Bloodwalker

Chapter 9: Murky Maelstrom

Trigger Warning/s: drowning, suffocation, human experimentation

Pre-chapter notes: none

Art: Markbizkit on DeviantArt. As well as awesome digital art, they also do a lot of beautiful, extremely realistic traditional art. Check them out if you can!

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You hear it before you see it.

Something vile is coming. Something disgusting is slithering towards you, something that squelches and churns. From the sounds of it, it's not viscous enough to be a body of water. It doesn't ebb and flow like the caress of a gentle tide; rather, it moves like a retching stomach, writhing and crawling, gradually inching closer to you. It's certainly not water - nonetheless, it's equally as deadly.

In the corner of your eye you glimpse a murky feldgrau. A putrid, slimy thing about the size of a truck slithers through an alleyway. It's mucous-like body adheres to the walls and only seems to grow in size when you face the monstrosity head-on, piles upon piles of slime towering over you.

How did it get to this?

It was only hours earlier that you had finished enduring a particularly harsh series of experiments at the compound. You had arrived for training, but you knew something was very wrong from the way The Undertaker looked more gleeful than usual. Leading you to his dimly lit laboratory, he began a series of experiments that left you reeling. Then, after an agonising few hours, you had stumbled home, body wracked with exhaustion, and with the lingering effects of his chemicals burning through your veins.

You needed to recover. You needed food.

But when you opened your cupboard, you were greeted with the remains of a bag of sugar, a roll of bandages, and some antiseptic wipes.

F***. As if your day couldn't get any worse.

So you weighed up your options. You could starve for a day, as you sometimes did out of necessity, or you could use whatever remaining will you had to drag yourself to the supermarket and buy yourself another week's supply of food.

The latter option seemed more sensible, so with excruciating effort, you did just that.

And here you now are, with your precious groceries in tow, as the gooey creature in front of you dwarfs your fatigued form. You're barely phased; honestly, it's probably the least daunting thing you could've encountered after the morning's torturous events. Anyway, what exactly is this creature?

You squint a little, studying the massive congregation of slime.

Is that a slug?

You know that slugs secrete mucus, are elongated in shape, and are often green. So far, the creature in front of you matches all of the criteria. But you're still not quite sure; a few months out of the compound isn't enough for you to experience and discover everything you've missed from your childhood.

Why can't you just ask, anyway?

"Are you a slug?"

If someone else were on the receiving end of your question, they might've forgiven you for your mistake if they'd known you'd never seen a real slug before. Definitely not this villain, though.

"You... you impudent girl! I'll strangle you!"

Well, he may have met the first three requirements of a slug, but you now think there's some glaring indicators that he might not actually be one.

Firstly, slugs don't respond when you talk to them.

Secondly, from your memory, slugs don't eat people. In fact based on the teachings of your late mentor, you vaguely recall that they predominantly have a diet of vegetables and decaying animals. So why can you see a spiky mop of blonde hair poking out from the unpleasantly coloured fluid and two garnet-coloured eyes staring straight at you?