There is a fog that exists in this world which suddenly appears above bodies of water. The fog is a bright white color, and it seems to somehow give off its own glow.
The fog is a gateway to a very unnatural place. I know this, for I have been there.
I was simply fishing on a lake near my summer home when the fog came one day. It actually took me by surprise, because one moment the area was clear and peaceful in the light of the evening sun, but the next moment I was suddenly being surrounded by this fog which came from behind.
The fog spooked me, and I immediately began to row back to the lakeshore. The fog, though, was quicker than me. It overtook me.
Once the fog began to envelope me, I could only see as far as the length of my arm. The glow of the fog made seeing a tad more difficult. The sky above was quickly replaced by the misty whiteness.
I then noticed that the noises of the lake and the nature surrounding it - the birds, insects, and whatnot - began to slowly fade from my hearing. I was not going deaf, though. I could still hear my breathing, and I could still hear the creaking in my boat and the noises my clothes made as I shifted my position in the boat. The sound of water disappeared too, though I didn’t think much about it at that time.
Suddenly, my boat stopped abruptly. As it happened my first thought was that I ran into the shoreline of the lake, but I realized it was something much different as the fog slowly began to clear. My boat ran aground on a mound of sand. The sand was the color of pearly white. Apparently, there was a sizable rock on this miniature island, for I saw at the end of my boat a newly formed hole.
I proceeded to step out of the boat then so I could assess how much damage was caused by this rock. I was assuming the water was shallow here, and I was only wearing sandals, so I didn’t mind some wetness. However, the moment I set foot in what I thought was going to be lake water, I realized something was wrong immediately.
I first noticed that what I just stepped in was not wet at all, and I also noticed that whatever I stepped in was very warm. The fog was still dense, but it was just about to clear. When it finally cleared, I got good look at what I was standing in.
I was standing amidst human bodies.
I reacted by jumping and falling back into my boat, cursing loudly as I fell back. Once in the boat, I scrambled to get to the end of the boat resting on the sand, so that I could safely step on the sand away from the human bodies.
Once I got onto the sand mound I stood up and looked around me. The fog was mostly dissipated by that point, which allowed me to clearly see the place I found myself in. I saw human bodies in all directions. I was looking at a sea of people. With the fog gone, I could see that this hideous expanse stretched on for miles and miles. I could not see an end. The sky was populated with clouds which had the same color as the fog, and the clouds glowed brightly, the only source of light in this place. The air was so still that the clouds did not move at all.
I looked at my boat then, and from my new perspective on the sand mound I could see what the rock looked like, the rock which damaged the boat. It was an unusually large skull, slightly buried in the sand. I noticed then that the skull was the exact same color as the sand. The same shade of pearly white.
I knelt and felt the sand. It didn’t feel like the sand from a beach, though, and the grains were larger in some spots. I picked up one of these larger grains, and I realized that it looked like part of a finger bone.
It dawned on me then. The sand was not truly sand. It was a collection of fine grains of bone, with some larger bones mixed in. I looked around me, sickened. For the most part it was just small grains of bone but I did see what some of these larger grains were - the tips of finger bones, toe bones, and even some teeth.
I needed to get out of that place, but I didn’t want to move. My boat was wrecked, but even then I couldn’t see much use for it in a sea of people. I had to force myself, then, to wade into the sea of bodies. Sitting in place would get me nowhere.
I went and took a step in the sea of people, only to gasp in shock when I saw what happened as I stepped in. The bodies began to contort in an impossible way. As if to move out of the way of my foot, the bodies bent, stretched, or contracted depending on where they were in relation to my foot and each other. They were almost acting like a liquid. There was no water, no kind of any other liquid at all. There were just the bodies.
As the bodies moved around as I sunk my foot into the “sea,” I noticed that underneath the bodies the “seabed” was just like the bone-sand mound I was just on. The bone-sand was apparently everywhere here.
It was shallow here, and as I walked the bodies contorted around me. I noticed that the bodies varied in appearance. The bodies were a lot of different ages - old people, young people, and all that’s in between. Disturbingly, I saw a few nude and hairless human bodies with no faces at all, with no genitalia that I could see.
I began moving in the opposite direction of the bone-sand mound, hoping that if I went in the opposite direction I was moving when I was still on my boat, I would end up back in the serenity of the lake near my summer home. Looking at the seemingly endless sea of people ahead of me, however, I doubted that moving anywhere would get me back home.
I went like this for a while, sweating a little from the warmth of the bodies around me. I soon realized that they were alive, all of them. I saw one of them look directly at me. She was young, in her twenties, I think, and she looked at me with a pained expression. She never said anything and she never did anything. None of the people I passed by ever said or did anything. They simply floated in silence, sometimes staring at me as I passed.
