Lost in a fog.
Was it a drug, or a dream?
Unable to recall, unable to conceive.
Agony skirted the edge of my senses like an echo.
Both close and far; part of me but somehow distant.
I felt a wetness like slick velvet at my feet.
They were bloody and raw and tortured.
Why?
A trail of crimson imprints followed me.
Did I make those?
A deep uneasiness swelled.
My heart began to race and adrenaline surged.
My body was reacting, panicking - but at what?
Then I felt it.
The malignance.
A vile consciousness was approaching, smelling and hunting.
Before me, the crimson steps began congealing and crumbling to dust.
One print at a time as it drew closer and closer.
I could feel it. I could hear its voice.
I knew it, and it knew me.
It longed for me, it yearned for me.
Such insatiable hunger; an impossible compulsion to consume everything that I was, and all that I could be.
It would never cease.
Terror, sheer unbridled terror embedded within my core exploded to the forefront.
I wanted to scream, I tried to run but slipped on the blood seeping from my own feet.
Blinding agony burned what fog remained.
I tried again and crumpled under the pain.
How long had I been running?
It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting away.
I tried to stand and slipped once more.
The malevolence was approaching; devouring bloody step after step, absorbing the life-force and leaving naught but dust.
It was close.
I couldn't stand, so I scampered on all fours. Clawing at the floor and pushing with my knees in a desperate fight to keep going.
The floor was...
The floor was gone.
It felt like tile but was as transparent and incorporeal as air.
My eyes began to focus for the first time, and that's when I saw it.
I was above a pit of unending depth, suspended by nothing.
It was a mile wide in all directions with me in the middle.
There were no walls around it, no frame of reference or context that gave this nightmare delusion justice.
How did I get here? Had I been here all along?
Was I stuck here? Was the monster stuck here too?
As I stopped the monster stopped as well - mirroring my confusion.
I could feel a realization identical to mine.
It had the same questions, and now, the same fear.
Was this thing a part of me?
An invisible monster, a devourer, with eyes the same as mine. It leered into my soul as it searched for answers.
Then it found them.
A light of truth appeared between us in a brilliant starburst.
A pin-prick of light so small yet so radiant.
I finally understood.
I didn't need to run anymore.
We stared at each other, suspended above oblivion for a time longer than I could recall.
Finally, the beast approached and extended an invisible limb to me.
When I reached out to take it, the incorporeal floor vanished - and we fell.
We fell and fell and fell.
United, and now totally fearless, we fell.
The pit claimed us both, but we didn't care.