I should probably entice him to gnaw on me. He must have figured out I’m bad for the stomach, hence the lyrical pause, but with just a little brute force everything was possible. He could power through and make me edible again. As far as he knew.

He could suspect, but wouldn’t know I’d immediately die upon such attempt. Just disintegrate the same way rest of this formerly sagacious goop did. Was that why he was idling? Waiting on confirmation. Or just lamenting loss of a pet project. His body parts? Does he even have concept of loss? Because surely the alien creature did not share in our most glaring human flaws.

Was I not even worth the effort? Ah. There was that. He had looked right through me once before. Now I was but a leftover refuse from an animal he’d already beaten. Did I still count as a mouth if there was no controlling organism to be attached to? What a thing to be having existential crisis over.

So that was it. Final bit of my fuck you plan would not come to fruition. What a nasty oversight. I burned to ask about how things ended on their end. Did Snail complete shredding every mention of me? Or did it half-ass it, too? Was it happy to be reunited at last?

Since I was an inconsequential nonentity here, what the fuck was he idling around for? My legs fell asleep a while ago and I didn’t want to cradle twitching corpse anymore.

“Get them out of here, they don’t deserve to rot underground,” I finally grated out. The tilting rocks glistened as something wet glided along them. Pressure at the back of my neck increased tenfold and not with atmospheric pressure. Demon finally decided on a fool proof way to make me eternally suffer and the insolence just kicked it off into action. I clutched my emotional support cadaver tighter and made it leak worse.

I’ll pay for all of this, won’t I? But I had the right to fight back. To take my revenge. I wasn’t just a pebble to be kicked around. Right?!

Of all the things, I felt fear. There was no more indignation or fury. I did all I could and it was equivalent of spitting in rich man’s face. Retribution always hurt. I was sure the failsafe wouldn’t really work anymore, he’d taken it into consideration and found ways around. I gripped something sharp in my hand. I could just stab myself in the throat and force him to eat me. Maybe that would derail some of prep process? I’d either die and if not, I’d at least try something.

Rocks around all cracked and bent, but none fell. The cavern was encased in a glistening and undulating layer. My ears popped. When all the noise stopped and cords untwined, cold hit me like a bat. I inhaled fresh air and froze the lungs solid. It wasn’t long until I shivered like an autumn leaf. There were none of those, just heaps upon heaps of snow. In the middle of nowhere. Mountains on the horizon line. I’ve never even seen that in my life. There weren’t any anywhere near where I grew up. Where the fuck was this?

The final solution my mucky hand held felt so light. Without overthinking it, struck my throat. I felt pain and pressure, but critical mass was caught by some thread and I couldn’t pull my instrument any further. I tracked it to the source and saw blond man instead of a faceless monstrosity.

“Where do you think you’re off to? You’re all that’s left,” drenched man said looking right at me. Dour stare, stark tone, weight of puny mortal’s sins and the northern wind made me shake like sick man. There was that. Most major oversight. It didn’t need to dig under my skin to make me suffer. Plenty of people managed that without superhuman abilities just fine.

I had an urge to apologise profusely and beg for forgiveness, as though that ever helped. Animal inside of me wanted to live, but mercifully the words wouldn’t come out. I’d keep my worthless pride for few minutes longer.

“Why do you reek of fear now? After all that,” even the words were served like a cup of iced contempt. Somehow it was easier to mouth off at an unfeeling, stony presence. This man was an unknown stranger capable of everything.

“Didn’t you see so many, much scarier monsters?” he mocked some familiar sentiment I might have ignorantly spouted back when I was young and innocent.

“So dismissive at the start.” Was that disappointment? Probably. Omnipotent god met a stupid airheaded human bent on doing his own suicidal thing and imagined that to be special. He should be as disillusioned as I’m enlightened, the fucker.

“I never said I wasn’t afraid,” I finally chittered out.

“You hadn’t? I can’t remember.”

Mm, what a well-placed biting reminder. He was so mad. Or maybe he didn’t remember me at all? The escapade involved healthy dose of brain damage. Was this even him or some mouth? The boots were all that remained the same.