The depth of this disgusting sea changed from time to time. The human bodies were up to my waist sometimes, and as I moved by I could see beneath the human bodies at the top. There were more bodies beneath them.
Even though being trapped in that place was terrible enough, two terrible things happened to me while I was stuck in the sea of people.
The first was when I suddenly sank beneath the bodies.
There was a sudden drop off in the bone-seabed that I couldn’t see beneath all the human bodies. Caught off guard, I immediately fell through the bodies.
The sea of people isn’t like an ordinary sea, of course. As such, when I fell, there was only some buoyancy offered by the human bodies, but not enough. Thus, I sank somewhat quickly.
As I sank, I found that I was still able to breathe, but it became trickier the deeper I went. I also began to smell something awful. It smelled like rot. It was dark, but in the occasional rays of light that came from openings between the bodies from above me, I began to notice that the bodies around me began to show signs of rot the farther I went down. I also began to hear moaning and screams of agony from below. The rotting bodies were alive still, and they were feeling the pain of the rot.
In a frenzy I tried to swim. Fortunately I could. I learned that if I swipe at the bodies around me quickly, I can briefly push off of them, but it was very difficult and I almost thought I was going to give out before I finally reached the surface and found the solid bone-seabed.
The second terrible thing happened a while after that. The sea was shallower, just below my knees, when I saw in the corner of my eye something move on my left.
I whipped my head around, my heart racing, as I saw a human body stand up. It stood on top of the other bodies somehow, which baffled me since I could barely interact with the bodies myself. I guess since that human body is part of the same terrible sea as all the others, it’s able to interact with all of these bodies more than I can, hence why it can stand on them. Even though this person stood above me atop the bodies, I could tell that it was the same height as me.
And it was no wonder that this person was the same height as me, because this person looked exactly like me. The same face, hair color, body proportions and all. Even though we were wearing different clothes, the clothes that they were wearing were ones I owned at home.
“You….” it muttered at me, desperation and fatigue mixed into their voice. “You are from the other world?”
I didn’t answer, merely out of shock from seeing my own doppelgänger standing before me, in a hellish place like this.
“Yes, you are from the other world,” it said, rather relieved.
“What are …. who are you?” I asked in a trembly voice.
“You” was all it answered.
The dippelgänger continued, “I’ve been hoping for you to come here for ages! You must take my place. You must. You must. I can’t stand it here any longer! The monotony of it all, and the stench of the rotting damned! I can’t stand it! Take my place, please!” It started to get hysterical, its voice getting hoarse from its screaming and pleading. “Save me from damnation!”
I was frozen in place, confused and fearful. It wanted me to stay here, so that it could leave. I didn’t need to ask to know that if I take the place of my doppelgänger here, it will replace me in the real world. It would steal my life for its own benefit.
Its face betrayed anger then, as if it sensed then that I wasn’t going to just do what it wanted.
“I am forever unable to go back to my old life in my own world, and I cannot stay here. I refuse to stay here any longer. You will take my place, and I will take yours!” it proclaimed before lunging at me.
I was quick enough to dodge out of the way, and it lost its footing and fell down. I tried to punch at it, but its body was still a part of this sick sea, so it contorted around my fist. Fighting was useless, so I began to run, while the hysterical shouting and cursing of my doppelgänger followed. I turned and saw that it was running on the bodies. It seemed to be struggling with the effort, since the bodies did not create a nice even surface for running. It seemed that I had the advantage, since the bodies gave me only little resistance.
The chase went on for too long. I was beginning to get fatigued, but I was lucky to catch something to my right up ahead.
It was that fog again.
Hoping that this fog would take me home, I turned towards it and ran as hard as I could. Apparently my doppelgänger knew my intention, and I heard it scream in desperation and fury behind me. I turned and I saw it was only a few strides behind me. It ran fast in its desperation.
The seconds before reaching the fog felt like the longest seconds of my life. I felt a hand grab my shoulder from behind me, but as that happened I entered the fog, and a terrible scream was uttered from the doppelgänger as it made contact with the fog. I turned and saw it stumbling backwards before finally falling back into the sea. Then, there was only bright white.
Soon, I walked out of the fog onto the shore of the lake near my summer house, the evening sun still shining. The fog was completely gone. I fell down to the ground, relieved and fatigued, and I laid there, tears streaming down my face.
I still do not know what that place was. I can only go off of what my doppelgänger said to me. Apparently, I was in hell or a hell-like place, and my doppelgänger is a version of me from another world who is forever damned there.
All those people, forever damned in that place.
It all sounded so insane to me as I laid there, going over it all in my head.
The only evidence that it ever happened was found in the fact that my fishing boat was gone. It’s still there amongst the sea of people.