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bluepenguinstories · 9 months

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(Anxious) Mouse Vertigo 11

Morning came with a crisp and cool atmosphere, the moisture and dew from the rainy night before decorating the leaves of the trees, the grass, and other flowers which sprouted up some time ago. Despite the morning chill, it was bright, yet not unbearably so. Perfect weather.

Or at least, the young man who carried the large brown backpack, overflowing with goods, thought so. The straps of his backpack were always in danger of coming loose, but even if they broke, he made sure to carry the necessary supplies to put them back together. Mother always did teach him to prepare for any situation.

He traveled along a dirt trail, left behind as a reminder of the civilization which used to occupy the surrounding area.

Each step was deliberate. One foot in front of the other, always in a straight line, always along the soft, dirt trail. Even if he tripped on a pebble, he wouldn’t allow himself to fall. His constant slouch, burdened by the weight of his bag, wouldn’t stop him from moving, even if he moved like a turtle.

Life in the new world was harsh; he’s walked past his fair share of mangled corpses, some hung from trees, others from lampposts of wrecked cities. But despite all the harrowing images, he walked on and considered everything he saw as an opportunity to learn more about how the world has changed.

In his green satchel which he kept tied around his waist, he unzipped the seal and pulled out a thick notebook with its bindings made of snakeskin (corn snake, to be precise, sometimes referred to as a red rat snake) as well as his golden steel fountain pen (gifted to him by mother). On a fresh sheet of mulch notebook paper, he scrawled:

“Man-made trails can still be found along certain parks, forest, and natural areas. While some cities have already been overtaken by plant life.”

While he tried to fill his notebook with any observations he could find, be it the most mundane or the most interesting, he had to admit that not everything has changed so soon. It made him wonder how useful his notes would be to another.

“Self-doubt is unfortunate, but both inevitable and necessary,” was an adage his mother would always say. She often had nuggets of advice like that. Were it not for her advice, he wondered just how long he would have survived for.

In conclusion: it wasn’t his place to decide what would or would not be useful. It was merely his duty to write down whatever he observed.

In front of him was a clearing where a blue sky with clouds that reminded him of mashed potatoes rested. Ah, father was such a great cook when it came to potatoes. Seeing those clouds reminded him of those special nights when he would feast upon potato pancakes.

“One day,” he told himself, “I would like to taste those again.”

Maybe it was foolish, naive, even a little optimistic, but that was just who he was: he believed in the human spirit to overcome any obstacle and adapt to any change in environment. As long as he held out, he was sure that he would taste the sweetness of a potato pancake once more.

If he met his end before he could savor another potato pancake, there was still the chance that another person out there would carry on and craft the dish that he couldn’t. Maybe it wasn’t the same, but someone else being able to eat one of his favorite sweets was almost as good as the idea of him devouring it once more.

“Clouds today remind me of potato pancakes,” he jotted down. Usually, he didn’t write anything personal in his notebook, as he would rather it serve as a tool to help others than as an insight into his own life. Of course, he knew true objectivity was impossible. For that one note, however, he decided to make an exception. “Note to self: write down potato pancake recipe.”

That way, when others might stumble across his journal, for whatever reason, they might end up taking interest in the recipe and decide to replicate it themselves.

Droplets of slick, sticky rain flew out in front of him. Some landed on the cover of his notebook and on the hems of his cape made of brown bearskin (another family heirloom). His cape often made him itchy, and on hot days it collected a lot of sweat, making it an almost unbearably swampy experience. But in the winter, his cape could be used as a makeshift blanket and sheltered him from the cold.

By some stroke of luck, his peach cream colored shirt with a button-down neck was untouched. He smiled as he patted himself down.

