This Primal I

I don’t remember dying.

I mean, I thought this was how it was supposed to work, a new world after a sudden and unwitting death? Maybe something stupid involved? I don’t know I just… I just didn’t expect to have to face something like this. I suppose that’s a good thing though, I get whiny about pain.

All I remember is going to bed, a bit early with a headache and it being hard to breathe…

My next groggy thoughts were muddled, warm, surrounded. My body felt stiff as I fluttered into wakefulness, the taste of something delicious flooding my mouth as a sonorous pulse pervaded though me, a steady beating shift which seemed to surround and engulf me with belonging and purpose.

And the strange, itching desire to make it stop.

My mouth worked, chewing at the wonderful substance as teeth and tongue worked in rasping tandem to stuff my mouth full, my body heaving in hard jerky movements as faster and faster I devoured the sweetness... as faster and faster I seemed to grow, pressing against the now hammering walls within which I’d been nestled, their steady beat now turning wild and frantic, somehow stirring me on to continue to eat that delicious hot thing which surrounded me. The harder and faster it beat, the more I needed to eat, to grow, to make it stop.

I shuddered in the ecstasy.

I cried in Agony.

Stuffed full and still growing… I couldn’t help put push against the frantic beat. And I met the hard resistance of something before me, pressing me tight against the soft warm feast. In wild abandon I beat my head against the hardness, a strange instinct governing as I smashed again and again face first against the harsh impediment, against the thundering beating noise, even as my body twisted and scraped against both soft and hard in a thundering frenzy.

Until the hard thing cracked.

Until the thundering beat ended.

Until I took the first breath in open air… and SCREAMED my birth into a New world.

In that single moment becoming aware of my naked grublike flesh, aware more of my three fold jaw and strange battering tooth-horns which shook with a hammering intensity against what felt like my nose. Eyes looking out from all across my sides as my focus shifted into a decidedly alien perspective.

I was strange...

I was Alien…

In my mind I could feel the primal urge even as I looked back upon the place from which my body had torn free, the need to devour, to grow, to overcome. Each one of my eyes darted about the environment, sweeping up the scene before me as I struggled to make sense of what they saw, even as my eight segmented legs brushed up against the edges of torn ragged armour and flesh which surrounded my upper half, while the rest of my long grublike body wriggled and twisted its way out of the comforting nest of what I now knew was a victim’s flesh.

Overwhelmed, and disoriented.

My head buzzed with fears and desires both distressingly familiar and comfortingly strange all at once even as I made that final heave to free my body from the last vestiges of armoured flesh from which I’d burrowed out. Three of my eyes glanced off to the side, attracted by the vibrations given off near me in the corpse.

I was not alone.

Beside me, and all across the armoured segments of whatever it had been, I saw others, horrible squirming others, just like me as they wriggled, writhed and screamed out to the world in glory of their freedom, each one a different size, I couldn’t help but note based on the locations which they’d carved themselves free. And all of us eyeing each other with a feral hunger, tempered by what felt like the knowledge that there was only a small amount to be gained in the process.

But even that small amount might be enough...

… enough for what?

I didn’t know... but I could feel it stretched under my skin, like the growth I’d gained, sat deep within the fleshiest, most nutrient rich muscle of the beast. Maybe enough for me to grow again, a primal surge of desire burned its way through me, as I trembled with the instinctive realization.

I was the biggest of all.

And I was still soo very, very, very, hungry...

I didn’t even think about it, as my body lunged and my tooth laden beaked three part Jaw snapped at a sibling too close to be safe, too small to defend itself against my lunge. It felt like a dream, vivid and slick beneath the rasping tongue of my mouth, snapping and tearing away flesh with a frightening efficiency as the taste of a small variance opened up before me. Like a tingle, like a surge. It was delicious, but mild, milder than the flesh which I’d already eaten, the flesh which made me stronger and larger than the others.

A rumbling sound echoed deep within the world. A hunting noise.

My feeding stopped as panic seemed to seep into my skin. Something big and strong, I needed to get away, needed to flee, needed to find warm wet earth and dig, and dig, and dig... needed to run away quickly. I wriggled with all my might, pushing hard against the carapace in which I’d still been partially lodged, and finally dropping down into the dirt, upon which my body seemed to know exactly what to do, how to wriggle and writhe my way into the soil, getting deeper into the loose earth and then drawing myself into another safer spot between an outcropping of rock. Front most eyes extended forward on an almost stalk like protuberance, allowing me to gaze out to this fresh hell of a world while still hidden.

