[Original Novel] The Black Pool, Part 7

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But there would be no escape for me. At least not that easily. When I arrived at the bottom of the shaft, my disfigured friend with the eel mouth was waiting for me. I can’t readily interpret his expressions, but he did look more than a little smug.

“Do you see now?” he asked as I dismounted the bug and led it back to the stable. “I’m not really sure what I saw” I confessed, “but whatever we’re inside of is alive.” He nodded soberly. “A form of life which dwells natively in interdimensional space. Having evolved to such a size that even all of the life on a single planet cannot sustain it, instead it connects itself to countless different places and times in order to feed.”

It made sense of what I saw. I also had no reason to doubt any of it, given that even my immediate surroundings would’ve been unbelievable to me before I was abducted. He went on to explain that the black stuff is what it uses to digest nutrients, as well as serving a purpose similar to blood.

“The insects exist in symbiosis with the larger organism, capturing prey which they divide more or less evenly with their host. Their larvae gestate within the jelly, entering the bodies of those rejuvenated by it, transforming them.”

I knew that much. Still, every time I thought I finally grasped the scale of my environment and the severity of my situation, it only expanded further. “...Is there any way to kill it?” He shook his head mournfully.

“In all of our searches we’ve found nothing resembling a brain, a heart or other organs. It could be that they’re further down, towards the core. Or it could be that the portion of the organism we inhabit is only the part which intersects with three dimensional space.”

I couldn’t accept it. Something of this nature couldn’t be allowed to go on living, given how it nourishes itself. “Can individual openings be blocked, or destroyed?” He confirmed it, but added that the creature could simply withdraw that tendril and connect to some other point on the planet.

“There is no hope for creatures of our size to kill the thing we’re standing in now, any more than a few ants could kill you. But there is still hope that you might return home, if you remember which of the shafts you were brought here through.” In fact I didn’t. I’d been in such a hurry to leave that place, I just headed straight for the nearest pillar with no thought of how to return.

I calmed down somewhat when I realized it had to be one of the immediately adjacent pillars. So long as I didn’t lose track of this one, I could simply check the pillars around it one at a time until I found the one I came here from.

At their leader’s insistence, I put that off until the next day. Insofar as there’s such a thing as a “day” down here. When it came time to sleep, the lights were covered with leathery hoods. There was no obvious source of electricity. When I took a closer look at one of the lights, it was just a translucent sack of bioluminescent vapor they must’ve harvested from that blimp-like creature.

I felt reluctant to make myself vulnerable to a bunch of strangers. Hideous, deformed ones at that. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the distinction between them and myself existed only in my mind. I’m just as strange as they are. Or as normal, in another sense.

As I settled into the bed, though it was fashioned from bones and cushioned with leather I knew all too well the probable source of, I couldn’t help but be delighted by how comfortable it was. By comparison with sleeping on cold, damp rock anyway.

It was the closest thing to real, physical comfort I’d felt since before the abduction. How incredible that such different creatures from such different backgrounds, possibly even different planets of origin, could come together and put their literal blood, sweat and tears into improving one another’s lives.

I surprised myself by choking up as I thought about it. Then once more when I found myself thinking of Camille. I couldn’t exactly say why, but neither could I stop picturing her. Recalling the home cooked meal she brought me when I moved in, or how she came to check on me the night of my abduction.

At least I spared the poor girl. At least she didn’t get tangled up with such a trainwreck of a person. My thoughts then turned to Shawna. That’s her name, surely? I could have at least bothered to learn that much about her. What I wouldn’t give to crack jokes with her now.

What I wouldn’t give to have it all back for that matter. Any of it, really. To see the sun, the trees and the clouds. Even a swamp! How I wished to smell the air again. What a fool I was to turn my nose up at it, simply for not being exactly what I prefer.

The possibility that it could all be taken away so abruptly never crossed my mind back then. That I might one day be plunged into a world of darkness and despair, where even the most frivolous aspects of the world I once knew would become my fondest memories.