That joy was short lived when looked up in time to see that a four-legged beast, the size of a large dog, leaped out and blocked his path. Rather than the paws of a dog, it seemed to have hooves, like a bull or a horse. Its mouth, with its sharp, jagged teeth, hung low and wide as corrosive drool dripped down from its mouth and melted away at the very ground it stood over. Rather than a set of eyes, the beast’s upper head was comprised of many snakes, each of varying species. Or at least, that’s the closest thing they resembled. To tell the truth, they looked to furry to be snakes. Too disjointed, and with bones protruding from some of them.

His heart rate accelerated and he felt the urge to press his hand against his chest. Air blew from his nostrils, a heavy puff, and the closest thing he could do to try to draw breaths.

No, he wasn’t sure whether to run or stay still. Either way could have spelled disaster.

Then, he heard the death rattle of the beast’s tails. He hadn’t noticed them before, but now he got a good look at them as they swayed about: there were multiple, at least four, all connected together, and shaped like a series of yellow rings stacked over each other, each ring smaller than the one below it.

Next came another warning sound: a series of harsh, low barking noises. Except they sounded muffled, as if someone had recorded a large dog barking, then played it back through a stereo while the stereo was covered up by a towel. There was no better way to explain it, but the sound shook him so hard that he hopped back and almost fell to the ground. One foot danced about, trying to reclaim its balance.

There would be no other warnings: the beast charged forth and the snakes, or whatever they were, readied their jaws as well.

Rather than brace for impact, he pulled out a silver, cylindrical object and pressed a black button off to the side. What the head of one of the snake-like creatures attached to the beast met was not the skin of the young man but instead a jolt of electricity which ran down the beast’s neck and surged around until static danced through the beast’s entire body.

The beast didn’t let out a yell, no hiss, no howls of pain. But instead, the beast’s head drooped down, followed by the many snake-like creatures. The beast backed away, then walked off behind a bush.

“Note: electricity seems to pacify beasts. While they appear unharmed, they will momentarily cease attack and should buy the potential victim enough time to escape. I first encountered this phenomena when I passed by the ruins of a city and a beast stepped onto a downed power line. With power outages in most areas, and a limited supply of batteries, it may not be a long-term solution.”

He wrote that down one afternoon, and after acquiring a taser, he found a lucky break. Ever since, he kept the taser with him in his satchel, right alongside his notebook. Although he was worried about how much battery life there still was in that thing, he couldn’t deny its effectiveness. Indeed, he lost count of the number of times that taser had saved him.

More than anything, he wanted to kiss his taser, but the fear of getting shocked by his own salvation proved too great a risk.

One deep breath drawn in, followed by an exhale.

He continued on, his movements unsteady. The bright sky ahead grew fuller with every step he took, and he could almost grasp for it.

One more step…

The ground crumbled under him.

He felt how shallow, how brittle the soil was before he fell, but as his bag weighed him down and impeded his movements, he was unable to step away in time.

So came the short descent, met with darkness as he landed on his own backpack. Important items like plates and mugs shattered, some of the pieces scraping against his back along the way. He winced, but when he looked ahead at where he had fallen, he found that he couldn’t see ahead at all: indeed, in front of him was a soft darkness. Not that it was so black that all light was extinguished, but the sunlight from above didn’t seem to do much to illuminate past the shadow.

“Now let’s see…” He muttered while rummaging through his satchel and drew brisk, hefty breaths. His poor heart worked overdrive to keep him steady. “I know I have a flashlight around here somewhere…”

Before he could find any such thing, more of the ground above sank under, both on his side, and the other, more mysterious side. While dirt fell on his head like a waterfall of sand, he was too fixated on what, if anything, was behind the shadow in front of him. As more dirt clear, he began to see what looked like a smooth, soft pink-hued mass.

He gulped. It didn’t take much to know what that meant.

Little by little, the beast revealed itself: it looked like a large, human brain, or maybe a giant pink clump of cauliflower. Little wires danced about the beast which resembled either snake tongues or veins, with their red, and forked ends.

Those tangled mess of appendages got caught up in each other, only to untangle and pulsate with each movement.

