Andrew Ate

Andrew ate his mashed potatoes and chicken silently, locking his gaze on the wall in front of him. The wall was pure white, with an ocean of lines drawn across it from top to bottom. No matter how many times Andrew had tried to count the lines, he failed each time, losing track of his how many he had counted before giving up. There were simply too many lines to count, yet something in the back of his mind urged him to try again and again.

As the man ate, something started bubbling up in the back of his throat; a feint yet noticeably sensory anomaly. He ignored it at first, thinking it was nothing as he kept chewing on his meal. With each successive intake, however, the sensation grew stronger. Turning from a phantom itch in the back of his throat to a gradually sizeable rock at the base of his throat.

Andrew realized he had eaten one spoonful too much once a wave of sharp pain exploded in his chest. Exacerbated by his own breathing, in a matter of moments, the painful sensation became comparable to that of a heart attack. Growing worse with each breath. Soon enough, Andrew collapsed onto the floor, grasping at his throat and chest. As he struggled to breathe on the floor, something moved. Something moved inside him. He could feel it. He felt something shift inside, causing shooting bolts of lightning to course through his torso.

The urge to vomit came immediately after. Andrew could feel the liquid coming out of his stomach and traveling upward toward his mouth. Each second become more unbearable than the last as torturous angina shifted and crawled inside of him. The man was in so much pain he couldn’t even properly scream. Every movement of air to and out of his body felt like a rain of swords came down, crushing on him.

The feeling in his limbs gradually faded as he writhed on the floor, coughing and wheezing. The movement of the malignant sensation inside of him made him spasm as his insides attempted to escape his body. Whatever force was pulling his viscera upwards was forcing him to live through an oral pseudo-birth-giving. A sensation of super-heated saw-blades clawed at each cell in his throat once the malignancy inside his body was nearing his mouth. Andrew’s vision rapidly faded in a sea of throbbing heat strokes dissolving his skin.

A cacophony of anguished vocalizations escaped his throat as his vocal cords struggled against the mass crawling out of his mouth. Before he knew it, Andrew felt a relief; if only a momentary one. In a millisecond, the suffering returned. His oral cavity burned as if someone was force-feeding him searing hot coals while he was being waterboarded.

A red torrent escaped his mouth, slowly forming a puddle underneath the man. He felt his remaining strength fade as the puddle grew wider and wider, threatening to take Andrew’s consciousness away. Eventually, it stopped, leaving the man with a strong metallic scent in his mouth.

He stared at it for a moment, too weak to move or shift his gaze. The puddle shifted, surprising him. His vision spun and his entire body pulsated with pain. The puddle became noticeably moving about, shifting away from its source, sending cold chills across Andrew’s emaciated body. He pulled himself upward, barely being able to straighten his head. Too exhausted, hurt, and overcome by an intense fear as the red puddle shifted and twisted, creeping away from its source and growing larger and larger, vertically.

The amorphous mass stood nearly as tall as the man it expelled itself from. It had no features nor a steady form as its entirety swayed softly. With no sensory organs; with no eyes to speak of, it somehow stared at its creator. Andrew stared at the thing he had birthed and felt its gaze being burnt into his skin. He could feel the hatred emanating like heat from within its presence. The man’s instincts took over. Something inside of him just knew he had to get up and run from this thing. A chill ran across his body, swiping most of the pain and exhaustion away. The sensation of his own heartbeat pounding in his chest and the increasingly hostile aura of the seemingly living liquid in front of him told him to get up and run.

His body was too slow to react; once he stood up. It was already too late.

A tendril shot out of the crimson shape. Andrew blinked and a sharp pain pulsated violently, drilling through his abdomen. His gaze fell down and horror gripped his mind, but before he could even asses the cause of his newfound suffering. An anguished moan escaped his mouth before wave after wave of pain exploded within his body, slowly blanketing his entirety in one endless stream of a concussive force tearing apart his bodily fabrics.

Before the sea of nerve-searing lightning and fire drowned out his awareness entirely, Andrew saw red droplets falling like rain all around him, slowly turning into a cold, all-encompassing darkness.

“Wake up,” a soft whisper awakened Andrew, pulling him out of the ever-calm sea of eternal equilibrium. Exhaustion and malaise blanketed his mind as he slowly opened his eyes. Unable to form a single coherent thought, he found himself faced with the same snow-white wall covered in markings. A stood by the wall, dragging her finger across it, her fingernail visibly cutting into it.

“Eighty-six thousand four hundred...” her voice trailed off as she turned to face the prone man. Her mouth widened into a smile. The moment Andrew saw her cold blue eyes, something inside of him clicked and he knew he had to avert his gaze.

“You’ve lasted an entire day... I wonder how more deaths your brain can handle before your mind shuts down completely,” she said, each word burning hotter than the previous as Andrew slowly came to realize a wildfire was crawling towards him, spreading outwards from what appeared to be flaming wings coming out the woman’s back.