The world fell dead silent, save for the sickening hiss of acidic fluid eagerly trying to digest my living flesh. I squeezed my eyes shut against the sting. I held my breath.
Was this the end? A ridiculous death, dissolving in the stomach of a jelly monster?
No.
My hand moved through the viscous liquid. My skin screamed in agony, but my bloodstream ran hot. The 'medicinal' rush from that first crystal kept me lucid.
I groped blindly. Searching for anything solid within this lethal soup.
One.
I grabbed it.
Zing.
Another surge of energy flooded in. Much clearer this time. The pain was momentarily dulled by a wave of chemical euphoria in my brain. My stamina replenished.
Two.
Zing.
My heart pumped blood faster. My lungs, starved for air, felt hardier. My body wasn't giving up; it was eating back.
Three. Four.
I ripped the cores free, tearing its structure apart from the inside. The slime began to lose cohesion. The fluid pressure around me weakened.
With my remaining strength—and the newly stolen energy—I kicked against its outer membrane.
Splash!
I spilled onto the ground. Drenched in mucus and acid.
Cough. Cough.
I choked, spitting out bitter slime.
My entire body stung. My skin was violently red, as if I had roasted in the sun all day without protection. My clothes were in tatters, smoking faintly.
But I stood up.
My legs didn't wobble. Instead, they felt... light.
Around me, the remains of the giant slime seeped into the earth, leaving behind over a dozen scattered crystals.
I picked them up, one by one.
Every touch offered a small pulse. Thump. Thump.
The burns on my arm hadn't healed, but the pain no longer bothered me. It was as if my nervous system had been rewired to ignore agony in favor of efficiency.
Eleven crystals in my pocket.
I slumped against the stone cliff. My trembling hand reached into my inner pocket, which was, miraculously, still dry.
Another cigarette.
This time, it took two flicks of the lighter before the flame caught.
I took a drag. The smoke mingled with the faint, charred scent of my own flesh.
The nicotine seeped in, slightly easing the tremors in my fingers.
Strange.
Medically speaking, I should have been in hypovolemic shock, or at least unconscious from neuropathic pain. But my breathing leveled out rapidly. My racing heart slowed, settling into a heavy, powerful rhythm. It was as though this body hadn't just brushed with death, but had simply finished a meal.
I looked at the palm of my hand.
Beneath the layers of dust and dried blood, the creases looked different. The life line appeared thicker, as if it had been re-carved with a sharp blade.
This body was adapting. Or, more accurately... mutating.
I stood up. The pain remained—a lingering sting of acid on my skin—but my brain processed it only as data, not as suffering.
I needed a weapon.
Not far from where I stood, the skeleton of a large animal lay in the dirt. Pure white, the remains of the slimes' feast. I approached it.
Snap.
I broke off one of its ribs. The sound was dry and sharp. I ground the tip against a river rock until it came to a point. A heavy femur served as a makeshift club.
Primitive. Crude. But it was the universal language of killing.
The sun began to set. The forest shifted into colossal silhouettes, swallowing what little light remained.
I climbed a massive tree—an ancient trunk with rough, scaled bark. On the highest branch, I found a bird's nest. Inside rested three eggs, speckled pale blue.
Without a second thought, I cracked the shells. The contents slid down my throat. Gamey, thick, and cold. The taste was repulsive, but my starved stomach welcomed it eagerly.
I sat on that high branch, my legs dangling over the dark abyss of the forest floor.
In the distance, a mountain pierced the clouds, its peak blanketed in eternal snow. There had to be clean water there. That was my destination.
I lit a cigarette. White smoke drifted into the night air—the sole remaining fragment of my highly ordered world.
Back there, in the world I left behind, morning was probably just beginning. People leaving for work, engines humming, clocks ticking to dictate a repetitive existence.
I exhaled a long plume of smoke, letting it vanish into the sap-scented forest wind.
"I hope my presence there fades as easily as this smoke."
There would be no funeral. No tears. No one to mourn the loss. Let me vanish from their memories, as though I had never existed at all. If I could just erase my existence there, perhaps the weight on my shoulders would finally lift.
I didn't sleep that night. I merely closed my eyes to the orchestra of death below, while the stolen energy of the slime crystals pulsed warmly in my pocket—a steady, glowing rhythm that kept my eyes wide open, waiting for the slaughter of tomorrow.