Mud

He was comfortably alone in the woods. It was peaceful; the only sounds were of the light breeze rustling leaves, some far off birds, and the light sounds of his shoes on the mossy ground. Brilliant orange shined sideways through the leaves as the the sun sunk against the mountains. He stopped to take it all in before he had to head back to campus. His mind was clear. He noticed the sound of trickling water coming from behind and to his left, not too out of his way as he made his way back. He didn't know there was a stream in these woods, but this was the first time he'd come this far. The light was getting steadily more pale, so he was just going to make a note of the surroundings so he could return to further investigate. He picked up his pace and the water got louder. He still couldn't see it, but his feet were leaving soggy footprints. The smell of stagnant water hit his nostrils. His right foot sunk into a dark patch of moss on the side of a puddle. The left foot stomped down, but he lost his balance. Mud and moss climbed to his elbows as he tried to break his fall. He kept falling.

He gasped an instant before he hit. The mud was ice cold against his face. Eyes squeezed shut, he tried to push himself up, but his hands only went deeper. He dragged his knees up toward his chest to kneel, but they too sunk. The black soup sloshed up over his back, his shoulders, his head. Moss floated on the surface, which writhed for a moment, then ceased.

His lungs were screaming. His skin was burning with cold, especially his eyes. It was in his ears, his nose, his mouth, even under his eye lids, despite them still being sealed closed. It crawled around his body, scraping with rocks and grit. Suddenly, he felt like something was tugging at his legs. He opened his mouth to yell out; mud flowed past his lips, into his throat. Then a cold crept up his legs, over his torso, as he sunk faster. He was falling.

He didn't know why, but he counted the seconds. One. Two. Thr—. His left knee hit a solid surface with a crack. Mud spewed from his mouth, followed by a gargling scream. He coughed, groaned, vomited as the shallow pool of sludge where he lay settled around him. Pain seared in his leg and he yelped as he rolled onto his stomach to cough and spit. There was grit all over his teeth, on the roof of his mouth, under his tongue, that he couldn't get off. He spit out a rock that was caught between his gum and cheek. Painfully, he sat and tried to fling the filth off his hands. He rubbed globs out of his eyes and opened them.

Lights danced in his peripheral. The pounding of his heart and his labored breathing thoroughly drowned out the only other sound—the quiet, wet sounds of mud sloshing in his puddle—as he whipped his heard around, trying to identify the movement. The lights got dimmer and dimmer; he realized it was nothing. He could see nothing. His vision faded black, but his eyes were wider than they had ever been.

He raked his fingers outward in the puddle until he found the edge and began feeling around for dry ground. There was none, but the mud was firmer to his left. He pushed with his right leg, dug his fingers into the ground, and pulled. Mud dug under his nails. The space where he lay felt small. There wasn't any echo. The mud absorbed all the sound that hit it, amplifying the sound that hit his ear; the grind of the dirt around his fingers, the slosh of his legs, the dripping from his clothes, the raspy, muddy noises coming from his throat, and the pounding in his chest. He sucked a deep breath in and held it against his urge to cough as he inhaled more bits of mud that still clung to the inside of his throat. His heart beat slowed, but it still pounded painfully. He strained to hear, but there was nothing.

His mind struggled through panic to try and find some scrap of literature he may have come across on what to do. He drew a blank. There was the thing about spitting in an avalanche. He had spit. For a different reason. Why would you spit in an avalanche? Up! To figure out which way is up! As he began to claw and kick with more purpose in a direction that felt like it sloped up, another basic survival instinct surfaced in his brain.

"He-e-elp!"

He stopped in fear as he heard that raspy, desperate voice screech deafeningly in his ears. Fear climbed from his stomach into his throat. It waned slightly as he realized the voice was his own. In reality it was but a whisper, amplified by silence. His throat felt cut to shreds from trying to yell after coughing up mud. It seemed stupid. No one would hear him yelling in the woods. Much less...here. There was the fear again, burning behind his ribs.

As he kicked and clawed, he felt the ground rise steeper, almost forty-five degrees. His foot started to slide and he reached above his head. The mud just squeezed through his fingers. He reached forward again and something touched before his hand found the mud. He whipped his hand back and tried not to vomit again. It was bristly and muddy. As he stared at the black space, he thought he saw the slow, creeping, spiny, thin legs, a foot and a half long. They must be everywhere. And he started to see them, all around, silently dragging through the mud toward him. Legs vanished and appeared all around. He sensed the air move by his ear as something landed heavily on his shoulder. He twisted his body and slapped at the stop, disintegrating a drop of mud. He imagined the black guts on his hand that he could not see as he held it an inch from his face. The stench of rot and earth hit his nose. The mud gave away under his foot and he slid downward. He squeezed his eyes and mouth shut as he expected the collision with a thousand claw-tipped legs. He chanced reaching for some anchor, and his hand found a rough, long object. His stomach turned in knots to think what could be attached, but then it broke.

His slippery, gritty descent accelerated for several seconds, then slowed to a halt. He was definitely further down than he was before. He reached again to test the possibility of at least climbing back to his puddle. More legs. Fear mixed with an unexpected flare of anger as this time he raised an open hand and swatted down to crush. He had a fistful of mud and... roots? Hopelessness welled up in his eyes. He couldn't handle this.

He lay still for a while. He didn't know how long. There was nothing to count time with besides the beating of his heart, of which he was quite aware. That and the cold. How long had it been since he saw light? It was strange, picturing the setting sun he had last seen with nothing in his vision to distract him. Even the image of his feet on the dark moss seemed to glow with light as he recalled. He could see clearly what he recalled, as clearly as the inescapable darkness, both at once.

The memory of the legs invaded his thoughts. He couldn't have seen them. There wasn't any light. But then, he couldn't have known that what he grabbed was just roots. It didn't move at least. His mind must have played tricks on him. He thought how odd it was for his mind to betray him by worsening his fear when he already suffered so terribly. How when his senses were so confused... anything that popped into his mind... could seem real...

He regretted the thought instantly. His mind raced to help contribute to his fear by retrieving every fear-drenched image he had ever seen or imagined. He felt eyes on him. A clown with a mouth full of razors smiled down on him from the ceiling of the space. A girl whose face was veiled in blood was looking up at him, reaching toward his leg. There was a face with mouths in its eye sockets whispering in his ear. A demonic figure floated above his head. The spiders were back. They made noises. Laughing. Babies cooing. Demonic whispers. He rolled over, away from the face, onto his stomach, and covered his head with his hands. His skin prickled as he expected something to touch.

He tried to combat the fear by imaging different things in their places. People he knew. Plush toys. Muppets. But he was anticipating the touch of a hand, a brush of lips, even a current of air. It didn't matter what he pictured. He couldn't stop the feeling of horrified anticipation. He tried to imagine that they were scared of him, like the snakes. They had faces. They weren't supposed to have faces. They were too real.

"We're scared, too."

They didn't sound scared.