Echoes of the Damned

Raelyn's body ached, each breath a ragged reminder of the nightmare she had just escaped. But the air down here was thick—cloying and humid, like it had been trapped in this underground tomb for centuries. It wasn't just the smell of rot. It was worse. There was something alive in it. A sickening sweetness clung to the walls and filled her lungs, making every breath feel like she was inhaling the breath of something diseased.

Flies buzzed incessantly around her, their wings creating an almost rhythmic hum. They were too many—covering her, crawling into her ears, her nose, her mouth. They didn't care that she was alive. They wanted her. They wanted everything. Her skin itches as their tiny legs moved across her body, and the more she scratched, the more they swarmed. They bit, and like normal flies, but hard, their mouth sharp and hungry, each tiny bite leaving a patch of skin raw and bleeding.

As she stumbled forward, her foot sank into something soft, and a sickening squelch followed. She pulled her foot up, but it was stuck. as if the ground was gripping her, sucking her down. She yanked harder, her leg slipping free with a loud, wet pop—and the stench that followed was overwhelming. She looked down, her stomach twisting in knots. It wasn't mud. It was a body, swollen and distended, the flesh split open and spilling out an ooze of blackened, rotting innards. The stomach had burst, and inside, a writhing mass of maggots churned, hundreds of them, pale and fat, feasting on what remained.

Raelyn gagged, her throat convulsing, but nothing came up. She could feel the nausea deep in her belly, but it wouldn't release. It was stuck there, a twisted knot of disgust that she couldn't expel, no matter how much she wanted to.

She moved away, but every step led her deeper into the filth. The ground was no longer solid—bodies beneath bodies, piled up, liquefied in their own decay. Some of them were decomposed they had merged into another, a sickening fusion of limbs and torsos, faces lost beneath the rot. But others... others were fresh.

She tripped and fell, her hands plunging into something soft and warm. Her fingers sank deep into the chest of a corpse, her nails tearing through the thin, papery skin. When she pulled her hands back, they came away coated in a thick, black sludge, the smell so pungent she couldn't breathe without retching. It clung to her skin, thick and viscous, and no matter how hard she wiped at her clothes, it wouldn't come off. She could feel it seeping into her pores, feel it sticking to her soul.

The buzzing grew louder, more aggressive. She swatted at the air, trying to clear the cloud of flies, but they wouldn't stop. They were relentless. They landed on her face, her lips, and she could feel their thing legs moving, feel the wetness of their bodies as they crawled into her mouth. She spat, coughed, but they kept coming, invading her, treating her as if she was already dead, already decaying like the corpses around her.

Her vision blurred as she stumbled through the hellish maze of bodies. She couldn't tell where the corpses ended and the walls began. Some of the bodies were missing their eyes, empty sockets staring back at her, hollow and judgmental. Other had faces that were eerily intact, expressions frozen in the final moments of terror or agony, their mouths open in silent screams.

Raelyn's stomach heaved as her foot slipped, sending her crashing down into a pile of flesh. Her hand punched through a bloated chest cavity, her fingers sinking into something soft and warm. She screamed and pulled back, only to realize her hands was coated in a slick of greenish slime, the consistency of rotten yogurt. Her fingers throbbed with the feel of it, like it was burning into her skin. The smell hit her full force—an overwhelming stench of decomposing flesh mixed with something far worse, something foul and sour. The kind of smell that could stick to your soul.

And then saw it. In the middle of the room, sprawled out on a mound of rotting bodies, was what remained of a man. He was bloated, his skin stretched tight over his body, gray and thin. His mouth was wide open, and something was moving inside—something long, thin, and slick with mucus. 

It was a tongue. No, not just a tongue. It was far too long, far too grotesque, writhing out of the man's mouth like a snake. It twisted and curled, flicked out to lap at the rotting meat around him, pulling strips of flesh into the dead man's mouth.

Raelyn couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She watched as the thing inside the corpses ate— feeding on the bodies around it, its slick tongue lashing out to pull in chunks of rotting flesh. The man's jaw creaked as it moved, a sickening sound of bone scraping against bone. His empty eye sockets seemed to turn toward her, as if they could still see.

Her mind reeled. She needed to get out. Now! But her legs wouldn't move. The tunnel of corpses seemed to close in on her, suffocating her with the weight of death. The flies swarmed her, biting at her exposed skin, drinking from her sweat, from the blood of her shallow wounds.

And then she felt it —a sharp pain in her ankle, followed by something warm and wet crawling up her leg. She looked down and saw it —one of the maggots, impossibly large, burrowing its way into her flesh, its fat body wriggling as it pushed deeper,disappearing beneath her skin.

She screamed.