Even if he didn’t know who I am, I was still found standing over the rotting remains of his precious memories. Mm, this just might be worse.

“May I touch you?” creature pretending to be human asked.

Ah, here it comes. I would have shuddered but my bones were already clattering uncontrollably and not with fear. Hypothermia was drastically shifting my priorities. The sooner it’s over the better. I gracelessly put the iced-over body aside and full blast of chilly weather hit me anew.

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“No,” I scoffed, just to wallow in irony for the last time. As if I could ever stop it from doing what the fuck ever it wanted.

Branches peered out of the snow and reached for the grey sky. Translucent membrane stretched between the webbing. My bravado went out with a puff.

“What are you doing?” Not knowing was better to the advance warning and the horrors the mind would conjure up. What was I doing asking? Beg, just beg.

I frantically turned my head around. He was trapping me here. With the remains. Oh no, no, no. No.

My quavering limbs somehow found it in them to move and vault over the forming wall of flesh. All that valiant effort just to go face-first straight into a drift on the other side. Which was fine. I began scrubbing scabs of red poison and the glassy decay with fresh, flaky snow. It didn’t feel cold anymore. What a delight.

“I am stopping you from gaining that deathly tint,” the strange man scoffed.

Another flesh bubble sprouted around me and I lost my nerve again, “Must you stick me with the dead bodies already?!”

The vines twitched and hesitated about growing the morgue further. “It’s just tissue,” monster dismissed my concerns but patiently waited for explanation. Right. To him, those weren’t dead bodies. Merely a decapitated part of himself. Like the rest of this webbed windbreaker.

That wasn’t what’s important right now. He was stopped by me twice. I looked into piercing bright eyes and asked tentatively, “What were you going to do before?”

“Dress you,” monster spoke looking down at my shuddering form. My immediate death wasn’t on its agenda and I was relegated back to being toy for the wicked. How typically arrogant.

“Kill me now or you’ll end up losing even more of your precious brainpower,” I threatened. Not that I was capable of doing this mammoth any more harm – not that I did a lot in first place – but I really wanted to teach it what happens when enemies are given clemency. Perhaps I can taunt it into taking a toxic bite after all?

“I’ve a lot to spare,” monster shrugged it off noncommittally.

“Fine. Do as you like… Besides rooming me with the corpses,” I muttered. I really hoped he’d just stick his grubby feelers where they don’t belong and we’d be done with all of this.

Something unpleasantly hot twined around my throat and squeezed to the point of choking. I startled but couldn’t move. Warmth spread down the back and it felt like being eaten by an amoeba. The weird membrane twined around my still weeping forearms, and then got covered by puffy red feathers. My entire body did.

I stood up and got dizzy from the sudden motion. Caught myself just before face-planting back into snow. Full of grace. And style, apparently. I was in a very comfortable, very flamboyant bathrobe of my dreams. I even had matching slippers. Hardly the attire for this climate, but there were worse things to freeze over in. I thought that right until realising I was sweating. It was so flush. Scorching, in fact. I undid the high collar to catch a break. As much as it looked like genuine article of cloth, it was still unmistakably monster’s flesh. Alive, and warm.

Stuck the hands into pockets and wondered where the pool party was. “I’m missing sunglasses,” I declared. His attempts to ridicule me were piss-poor. I had no shame and I have always wanted something like this.

“Inner pocket,” monster rasped. He sounded far more human now, but some grit still made guest appearance.

“There’s more pockets?” A tactical combat-ready chill outfit? I was almost thrilled about this garb. Began perusing and also found chewing gum - colourful wrapper and all. Had to put that one back where I’d found it. Tinted eyewear helped with painful snow glare and the headache I didn’t know I had until it diminished.

Fuck this day, seriously. Was I possibly dreaming? It’s crossed over into surreal a while ago. What are the chances I was already eaten? Never free to begin with? Which monster could be causing this vivid hallucination?