An acidic, stomach churning feeling filled him. Said feeling made him want to cough, to spit out whatever bile had found its way into his system. But worst of all, he didn’t see a way out of the hole: while he suffered little to no injury with his fall, the way back up was too high for him to reach. Even the beast didn’t reach the surface, and it was large enough that three tall people stacked on top of each other would have only barely met the beast’s height.

Can I even use my taser on this thing? He asked himself, but even though his hands shook, he knew he had to try.

His shaking hands, as small as they were, felt heavy under his control. It took a swift swipe for him to pull his taser out and grasp it in his hands.

In front of him, the pink, clumpy mass turned from idly moving by to aware of the young man’s existence. A vertical slit spread open across the beast’s mass and once it was fully opened, a milky white surrounded the inside of the slit, while a green-hued pupil formed.

“No way...it’s an eye…” He whispered.

Sticky, clear moisture dripped from the beast’s eye and corroded the earthen floor below. He watched spots on the ground dissolve.

The appendages, which continued to dance about, drew its focus toward the young man and shot forward. He clicked on his taser and the confined bit of static swayed at the top. Naive, maybe, but he thought that as long as the electricity reached the beast, he could still get out of such a mess. However, that would prove not to be the case:

The beast slapped the taser out of his hand, knocking it to the ground beside him.

“No!” He gasped and tried to crawl toward his one hope of escape. Instead, it grabbed the taser before he could reach it and slammed the metallic device against the dirt walls.

It smashed into shards. He let out yet another gasp.

I’m really done for, aren’t I?

His face stiffened and he gasped as his body seemed to have grown cold. He wouldn’t have been surprised to have found out that his face turned blue.

The larger than life eye peered down at him with its emerald green pupil. It bore no expression that he could discern, but something in the deep recesses of his mind told him that the beast oozed malice.

Rather than attack again, another part to the beast emerged just underneath its eye: it was yellow, and had two components which were triangular in shape and curved outward. One below, the other above. He recognized, or at least believed it to be a beak.

The beast’s beak opened wide, no visible tongue, no teeth, yet it made its call all the same: a piercing, shrill shriek, like a distorted rooster calling to announce that it was morning.

He crawled back and tucked himself against his backpack. Not that he thought its contents could protect him, but that his desire to cling onto anything, even the most feeble sign of protection, was far too strong to outweigh any sense of reason.

That was when a shadow from above cast over and grayed out the skies themselves. With a large, looming line pointed forward, the shadow expanded and drew closer.

As if things weren’t bad enough, he thought. Whatever shock he had turned into resignation as he imagined whatever beast approached would join in on their hunt for the young man. That, or fight the other beast first, before turning its attention to the young man.

Either way, I don’t see a way out of here. What else can I say other than it’s over?

Faint sounds of thuds against the ground above shook the foundation and caused more specks of dirt to fall onto him. In a blur, the approaching creature leaped into the air and all the young man could catch before the creature landed was a glimpse of tanned, reddish-brown skin arms which held onto a towering slab, perhaps made of stone.

The figure landed on top of the large, pink beast and plunged the tip of the slab into the beast. Part of the figure was obscured in shadow, but he caught enough of a glimpse to notice two toned muscular arms and legs in short, white cotton shorts and a plain, white short-sleeved shirt.

Wait. That beast...is human?

That person, who he first assumed to be a beast, cackled a loud and riotous laughter which echoed through the pit. They pulled the slab out and repeatedly plunged it back inside, causing slick, red fluids to seep out of every puncture and the beast’s eye to water in pain while shrieking.

Those vein-like appendages tried focusing its attention on the person, only for them to pull out its heavy weapon and spin it, and themselves, around, while cutting off each appendage in the process.

Wait. They can harm the beast? How? His astonishment ran so deep that he couldn’t decide whether he was terrified or impressed.

The water from the eyes burned into the ground and saliva eked out as the beast howled.