What I saw next… It was strange, armoured and insectile, yet weirdly reptilian, only with fur and other confusing features as it stalked in towards the dead meat. Its body was squat and armoured save for a writhing rear end which vaguely reminded me of my own, its eyes staring off into every direction, ringed about its heavy, furry body. A multitude of Delicate claws like something crossed a monitor lizard’s talons with a roach’s limb clacked lightly together in anticipation of the meal to come as scuttled and lurched towards the shattered carcass and those few of your siblings which had not yet wriggled their way free.

It chattered in delight, capturing several of those too foolish to have escaped far from the meat in each of its multiple arms, stuffing them deep into its own three part maw with audible crunching force before making its way into ripping down the remains of the carcass in a greedy face stuffing frenzy.

It was only then that I found my mind drifting back towards self, towards the body which surrounded me as I lay stilled within the den of dirt and rock, desperately hoping that the greedy nightmare would not notice my escape. Would not come over and reach its thin fingered claws to hook me up and wolf me down. Would not crunch and pulp my body as I had done to the sibling beside me.

A sudden flurry of wings and an ear piercing shriek shattered the first creature’s composure, another rocketing down from the canopy which surrounded everything with an attempt to swoop in and grab the carcass from under the armoured beast’s many claws. It itself was a weird scaled thing, insect like features mixed strangely with many others, this one more like a bird and a fish mainly, as its long scaled tail trailed behind multiple wings as its talons swept forward for the prize.

But that was to no avail, sudden or not the first creature it seemed, had been fully prepared for such an invasion, one of its smaller delicate arms hooking out to catch the outstretched leg, the pull the thing down into the ground. It twisted in the armoured one’s grip, surprised at the response even as it turned and slammed its long tail into the heavy carapace with a long ring, forcing the shelled one to let go and retreat slightly, its carcass prize preserved, though the flier seemed to be twisting about for a second run.

This it seemed, was not to be. As the armoured creature turned, and on its back several spiky protuberances stood up, and meeting with the flier’s momentum slammed into its diving body, leaving the beast shrieking in agony, landing badly and wrecking several of its wings. Grounded, you could tell now just how large the thing had been, almost the same size as the armoured one infact, and even now in its pained thrashing, it tried to strike out at the armoured on, who simply seemed to dance in and out of its range, taunting and forcing it to tire itself out.

At least… until the moment that several, very familiar forms rent their way out of the flier’s skin, shrieking just as I had coming out of my own fleshy womb.

… mother?

What kind of creature weaponized its own young?

I didn’t care to answer that question in my own head, despite the whirl of ideas which swirled through it.

Preening after its success you watched the creature, your possible progenitor, drag both carcasses over to each other, grabbing and eating any of the grubs which it got its hands on though not overly concerned with gathering them all anymore.

And then it began to feast.

I watched it eat for what felt like hours, gorging itself deeply on the two items of prey as its body seeming to ripple and writhe beneath its own carapace, its body shifting and changing even as it ate. The creature which had started the meal and the one which ended it almost didn’t seem to be the same, long powerful legs having grown from its rear section as its front became more streamlined, and all along its back where the strange protuberant spikes still grew, they seemed to gain a new spiraled shape. A massive pair of wings grew out, and then folded over into groves on the sides of its shell, huge and powerful. Growth and change. I couldn’t help exhale a sigh of relief as it turned and scuttled away, wading though the vegetation like a pig rooting though a forest’s underbrush rapidly on its new found limbs.

It was only then that I began to allow myself to drift away past the boundaries of Morpheus, the weird mixture of panic and contentment over taking me, as my eyes continued to dart about, rest settling in despite the continued vigilance which my body enacted on the basis of instinct.

I would need time to process this… to figure out what it all means.

Time to stop... time to grow.

Time to think.

… time to realize the horror of what I had become.

Time enough for alien whispers to fill my mind with dreams and options of growth.

Evolution.

Change.

It was in that time that I truly grasped my new reality.

Primal Zerg.