The Happy Snerd Chap. 4 (Patreon)

The bug slurped the bile up. Its chubby legs splayed out, letting it lower its body right down to the bright green mess. Mortimer wasn’t fooled. He could see the way the legs were bent at the knee. “Knee.” There were no joints in there. But they still moved with dreadful agility. The bug was slurping the vital essence of its former comrade up off the floor, but Mortimer knew perfectly well its attention was locked on him. 

He didn’t know what would happen when the bug finished eating. He didn’t really want to find out either. The swirling lights inside the horror were getting bigger, brighter, more violent. Tinges of other colors were mixed in with the green as well- faint, but in the cold, dim light of this nowhere place, they popped. 

Nothing good would come of waiting. If it was fixated on eating, then let it eat. Mortimer shifted to the side. The bug didn’t move. Mortimer hesitated. Should he run? He could probably run away from this thing. On the other hand… run where? And let something eat his kill? That didn’t sit right. Besides, he was hungry too. 

The iron rod rose and smashed down on the insect. He could feel the bug’s change through his hands. Instead of the soft thud of striking pillows, it was the sharp SLAP of smacking dense, rubbery foam. The swirling lights within responded too, becoming more active, brighter. Some of the faint indigo and crimson flames flickering within grew too. As though the lashings of the rebar hook were, instead, a bellows fueling an alien furnace. 

He could see the creature inflating, the flabby bags of flesh filling with tens of gallons of corrosive bile. Mortimer snarled. The bug getting bigger was a problem, yes, but it also meant that the skin was under more tension. More tension meant it would be easier to tear. And the bug wasn’t shifting away to deal with him. It just kept its maw on the floor, slurping up all it could.

He picked a spot to work over repeatedly. He couldn’t believe that the beatings had no effect at all. Maybe it was thinning the skin. Some internal circulation causes the reaction in the bile and spreads it through the body more generally. Did it matter that he was aiming for the join between the “neck” and the first shoulder on the beast’s left? Probably not. But it was convenient for him, so he kept at it. 

The bile isn’t just getting sucked up. It’s rushing towards the bug. It all wants to be one piece. The bile inside the bug is calling to it. Drawing it in. 

Mortimer squeezed his back, his shoulders, willing them to swing the iron bar faster, harder. That puddle was getting smaller and smaller, the swirling colors in the bug getting brighter and brighter. He switched his grip around on the rebar. No longer striking with the length of the rod, he focused his strike on the tip of the hook. Hoping that it would punch through. Maybe it would have worked, if he had enough time. 

The last of the glowing bile seemed to leap up of its own accord, diving into the protruding, tubular maw of the beast. The bug shuddered. Its eight clawed legs beat a sharp tattoo on the floor. It wasn’t just glowing green anymore, it was green and indigo and crimson swirling in dreamy nebulae within its bulging skin. 

It rose up, high, damned high! Its long claws spread wide. Then down it slammed, coming for him fast. Faster than any of the others. He felt the claws whipping past his face, the breeze cutting his skin, felt them scrape past his shoulder as he lunged forward and to the side. The hook was jammed into the crook of the neck, and the weight came crashing down. 

There was a moment where the rebar seemed to slip in his hand. Where the weight was just too much, and he could feel it trying to buck and snap out of his grasp. The things’ paw, bigger than his head, ripping claws extended like the talons of a diving bird, reached for his head. If it didn’t catch his head, it would catch his shoulder and he would be just as dead either way. 

It was just a moment between life and death, but it was enough. A moment was all it took to lean into the rebar, brace his back foot, and shove. The iron bit into the stretched taut skin. Long claws ripped down the side of Mortimers shoulder, along his ribs, all the way to his hip, a cold fire burning in the cut. But it was a fatal last effort by the beast. Bile sprayed out like a fountain. Mortimer had won his gamble.

The memory of being burned by a single drop of bile was still fresh. He staggered back, the bile coated hook trailing behind him. A green trickle and red drips falling behind him. 

Funny how the blood looks black in this light. I know it’s red, but it looks black. Mortimer’s face flushed, then went pale. He stumbled, even though he had stopped moving. How bad did that thing get me? He gingerly reached out to touch the wounds. Even a feather light touch was instant agony. Badly. It got me badly. 

The warmth seemed to have leaked out with his blood. He was getting cold, fast.

He was lightheaded. Blood loss. That fast, that’s bad news. But there isn’t enough blood on the ground for that. Poison? It could be. It really could be. But if it was, he couldn’t do anything about it. The bug was still thrashing wildly. Mortimer would have backed up further if he wasn’t hurt. Instead, he held his ground. Slowly breathing. Trying to gather his strength.