Is it...crying? He asked itself.

For as horrible as the beast was, he wanted to extend some form of sympathy, but knew no way how. Worse, his primary emotion took over and urged him to cheer on the beast’s slaughter.

In the end, he did neither, and only watched as the strange person leaped back into the air, arm held out, carrying the large slab in one hand. He recognized that the slab was none other than a weapon, more specifically, a sword. It wasn’t just a thick slab that surpassed the person’s own height, but a smooth, crafted one with its tip a sharp, triangular edge.

“AAAAAAA –!” The person shouted and charged at the beast, carrying their blade with both hands this time. That they were able to carry that weapon with one hand was impressive enough, but that they ran with such a heavy, ungodly thing, was even more impressive.

The young man caught a better glimpse: this person’s back was wide, well-built, thick, yet toned. Their hair was black and short in a bowl haircut, and covered the top half of their ears, while he noticed a small, pearl pierced into both of their earlobes.

The oddity of a person dug their blade into the bottom of the beast’s face, just underneath the beak, and dragged their blade upward, cutting through part of the eye in the process. Blood seeped out and splashed down. His morbid thoughts turned to the idea of the beast’s blood fertilizing the earth and feeding any plant life that may have taken root.

Some of the vein-like limbs remained intact and thorns grew along them. The young man decided in that moment that rather than veins, those appendages resembled the branches of a rose bush.

I must be losing my mind. I can’t decide on what to call things, I can only come up with that which I’m familiar with, even in the depths of despair, he couldn’t stop himself from making observations.

Those thorny appendages slammed their way in the direction of the person.

Said person dashed off to the side and hacked away at some of the appendages, most of them missing the figure. One of them, however, managed to brush up against the person’s upper arm and deliver a fresh, bloody cut.

“Ah! AH! GOOD ONE!” They shouted. At first, the young man thought these shouts were in rage, but now that he got a glimpse of the person’s face, he recognized a toothy grin with and undeniable joy. There was a fire in that person’s simple, black eyes which signaled not anger, but delight. “IT WOULDN’T BE FUN IF ONLY ONE OF US GOT HURT!”

This person may be a human, but I changed my mind: they may as well be a beast as well, he observed in terror.

“I’M GOING TO TEAR YOU TO PIECES!” The sword-wielder shouted with a murderous joy and cackled while rushing toward the beast.

He couldn’t watch anymore. He closed his eyes.

Despite doing so, he still heard the grunts from the person and the sickening laughter, followed by howls from the beast.

All other sounds were soon blocked out until he thought that peace had come at last. Deep down, he wouldn’t have minded staying in the position was at, so long as he no longer had to be subjected to the madness in front of him. However, any peace that could have been derived was interrupted by a snapping sound, followed by a deep cast shadow which ended in a thud to the ground that shook the entire pit and caused him to leap up from where he sat. His eyes opened wide.

In front of him was the fallen remains of the large, soft pink beast, covered in dried, red streaks, and chunks of its form strewn around the pit. That monstrous person leaped over the fallen beast and was readying to make their way up, sheathing their blade back behind them on a strap attached to their back.

“Hey! I’m over here! Help me!” The young man shouted.

When the figure turned around, with some of the beast’s blood stained onto their clothes, there was a piercing glare plastered onto the figure’s face. The young man gulped and wondered if he had made a mistake calling out to the unsettling stranger.

But, just as fast, the glare turned into a smile.

“Oh! I didn’t know there was someone down here!” Their voice wasn’t so frightening now, but instead bright and cheery. How, after slaughtering such a creature, they could be so chipper, he just couldn’t understand. “Come on, then, reach for my hand and I’ll help you up!”

He tried to get up, but found his backpack too heavy to lift up by himself. It could have been the shock that drained all strength from him.

“I...I can’t…” He struggled to say, “my backpack…”

“Leave it,” the stranger dismissed, all while holding that wide, dopey smile, “what’s more important? Getting out of this hole or making sure your possessions come with you?”

