Chapter 7 Don’t Look at the Eyes #2
Found him chained with mirrors catching the sunlight, pointed at him. Fried. Close to death.
Dermal tissue crinkly but smooth and human-like post-water.
Datu has grown sharp teeth and claws. Mentioned he did not have this before. Now has canid-like incisors.
I feel like I’m in a dream that’s just randomly manifesting specific things I should know about, throwing them in a blender, then fucking them all up.
I dump everything onto paper to rationalize everything I’m seeing, but the more I read back, the more disconcerted I become.
I flip my notebook close, an attempt to comfort myself.
Sitting on one of the mahogany’s roots, I feel like an ant. It is enormous to say the least. In my quiet spot, I curl over to hide the painful pangs and peer around. I can see Datu and Teva. She’s talking to him while he lays there, serenely staring at the sky.
Something about it strokes a silent part of me. I don’t think he’s ignoring his sister. He’s listening, but he just doesn’t let it faze him—the grim reality that he almost died. It’s an admirable trait, one I’m secretly jealous of.
My gut twists, and I gasp. Sharp, stabbing pain blooms in my innards, and I know I’ve overexerted myself today. It’s the gastric acid gnawing through my stomach lining. Hunger hurts more when I’m stressed.
I open the bar Ingar gave me and I try to eat slowly. Instead, I finish it in less than a minute. I barely even chew it, its taste not registering. It’s enough to lessen the pain, and as I stay there seated, waiting for the snack to settle, I keep staring at the trunk of another tree.
It’s old, cracked, greying with fungi growing out of its folds.
It’s not unusual for conks to grow from decaying wood inside.
The tree contracts and retracts, moving as if it’s…
purging—pushing, oozing. A bright violet fluid bleeds through the folds, leaking down to something akin to a screaming face.
I cock my head to the side, my mind trying but failing to make sense of what I’m seeing. The world becomes utterly silent, and all I hear is my heart pounding in my ears. My breathing’s rapid as the folds where the fluid has dripped from snaps open.
Eyes. I’m seeing eyes. A face much too inhuman. What I first thought was a screaming mouth was actually that—its mouth, but it isn’t screaming like I first thought. It’s panting open breaths with that serrated-toothed grin.
A scream rips from my throat and I scramble away. It shifts briskly against the tree trunk, and I see now why I hadn’t noticed it the first time. It’s camouflaged itself into the tree’s patterns.
It moves like crazy. One moment, it’s fixed on the trunk, and now, it’s on the ground, skittering towards me.
I can see its large claws, its back legs bent in too many places.
In horror, I see they’re longer, bigger than his upper legs.
It is growing bipedal before my eyes and it doesn't know how to walk so it just clumsily scuttles toward me.
The mangled way it’s moving just makes me scream again, bolting for the treeline that I can't see anymore.
It rattles a deep sound, and mid-stride, a heavy weight smacks against my back.
My front drops straight to the ground while something licks across my skin like velcro.
It’s rough, smooth, sticky at the same time.
As my heart assaults the earth, all I can think is how big of a failure I am to be eaten so quickly.
My hunger dissipates, my adrenaline surging once more. I’m angry, irritated, not scared. Why am I going to let a fucking gecko break me like this? I’ve survived much worse situations.
Its wet, gelatinous tongue moving across my neck, shaking with excitement. Something big pokes at my butt, but the temporary madness has made me rabid.
Don’t look it in the eyes. It will think it wants to mate you.
Little did I know, I had been looking at its eyes that whole time.
I curl my legs until I’m kneeling on the ground with the gecko draped across my body like a convulsing thing. I grab the knife I had slipped into my boot. The knife I had almost stabbed Ingar with.
The metal clutched in my hand, I prepare to ram it by the neck…until the weight is torn off me. Sudden. So, so sudden that I begin to think I must have imagined the attack.
I’m trembling as I look behind me. It’s dark, but I see the inky violet light of the tree where it had been…I see it move like a throat working to swallow a being much-too large.
I hear muted sounds—crunching bones, grinding rocks. Whatever it is, it reassures me it’s gone. Gone. Just like that.
And as I stare at the enormous tree that bled those luminescent violet light, I see it for what it’s not.
It’s not a tree, but a much bigger thing than the gecko…
the gecko that was about to eat me was just eaten by another…
It bellows a forceful, violating hunger that I trip over myself running away.
Whatever it is, it will eat me if I stay longer.
The vivid purple goo is my only source of light.
My skin itches as my eyes find the other danger.
Vines snake my way, slithering like hunting pythons.
There’s no rational thought in my mind. Adrenaline surges, and I slice them before they can reach me.
It drops to the cracked ground, twitching like a lizard’s missing tail.
I’m blind in my pursuit for safety, and as I trip over the undergrowth, pain is the thing that drives me farther from the forest. When I collide into something hard and warm, I sob.
Relax, Xiaoyu. You’re just panicking.
Yes, just panicking.
Night has fallen and it’s literally black. I’ve never known utter blackness until now in this deranged, alien forest. The whispers of nature have silenced, my breathing and thundering heart the only thing I hear.
Something grips me by my shoulders, trailing down my arms. A faint glow interrupts the darkness, and I see Datu. I’ve never been so happy seeing a face, not just a mouth. The purplish speckles on his skin glows as his still-blind eyes seek me out.
Instead of the carefree, smiling face he seemed to usually have, he’s grim. Disapproving. I see it in the way he shakes his head.
You shouldn’t be here, Xiaoyu.
I agree. “Please, get me out of here.” I beg him.
He circles me in his arms, picking me up. A vine twists around my ankle, and I can’t seem to figure out why it is bent the way it is. Had I broken it? I can’t process anything as a sweet rush of euphoria takes over me.
The last thing I hear is the wind telling me to close my eyes.