Soon it rains and lifts the haze, she is wearing a yellow rain coat and two brown boots. While she rows, she looks around. She is trying to be vigilant even though her stomach is growling. They might be just lurking.
"Bring me home", she hears a voice. To her, it is unclear if it's just a dellusion out of hunger or an actual call.
She kept on rowing and rowing with only a small fire inside a small lamp as her guide.
Then a glowing object appears on front of her. It looks edible, it looks tasty.
She tries to grab it and fails, then she did it again, and two times more. Her attention was on the object on front of her when suddenly it went darker.
This time, the rain stopped and the stink of sour juice was around her.
"Where am I?", she asks, this situation is really confusing, her empty stomach is affecting her thoughts.
She raises her lamp and looks around. There is nothing but darkness. And when did these walls appeared around her?
Her hunger is getting worse, it's been four days now since she last had her meal, and that wasn't that much either.
She rowed forward to the darkness, there is nothing else she can do, there is no way around.
She rowed for some moment and "plak", she hits into something. She raises her lamp to see, and what a surprise she saw, a piece of land on front of her. Everything makes no sense anymore. And so, she went down and started walking.
The soil is hot and steamy and the cold air is nowhere anymore, only darkness has been left and the enigma's of the place.
She started walking again and saw some bones around. They were scattered, a lot of them.
She didn't put any attention to the remains as her hunger makes her worry about nothing anymore. Even the smell of the place is nothing to her.
The smell isn't as foul as stench and is bearable, yet, it is noticeable.
As she walks, she hears a sound, 'tak', it's a slow continuous sound of execution. A man is chopping fire wood near a camp.
The man is above six feet tall, wears a leather coat and has a black dirty hat. He is old, probably around his 50's and has whites on his hair.
On the camp, near the camp fire, she saw some food being cooked near the fire. They look delicious.
The smell of the food wafts to her nose and an uncontrollable hunger kicks into her. She approaches the food and gets a hold to one.
The food is an exotic delicacy, something she had never saw and tasted before. It looks like a slug of some sort with some herbs around it.
She takes a bite and tastes the food. It was delicious, she took some more bite and she finishes one in seconds.
She took another one and finishes it quickly. And she takes another more.
"Who are you?", the man with an axe asks her.
She drops the food she was holding cause of fear, she was seriously guilty of stealing.
"Um, I'm...", the girl speaks with shakes in her voice.
"It's okay, it's okay, I think you're really hungry, I have plenty of them",
The man pulls a box under a pile of rock. The box is filled with moving slugs, same slug that she ate moments ago.
"What are these, they're delicious", she asks.
"Those are 'gastric slugs', you can find them almost everywhere in this place"
She kept on eating and eating. "It really surprises me to see someone else here, how did you get here?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, how impolite of me, my name is Salley and I don't know either how I made it here, all I can remember is, I have been travelling for four days now. Then when I reached the river, I saw this light and..."
"You chased it?"
"Huh, yes"
"Now I get it"
"Where am I? Am I lost?"
"Yes and you're stranded as well",
"Stranded? You mean I will never be able to get out of here"
"Not exactly, you see, we are inside this animal that ate you and luckily, you met me earlier before you had been harmed by the nature of it's stomach"
"An animal's stomach?"
"It's called 'torpelophs', a very large animal that lures creatures of all kind into it's five different mouths with it's bait light, usually it catches fishes by sinking it's mouth and bait under water. This is actually the first time I saw a mammal got caught by it cause of it's bait"
"A mammal? You mean me?"
"Who else should it be?" The man blankly says to Salley.
"Thank you for the food, but I seriously need to get out of here, can you tell me how to get out of here?"
"I can show you, that's the only way--I think", the man said while cleaning his pants after standing up.
The man decided to escort Salley till she is able to leave the unbelievable large animal. He has too, or else, his conscience will haunt him for letting a girl be killed by letting her go by herself around the torpelophs' dangerous stomach insides.
They walked and reached a river made of luminescent fluids. The fluids looks beautiful. And so, Salley tries to touch it.
"Stop, don't touch it", the man said to Salley.
Salley stops at panic cause of the warning to her.
"That fluid is highly concentrated acid, it will remove your flesh off your bones once you touch it", the man explained with being a little witty with his tone.
"Yikes"
"There, we will cross this river of acid", the man said while pointing on a weird looking tree.
"This tree is an endemic tree"
"What does that mean?"
"It means that this tree only grows here. It's actually a special one. Specialists calls it Gala Gala trees even though it's actually not a tree", the man said before touching the tree itself to examine where to hit the tree with his axe.
"By hearing that, this place just sounded a lot more weirder", Salley said to the guy.
"A real tree or most plants, uses a process called photosynthesis to produce their own food. While Gala Gala trees don't do that, they simply can't. We are now inside an animal's stomach and any sunlight can't reach here"
"..."
"So in order for Gala Gala trees to grow, they get food from their hosts, this so called to be 'tree' is actually a big fungus that looks like a tree. It's more of a giant mushroom rather than a tree"
"Wow mister, you're so informative"
"The name is Emile, people call me that when I was still outside this torpeloph's stomach", after saying that statement, the man swings his axe to the Gala Gala tree. With one swing , the said to be tree goes down. It's body is really soft despite of it's big size.
"Emile? Your name is Emile?"
"Yes, that is my name"
"I went out from my village to go on for a journey to look for a man named Emile"
The moment Salley said that, Emile looks at her and both their eyes met. The two then just discovered something much more shocking than anything that you will be able to find inside the torpeloph's stomach.
To be continued.
this work is a fictional work, any relation to the real world or any events are pure coincidence
the photo is from Pixabay