Chapter 1 - Something is afoot
A foot moves through the fabric of All-Things.
See it now as it goes, illuminated only in conceptual ways. Its skin is dappled by the glow of consciousness itself, soft like the morning sun, cast between spots of shade made by galactic clusters and filaments, swaying like leaves and branches in the breeze.
Feet are generally meant to function in distinct circumstances, but this particular foot now existed in entirely incomprehensible ways. Perhaps it was going forward, and perhaps at unfathomable speeds, but things such as space and time were inconsequential. Any attempt made to comprehend the foot's movement through All-Things would result in either confusion or madness, and so it’s best to let things happen as they will.
Suffice it to say that the foot had no relation to what is generally thought of as normal. If the foot was like a droplet in a storm it was a misshapen one, falling but not in the same direction as the rest of the rain, having somehow lost its way. If it was part of a world turned to spaghetti* by the pull of a black hole's hunger it was a stray bit of noodle careening towards a cosmic lap. If it was a cell from a body it was an anomalous fibroblast lifted away in a tissue sample, headed to a dish in which it could be isolated and observed.
Then, all at once, the foot struck down with its whole sole on All-Things, as would a mallet on a gong. There was a sound, low and mellow, ripples of movement carried on the stuff within the stuff within everything, and it went something like this -
Toooooooom
The step’s impact also caused something else, a wave of feeling sent upwards, sluggish and yet lightning-fast. Somewhere distant, far above, a mind stirred.
The mind somehow knew that it had a body, one full of parts aching for attention. There was flesh, sinew, and bone. There were organs, squishy and fragile, hidden within. And all around were various senses, but these were entirely confused, each fighting for importance, simultaneously pulling and pushing at the mind’s focus.
Also present was some kind of distracting buzzing, intermittent and distant, somehow menacing and full of ill-will.
The mind decided to take all these things one at a time, from the bottom up. It therefore started with the foot which had, after all, been the instigator of this ordeal.
The mind took notice of the foot, its own foot, and how the warmth of the ground made its skin tingle. At the end of the foot were a number of toes it could wiggle, but the mind wasn’t quite able to grasp just how many of these there were for the moment. However, it could tell by the sensation underfoot that the ground was both firm and loose: beaten earth with a fine top layer of dusty, scattered sand.
The mind then rose its attention and perceived that there was a leg connected to the foot, and above that a waist, and then a torso. There were lots of interesting and complicated bits on these that the mind skimmed over. This wasn’t for lack of interest, but rather that there seemed to be more pressing things to consider, such as that annoying buzzing, now closer and more persistent. First, the senses required sorting out.
Atop the torso was a neck, which was barely managing to uphold a drooping head. The head bore a face, and the face felt awful. Its mouth was pasty, filled with a swollen tongue and aching teeth. Its ears rang and pulsed, its nose burned all the way back to its tight throat, and its eyes watered and stung.
“If only there was some way to wipe these eyes,” thought the mind, and just then, somewhere below, there moved some fingers. These too were of an uncertain amount, but the mind didn’t bother with this. It scanned upwards from the fingers and found two arms, limp and heavy, hanging loosely on each side. Slowly, the hands began to move, the elbows to bend, the shoulders to pivot. At this, the buzzing changed slightly, as though trying to avoid the progressive rise of the hands.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
After what seemed like an eternity the palms reached the eyes. Here they pressed and wiped until sight was obtained. At first, it was a broken sight, cut by the uncontrollable blinking of eyelids trying to adapt to the clear ambient glare. And a moment later, the mind saw.
The first thing it observed was the body it had only been feeling so far. It was naked, paler than the yellowish brown of the ground, and presented certain anatomical aspects which supposed a particular gender: female. The mind considered this and decided that, for the moment, being a female suited just fine.
The female looked at her hands and determined that there were, after all, five fingers per hand. And an inspection of her foot, firmly planted before her, revealed the same amount of toes. Just when she realized that her nose occupied a permanent part of her vision, she also suddenly noticed the apparent lack of a second leg. If she had two arms, surely there should be as many legs?
