Circe ran. A mass of brown, tan, and putrid green roaches skittered over her. The colorful roaches remained distant. These roaches were camouflage. A clump of mud with violet glowing eyes full of squiggling static insanity stomped forward. Frenetic chemical energy. Her leg burned inside, but she could put weight on it. Pain didn’t mean much as a warning when it was everywhere all the time dialed to eleven. Every inch of her skin felt like it was peeled open and being stabbed with a million needles. Is this what a full body tattoo felt like? The leg didn’t feel broken. Good enough, as her mom would say. Circe missed her so much that her chest heaved.

Her head ached. Shifting mud splooshed under her feet. The pool beckoned her to collapse, to roll, to drink deeply until it filled her ventilated lungs.

Tendrils pulsed across her. She grabbed them, felt them. Tendrils pierced skin. The purplish glow of their ethereal lengths slid across the top of her head under the cover of skittering roaches. Somehow, the tendrils transferred less of the pain to the roaches. It meant more pain for her, but allowed them to cloak her.

Each breath scented her insectoid capsule with bloody rot. Puss ejected from the hole in her chest. Breathing eased ever so slightly. Every tendril felt spiritual in nature, yet somehow, she caught them, detected them feasting on the visceral pains they inflicted. Somehow, she injected them with her mana.

Make them smarter. Circe fed her torturers’ intelligence, one by one, yet felt it build within their collective being. If they wanted to kill her, they would have done so. If they wanted her to die, they wouldn’t have fixed her leg or reattached her hand. These marks belonged to her. She would harness them. They would become her tool, but only if her sanity could survive this level of pain.

Thoughts couldn’t sort themselves. At times she saw faces, or heard conversations. Alfredo. Ebony slept on a comfy bed hugging a pillow. Then Azoria danced flamenco while her parents scolded. Static. The room. A broken television. More static and roaches burned over the floor as Alfredo banged on the door demanding money. Her heart went into the roof of her mouth.

Her broken and torn hand clutched her stomach. Icy stabbing pain pulsed from her inside like a drum beat. Lungs revolted as bloody puss shot forth from cracked lips. This wasn’t vomit. It came from her lungs! Now it ran down her neck.

Survive. Get out of this dungeon and survive. Go anywhere, hide. Find a solution to make the pain go away. Fingers clenched. Rusty nails pushed through her feet with each step. Circe ran. Thumbs pried at her glowing eyes. The half-moon marks never stopped watching, burning, glowing, killing. Burned razors slid along her arms and legs like picks over the strings of a guitar. Skin peeled away.

Ebony screamed at her about a bounced check. Tigers clawed inside her stomach.

More! She sensed a tendril untouched by her powers. Mana flowed; the stupid parasite would be permanently buffed in intelligence. This was her power. It was about time she used it.

“Hurt me more you stupid bastards! Hurt me more! Do you think I’m not strong enough to feed you!? I LIKE IT! I make you stronger! I’m your freaking GOD!” she croaked.

Tears washed her face. Roaches crawled in her mouth. They picked the rot from between broken teeth. They dropped small beads of water from the stalactites and returned tears to a dry tongue. The walls of this dreary cave enclosed everything. Did she even know where to go? Where could she find an exit?

Soft upraised ground provided no cover. Muck threatened to consume her. How could she escape? This endless labyrinth just kept going and going and going with the same bleak walls, the same dirty water, the same mounds, and the same stupid glowing mushrooms. There was no right answer.

Right answer!

Legs trudged across the foul pool until her hand rested against the nearest rough wall. Turn right! Nails scratched against the hardened feces she followed. Wouldn’t going right only work if all the walls of this labyrinth were connected? Hmmm, maybe she could keep moving until she found an outer wall and then turn right. If she found herself going in circles she could go straight to the next wall after five right turns, right?

This cavern was so huge though. A series of looping paths and wide-open spaces supported by pillars surrounded her. Would she ever find the outer wall? Did it even count as a labyrinth? Maybe this was the wrong strategy for getting out of this place.

What else could she do for now? She ran her index finger lightly along the wall. The nail slowly peeled off, but she couldn’t feel the pain of such minor injuries anymore. One right turn led to a long walk that led to another right turn. A few more minutes of forcing herself forward led to another right turn.

A pillar marked the entrance into a cave. Nothing ever worked out for her. What happened to maxed luck!?

Thinking blurred. Static filled her head as she entered. As she felt the wall, the loose scratchy stone became more linear. Something squeaked. Rats scurried across a flat floor covered in dirt and stones. They didn’t bother her.

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Roaches tracked into the cave hall. She hoped they did a decent job of disguising the entrance until she got back.

A dim vein of phosphorescent stone lit the lower ceiling as she went further in. The air became dryer. Wood shelves lined the walls. Fingernails scraped along the crumbling stone bricks until her palm slapped a splintery bookshelf. Dried tomes lined the shelves. She blinked, then pressed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she noticed a rat glaring down from the top of the shelf.

Slowly, her left hand reached to pull a moss eaten tome by the spine. It crumbled into a dry powder. More little brown mouse pellets remained than book. Circe snorted as she clawed deeper. Dried heaps of dust fogged the air. Rat feces scattered across the floor. The moist splinters of a mossy peat fell from her palms.

