By the time the sun sets, I’ve been able to dig myself a pretty comprehensive little hole. I only had to take a snack break a few times, which allowed me to follow in close detail exactly how the first stages of bodily decomposition took place. The important thing was that as long as you chewed and swallowed you didn’t actually notice all that much.

I hadn’t really paid attention to it at the time, but I’m actually really sick. All of my stats have essentially been halved, leaving me barely able to dig as much as I need.

But, eventually, I’ve got a hole in the ground. I’d like for it to be deeper, but I’m seriously too tired to bother anymore. My arms are on fire and my whole body feels cold and hot at the same time. I got dry quite a while back, but now I feel wet again, probably because of the sweat.

For my final action of the day, I drag the deer’s partially eaten carcass into the hole and lie myself beneath it. Since I’m pretty small, I’m able to sneak out of the hole to place twigs and branches and moss above it to hide us, though I’m sure any creature with an adequate sense of smell would be able to find us. In that case, I will probably try to defend myself depending on the situation.

It really comes down to whether I’ll be healthy enough to do so. My stat decrease hasn’t grown any worse, but the darker it gets, the more dead I feel. So, with my eyes on the verge of popping out of my skull and my brain thumping silently against the back of my head, I curl myself into a ball and try to sleep.

Somehow, it isn’t nearly as easy as it was when I was a mossling, even though I feel about fifteen times more tired.

Maybe it’s the 300 pounds of deer weighing down and crushing my small body, but it could honestly be anything.

With nothing else to do, I try to pass the time by imagining what might have happened after my apparent death. I died in the middle of a meeting, after all, so I was probably discovered instantly. There were quite a few important people there, so I doubt anybody would have allowed me to sleep for long. Must’ve led to a right big panic. What did I even die by? Stroke? It couldn’t have been a heart attack since it was instant.

If it was spontaneous combustion then I can only imagine the kind of hilarious expressions my coworkers might have had.

Would’ve been real fun to… See…

I wake up to the sound of a scream. It is either the Myling or a fox, and whichever it is, I am going to staunchly ignore it. Goodnight again.

…

...It would seem, despite everything, that I was able to sleep until morning time, for once. And the deer is still here! Yippie, no hunting today.

I can’t say the sudden scream didn’t leave me groggy as all Hell, but I’m sure some breakfast can soothe that.

Exerting strength I didn’t know I had, I huff and puff and attempt my damndest to push the deer carcass out of the hole but to no luck. It isn’t stuck, is it? Please, God, tell me it isn’t stuck. Growling to myself, I climb around the side of it, popping out into the clear morning. Feeling a strange kind of panic, I clear away the moss and leaves I hid the hole under and take a look at the deer. It’s bloated, alright. Not a lot, but enough to clog the hole. It barely fit inside as it was, so having it grow bloated with dead gases really left it in a sorry state.

My best bet here would be to disembowel it and hope that it might butter it up enough for me to drag it outside.

Stolen story; please report.

This tiny body is quite impressive, huh?

While I’m at it, I might also eat some breakfast. Intestine isn’t as bad as people make it up to be. It has a lot more flavour than regular meat, though it isn’t always for the better.

I creep beside the dead deer until I get to the thick, bloated stomach. This isn’t going to be pretty. I take a deep breath and prepare myself. Then I shove my hand inside with all the strength I can muster. The bloated stomach, tense with pressure, easily gives way to my claws and my hand slips inside. For just one second, I fully expect this to be the end and for the stomach to pop.

But it doesn’t. With my hand still in the hole the stomach remains fully plugged. Until I pull out my hand, it will remain that way.

The inside is… I can feel it. It’s mushy. Mushier than even fresh organs, which are surprisingly squishy. No, not squishy. It’s more that they simply fall apart.

This is even worse. And it’s lukewarm. Yesterday the deer was cold but now the gases have made it slightly warm. It’s honestly disgusting. I want to pull out my hand but the knowledge that doing so will open the floodgates makes me hesitate.

I shake my head wildly.

Get it together, damn it! The flesh is still fresh, we can’t just give up on prime prey because it’s a little decomposed!

I squeeze my eyes shut and pull out my hand with a pop.

A fluid splashes over my body and I open my eyes to find myself covered in a black mush. Some pieces of organs remain somewhat intact, but most of it is simply a homogeneous fluid. The smell that comes from this liquid is simply indescribable. It is death. Every hair on my small body stands on its end and I have the realisation that I want to die. I have never smelled anything worse in my life and if I get to choose then I never will again.

Moving as fast as I possibly can, I escape the hole. Though before I can flee towards the river fully, I decide to pull out the deer fully. Just in case.

Heart racing with disgust I move over to the river. I’m not too interested in getting in fully, so if I just wash myself on the surface…

I look down at my fur and find it crawling with thick, white maggots.

Ah. Alright.

I hop into the river, making sure to keep a hold on the branch of a nearby tree. And then I scrub myself rigorously. Arms, legs, ears, tail… I need to be clean, damn it! Shit, shit, shit…

In all honesty, if someone were to grab that damn deer while I’m gone, I wouldn’t mind all that much. It’s almost rotten, damn it!

After a bit longer than it should have taken me, I pull myself out of the water. I can’t exactly dry myself off, but…

“SNNZ”

Ah-, okay, that was another sneeze. I don’t think I feel all that good. My whole body feels feverish. The deer had distracted me, but now it’s all back again. I feel tired. I kind of want to crawl down into the hole again and just sleep all day, but I feel pretty hungry. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I’ve already hunted.

Though…

I pull myself out of the water and shake myself off as best as I can. Walking around soaking-wet will only worsen this.

I glance at the deer. Yeah, I’ll need to take a few bites of it. My body is small. I don’t need all that much.

The entire lower half of the deer is covered with black goop. I can smell it from all the way over here. Jesus Christ. Maybe having a huge nose was a bad idea. W-, well, if I just stick to the upper part, it’ll be fine.

I approach tentatively.

The smell gets worse with each step, but I refuse to plug my nose. As stupid as it is, the better I know this smell, the more safe I can be. Think about it, if I smell this while out wandering, I’ll know to avoid it, right? It could mean a total of three things: a thing has died and begun decomposing, a thing has been killed and half-eating by a predator (that may still be nearby) and this is a place where things die.

All of those are bad. Sure, eating half-decomposed creatures hasn’t hurt me all that much as of yet, but…

I swallow and place my hand on the thick shoulder of the deer. Even this part feels somewhat bloated. With all the necessary apprehension, I try to take a bite. I say try since the leather is, as always, damn hard. I chew for a few minutes until I finally break through. I ignore the maggots in the flesh and bite down. Luckily enough, the maggots only bring a slight bitter distaste. It’s the flesh itself that’s bad. It doesn’t taste directly wrong, but the knowledge that it’s in the middle of decomposition makes my stomach turn.

I eat until I feel full and then I stop eating.

Even though I kind of want to sleep for a few hours, I know I need to keep digging, so that’s what I do. There’s black fluid in the bottom so I have to scoop it out. On a feverish impulse, I taste a little. It must’ve paralyzed my tongue since it didn’t taste like anything at all. All I could feel was the wriggling of maggots.

I kept digging, deeper and deeper, until it was finally deep enough. Well there, I splintered it into two. One to keep the deer in and one to sleep in. Since I had the time, I dragged a few branches down there, just to make it a little comfortable. The deer got nothing. Fuck that deer. Decomposing and shit.

And then, once the deer was down in its storage space, I went to sleep on my end, of course remembering to cover up the hole first.

It was hard to sleep with the smell of the deer making my eyes water, but I knew that I had no choice. And so, I slept.