“Okay, what now?” I asked like some noble observing the domain. Empty, desolate, cold domain. There was nothing. Not a tree, no houses. Just that massive crevice we crawled out of. Truly a landscape befitting its lord. We were smack dab in the middle of my imaginative mind, weren’t we?

Monster trudged through the snow like it wasn’t there, offered me his hand and said, “Let’s go see the mountains.”

Well. That was… more than what I had, which was just to lie down and hope to die. And I highly doubted the creature would let me. It didn’t go through all that trouble to emerge empty-handed. And I didn’t exactly burn with desire to quietly expire next to the other incarnations of myself either. The pile of ooze and gore still wasn’t all that inviting.

I must have wanted to take that hand hundred times. Before he’d killed everyone and fucked off. Now… this? What a joke. All I wanted was to just slap it away.

I’m all that’s left, he’d said. I ain’t nobody’s consolation prize. My attitude flared up, “Why aren’t you just eating me?”

“Because you’re a headache.”

“I hope I’m a heartburn, too,” I muttered.

“Right now? Possibly.”

So he knew. Well, I suppose cave full of noxious fumes was hard to overlook. Would he suspect the other thing?

“Scared of some spice?”

“You were never intended for that.”

“For what? Eating? Then just kill me. Put my head in a jar if you like. Do whatthefuckever you like, just don’t drag me around like a toy like this and expect entertainment.”

“But you’re just so unbearably entertaining. Constantly at risk of dying whether I’m there or not. It’s so fun scraping you off the bars of whatever cage you end up in.”

There was just too much unmistakable sarcasm to freak out about vulture with stalking tendencies. Even if he wasn’t really kidding. That had to be bump in otherwise seamless almighty existence. After all, he must have so much to do.

“Then just fucking stop!” I shouted at him.

“No. I’ve grown far too fond of you to abandon.”

“Everyone’s dead. By your hand. I’ve nothing to be alive for. Least of all, because you wish it.”

“I can make you wish for it, if…”

“Are you kidding me now? Nothing you say will ever make it alright. Ever. I hate you. I wish you dead.”

“Then kill me,” he dared simply. “I wasn’t going to make excuses. It was worth it to get this scrap of you back. I would have taken a lot more if that would have made a difference. I, after all, wish you very much alive.”

“I don’t care how many it was, just who! You took the few I ever had!”

“And you found ways to get back at me,” he said with some strange glee.

“I didn’t fucking do it to fucking amuse you,” I gritted out.

“I know. I am greatly impressed nevertheless.”

So there we were. Two very separate people with vastly different agendas. Tug of war in which I held no sway. Just like always.

“And ‘get me back’? You just left me there, in the middle of ground zero,” I muttered, pointing at an undeniable flaw in his logic.

“I had no way of knowing if it was or how much of it was you. I needed to go through every cell of All-seeing to find out.”

Sure. Convenient answers to everything. I wasn’t buying it. “Yeah. That’s another one you just had to trample over to get your way, isn’t it?”

“It’s right where it wanted to be, isn’t it?” light-haired imitation of a man enunciated, forcing me to shrug, grudgingly. Monster relations and inclinations were beyond my scope of understanding. “For now,” red-eyed man added.

“What’s that to mean?”

“I don’t need all that mass. I’ll cast most of it away as soon as I’m done going over it.”

I didn’t know which part was worse. I liked neither. Bunched up the feathers in both hands. “Are you being deliberately cruel?” I felt like a child first time introduced to unfairness of it all. It’s like I still expected something from this no-longer-horned creature. How embarrassing for me.

“Deliberately? Perhaps. Would you rather I spoke falsehoods, like you?”

He went through my brain. He knew everything. Or enough, anyway. He was still under my skin, even now. I hated his guy so much. Why can’t he dig just a little deeper and finish all of this uncomfortable situation for good?

“I’d rather we didn’t speak at all,” I proclaimed my verdict.

“Then let’s walk.”

And just like always, all I could do was act obediently and wait for an opportunity to strike. They always came, one way or the other.