The Dark Passage

The surface inside the dark interior of her stomach was ridged and slimy. The air was stifling, each breath feeling like he was inhaling a caustic cloud into his lungs and making him cough. He could hear what sounded like a person mewling, moaning in pain, but he couldn’t tell if it was male or female, though he suspected it was Farrell. His fingers tingled and felt like they being dipped in boiling water. Closing his hands into to fist, the walls of her stomach contracted, pitching him forward into a mire of fluid. He found the person he thought was Farrell, skin and flesh peeling away as the man groaned. Panic filled Daryl, pushing the partially dissolved man away and trying to move back. The burning sensation in his fingers grew stronger and he tried to wipe them on his chest before closing them into fists again. His eyes stung and he reached up to try and wipe them, to relieve the pain. Her stomach moved again, throwing him back into the mix. Turning he tried to stand up. The sounds of her body were loud, almost deafening. He opened his mouth to scream but digestive enzymes and gastric juices poured into his open mouth attacking the vulnerable flesh inside his mouth and throat, starting the breaking down process. The pain was unbearable, he opened his mouth to try and scream but only weak gurgling sounds came out. His extremities began to come apart, fingers, toes, nose, ears, and his cock were the first things to go. He prayed for the sweet release and oblivion of death, but it was not to be. He could feel everything, every last nerve ending as his skin was breached and her acids assaulted his body. He no longer had voluntary function or control of his limbs, the muscles of her stomach tossing him around and pulling him apart. Why was he still alive? Why could he still feel? He should be dead. The acid ate through his eyelids, melting his eyes. He thought once the flesh was stripped from his body the pain would go, but it only got worse as her system sucked him down into her small intestine, leeching the very marrow from his bones and forcing him through her digestive tract. He was aware of everything although he no longer had flesh to feel or eyes to see, he was aware. Arms gone, torso pulled away, he was nothing more than a skull attacked to a spinal cord, yet he could feel the bacteria swarm over him, stealing every last ounce of nutrition out of what was left of him. Time once more meant nothing, there was only all consuming pain. Somehow, he had a sense of movement, sliding along her digestive tract. Had he voice or lips to fashion the words, he would surely have begged for the sweet release of death. In a moment of epiphany he understood, he was dead. Hayley had shot him and this was Hell.

As if the revelation provided understanding and reprieve, he was free of the giant woman who had consumed him, squeezed out through her anus and left blind and helpless, alone in the darkness, little more than a half dissolved skull with a dozen socketed teeth. Bit by agonizing bit, he could feel his body reconstituting itself from the mass of sludge and waste around him, like a mushroom growing from compost. He felt the vertebrae shaping, rib cage, pelvis, femurs, all slowly taking form, but like raw exposed nerve endings screaming in pain. If he thought bones were bad, his central nervous system redefined his understanding of agony. Organs took shapes, muscles slid back over his skeleton, eyes reforming insides the sockets in his head but it was dark. He found he could move. Sitting up, he sucked fetid air into his lungs and screamed until he gave up, the only sounds coming from him now little more than whimpers or guttural moans.

Still without skin, he tried to stand but fell into the mire of feculent matter surrounding. He could hear the wails and cries of another unfortunate lost somewhere in the distance. He tried to look in that direction, lidless eyes trying to penetrate through the veil of darkness. Nothing. In the distance to his right, he could perceive light, weak and flickering, though no source.

He tried to speak, voice raspy and hoarse from his screaming. “Hello?” he croaked weakly hoping to hear a reply.

There was no response, nothing other than the sound of suffering.

Crawling forward a short distance through the thick waste, he pushed himself toward the light pausing each time pain threatened to overwhelm him. He could actually feel skin forming, stretching over muscles, the coolness providing surcease to the omnipresent burning he experienced all over his body. He remain there, letting it cover him slowly, each passing moment diminishing the agony he felt. Then the pain was gone. He was completely reformed. Unable to contain his feeling of emotion, he wept. Tears of joy sliding down his grimy face. Rearing back, he pushed himself upright, teetering unsteadily on wobbly legs. If only he could make it to the light, he knew it would be okay.

Tentatively he took a step, knee threatening to buckle, but less so with each successive stride he took. Soon he was walking, the waste material growing shallower the closer he approached the light, a circular source situated up in the air. As he came toward it, he encountered a concrete wall, metal rungs embedded in it leading toward the opening, like something one would expect to find in a sewer leading up to a manhole.

Grabbing the rungs, he climbed, pulling himself up. Was he back? Was he in the LA sewer system? He moved faster, pausing near the opening to take a peek before poking his head out.

It was kind of dark out, like the twilight state of sunset or sun up, he couldn’t tell through the blood colored haze hanging in the sky. The sky reminded him of the time he was in Pasadena and the smoke from wildfires blew in and blotted out the daytime sun.