Clumsily she moved her head, first straightening her neck and then rotating from one side to the other. Small pops informed her of the presence of a spine composed of stiff, sleepy vertebrae. Eventually, she managed to mobilize her entire spine sufficiently to see behind herself, and there, below the round shape of her behind, was her second foot.
This foot was different than the first, partly because the heel was raised as though it had stopped mid-stride, and partly because it was on the other side of some kind of shimmering veil. It was a hazy screen, sparkling blue and silver, filling the space beneath an archway. And the foot beyond it, her left foot, was numb and senseless.
To make matters worse, the buzzing suddenly returned with a vengeance, swooshing near her ear in a high-pitched crescendo. This rush of sensorial stimulation, together with the sight of her seemingly lifeless and disbodied foot, sent her heart rate into a flurry.
Filled with sudden panic, she twisted her hips so that her left foot jerked through the veil. Feeling exploded through her left leg and she stumbled, fell, then rolled on the ground, covering her bare skin with a coat of dust. The sensation of rough, grating sand made her muscles tighten, her skin harden in goosebumps, and her teeth bare in discomfort.
Something rushed through her then, binding all her parts together into a single, functional unit. She was whole at last, and it took less than a thought for her limbs to coordinate and lift her onto her knees, then to her feet. And when her eyes moved away from the ground, up the long, smooth wall that encircled this place, her senses came together to try and understand where she was, and who they were.
All around her, above the circular wall, were white faces, each one the same, egglike in both shape and colour. And yet amongst them were no mouths, no ears, no noses, only eyes. Wide and blank, the eyes looked down upon her, unmoving, cold, waiting. The girl spun on her heels, for some reason hoping to find at least one face different than the rest, but each one was identical. She hastily tried to estimate their number, but there were more than all her fingers and toes combined, more than she could currently understand. When she looked too hard they became blurry, slid into one another and made her lose her bearings.
Her breath quickened and her blood began to pound through her arteries even harder than it already was. She wanted to run, to dig a hole in the ground and bury herself, to scream and make those faces move. But just as she drew in a breath and readied a roar, that faint and yet unquestionably annoying noise caught her ears. The buzz of tiny wings beating incredibly quickly, the sound of a minuscule predator impatiently nearing its prey.
The girl froze, momentarily forgetting the horror of her situation, only preoccupied with the hum of a circling insect. From some deep instinct, she knew just what to do. She lifted her forearm slightly, turned it outwards, and exposed the soft, blue traces of her veins. The small black insect passed by once, blurred by its speed, and passed again, this time closer. Like a dart it landed on the inside of her elbow and the girl met it with a slap of her palm, instantly crushing it to death in a most satisfying way.
Usually, when a palm slaps an insect to death in the crook of an elbow, it makes the characteristic clap of flesh against flesh. This, however, was not the sound that made itself heard. Instead, the innumerable watching faces ripped through the middle, opening into large, gaping mouths, which each began to cheer and shout with the blaring of a million voices, horns, and whistles.
The girl covered her ears and ran. Terrified beyond measure, she barely registered the giant, glowing symbols that had appeared in the sky and instead dove through the shimmering veil from which she had pulled her foot. There she found herself in a small, bare room, and quickly crawled to a corner where she huddled into a ball.
Arms wrapped around her knees she rocked back and forth, shaking and crying. Tears ran down her thighs, dripped onto the ground, and pooled in the dust between her feet. For the longest time, until she fell asleep and on into her unsettling dreams, the symbols that hard flashed through the sky burned in her mind. To her, they were unintelligible, blurred and strange, but surely hid some kind of meaning.
Triumph attained
Tally of Contestants
Human - Whole
Mosquito - Obliterated
End of Chapter 1
----------------------------------------
Notes on Terms
*Spaghetti - Spaghettification: term used to describe the process of an object stretched and compressed to be noodle-like when pulled towards a black hole.