Green Globs

I hurriedly finished my bowl of green goo. It was a little watery but still thick, sour, and I was able to eat most of it with my large soup soon and slurp the rest out of the bowl like cereal. I got up off the floor and took a piss in the corner of my cell.

I took the wooden bowl and threw it against the wall several times until it cracked. Once I had cracked it enough to break it by hand into at least two pieces, I did so, and I kept the thinner one as my prize.

The old brick wall was all I needed to sharpen the tool. It was difficult to grip, however, so I took off my left sock and wrapped it around the bottom to make a sort of handle. I hid the other part of the bowl and the spoon in the corner behind the cell door so that when the guard came in, he wouldn’t immediately see that I had tampered with anything.

The guard came to my cell shortly after, a short, fat, burnt pinkish-orange-skinned pussy with no hair and a pimply face. They only gave you so much time to eat, and if you didn’t finish they beat the shit out of you. If you didn’t eat at all they didn’t feed you for a day, and that punishment grew exponentially until you were on the forefront of a terrible death, then they force-fed you, which was clearly worse than just eating the first meal.

My last cellmate learned the hard way, which was why I currently didn’t have one. After they force-fed him, he tried to commit suicide by beating his head against the brick, and when they saw that, they dragged him out, probably to some kind of torture chamber, but there was no way to know for sure.

Anyway, I had it all mapped out. One of the two cell beds was to the left of the door, in the corner, so I was there, pretending to rest after my delicious goo. The door swung open, and the stupid guard stepped in, expecting the bowl to be right there, obviously pissed that he couldn’t grab it through the bars without having to unlock the door and actually walk in.

I lunged at him immediately, only a few feet of a leap because the cell was so small. I stabbed him in his big sloppy fucking belly, pulled the makeshift blade out, and stabbed again and again. In the initial move, he let out a loud guttural groan, at which point I punched him in the snout with my left hand, grabbed him by the collar of his cloth potato sack of a shirt, and pulled his bitch ass into the center of the cell before plunging the weapon into his throat to finish him off.

Never having done anything like this before, I felt truly exhilarated. I threw up large dark colored chunks mixed into a thick, putrid green slime pretty much as soon as I took a step back, and my exhilaration was followed by a deep sense of guilt and self-loathing. But I needed to get the fuck out of here. The pigman’s weapon was a club, which I thought might be useful. I tucked the bowl-knife into the back of my pants and took the club into my right hand before continuing out.

The hallways of the cell block were dingy and humid, as undoubtedly was the air above ground. I was admittedly unspecific when I referred to the guard, but these savages were no more than humanoid. They communicated in what seemed to be just scattered grunts and snorts, and they seemed to know above anything else pain, torture, and acts much darker and much more depraved. I took a wrong turn on a drunken afternoon and ended up here. After the incident with my cellmate, a rage woke up inside me despite my general weakness, and I found the motivation to do more than simply die. These animals weren’t human and surely showed no mercy. I was a prisoner, kidnapped, beaten, and nearly starved. Though at times I savored the taste of that horrible green goo, I would not miss it going forward.

I didn’t see any other guards nearby, which made me wonder if there were more than a couple that policed this entire block. I saw at the far end of this hallway a shoddy wooden ladder that seemingly led to an opening.

Still clutching my makeshift weaponry, I sprinted to the ladder. The hallway did extend far down in the other direction, but it was so long and so dark that I could not see where it turned or ended. I figured this ladder was my best bet. It was a risk, and at this point, I was willing to do whatever to escape these psychotic pigmen.

Peering out of the opening, I tried to study my environment as much as possible. It was daytime, so there was light, and I seemed to be somewhere in the midst of a crumbling village, though bustling with this sorry excuse for life. I got the impression that they must have inhabited some long-forgotten ruins, rather than having built it all themselves, as they seemed almost totally unintelligent and barbaric. It was difficult to imagine they had been here long enough to build all this and live in its decay without even making a repair. As far as I was concerned, they were nothing more than a tribe of primitive vagrants, nomadic in their lifestyle and absolutely evil and uncivilized in their execution of it.

I smelled cooking meat, which immediately made me wonder whether that’s what I was being held there for in the first place. I could see a large beast cooking up a batch of the green goo, some guards with barbaric weaponry talking nonsense, as well as small children running around and playing, which for only a moment struck a chord of guilt within me. Fuck them, I thought, my senses returning, and I tried to look beyond the limits of their settlement.