These were corpses.

Books come here to die.

Circe put her head on the creaky shelf and cried. It felt as if it might disintegrate under her weight. Shards from broken pots rested between shelves. She collected two and continued to a dead end. Maybe she’d find a treasure with her burgeoning luck.

At the end of the structure, a shattered shelf leaked disintegrating tomes overflowing with silverfish. Three rats scattered into the broken masonry. The pile invited her to sleep. The silverfish were huge, she’d never seen bugs that big. When her grandmother died, they had discovered that her library was infested with them. Most of the books couldn’t be saved. One scurried off as Circe poked it. The pain unrolled from her stomach. Saliva flowed back into her dry mouth. Knees hit the jagged stones.

Eat…

Broken blood encrusted fingers dug into the pile. The monster, the gremlin, the vile creature, would feast. Circe pulled the fat wriggling insects from the battered remains of books that smelled like mold and urine. They collected in her enclosed fist until she had a good handful. Her palm pushed against her lips. The half-lidded eyes on the back of her hands glowed brilliantly. Not one would escape as she stuffed them inside. They walked on the roof of her mouth and wriggled under her tongue as she chewed. And she did this again, and again, until she could find no more.

Back to her feet, she wobbled a bit and listed her head at the thought of what she’d just done. Static. The tendrils caressed her stomach. Nutrients. So this was that. A dead end. Nothing to find or see here. Nothing to remember. Nothing happened here. That disgusting wriggling taste never happened.

“HA!”

Sometimes a dead end was just that. Life had too many of them that never had anything interesting. Utterly boring. Mundane even.

“Ha hahaha!”

A speck on the floor gleamed as she walked away. At the pillar, she carved an X at eye level with one of her two pottery shards. This path had been tread, dead end with nothing.

The last thing she wanted to do was walk in circles, but she decided to stick to her plan. She kept walking by following the wall and only going right. It went in a circle? After another stretch of time, she reached the same mushroom cluster she had started this strategy with.

But this time she had pottery. She carved a circle into the compact fecal mound with her shard. This would mean she circled this formation. When she came to the next turn again, she drew another circle before moving forward to cross the refuse stream.

The runny mud rose to her ankles. A steady flow passed as she trudged forward. She picked at the hole in her chest and felt her rib cage. The bone wasn’t even bloody. It felt dry, like decaying rot. Her finger pushed up. Pain radiated from her knitting ribs. Hissing shot through her mind. The tendrils were angry. What? They didn’t want her interfering with their work?

Let work…

So much was damaged. So much of her needed replaced. She was becoming more tendril than woman. Static. She thought back to philosophy class. There was this story about a ship that haunted her nightmares. Parts were removed, parts replaced, parts damaged, more parts replaced, until every part had been changed. It was no longer the original ship. Circe began to cry.

“I’m not a thesaurus ship…”

Even if she wasn’t the original, she was still a crybaby. That made her feel better. She couldn’t even tell why the thought comforted her so much. She was big crybaby. She was still Circe, in there somewhere, under all this static and pain.

If there was something more than matter in the universe, did concept suddenly matter? Would any of these thoughts even occur to her if she was anywhere but here, in this stink hell?

How long was this flowing stretch of grime? She’d been walking for minutes. At least that’s what it felt like. Static. A pause. Legs stopped moving. Glowing purple eyes like glass beads scattered the roaches as her head craned back. Mouth opened wide in silence as she stared up into the darkness with a blank gaze.

Nothing could be seen; it was too high and too dark. Pot shards clutched against her chest. She could no longer feel tendrils that that could receive her mana. Tomorrow, she promised to make them even smarter. The trek onward continued.

Soon water rose to her calves. Roaches floated from her legs and skittered across thick grime. Or they crawled up her thighs to her hips. Why was it getting so deep all the sudden? The caverns rumbled. The flow reversed. Another step forward.

Sploosh.

Hands reached for help as Circe fell into a sink hole. She struggled back to the surface. It felt like something wrapped her legs. Mud sucked at her bare feet. Pain faded as she kicked. She pushed out of the hole gasping for air, on all fours. It was shallow now?

Slfloooosh!

A violent tide slammed against her. Her body tumbled. Pottery shards cut into her waist as she refused to let them go. Her back scraped along the floor as it gathered mud. Legs rolled into her arms as her once severed arm stretched. The fierce flow of thigh deep water knocked her over whenever she tried to stand. It pushed her like an angry subway crowd. The sudden mudslide beat her, punched, pushed her sideways. Then it abandoned her.

Circe opened her eyes. Only half her head and her right hand extended from the thick mud. Now that it had beat her, it encased her in a suffocating embrace. It pressed, hugged, squeezed, refused her movements. She struggled, wiggled, clawed, and pushed. Her mouth remained just above the shallow water if she craned her neck. Beyond that, she couldn’t move a muscle.

This was it; she was over, she couldn’t even move.

Roaches moved in to crawl around her head and tickle her fingers. The pottery shards sat next to her right hand.

“But my luck is 99!” she croaked as a silverfish crawled out of her mouth.