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The previous document was hacked and modified so if it made no sense, that’s why.
When I left you, I was contemplating which course of action I should take: ought I to attempt cpr on at least one out of a hundred people who have spontaneously collapsed to the ground or should I leave before I am next?
What caused these previously merry individuals to all collapse to the ground at exactly the same time? I do not know. Why I am alone not collapsed on the ground? I do not know.
Something grabs my ankle.
YIKES! I almost yell out loud but I manage to keep my cool for just long enough to notice that my imagination was playing tricks on me. Nothing is at present grabbing my ankle.
Perhaps I was nipped at by an invisible spider and that is the sensation which I felt. I know nothing of invisible spiders. Not yet anyway.
Perhaps a ghost grabbed my ankle. I know nothing of ghosts nor ghost antics. I wonder if all cultures past and present talked about ghosts.
No matter the reason, nothing is grabbing my ankle and I feel no grabbing sensation.
Something grabs my ankle.
I jump erratically. But again, nothing has grabbed my ankle. This place is creepy.
Moments ago, all were merry and all were toasting stylishly to their scientific accomplishment in the field of necromancy. In modern memory, they are the most recent people if not the only people in the world to have proven the effectiveness of semi-mummification.
Pessimists had originally scoffed at the notion, saying it couldn’t be done, and now everybody has collapsed to the floor with their faces now turning a nauseating shade of green and their skin now oozing mucus. This is way beyond my first aid training.
An interruption.
“Well well well,” to me says an armed soldier who is joined by a squad of armed soldiers. Their uniform is a pattern I do not recognise. Are they ally or enemy?
The same soldier continues, “you have one minute to explain to me in remarkably good detail what is going on here … xxx … and each soldier falls to the floor as if spontaneously dead except for one who gets their gas mask on in time and then that soldier dies too. One by one, their faces become a nauseating shade of green and their skin oozes mucus..
The past two years have been an uncomfortable blur. I have no clue what is happening. I should get out of here.
There’s the door. Between me and the door are heaps of motionless people with green faces and mucousy skin. Heaps of them surround me. I will have to step over them if I am to reach the door.
Are they truly dead or are they only playing dead and waiting to attack me? If they all decided to attack me at once, I would not enjoy it. I would be outnumbered a hundred to one.
It’s now or never. I maneuver around corpses and nothing goes wrong. No corpse proves animate nor lively and with some patience on my part, I reach the door.
Something grabs my ankle. Nevermind, no it doesn’t. I only imagined that I was grabbed at the ankle.
A chemically hazardous corpse of a soldier blocks the door so that it won’t open. If I want to leave this piece, I must move this dead soldier.
Not long ago, this person had been soldiering and now they are a chemically hazardous corpse.
The mucus has contaminated the soldier’s clothing and it is gross to touch. It takes me a full minute to move the deceased soldier away from the door and it does not attack me nor does it do anything that I would not expect a corpse ever to do.
I open the door and step into a hallway that leads both left and right. I do not recognise my surroundings and there are more chemically hazardous corpses to be seen. I and I alone so far remain not having become a chemically hazardous corpse.
Among the corpses is one who has collapsed with its hand firmly gripped around a fire alarm yet no fire alarm is to be heard. Either this fire alarm is not up to code or it has been disconnected.
There is never a friendly reason to disconnect a fire alarm.
There are armed soldiers dressed in hazmat attire patrolling the hall and they spot me immediately. The patrolling soldiers ask me whether I have a gas mask and I reply in the negative.
“You’d better come with us now,” says they to me. “The longer you’re exposed to this stuff, the more likely you are to die.”
A moment later, it is they who have died and I remain. They collapse to the floor and are unmoving.
Then it gets bad. I can hear it. The sound is halfway between an upended rainmaker toy and a hundred pencils tapping a desk. The vibrations tickle me in a bad way. The image is worse than I thought it would be.
I am wishing that I too had just died.
Turning the corner at the far end of the hall are several conjoined stripey spider twins, each one conjoined at the head so that all sixteen eyeballs see together as a team. That’s sixteen glassy eyeballs, sixteen hairy legs, two hairy abdomens, two hairy heads conjoined into one and one mouth that has two sets of pincers.
They may even each have two brains.
Each double spider is half the length and three quarters the height of my old sofa, legs included, and they are scuttling noisily along the ceiling, floor and walls and emitting high frequency spider chatter.
Rubeus Hagrid would be charmed. He would adopt one for a pet, challenge it to tickle fights and name it Cuddlecakes. I am not Rubeus Hagrid. I am not at all charmed.