In the far distance was clearly some mountainous region, and I could make out forestation to my left. My primary concern was that whatever direction I chose to run in could potentially lead me to circumstances worse than these, where I definitely had no chance of escape or survival. I decided to crawl out of the hole in the ground, seeing a very tight alleyway between two buildings on my right. Crouching, I entered and inched down the alley and looked out of the other side, finding a dirt and gravel road just before a wall, which I could tell opened out into vast fields beyond the broken wall that must have once provided security for this village. Whether it could keep intruders out remained unknown to me, but it would surely not seal me into this hellhole.

Before the wall, leading off the dirt road, was visibly rotting scaffolding. The wall was probably fifteen feet high, if not a little more. I peeked out either way, only now realizing that the roads were nearly packed with gangs of these disgusting pigs, standing in circles and making noise and scratching their asses. There were a couple up on the patrol path atop the wall, so I surely couldn’t make it without being seen, almost definitely not without a fight.

“Fuck it,” I said aloud, my heart pounding, sweat pouring down my face, and I ran across the road. I knew I’d been seen because I heard loud grunts and groans coming from every direction, but I was focused on my mission, quickly but carefully making my way up the ramp. The pigmen up top were coming at me now, one from either direction, so I charged the one in front of me as I reached the patrol path, swinging the club overhead at him.

He grabbed it effortlessly and ripped it from my hands, and though he was a bit shorter than me, overpowering me with ease. I pulled the bowl-knife out and poked at him with it, and it seemed only a matter of luck that his fatness weighed him down and kept him from jumping back in time, so I made my incision, yanked the knife out, and kicked at him at once. Bleeding and off-balance now, the pigfuck slipped over the edge and fell off the wall into the scaffolding. The one behind me was getting close, but before he could reach me, I placed a hand on the top of the wall and hopped over.

The drop down into the grass felt much longer than fifteen feet, but I rolled and stumbled and slipped and scrambled to gain my footing before running, sprinting directly into the fields.

I only now realized that it was sugarcane, the tall plants whipping and slicing my face as I bolted through, the height concealing me further, and I knew full well the chunky slobs behind me would never catch me now. I cracked a smile for the first time in a very long time, and I felt tears or blood or both running down my cheeks.

When I reached the end of the field, I saw, only a short distance away, a city, a real city, clearly much more civilized, clearly much larger and more established, and as I made my way I prayed to nothing in particular that this encounter wouldn’t be as difficult as my last.

I got a job slicing carrots at this vegan spot. They gave me a shitty tool and a cheap cutting board and that's what I did for 8 hours a day. When she hired me, the manager informed me that she was doing me the courtesy of paying me.

The city was fine. I told them about the pigmen, and I got little more than, “Ah, shit, alright. We’ll take care of them,” as though those killers were just common pests that had nested in the basement of an old woman’s home.

There was a king, however I’d no idea who he was, so I was on edge knowing that at a moment’s notice I may offend some loyal cuckolded pussy ass follower. I didn’t understand how there could be a king in the first place. The poor people in this city were on the border of starvation, and although the food we had access to was better than the green goo of the dreaded pigmen, it was basically just the unused pieces of carrots and peppers mashed all together into a smoothie. Only the royals ate meat, apparently, which really didn’t bother me, as long as I got a choice whether I lived or died. And here I did.

I paid a quarter of my day’s wages to this inn and slept there every night. The rest of my money went to as much shitty ale as I could afford, which is basically what it took to get a buzz off the swill the old hag brewed somewhere in the back of the inn. I figured the king got all the good shit. Undoubtedly he got all the best. Still unsure how I really even ended up in this place, I started to dream of a way out. This life, slicing carrots, was not for me. It was not the life I’d known before, and deep down, I knew it was not what was destined of me.

A loud crack in the middle of a random night awoke me, but seemingly only me. Naturally, I was fucking infuriated because my days were spent toiling away at the carrots, which was strangely exhausting, and every moment of not being on my feet, not standing there like a dumbass, peeling and slicing, peeling and slicing, peeling and slicing, was a blessing I never let go unnoticed. It started to affect my ideological standards, even, where I realized that the moments away, toiling, were essential to enjoy the moments of rest and comfort, and I thought often that if I didn’t have to endure this bullshit, I probably wouldn’t be able to enjoy my life at all. It made me think of my old life.

I used to be a college graduate. Well, I was regardless, however not in this place. I had a comfortable office job. I made $55k a year. I had no student debt, lived in a condo my parents owned before I was even born, and school came easy to me. I worked, I went home. I watched anime and drank beer. I ate noodles, rice, eggs and avocados and felt fine. My back never hurt me then. My feet never ached. I had to wear glasses to read and that alone was enough to send me into a fury.When my internet didn’t work I would start breaking things around my apartment. I was not, then, the man I am today, and I knew full well it was because I had not yet suffered. Greatness cannot be born of luck, privilege, advantage, and ease. Greatness, I came to believe, is a tree that is planted and may grow within you but only when provided the proper conditions.