It took the bug minutes to die. Each second saw more blood drip onto the floor. Saw his socks soak up black blood. His toes squishing in the little puddles pooling in his cheap loafers. His shirt, the finest pale blue oxford collar shirt $19.99 could buy on Amazon, was ruined. 

Shame. This is my favorite shirt. And my best shirt. All the others have little stains on them that I think nobody can see, but I’m not really sure. 

The poison, if that’s what it was, had teamed up with the blood loss. As the bug collapsed, so did Mortimer. His legs gave out, his knees hitting the concrete floor with a dull thud. The rebar had fallen long ago. He started crawling towards the corpse. He knew what would happen. The bile had stopped spilling from the tear in the flesh. 

What would come first- him bleeding out, or the core forming? He really didn’t know. But he needed to be as close as possible to where it finally formed if he wanted any chance to eat it.

It’s not what I usually do in a day. He dragged himself closer with his one good arm, pushing with his one good leg. I don’t think we covered this in any of my electives. Can’t say I really remember much of anything from my electives, actually. I spent thousands and thousands of dollars, every day, for that degree.  All so I can work for the guy who made sure I had no friends in high school.

He noticed that there was a faint square pattern pressed into the concrete. Each square was roughly the size of a flagstone. The impressions were so shallow, it made him think of some vast hand pressing a mold against the setting concrete and deciding at the last moment that they liked the giant floating plaza the way it was. The bodies of the bugs were the most dramatic point of interest in a space considerably larger than the block he lived on. Madness. It was all madness.

I don’t have any friends now either. It all just seemed so hard.

Everything was going dim at the edges of his vision, but he could see the core forming now. All the fluids, all the horrible chunky bits, all pulling together. He kept crawling, keeping pace with the retreating bile. It looked amazing. So bright. The colors popped so cleanly in the dark. His mouth was salivating. If he could just eat this, everything would stop hurting. 

The darkness closed in. All that was left was the core. He kept crawling. His arm gave out. Just no strength left in it. He kicked along with his one good leg. Tried to shrug his way closer. The concrete was so cold. So rough against his hands and skin and ripped open meat. 

Closer. He tried to reach for it. His hand barely twitched. Push. Closer. One last push. He opened his jaw as wide as he could. He reached out with his neck, stretching, anything to reach the beautiful thing fading out of his sight. 

His teeth closed on something. And that something exploded. Maybe it was God.  Darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. All boiling up inside of Mortimer was the light, filling him, creating him. All the broken pieces of him, inside and out. He gasped, then sealed his lips, not willing to risk exhaling any of that blessed light.

Healed, all healed. His flesh, yes, but in that moment of ecstatic revelation, he knew that he was missing chunks of his mind and soul as well. No, he misunderstood the revelation- it was all one piece. His flesh and mind and soul were all the same thing. All the shadows of some greater structure he couldn’t perceive. Not yet. But one day he would, and soon.

It was all so immense. So much to accept. The truths were so obvious and intuitive, but their meanings were so profound he couldn’t hold on to them. All those grand revelations slipped from him, like water from a clenched fist. He had everything. Then it was gone.

Mortimer awoke. He wished he didn’t. He was crying. He could remember that he had something so precious, knew something so precious, then it was gone. He could prove it had happened, though. The spark was back, and bigger than before. Lighting his world.

He wiped away his tears. His hands were working again, but this seemed unimportant. It wasn’t just about feeling good anymore. Or feeling full or any of that. It was about getting it back. Whatever had been taken from him, he had to get it back. That sense of loving connection. Like he was one with the little spark of warmth, and that spark of warmth was the size of the universe. He had to get that back. Nothing else mattered. Not really.

Mortimer climbed to his feet. His clothes were trashed. His pants were being held in place by part of his belt and not much else. His shirt was more aspirational than real. His underwear, regrettably, was in no better shape than his pants. And his left shoe was now absolutely wretched with squelching blood. It was the wet sock feeling, multiplied by his own blood.

He needed to recapture that feeling. But, should the opportunity present itself, he would also get new clothes. Judging by the fact that he was standing in what looked like the intersection of Boston City Hall and the dormroom-poster art of Salvidore Dali, it felt unlikely. Clothes, an emotionally sober person might say, would either not be happening, or would be a nightmare horse thing that was also, somehow, a melting clock and the fear of emasculation. 

The metallic clang infiltrated the void between structures again. There wasn’t any other noise. 

He had a girlfriend a year ago. She broke up with him. The memory intruded suddenly, violently. He wasn’t broken up about the breakup. It was a two week relationship that went nowhere but to a bar and to her bed. They were friendly, not friends. He had forgotten her within days. He had forgotten the whole relationship. 

Why would he think of her now? Mortimer shook his head. Lots of fish in the sea and all that. Next time he would find someone he really connected with. 