“Ugh…” Having to choose and not being allowed to pick both was worse than being mauled by a beast.

“How about this? We can retrieve your bag after we come up to the surface, yeah?”

“We can do that?” He blinked.

“Sure! It doesn’t look that heavy. Just big.”

He wriggled out of the straps of the backpack. It still felt foreign to him to move around without it on his back, as if a part of him had been cut off and made him incomplete. That cold, yet freeing feeling was something he tried not to dwell on as he ran toward the figure.

I don’t understand you and I’m afraid to. But I’ll trust you, were his guiding words forward while the stranger had their arm reached down for him to grab onto.

When their hands joined together, he was thrust upward and tossed into the air. The salmon meal that he had caught from earlier churned in his stomach and almost spilled out before the stranger caught him by the waist.

“Ready?” The figure asked as the two stared into each other’s eyes. Her black eyes, his hazelnut brown. He felt no connection to this stranger, and really wanted to speak up and demand to be put down, but instead said:

“Go for it.”

He would regret those words while being tossed into the air and thrown over the pit. When he landed back on solid ground, his side slammed down and ached, while his right arm got scraped.

“Ow...why?” He winced and asked himself while tears filled his eyes. He struggled up and rubbed his arm where he had gotten scraped.

With a leap, the stranger emerged to the surface as well, landing on their feet. He looked up and faced the stranger, whose hands were on their hips.

“How did you do that? Slay that beast, I mean,” the young man asked.

The stranger now exposed to the light, appeared to be a young woman, both slim and muscular, and whose clothes reeked of the beast’s blood.

“Oh, my sword? I learned pretty quickly that a beast can be harmed using the parts from a beast. There was a beast corpse lying around when I faced one a long time ago, and I managed to extract one of its bones and used it to tear the beast apart. From there, it was a natural progression of taking bigger and bigger beast bones, discarding the previous ones, until I managed to kill a dragon. I forged this sword here from said dragon’s bones,” she explained in a manner more fitting of an office worker telling their coworker how their weekend went.

“You...what? There’s dragons? And you forged a sword out of their bones?”

She tilted her head.

“Oh...yeah. At least, I think it was a dragon. It resembled what I assume a dragon would look like were one to exist. I cooked some of it afterward, and its meat was quite tasty, but damn, that skin was tough. Reminded me of a fried chicken leg, but harder to chew through.”

“You...ate a beast?” He couldn’t believe what he heard. Every new piece of information she fed him came off as more absurd than the last.

“Well, of course. Gotta eat something. Roast beast isn’t so bad, really. You just have to remember to cook it all the way through.”

“Are you...are you sure you aren’t a beast, yourself?”

She laughed a hearty laugh.

“You’re funny.”

What’s wrong with this woman? She’s acting like this is all common sense when it’s not. He soon dismissed his disbelief. It was unbecoming of him, improper, even. How was he going to learn more about the world if he didn’t listen to others? She might have been crazy, sure, but her words could have still been true. They had to be, at least in regard to the sword. He already saw it in action.

“So...you can forge weapons out of beast bones?”

“Yeah! Ha ha!” She laughed and scratched the back of her head. He noticed that the sword she carried barely touched the ground, and its back extended well over her head. He imagined her resting on top of the sword as if it were a pillow. “I was a blacksmith before the whole calamity happened. I can still forge weapons so long as I have the right tools and conditions.”

“Wow. Okay. Let me write this down,” the young man resolved and pulled out his notebook and pen from the satchel which was still attached to him. All of the notebook’s pages looked to be intact. While he would certainly mourn the loss of his taser, he was still grateful that one of his companions survived.

“It seems one can harm a beast using parts from a beast. While this is tricky, it may be doable if a beast corpse can be found nearby,” he jotted down.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“Note taking. It’s important to gather as much information as I can. I try to make observations wherever possible.”