In any case, the sound was a disturbance, and I needed my rest. I got up at once, angry still, knowing it would take me a while to fall back asleep because now I’d already come online mentally and the act of shutting it down was difficult.

Outside of the inn, in the middle of the road, stood a skinny woman.

“Ah, you’re awake.” She smiled at me with beautiful teeth and beady eyes, purple hair tied in a bun at the back of her head.

“Yeah, obviously. Who can sleep through this fucking noise?”

“You are looking for a way out of this place.”

“I have a job slicing carrots. Yeah, I want a goddamn way out.”

Visibly bothered, she continued, “Go toward the mountains. At the base of the mountain you will find a large pond. At the bottom of that pond is a key that will open the door.”

“What door? What kind of key is it? Will it be obvious?” And before she would have even had time to answer, she dissipated into thin air. “Fucking bitch,” I muttered, ungrateful as ever, and, having no belongings or real responsibilities, I started walking in the general direction of the mountains.

The main road led right out of the village and around the main mountain, technically in between the largest and the one adjacent to it, but from a distance it seemed to send you aimlessly into the depths of them, despite being fairly open. I didn’t realize this until I got close to where the mountains were visibly separate, the road branching off in between them and to the far left of the smaller one, as well as into a lightly wooded area that led to the base of the large one, which I hoped was what the fairy woman meant.

As I got through the wooded path, I saw the pond she mentioned and felt a massive sense of relief, realizing her instructions might not have been as cryptic as I suspected.

“Bottom of the pond. Of course not on the side of the pond, not under a rock or in a hole in a tree, just right at the bottom.” I shook my head in disgust as I stepped into the ice cold water, which, to be fair, felt good up against the heat of the summer’s night air.

I dug around for a while, and I felt nothing but sticks and rocks and soft sediment. I’d just started to wonder if I had been fucked with in some way when I found what I believed to be the ‘key’ she mentioned.

Like a fish out of water, rather, an item out of time, I tightened my grip around the key. Still absolutely confused about how this could possibly work or what it meant, I lifted the original version of a Super Nintendo Entertainment System out of the water.

Out loud, for the first time, I acknowledged the complexity of everything happening around me, with a resounding, “What the fuck is happening?” I looked around, now really wondering if I were somehow being pranked, if something incredibly obvious had gone right over my head, but I saw nothing. I heard nothing but crickets and distant sounds of creatures of the night, and in this moment, I started to realize that not only had I been transported to a different world, but I’d also been rendered unable to figure it out.

In high school, I was very interested in dreaming, especially lucid dreams. One of the most difficult things about taking on the task of becoming lucid is the way in which your brain seems to know it must fool you: you will have false memories in the dream, and even when they are too unspecific to remember, you accept them as absolute truth. You accept the foundation of the world you’re in regardless of whether it’s entirely constructed by the fantasies of your mind, not even distinctly tied to any real-world memories you have. For me, what worked the best was finding the symbols in my dreams that would tip me off that I was back in another dream. After studying my dreams daily, I began to recognize and remember a specific item, setting, person, etc. The recognition of this symbol was my way of ‘waking up’ within the dream.

The SNES served this purpose for me here. It was the first time I had questioned my surroundings or even really wondered where my story started, the inception of which now felt like a distant memory itself. I thought of the pigmen, the prison, and my escape, now seriously considering whether it even happened.

But more importantly, how the fuck is this thing my key? I climbed out of the pond, observing the destroyed console by nothing more than moonlight, and even that wasn’t enough. I ran my fingers across the top of the machine, felt the buttons, the slot where you put cartridges to play, the inputs on the back and front for the power adapter and controllers, respectively. I was suddenly filled with a sense of joy and nostalgia, a longing for a life I knew decades ago. I could feel the cool air in my childhood bedroom and smell my mother’s cooking coming through the vents with it. My small Cathode-ray Tube television sat on the small table in front of me, flickering as my game froze, before I yanked the cartridge out, blew in it, put it back and tried again. I felt myself crying now, crying with joy and with a newfound appreciation for a life I took for granted when I was too young to know better. I held the wet, muddy console in my hand, and I sobbed. In a move of sheer desperation, an instinct I never knew I had, I clicked the power button on and my world went black.