Hungry Ghost Hell back up Jan 14

  A Hell story:

       It is an existence, a lucid nightmare from which there is no percievable escape. There is no body to feel pain, however there is no body to alleviate the constant feeling of thirst, hunger, and fatigue. Only a conciousness floating about a nightmarish world of twisted black plants, shifting landscapes, swirling blood red clouds and mists. He is awake, he can percieve others he assumes to be like him varying from tiny dots of light, to clear outlines of the people they once were; to something bluish/purple and nearly opaque; these do not last long as some horror of this land stalks and descends upon them. Their transluscent faces distort in screams without sound as they are dragged down into the maws of things ranging from deformed beasts, mechanical monstrosities mixed with flesh, to even strangely beautiful and color beings, and far more indescribible things. He has learned that the colorful places are traps set by the things that resemble humans of inhuman color, claws, and odd horns, the things he cannot describe properly as they are beings of horror and beauty and one would have to see to grasp that meaning.

     He is food, that is what he has come to understrand. An endless cycle of suffering. He wanders alone and silent, over time he begins to feel more weight to himself, he can talk and has a body of sorts, a clear ghostly form, the hunger and thirst only increase, he cannot eat anything, nor drink, to sneak into the palaces of the gorgeous ones is to invite loss of self as he and those like him would instead be devoured. He has never seen anyone get beyond the thicker shade as that form attracts every beast and monstrosity to them, a ripe fruit, a fat hog, to be descended upon and consumed. He has spent more time in the belly of what he can only call demons than he cares to remember; although he has come to welcome it, at least from one demon in particular whose home he wanders about waiting to ripen once again. She is a magnificent creature with blue skin, a pointed chin large glowing eyes and a great horn like crescent crest, her body armored in a way like revealing clothing, her hands and feet sporting long red claws, and her tail a long sweeping segmented whip tipped with a spear head. She and her sister, a twin, she with black armor and her sister with white have shared of his essence. The closest thing to rest in the endless wandering of hunger, thirst, and fatigue; is to be devoured; within the bellies of demons there is no pain, but there is the loss of senses and being overcome by darkness. There is no real sleep instead he manifests again as a conciousness floating about the landscape slowly growing ripe again. The twins have fed upon him so many times they have his scent, as best he can understand it. He can tell others try to escape, try to flee, try to find other ways to stop the suffering.

  He remembers the wandering, finding the traps, the cages, the nests, the glowing souls of others trapped inside pods and fading away only for demons to consume the pods, sweetened by the souls, souls trapped by unnatural structures like fenced in cattle. Is there a goal, is there an end to this? What is the point he would wonder as he moved about. At least that is how he used to think; there is no concept of day or night here, no concept of time; he does not know how long he wandered, he had been forced into pods, they increased the feeling of thirst and hunger to painful levels before he'd fade away; the cages increased the sense of fatigue without rest; seemingly because they could not move about; the one thing that distracted from the sensations. Each time reappearing as a floating conciousness not far off. He had escaped these, and found himself by the palace of the twins, they had fed upon him like vampires, not completly making him vanish, and other times swallowed him up completly. Inside them was different from the pods or being shaken about and crushed into a horrific sensation of unbelievable hunger as his essense was drained away in the gut of bestial things. The twins had a warmth, a calming sensation, more akin to just fading into sleep. It would not last but a moment after and he'd be back. He found it almost addictive, even such a temporary release.

  That was then, the last thing he remembered before now was wandering about in what he came to think of as the second stage of the cycle, being a glowing blue flame like ball about the size of a fist. He was wandering through the twin's palace and came upon an open door that lead to a strange fleshy tunnel that changed to stone. He saw what he could not believe, sunlight, real sunlight, rocks, trees; and then he vanished.

   ******

  Now he is awake again, but he has skin, hands, a voice, his vision like when he was alive. His memories of before rush about his head as he blinks and rubs his eyes trying to stand up from the forest floor, leaves falling off his body. His clothing, his jacket, torn pants, brown climbing boots. He sits there dumbfounded by some rocks and a tiny cave going down with a horrid stentch coming out of it, just wide enough that someone could force themselves down it. He takes his flashlight from his pocket and shines it down, a dozen feet past rock he sees the pulsating fleshy wider tunnel. Everything comes back to him instantly. The unknowable passage of time, the suffering. But now he is wearing the same clothes he was in before all that happened.

  "Am," he stops hearing his own voice for the first time in unknown ages. He glares at the small opening and piles leaves, small rock, and branches in front of it, he had seen the daylight, so something else might as well.

  He walks down hill among trees and rocks, it looks familiar, but not familiar enough.

  "Am I," he starts again, "alive?"

  He feels his head, it is a bit sore, he can feel the chill of the breeze.

  He looks back as he tries to find a trail, "Was that real?" He ponders the hole, the foul stentch, the nightmare world.

  "Underground gas," he says as he comes across a dirt trail, "I get it,"

  He fumbles about the pockets of his person, his flash light, his wallet with his IDs, cards, his pocket knife. The only thing missing is his hunting rifle but...the last thing he remembered was leaving it at camp, he had decided to forget hunting for the day and was looking for edible mushrooms. He could have sworn he had only come up a small hill from his camp site and then; then was the cycles of suffering. It felt so much longer than what seems to have passed. He does feel hungry and thirsty despite the fact he had had lunch just before going mushroom hunting. He checks his phone for the time but the battery is dead, it too should have had a full charge.

   "Ah shit," he says, "please don't tell me I got knocked out by some gas and was lying there on the forest floor for a whole fucking day or something. Shit,"

   He walks downhill along the trail, however it is unfamiliar to him, he continues figuring he must have a concussion and inhaled some strange gas leaking up from an underground mine. To try and focus he takes out his wallet reading his ID, "Joshua Anderson", yeah the jokes he had to put up with the Matrix came out. He wishes his phone worked. He focuses, it should be late April, just starting to get warm. If any ranger asked he was either mushroom hunting or if caught with his gun turkey hunting. The land he is on should be his family's land anyway, but he was hunting more than just turkey and mushrooms, he was after small deer. And he wasn't alone, his buddies Steve and Brian were supposed to be with him. The deer are out of season but he promised them being his family's land unless they went crazy they should have been able to slip right under any ranger's notice; they planned to bag one and cover it up with a tarp in the back of Steve's truck, get some good deer burgers for BBQ in a few weeks. To keep hidden they had full camo, no fancy colorful vests and; while focusing on this it is dawning on him he is traveling too far; his campsite should have been nearby, and Steve and Brian should have been meeting him there.

    "Damn camo," he mutters, "maybe they walked right by me face down in the first and left...fuck; they'd better not have driven off or some shit."

   Josh, as he prefers to be called by this shortened version of his name, stops as he comes to a clear view off the mountain. The hills don't look familiar, and below there is a small town he doesn't recognize. It is also occuring to him the whole way down he has yet to see any signs of wildlife, not even bugs, its just plants. He shakes it off and follows the dirt trail to a paved road running down to the town or further up the mountains. Naturally he heads to the town; he needs to get to a phone and call either Steve or Brian and find out what is up. He keeps repeating, "I must have a concussion," to himself to explain why nothing looks familiar.