I count at least a dozen double spiders. That’s at least a hundred eight spidery eyes, each one the size of a ping pong ball, focused on me and me alone and at least forty eight sets of pincers clacking excitedly at the sight of me.
I am not an arachnologist but I suspect they are planning to eat me. How does getting eaten alive work when you’re semi-mummified? Will my consciousness outlive the digested remnants of my corpse? I may soon find out.
Perhaps I ought not to worry. Perhaps I ought to worry. I must keep my cool even though these sixteen-legged terrors appear to have been modelled after images from the most forbidden portions of the most terrifying of my nightmares.
I’m sure they will see through my false bravery. Anything with sixteen eyes can surely read emotions and can maybe even perceive beyond three dimensions. I’ll bet their webs are inconceivably marvellous to behold. Maybe I am trapped in one right now without being aware.
One-two-three-four-five-I-lose-count double spiders all at once jump onto me from ceiling, floor and wall and pin me to the floor. I can not move.
They are drooling on me from their wet four-pincered mouths. Which part of me will they eat first?
Starting with the nipples, the spiders waste no time in chewing through my clothes to get to the skin on my abdomen, arms and legs. Lucky for me, I feel no pain although the feeling is disgusting like two filthy sewer dogs slobbering on a chew toy.
I shed my dignity and wail like a raving psychopath. The sensation is that bad. It is worse than when unseen bugs ate me alive in pitch darkness.
It could be worse. I could get eaten by conjoined spider octuplets. Can you imagine a sixty-four eyed sixty-four legged conjoined spider unit of octuplets? Can you imagine five of them? I would rather not.
Then not a moment too soon, the hallway catches fire and the spiders flee.
Ahead of me to the right is a fire extinguisher. Weekly military prison fire safety parade has made me apt in the handling of a fire extinguisher, preparing me for this moment.
***
The past, in military prison
***
It is weekly fire safety parade and I must pay twenty five double burpees for the privilege of fire safety parade.
Staff instructs, “prisoner, open your ears and listen as if your life depended on it for it does. If you ever see a fire and you alone are with a fire extinguisher, this is what you will do:
“First you will pull the pin, then you will aim the nozzle, then you will squeeze the handle, then you will sweep the area with your extinguishing agent until the fire has been eliminated.
“PULL, AIM, SQUEEZE, SWEEP. Do you understand, prisoner?”
“Staff, yes staff,” replies me, who is standing still in the position of attention.
To prove that I was paying attention, I must repeat word for word what staff has just said with the price of a double burpee for each mistake I make during the repetition of this week’s instruction on how to use a fire extinguisher.
***
The present
***
I grab the extinguisher, I pull the pin, I aim the nozzle and I squeeze the handle but the extinguisher is empty, another fail for fire safety.
I throw aside the empty extinguisher and follow the spiders on the assumption that they and each of their sixteen eyes are better and spotting the nearest exit than am I, their sixteen legs racing to safety.
The spiders are too fast for me and I lose track of them as the ceiling and floors begin to collapse and melt in a rapidly orangening nightmare. I have absolutely no idea where I’m going.
I wonder how getting burned alive works when you’re semi-mummified? Will my consciousness outlive my ashes? I’d rather not find out. I have no idea at all where I am nor how I will get out of here.
A trio of double spiders, each one on fire, run erratically past me and keep bumping into walls slowing down just enough for me to more or less keep up. They run down a corridor that leads to a stairwell. Being spiders, they don’t need to use the stairs, they are scaling the walls - going up. I must use the stairs.
I hope I am headed in the right direction. Stairs collapse beneath my feet and smoke blinds me as I ascend one stair at a time, wandering every time if the next step will be my last.
Climb climb climb cough cough cough. A fire exit! Success! The outdoors!
All around are flashing lights, fire trucks and military vehicles. There is too much smoke to identify the military pattern so I do not know if I am in the presence of ally or enemy.
Six people dressed in full hazmat attire each spray me with an unknown liquid compound until I collapse and I pass out.
I dream that I am still in military prison.
Oh thank goodness, thinks me in the dream. I’m back in military prison, where there have so far never been conjoined stripey spider twins and where I have never been buried alive for two years.
Little do I know that I am only dreaming that I am in military prison. I am not really in military prison.
This dream takes place during my thrice daily toothbrush routine.