I cried hot, salty tears while wishing desperate, impossible wishes. To have my old body back. My old life. It wasn’t that bad, was it? No it wasn’t. I only isolated myself because of a broken heart. All the while, ignoring people who might’ve helped me fix it...because they weren’t her.

If only I had another chance, I’d make things right. Those beautiful, friendly people with their shining faces. They’re not monsters. I was the real monster, even before this. What poor fortune those girls had, in particular, to meet me.

I think that’s why I never pursued Camille. She was just such a sweetheart, I didn’t want to poison her. Didn’t want her heart to become polluted upon contact with my own. Thank goodness I’m out of her life now.

When at last I drifted off, shadowy forms once again swirled about my subconscious. But this time, they began to coalesce into something. More and more solid, until I recognized it as Camille. Soft, gentle, sultry. Beckoning to me.

I tried to apologize for everything, but she put a finger to my lips. Then replaced it with her own. How I longed for it all this time without even realizing what I wanted. Perhaps not allowing myself to. Then I felt a strange sensation in my throat.

Before I could react, something wriggled up my throat, through my parted lips and into Camille’s mouth. She withdrew, choking. I tried to help her as she collapsed, but her convulsions only grew more violent. Finally she lay still.

When I felt for a heartbeat, her eyes and mouth suddenly opened and cockroaches poured out. I cried out in terror and fell backwards. The shiny, crawling black torrent just continued to issue forth, leaving behind only an empty Camille-shaped bag of skin.

I awoke screaming. The fellow who found me the other day rushed to my side, asking what was the matter. “Just...Just a nightmare.” He patted my shoulder and nodded knowingly. “The trouble with nightmares down here is that you cannot truly wake up from them, except into another.”

He recounted how nightmares plagued him for the first few years after he was brought here. “I wouldn’t say my dreams are pleasant now. Just that what they show me isn’t all that different from our surroundings. It’s amazing what you can grow accustomed to.”

I didn’t want to grow accustomed to any of this. I wanted out. I wanted my old body back. I cried, and to my surprise, he held me. I didn’t fight it. There was no denying that, whoever he’d been before, he understood what I’d gone through since my abduction.

Of all the places to bond with someone. Of all the things to bond over! But strangely, it was nice. Just to be with someone I could feel certain had experienced suffering similar to my own. He stayed with me until I calmed down, then departed for his own tent.

The old me would’ve immediately turned him away just for being strange. Perhaps it’s not only my body that’s changed. I got to wondering whether the metamorphosis might, in some ways, be an improvement. It proved distracting enough that I soon returned to sleep.

When I next awoke, the village bustled with activity. The flimsy leather walls of my tent did nothing to muffle the racket, the cause of which was revealed as soon as I emerged from its flaps. A procession of mutants came in through the main entry, bearing leathery sacks of something or other on their backs.

“What’s this all about?” I asked eel mouth. “There’s been a successful raid! Not of our own shaft but a neighboring one.” I wondered if they might’ve been through the shaft I was brought down. When I described the field and the garden trail to one of the creatures, now busy unloading his sack, he shook his malformed head.

“Just another planet the bugs have already overrun. They don’t fare well on worlds populated with intelligent life, but the worlds with only rudimentary fauna make for easy pickings. Or sometimes it just connects to an earlier era on that same world, before intelligence arose.”

I wondered whether it may have tampered with the history of life on Earth in this fashion. I’ve never seen any cave paintings of giant bugs though. If there are some, anthropologists would probably mistake them for magnified depictions of normal insects.

He pulled a football sized chrysalis from the sack and thrust it at me. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked. He carefully cut it open with a knife that looked to be fashioned from a bone shard, the handle wrapped tightly in leather.

The translucent white pod split open to reveal a bizarre little larval creature inside. Beady little black eyes, a mess of pudgy little legs similar to those of a caterpillar and a body closely resembling an unusually shortened grub.

