[POV Ryan First-person]
The road under my feet isn't dirt.
"It's a Flesh!!!"
It ripples like oil, black and thick, swallowing every step before my boot lifts. Sky overhead hangs in strips, torn cloth of red and violet and that same black hole from the Space House window, only closer, pulsing, like it breathes.
I turn in a slow circle.
No caravan. No wagon. No Snowball.
"Okay," I whisper. "This is not on the map."
The path stretches ahead, a narrow ribbon of dull grey laid across a sea of shifting flesh. Shapes heave under it—ridges, knots, something like ribs pressing up, then sinking again.
(Feels like walking on a lung.)
At the edge of my vision, things move. Not fast. Not hunting. Just…waiting.
One of them steps closer to the path.
If "step" is the right word.
It drags itself on too many joints, knees bending the wrong way, feet that end in hands, fingers that end in eyes. Its torso twists as if someone argued about where front and back should be and never decided. Skin has no colour; it wears bruises instead.
Its head—
No. Heads.
Three faces bloom from one neck like rotten flowers. One face smooth, no features at all. One a child's, mouth sewn shut with fine red thread. The last one is sam, or close enough to hurt.
It looks at me with my own tired eyes.
"Stop there!" I speak with trembling fear.
My voice cracks. The sound goes nowhere. It's like the world eats it.
The thing keeps coming, slow, patient. Each time a hand‑foot touches the ground, the path brightens for a heartbeat, numbers strobing in the stone—3.1415—9.81—6.02e23—then fading.
I swallow.
"What the F*ck are you! Get out of my sight!"
The child's face trembles. The threads along its lips pull tight.
"NO."
I hold up both hands. "IT'S NOT REAL, CAN'T BE REAL. it's just a bad dream!"
"Ignore me."
The featureless face turns toward the sky. A mouth tears open in the smooth skin, vertical, lipless. When it speaks, the sound doesn't pass my ears. It arrives already inside my skull.
"WHAT IS OURS DESTINATION?"
My knees want to fold. I lock them. But it's like my body won't listen to my orders.
"WHAT ARE WE BORN FOR? Ahhhhhhhhhh" The monster screamed.
"FOR THE WORLD YOU BUILT."
The face that looks like sam smiles. It shouldn't. Sam smile never stretches that wide.
Skin splits along its cheeks, making extra space.
"WE HAVE BEEN WAITING," it says, three mouths one voice. "WE WALK BEHIND YOUR ORDERS. WE GROW IN YOUR RULES. WE FEED ON WHAT YOU REFUSE."
It lurches closer. The air thickens, like I breathe, My glasses fog from the inside.
(Authority. Yes my Authority can save me right?)
I step back and feel the path flex, soft as tongue.
"Okay, no," I rasp. "This is a nightmare. I'm Safe from Nightmares of the Abyss not Nightmare from sleep. F*ck you don't get to live here."
The creature halts. All three faces tilt.
The child's sewn mouth moves, thread biting into its own flesh. Blood runs along the stitches, spelling symbols as it drips off.
When the voice comes again, it's thinner. Closer.
"NOT THING CAN HURT YOU," it whispers inside me. "FATHER."
My stomach drops.
"What?"
The head that wears my face leans in until our foreheads almost touch. I smell an apple juice but the absence feels loud.
"FATHER."
The word punches through my chest, cold and sharp.
All three mouths speak now, in layers:
"FATHER."
"FATHER."
"FATHER."
Hands‑feet reach for me, fingers of eyes blinking, desperate, pleading.
"WE ARE WHAT YOU MAKE," the thing says. "WHY DO YOU LEAVE US IN THE DARK?"
Its fingers brush my sleeve.
The world tears.
---
I jerk upright, skull cracking the underside of the wagon bow.
"FUCK!"
Canvas shudders. Grain sacks thump against my ribs. Outside, wheels grind over frozen ruts, steady and dull. Someone at the front curses back at the noise, voice blurred by distance and wood.
My breath saws in and out. Sweat chills on my neck.
No black sky. No flesh road. Just rough boards, onion stink, the sway of the merchant's carriage.
My hands shake as I press my palms over my face, then drag them down.
"This is what I encountered after sleeping for the first time after being—Safe from Fatigue."
The words rasp out, thin in the cramped dark.
I stare at my fingers, flex them once, twice, counting joints like they might be wrong.
(Feeling nostalgia.)
I lie back down on the sacks, eyes open this time, and watch the dim curve of the canvas until my pulse slows, listening to the wheels turn like nothing in the world has changed.