words came out from it. The hillock twitched back and forth and I started to discern head and the shoulders. The process was slow. Where horned devil instantaneously could change its form or even spit out an entire copy in a flash, this seemed almost painful. I was too locked up in a fearful awe to be speaking and the mouth took those silent minutes to do its thing undisturbed.

The protrusion which I assumed to be the head lifted. Shiny ooze stretched and about dozen of eyes opened up, scattered all the way through the chest and back into the grass. Deformed, leaking features turned to face me. I held back a shudder of repulsion.

“You misunderstand,” a hole in the face moved pretending to be mouth. It was so terribly mispronounced I barely caught it. I was too in shock to argue and human shaped creature invested all that time to gain firmer shape.

“It knew the other one,” now fully understandable, feminine voice sang. “The slumbering brain. It tried to help it, get its attention. It succeeded.” The face with far too many eyes but clear-cut, dainty bone lines smiled sadly at me. “It couldn’t have gone any other way,” she finished with a note of finality, but to me it just affirmed that the crawling snot really did know what it was getting into and how it would end.

“But… why?” I was appalled. Why risk it all?

The girl’s many eyes turned to gaze somewhere far, only few staying fixed on me. “They used to be one,” grassland girl said eventually as though it explained everything.

“As in… together?” Some monster equivalent of dating? Did I land in a middle of a meaningless squabble? Which would be fine and dandy and I wish I could just back the hell out of this, but all my friends were dead.

The woman smiled gently as though she was privy to secrets and laid her head down onto the red moss. If I didn’t know better I’d think rest of the body was beneath the turf. Instead, she must have been this entire scene. But it did look comfortable.

“Not in the way you think,” crimson lips enunciated. “You are so young, little brother.”

“I’m not your…” Should I really be correcting the assumption which could possibly be keeping me alive?

“You are more than you are not. The last to consume and put us back together has been same being.”

“That doesn’t really sound as moving as you imply,” I grumbled.

Relaxed, napping face with many alert eyes had a slight smirk. “Did you have a say in which family to be born?” My shoulders hunched, the glistening bust of a lady went on without pausing, “That world… doesn’t procreate in human sense. There is no need to be together. They rip out desired parts from one another, or discard unwanted chunks of themselves. Some of these develop self-awareness, especially when there’s much of brain mass involved.”

“Oh, so… They’re… Uh. Related? Used to be one. I get it. Wait. So, snail… is the child?”

The woman’s slight smile did not change but I got the impression I was correct. The longer I pondered the notion the more upset I got. The loathsome monster which plagued me turned out to be deserving much more hatred than I already had for it. The abandoned baby monster seeking any shred of attention from its uncaring parent, for the latter just to lash out in most terrible way.

At least my parents properly fucked off, leaving me no chance to try and cling to them. My younger self would have done something equally heart-breaking.

“And you’re cool with that?!” I shouted suddenly, invigorated by fresh wave of anger. “You’ll die!” I was vaguely aware how hypocritical that sounded, but the faintly smiling woman did not seem unhappy to exist as an ominous meadow. Or whatever these snot-trailing creatures were up to.

“I am but a mouth, little brother,” she spoke melodiously. Not happy nor sad. Not particularly resigned either. Likely she had parted with the emotions altogether. “I can’t find you within. You shall be safe. Unless Nervous System comes looking for you separately… But we can change your smell further, if you like. You’ll be safe.”

“No!” I screamed. “That’s not what I want at all. You think I walked all this way to get to another monster because I wanted safety? I need that thing to suffer. No matter what cost. And tell the god damn snail to snap out of the craving for mommy and do something to survive.”

“It has been listening,” woman on the ground said and I squirmed. Thankfully these creatures did not subscribe to erratic emotional outbursts and hopefully took no offence. I barely cared, really, but I needed these creatures on board.

I cleared throat and addressed the silent participant, “The only way that conceited bastard will ever remotely notice you if you kick its teeth in,” Then fixed my burning glare onto the many eyes of the lady, “You know I’m right. Both of us can convince it, I’m sure of it,” I said completely groundlessly.

She snickered through what seemed to be light sleep, “Would you listen to a body part? All your cells are screaming in pain, you disregard it completely to go on this suicidal quest.”

What a winning argument. Everything did hurt. Exhaustion, sprains, cuts, burns, lack of water and food. “I’d already be dead if not for this,” I insisted, but changed gears to think of the helpfully offered alien’s perspective. Did the snail have similar drive which kept up its existence? Being unwanted orphan did open me up for reckless situations, until somebody showed up to hold my hand and tethered me to this existence.

“I need you. I need the help of two of you,” I appealed. “All of us can get through this.”

“What can you do, little human?” napping woman asked humourlessly. “My body is old and powerful, so much so that the mere movement of these two beings towards each other are wiping many others out of existence. Their meeting will decimate that world.”

“So? What does the life of others matter when your own is at stake? Have they ever lifted a finger to help you survive?” I threw out callously. I only ever had sympathy for those who have been kind to me first, and such people were far and few in between. In fact, snail was the last one of those.

“Can you even imagine how much greater the parent body is, to discard so much as though it was a mere fingernail?”

This bit of information did burst my bubble. Perhaps it was a pipe dream all along. I pursed my lips, freed the hand woman was still holding onto and began digging around in the bag pack.

“There’s still something,” I said, clinging onto last shred of hope. “When I was caught, military men threw this at us. It’s some sort of deadly gas. Knocked Brainiac straight out. Perhaps if we get more… or just nuke the fucker? He kept saying anything can die. One way or the other, the fireball over there wants to visit another armoury and we can grab whatever we want there too.” Yes, excellent! All the variables were finally aligning, this might really be it. This monster dream team would be unstoppable by puny locals.

The slumbering woman propped herself up, now with hands and watched me pull out the container. She was intrigued, but half of her eyes watched me sceptically… or with a disappointment.

“Human weapons would be great,” she said eventually, “but I can’t transfer it over.”

I looked at the canister. “Be… because it’s… not meat?” How had I ever managed to overlook such obvious thing? Dammit. No, that can’t be right! The absence of coin burned my pocket.

“You are so young,” she exhaled, relaxing into a pretend slumber again. “I’d need to consume it, which is deconstructing to most basic components and recreating anew in the other place. But if it’s poison effective on Fearsome Nerves, I’d just wither first.”

Fuck. I sighed and laid down on the wet grass to look at the grey sky. Was this truly the end?

The two-legged pyre was uncharacteristically crackly and I pooled concentration that way. “Human gateway,” it kept repeating. The unlikely helper might have been pumped up after mention of a nuke and I didn’t blame it. That would be pretty sweet, even if I had no idea where those had been kept.

“Too far,” woman whispered in reply, dashing all the remaining hopes. “I feel his approach on the waves.”

“Fuck,” I couldn’t hold back muttering. Time constraint completely scratches off the plan to force-march this mouth to hefty settlements and have it grow in mass like the first one. Whether the weight categories were that insanely different was but an unproven claim, after all.

Lady in red paint snickered gently, “My body has ideas.”