It repeatedly squeaked...in fear? Can it feel fear? “What is it?” I asked. “This is what the little white worms become if they’re not implanted. If allowed to fully mature, they imprint on the bugs. Then they serve them tirelessly as drones, subsisting on whatever scraps they can scavenge.”

Not as reassuring as I hoped. But something about the wiggly little bundle charmed me as I cradled it in my arms. “It’s not often that we can steal so many” he said. “Look after yours, you won’t get another any time soon.” I asked why I should want one to begin with.

He demonstrated by massaging his own pudgy white grub until it secreted a familiar black fluid from its abdomen. “This way if we’re injured or hungry during a raid, we can make our own black jelly on demand rather than having to backtrack all the way to our own pool.”

He made them sound like convenient portable appliances. But the thing I now held in my arms as it gurgled and squeaked appeared very much alive. “What should I name it?” He frowned. “Don’t get attached. They’re short lived and infertile, that’s why we can’t simply breed more.”

Don’t get attached? Shouldn’t be a problem, that’s what I’m best at. If I could believe that nutter back at the sunlit pool I came from, it’s even how I wound up down here in the first place. Or at least it has something to do with it.

One of the mutants asked for a hand with his bag. I declined, explaining that I meant to return to the shaft I was brought down here through shortly. “Well that’s a hell of a way to repay our hospitality. You just breeze on in, we heal you, give you a bed to sleep in, then you’re on your way?”

I could find nothing to say in my defense. So I wrapped the little grub in a leather blanket, stashed it in the tent I slept in, then joined the others in their task. To my surprise I found it quite satisfying to labor alongside them, working up a viscous black sweat as I exerted myself.

After we finished distributing the grubs, there were several tents in need of repair, as well as maintenance to be performed on the outer surface of the brick walls. I didn’t agree to all this, they just kept piling on more work. But I also couldn’t turn them down given how helpful they’d been.

“Feeling overloaded?” My eel mouthed friend joined me, the two of us lifting a replacement brick into place. “Actually it’s nice to be useful” I admitted. “In my old life, I didn’t fit in anywhere. There just wasn’t any place for me.” He raised one eyebrow. At least I think so, his face is rather lopsided. “Were you really looking?”

I mulled it over while we returned to the fortress interior. There was a modest banquet prepared to feed us, a trio of bug corpses in the process of being divided up into sections and cooked. I had to fight back the urge to puke when the smell hit me.

Eel mouth laughed. “They taste better than they smell. It’s a lot like lobster, actually.” I didn’t believe him, but my growling stomach persuaded me to take a chance. I’d have pinched my nose if I still had one.

“Of course, you don’t have to eat anything if you don’t want to. Just soak in the black jelly for a bit and the hunger goes away.” What he left unsaid is that there would be a price. That each time I did so, it would only further corrupt my body.

So, driven by a mixture of exhaustion and hunger, I dug in. The tender, jiggling white meat proved every bit as satisfying as I was led to expect. Lobster might be pushing it, but it really was quite tasty, and to be surrounded by merry company while I ate was its own sort of nourishment.

Following the meal, I volunteered to help clean it up. I knew I meant to leave soon, but some part of me craved just a bit more time with these creatures. These...unlikely comrades. The feeling turned out to be mutual.

As I mounted a winged insect with Eel mouth’s help, he lamented that I was leaving so soon. He handed me the little grub, which he’d tucked into a satchel. “I’ve gotta go back” I insisted. “That’s all there is to it.” He asked if I was happy there.

What a strange question. I brushed it off, thanked him for everything, then headed for the rim of the pillar. His words returned more than once to trouble me on my journey. Was I happy there? I suppose not. But still, what else could I do but return?

There’s my family to think of. There’s Goblin. Surgeons may still be able to reverse much of what’s happened to my body...though I couldn’t imagine how to explain to them, or anybody else, how I became like this.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 8!}