Not a nice place... (Taken from Reflections in the Mist)

Arriving there

I was suspended about three meters above the floor.  A putrid, pulsing mass of ground spread out around me.  It was covered in a pinkish membrane that moved as bulges and lumps pushed their way around under it. It turned a blackish/yellow shade of bruise as the things passed beneath.  From my position it spread out all around its contours creating a grand guignol of horror that stretched into the horizon.  At first glance, it was not that dissimilar to back home, I could see trees and plants, a river cutting across the land, a field of crops and ahead of me and in the distance a mountain rose up into the sky. 

The sky was a deep red, but bright enough to illuminate the grotesque landscape.  Massive black blobs made their way across the heavens.  Giant cloud sized cancerous slugs slowly moving over the scarlet canvas casting shadows on the land and leaving behind a long trail of iridescent secretion.  These trails eventually drying up and deteriorating, falling down in a flaky cascade.  A disgusting dry rain of crusty mucus.  Some of the larger groups in the distance leaving trails that slivered away into downpours.

Before I could take in my immediate environment I started moving forward.  Invisible forces had taken hold of me and I floated onward, toward the direction of the mountain. 

As I moved I saw that the lay of the land was constantly altering.  From polyp like hillocks to blackened and red tumorous outcrops and large gas filled membranous tors that swelled out of the ground.  Deep festering fleshy rips were gouged into the terrain creating open wound valleys.  Rotting meat lined the walls of the yawning crevices.  The smell of the decaying flesh was overwhelming.

Dotted around I saw intestinal trees that had sprouted from this sickening land, each one as tall as a house.  Huge slimy coils of gut made up the thick trunk with smaller tracts protruding, splitting and themselves growing further smaller intestines.  They branched out everywhere and each one ending in sphincters which leaked out thick green ooze.   Surrounding these were multitudes of smaller varicose bushes.  Deep blue and red veins made up the bushes frames.  Scab leaves covered them each one was flourishing with pustule blossoms.

Over some open tracts of land, moved giant maggots.  The size of a few train carriages, their flesh a septic yellow dotted with fetid gashes, trawled over the terrain, eating their way through the fleshy landscape.  Rows of teeth ploughed chunks of flesh into is gooey maw, while small stick like legs slowly pulled them along to fresher, uneaten ground.  A reeking stench of soured milk and old sweat emanated from them.  Every so often, thick black excrement slowly leaked out their back ends adding to the smell of their repellent aroma.  Their swollen and segmented bodies glistening with excretions were themselves prey.  In a sense of sick irony, each of these massive maggots was itself being eaten by thousands of smaller maggots.  Burrowing their way through the giants rotting flesh.  Feasting on the giant feaster.  I moved on through the world but could continue to hear the agitated screams of maggots as I went. 

I had noticed that the closer that I floated to the field of crops, the less it looked like anything that could be harvested.  When I first saw it from a distance it had looked like a field of wheat, as I neared I saw that it was not the golden yellow of a good yield, they were black, jet black.  Now that I was closer still it was obvious that they were not topped with an ear of seeds.  There was nothing on top, they just ended in a point and there was no leaves bowing underneath.  Instead they were covered in thick black hairs.  And they were moving.  They were not swaying in the wind; there was no wind here to move them.  These things were moving completely independently to each other.  Some swinging backwards and forward erratically, others spasming intermittently.  The unseen force moved me closer and eventually over the top.  From here I had a good look at it all.  Wheat did not grow from this ground, thousands and thousands of large insect legs did.  As tall as the wheat I had mistaken it for, I could only assume, by the way they were moving that they were still attached to things under the surface, or maybe they all belonged to just one massive thing.  The thought of giant insects made me involuntarily shudders and I burst out in goose bumps all down my arms.  Just creepy. 

I left the field of legs behind and into an open expanse again.  Prolapse’s spewed out of the ground.  Ripping sounds attended the appearance of swollen and irritated intestinal flesh.  Each one covered in a foul brown fluid that clung to the exposed tissue and pooled around protruding muscly mass.  The stench of excrement flew into my nostrils making me gag.  From an opening in the top, bundles of long thin parasitic worms slithered out.  They fell to the floor making a symphony of splating noises as they hit and quickly slithered off before burying themselves back under the surface.

Just ahead of me a group of slug clouds moved and their trails had begun to dry and fall.  Like everything else here, the river I had noticed was a corruption of what I thought it should have been.  There was no blue water running through it.  Not one koi swam along its frothing currents.  This river did not provide the essence of life for anything here.  It was a stinking flow of sticky looking vomit, viral excrement and thick dark red blood clots.  It bubbled and foamed, toxic vapours clung to the surface in a sick parody of mist.  This slop eddied its way down the twisting and winding course of the river.  Lapping at banks leaving thick black blood clots on them and staining everything it touched. 

Travelling through a shower of slug crust and getting a good dusting of it myself, I got nearer to the mountain; it soon became evident that this was not part of the fleshy land.  It was the biggest pile of eviscerated organs and tracts of intestine I could ever imagine.  All of it in various states of decay and most of it completely unidentifiable.  And it reeked of the worse smell imaginable.  Liquid decomposition flowed freely over it, and in some areas jetted outward where the rotten juices had fermented for too long and ripped through decaying tissue.  It surged down the side of this mountain, creating a small waterfall effect as it flowed over a ridge.  It eventually made its way along to the base of the mountain before the tributary joined up with the river I had passed only moments earlier.