« ALL RIGHT, YOU FILTHY PILE OF EXCREMENT, I CAN SMELL YOUR BREATH FROM HERE AND I’M STANDING TWENTY FEET OR SIX METERS AWAY FROM THE RANCID GINGIVITIS PLAQUE INFECTED SCUMHOLE THAT YOU HAVE FOR A MOUTH. WHEN I GIVE THE WORD OF COMMAND, YOU WILL GRAB YOUR TOOTHPASTE AND THEN YOU WILL AWAIT INSTRUCTION TO REMOVE THE CAP OF YOUR TOOTHPASTE. IS THAT UNDERSTOOD? »
« Staff, yes staff. »
« I CAN’T HEAR YOU! SAY IT LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT DENTAL HYGIENE! »
« STAFF, YES STAFF! »
« GRAB YOUR TOOTHPASTE! »
I grab the toothpaste. The dream is so vivid. I can really feel the squish of the toothpaste tube.
« PLACE YOUR HAND OVER THE TOOTHPASTE CAP AND WHEN I GIVE THE WORD OF COMMAND, YOU WILL REMOVE THE TOOTHPASTE CAP … » … and so on, and then … « PLACE YOUR TOOTHPASTE ON YOUR TOOTHBRUSH!! »
It is always that detailed and always that loud. I must execute precise drill movements for every single minute action involved in the toothbrushing process. Floss parade is just as bad but at least that one is only once daily.
After I have cleaned my teeth to standard, I must clean the bathroom for inspection as punishment for having soiled it with my disgusting mouth bacteria.
I have fifteen minutes to bring this bathroom to mint condition but before I am permitted to clean a single thing, I must pay twenty five squats and twenty six jump lunges as payment for the privilege of bathroom inspection. The squats and jump lunges cut into the fifteen minutes of prep time.
The dream is so vivid. I can really feel the burn in my legs.
« CLEAN THIS BATHROOM! » staff yells repeatedly as I am wiping down a mirror so that it you would mistake it for a window were it not for your reflection.
« CLEAN THIS BATHROOM! » staff continues to yell as I mop the floor to a glowing shimmer. The floor is so clean you could eat off it - yes, eating off a bathroom floor. That is how clean is this bathroom floor.
« CLEAN THIS BATHROOM! » and so on.
If it’s in the bathroom, it’s a part of inspection. In basic training, it would have taken me three hours to get this bathroom to standard but I have instead been given fifteen minutes minus the time it takes to perform twenty five squats and twenty six jump lunges.
The inspection is doomed to fail no matter how good a job I do. Failure to do a good job any slower than hazardous breakneck speed may be interpreted as insubordination and I may be punished with the bread and water diet or with solitary confinement or even with time added to my sentence.
« A-TTEN-TION! » staff yells and I bring myself with lightning reflex to the position of attention. Any drill performed any slower than a lightning reflex could be interpreted as insubordination.
I am standing still in the position of attention while staff can walk around and do whatever they like. They inspect the bathroom.
« What the xxx is wrong with you? » asks staff. « Did you misinterpret the instructions as having been told to execute the worst bathroom inspection in all of military history? That is the only reason I can imagine for such a colossal travesty of a bathroom inspection … » and so on.
A nauseating wave of doom rushes over me like this will never end and I fear that I will die having done nothing else with my remaining life…
… and then I wake up and quickly deduce that I had only been dreaming that I was back in military prison.
I wonder where I could be. I am restrained at the ankles and wrists, sitting on a small uncomfortable chair.
Before me is an squad of military members dressed in uniforms that I don’t recognise. Are the ally or enemy? I do not know.
“Who are you?” they ask me.
“Who are you?” I ask them.
A punch to the face. I don’t see it coming and it knocks me off my guard. I’m tied uncomfortably to an uncomfortable chair so there’s minimum recoil and I absorb nearly all of the punch. I can feel that my cheek has been broken but lucky for me, I feel no pain.
They say to me, “we’re asking the questions. Who are you?”
I reply “who are you?”
Another punch to the face, this one so hard it knocks the chair so far off its course, I fall over with a freshly broken cheek and a newly broken nose. It is lucky for me that I cannot feel this pain. Before my semi-mummification, I was not badass enough to take good punches to the face.
“You think you’re tough do you?” to me says a member of this unidentified army. I do not yet know whether they are ally or enemy. “Well let’s see how tough you are after (removed).”
“We could always let the spiders interrogate him,” somebody else suggests.
“Good idea,” somebody else concurs. “If he’s too shy to talk to us, maybe he’ll have an easier time talking to them.”
That sounds worse than (removed) but that’s just me.
I wonder how I will continue with the interrogation.
More to follow.
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