"If one were to describe a catastrophe, there is no need to take a grandiose perspective, painting the entire world in ruin. Nor is it necessary to enurate every person's tragedies in minute detail.
Because what I alone have heard, seen, and inferred is enough to outline each eddy in these dark whirlpools of the Abyss, revealing their bizarre and terrifying faces. This is the truth I've gleaned whilst being hurled into the Dark Hole and navigating the gloomy, narrow passages of the world.
After we, in our ignorance, embrace the radiant trap and awaken, what appears before my eyes is a piece of rust-flecked tal, a corner of which is lifting away from the ceiling of the subway carriage..."
"God, where the hell am I?" Quill held his head, trying to sit up, only to find his forearm seed stuck to sothing. He turned his head to the left to see thin strands of viscous fluid connecting his barely lifted arm to the ground.
"What the hell is this stuff?" Quill gritted his teeth and cursed. He laid his arm back on the ground and shifted his weight, attempting to lift his arm off the ground.
But when he used his right hand to brace himself, he discovered that it too was adhered to the slimy substance. Quill gave a helpless bitter smile and said: "Now I know what it feels like to be a cockroach stuck on a glue-board, God, Rocket, Rocket, are you there?"
"Plop, plop, plop..."
A series of faint sounds ca from the distance. Quill froze, instinctively turning his head towards the source of the noise.
It was an endless darkness.
Using what limited faint cold light was available, Quill managed to make out the shape of the ceiling above him: it was not a normal roof but sheet iron, one panel of which was lifting from the ground to reveal a patchy rust.
Appeared that he was in a subway carriage. Quill sighed and even managed to reassure himself in his calamitous state: he was sothing of an antique and had at least seen subways before.
"Plop, plop, plop..." the sound continued.
Quill listened carefully. The sound was coming from a great distance and did not seem to be getting any closer. He decided to ignore it and concentrate on extricating himself from the sticky substance holding him to the ground.
Shifting his weight from left to right, using the strength from his abs to his back, Quill wriggled on the ground in what must have been an amusing position. Eventually, he managed to free half of his body from the clammy grip of the sli.
Quill clenched his fist to cheer himself on: "Good job, Peter, you're halfway there. Just put in a little more effort, and you'll be a free cockroach!"
Suddenly, there was a chill feeling on his forehead. Quill used his newly-freed hand to touch his forehead and found traces of so dark substance. The lighting was too dim for him to make out exactly what it was.
He wiped his hand on the ground where the drying sticky substance served as an excellent cleanser. The dark streaks were wiped away, but soon two more drops of an unknown liquid dropped onto Quill's forehead.
Quill flicked his hand in disgust, realizing that the liquid was not behaving like water.
Suddenly he heard the "squish squish" sounds of viscous fluids coming from above his head.
Slowly, Quill raised his gaze. Above him under the upturned sheet of tal, what he had assud to be rust was now crawling with masses of dark eggs.
More and more eggs were falling from above. They trickled down Quill's forehead and prominent nose to his chin. Quill scread hysterically, frantically wiping the matter from his face.
Like a deer with a broken leg, he shuffled his half-free body away from the horrific nest above him. Using his powerless arm to scrub the dark tracers on his face, he could distinctly feel the rhythmic pulsation within the granular eggs.
They were about to hatch.
The realization brought Quill into a fierce frenzy. He snatched up so of the partially-dried sli and scrubbed it against his face and body as fast as he could, dispelling the dark traces. With a strong toss, the ball of sli rolled into the weak cold light.
There, illuminated by the light coming from an indicator on the subway's car door, Quill could see the nest of fine eggs wrapped in the sli ball: they were beginning to hatch.
Nurous black insects with shelled bodies and three pairs of hooked legs crawled out of the semi-transparent embryos. But what greeted them was not a new life but the ever tightening sli ball.
The red viscous substance seed to have lost its vitality, but it still entangled and constricted the mass of insects, crushing their exoskeletons and snapping their hooked legs, even grinding them into scattered foam.
The black insects struggled desperately to escape but suffocated before they could break the final barrier. Quill could even see the despair on their faces as they suffocated. But more and more hooked legs pierced the mucous mbrane, turning the red sli into a porous slab.
Quill felt a horrifying sense of suffocation. He used all the strength he had to fight the sticky substance clinging to his body. The hatching insects were becoming more nurous and larger.
User Comments
0 comments from readers