“Wow! We could use someone like you! You’re like the missing piece we need!”

“Huh?”

“Hey, what’s your name?”

He continued to write notes based on the things she had mentioned:

“Some beasts may be safely eaten if cooked properly (?)”

The question mark was a necessary addition, as more research would have to be done. Just the fact that this woman claimed to have eaten a fallen beast was intriguing, but it wasn’t enough to be noted as a fact.

“Hello? Are you lost in those notes of yours?”

“Oh. Sorry. I’m Camembert Latke,” he looked up and put his notebook away.

“Cool! How do you feel about being called Sweet Cream?”

“Uh…”

“Great! I’m Custard, by the way!”

The name sounded familiar. Camembert, or Cam for short (or perhaps now Sweet Cream) might have heard something about a ‘Custard’ in passing. It wasn’t like he hadn’t encountered another person before since the calamity occurred, just that such encounters were far from common. Maybe that was something else he would have to note down for future reference.

“Hey. Sweet Cream,” Custard’s excitement turned into a hush, but harsh whisper. It was almost as loud as her normal voice, and seemed to betray the very concept of ‘whispering.’

He looked straight at her, studied her face, the furrowed, thick eyebrows of her, and her thin lips no longer spread out in a bubbly smile and instead lay flat, in a dead serious manner.

“Don’t look behind you. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”

His skin began to crawl.

Why is she telling me this? He wondered and one part of his mind tried to jerk his head to the side and see what the big deal was, if anything. However, the other part of his mind understood well enough the implications of her instructions.

“If you understand, don’t nod. If you don’t understand, don’t shake your head. Do you understand? Don’t even gulp.”

This isn’t fair. Am I supposed to just be a statue?

Sweet Cream felt a lump in his throat, whether manufactured as an internal illusion or a legitimate need to swallow saliva, he couldn’t tell. But the urge was overpowering and he almost took that gulp, despite all warnings. It was only his trust in Custard, this madwoman, this beast in human form, that he resisted.

Cold sweats began to form along his neck and whether it was tears from his eyes or salty sweat from his forehead, he knew something ran down his face. Then, an even worse feeling overcame him:

Hot breaths against the left side of his neck, and brushed against his ear. It tickled, and yet again, an overwhelming urge to shiver, to shake, to twitch. He really thought it would happen this time, that he would be unable to resist. After all, weren’t such jerking around sometimes an involuntary reaction from the body? What made him any different?

Warm, sticky saliva dripped onto his thick bearskin cape. Said saliva ran down the cape and onto his shirt. More than ever, the desire to move, to do anything, took over.

However, he kept his gaze fixed on Custard. He noticed that there was a large shadow just behind him, and he could only imagine what kind of shape the beast who decided to encroach upon him took.

With a slow motion, Custard reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a gray shard. It sparkled, but he couldn’t discern much of the object.

“It’s a piece of the dragon bone. Scrap from when I crafted this blade,” she explained, still whispering in that absurd manner that she was surprised it didn’t attract the beast’s attention.

Whatever she was about to do, he knew he would have to make a note of it later. That is, if he were to survive this encounter with whatever loomed behind him, of course. Then, she did it:

With a swift motion, she tossed the shard right past Sweet Cream’s shoulder.

“NOW! ROLL!” Sweet Cream was never much of an agile person. Sure, his stamina when it came to hiking was higher than most, but his flexibility was lacking.

Still, my trust in Custard has kept me alive so far.

He rolled, or rather, he made a clumsy dive toward the bushes in an awkward attempt at a roll. When he looked back, he saw a violet colored scaly beast with crimson red scales and green gills. Its body, shaped like a torpedo, had two webbed feet with long, pointed nails, and a large mouth with sharp, jagged teeth which hung open and bled out, presumably from the shard that Custard had tossed.