He blinked, then looked around for his rebar hook. It was easy to find, given the complete absence of stuff on this empty plaza. He faced towards the clanging noise, and set off at a quick pace. The overhanging office building was starting to wear on him. 

“Her name was… Rose? Rachel?” He muttered. He knew it would drive him crazy. He could remember that she existed, that they had dated. It had only been last summer. Not long ago at all. But he couldn’t remember why they had, or how they had wound up in bed together. They really had nothing in common, beyond loneliness. 

Once I have more of that energy, I’m sure it will all make sense. Just need to fill in all those gaps again. Learn everything again. 

Mortimer walked the length of the plaza. There were no railings. It was simply an impossibly vast square of concrete suspended over a void of impossible depth, with a cancerous skyscraper hanging barely twenty feet over it. It should be perfectly safe, unless you did something really foolish like go to the edge. Mortimer kept a dozen yards back, and his eyes fixed firmly ahead. 

The end of the plaza was a door, mounted to the very edge of the platform. A concrete tube extended through the void and terminated at a round door which had been shoved open from within. Presumably by the bugs, but then, how could he really know? The tube wasn’t straight. Raither, it corkscrewed upwards. Mortimer could see it vanishing up into space. 

The clang echoed through the tube. It was either wander without a fixed destination until he finally died, or follow the noise. Mortimer hesitated a minute, thought things through a second time, then a third, then squared his shoulders and climbed into the tube. 

The tube wasn’t terribly small. If he was in the exact middle, he could stand upright. Usually. Unless the tube was bending in some odd direction, which it often did. He wound up taking off his shoes. The rubber soles gripped well, but when he had to brace against the wall to climb up or over, his feet slipped or rolled inside of them. 

Why can I see inside this tube? There are no lights. There is nothing except concrete and my bloody footprints. But I can see well enough. 

It joined the other questions this madhouse place used to torment him. He decided it didn’t matter, at least for right now. Right now he just had to climb. Pressing his bare hands and feet against the rough concrete, bracing himself, using the friction to lift himself up, or to stop him from sliding down again. 

He gave up on trying to carry the shoes. He knew damn well he was going to quickly regret not having them, but it was just too much. The shoes and the rebar hook left him no free hands to work with. He would be unhappy without shoes, but he would be dead without a weapon. 

The tube twisted like an intestine hanging from a windchime. He didn’t know how long he climbed. It seemed to be a meaningless question in this place. Long enough that his skin was rubbed raw, and he was dizzy with all the twists and turns. 

At some point, some indefinable point in space and time, he emerged from the tube, crawling on his hands and knees onto a staircase. The stairs were some fifty yards wide, and each step was about a foot tall, and only eight inches deep. He looked upward. It was a cliff. It was a cliff of stairs. They kept extending upwards until he lost them in the shadows. 

Whatever malign thing designed them wasn’t completely heartless. Each side of the staircase was flanked with heavy stone railings. Every so often, perhaps every hundred steps, there was a statue twice the size of a human. Beings wrapped in robes, carrying staves or bowls or flowers, but subtly wrong. Fingers with too many joints, or not enough. Heads made with subtle disproportions, eyes and ears stuck with seeming carelessness to a head just that bit too large to be natural. 

There was a metallic noise, that same clank he heard from… who knows how far back and how far down. It was no quieter or louder than the first time he heard it. It was coming from up the stairs. The insanity of his choice pressed down on him. Chasing a mechanical noise through this nightmare place? But then, what was the “rational” choice? To put his hand on the leftmost wall and hope it would lead him to the exit?

The stone processions of alien saints and gods stood waiting. Waiting forever, if necessary. Mortimer’s presence was ignored. It didn’t even register. What else could he do? He started climbing. 

The steps were too tall. He could tell after just one lift of his foot. They were about a third again too tall to be comfortable. Each step required him to raise his leg up unnaturally high, then powerfully lunge upward. But his whole foot did not fit on the step. His heels were always hanging off the edge. Again, and again, and again. 

His bare feet felt like they had been slashed by the rough edge of every concrete step. His long iron hook making a steady chiming counterpart to the clanking noise above. Marking his silent steps through the void. Chasing that warmth. Despite everything, it felt like he was running towards something, not away.

They moved very quietly. It was only the clattering of claws on concrete that told him they were coming. Mortimer looked up. Pouring down from above were flabby, awful, forms. Bugs. So, so many bugs. He couldn’t keep count. A waterfall of green was crashing down on him.

He stood on the steps, barely able to keep his footing. Holding on to the iron hook hard enough to turn his knuckles white. His mind ran quickly, the spark in him blazing. The answer was simple, if hard. 

“I just have to kill one of you the hard way. Just one. After that? You are all prey.