In the time that he moved out of the way, Custard spared no time in rushing toward the beast as she brought her towering blade down. The beast clamped its mouth onto the blade as it tried to block the massive hunk of bone from slashing the beast open. If the blade had any wear from the gnawing and grinding of the beast’s teeth, it didn’t show any signs. Not a single dent was made.

Between the struggle for control over the blade: the beast keeping it from moving and Custard, trying to push down as hard as she could, and even with her large, muscular arms, they shook under the weight of the pressure the beast exerted.

Just like her blade, if Custard was frustrated in any way, she didn’t show it. Rather, what she did show was that same toothy grin from before, complete with what looked like two slightly larger teeth in the back, both on her top and bottom half. Sweet Cream couldn’t tell if they were fangs, and his assertion that she was some beast in disguise, or if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

“Fine. You want my sword so bad?” She rasped before erupting in a triumphant shout, “then eat up!”

Rather than try to push down, she instead switched her approach to pull upward slightly, and Sweet Cream was astonished to find that this time, the blade moved against the beast’s mouth and cracked the jagged teeth of the beast. Then, she shoved the tip of her blade in, thrusting her whole self forward all the while. Once she felt her blade, wet with the beast’s insides, halfway in, she swung yet again upward until with a swift slash, the beast was cut open from the inside and exploded in a bloody climax.

“Ha,” she scoffed as she sheathed her blade, “just like gutting a fish.”

“I think gutting a fish is cleaner than that,” Sweet Cream said, making his presence known once more.

She glanced over, her grin fading into a light, but no less cheery smile.

“Gutting any beast is going to be messy. It’s all a part of the process.”

Custard walked off into the bushes and through the thickness of the woods, just off the trail, but before doing so, made motions with her hand for Sweet Cream to follow. Well, he sprung up and did just that.

“You’re like a beast magnet,” she said, recognizing Sweet Cream’s presence but refusing to turn around.

“Please don’t say that. It’s going to give me nightmares. Not that I don’t get them already.”

“Nightmares can be a good thing. They can be a great motivator.”

He didn’t understand, but didn’t press on that matter.

“So, about my backpack…”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll have Mousse grab it for you. You’ll like him. He’s a big strong guy.”

“Mousse?”

“Yeah! He’s one of the members of Sweets Escape! We’re a traveling troupe of mercenaries who hunt beasts and bake pastries! There’s me, obviously, but then there’s Pudding, Mousse, Yogurt, Frosting, Flan, and the seventh member, you! Sweet Cream!”

“Um. About that...”

“Yes?”

“I can’t wait to meet them!” He said, and the enthusiasm in his voice shocked him. He was so sure that he would tell Custard how he never agreed to join this group of theirs, but he couldn’t deny the prospects that came with joining such a group.

Surely, he thought, this will prove fruitful for research.

“I’m so glad you decided to join! I’ve been saying for some time now that what our group’s been lacking is someone with knowledge and lo and behold, who do I find but you?”

“Well, thanks. I hope my notes can be useful.”

“I’m sure they will! But remember, while knowledge is important, raw strength is still vital for survival. I’m gonna bulk you up!”

“Um. I don’t know…”

“You don’t have to know! Anything we don’t know, we’ll figure out along the way! You must be pretty strong already to lug around that big bag of yours.”

“I suppose.”

“Oh, and I ought to forge you a weapon. What do you think you’d be into?”

“Hmm…”

“Don’t worry, take your time! We can figure out the logistics as we go!”

She hummed about while pushing aside branches with thick leaves as she went. Some of them hit Sweet Cream and he winced. On certain leaves, he saw fuzzy caterpillars with orange and black stripes. On another, a thick, vine leaf, he saw a banded centipede with pincers on its end. Usually the sight of a centipede would be enough to send him into shock, but with the multiple encounters with beasts in such a short span of time, his irregular heartbeat did all the work for him.

At least soon, he told himself, my new life will begin.

#writing #stories #fiction #dark fantasy #horror #action #drama #custard #sweet cream #potato pancakes

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