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Rennick crawled from the wreckage, leaving blood behind him. The deep gash on his leg ran red and mixed with the pouring rain. The helicopter crash had left him seriously injured; pain seared his leg with every move. Despite the frigid weather, he was overheating. Beneath his neatly pressed button-down shirt, rivulets of sweat ran down his body. He found it hard to stand, and he was too panicked to try.
Whatever this was, whatever infection had come from that horrible glistening creature's limbs, it had burrowed into his body by now. He could feel it churning in his gut. His head wouldn't stop pounding. A drum beat in his brain. He was on all fours, and every time he reached out to crawl one step further, the pain in his head struck again.
“Stupid goddamn—“ he muttered, striking the ground with a fist. Sharp pain exploded behind his eyes. He didn't know who to blame for this goddamn mess, and for the reason he was hurting. Something had taken out the helicopter and ruined his chance of escape. He could see his window for survival closing like the last strip of sunset fading into darkness. And he couldn't even use the lifeboats, because that damned McLeary had screwed them all up. Sheer incompetence had sent them tumbling into the sea. That's right, the lifeboats... and McLeary.
Rennick felt a fresh surge of rage. “Ah God—McLeary! When I get to you I'll take your fuckin' head off!” Both of his hands curled into fists. The temperature in his body seemed to ratchet up another notch. Rain collected on his glasses, made it hard to see. He groaned with frustration and turned over, lying on his side. The rain-slicked metal ground couldn’t cool his fever fast enough. Trying to move was too much of an ordeal. He could only wait to see what fresh pain would come next. From his position on the deck, he could see the derrick. Needles of fear pierced him when he looked up at that thing wrapped around it. He found it hard to look directly at the ribbonlike masses of monstrous flesh. It all felt so wrong. An inescapable nightmare; something that flew directly in the face of God. And yet it was here on the Beira, seeping up from Hell.
“Chkgh—“ Rennick choked as a wave of revulsion and pain crawled over his abdomen. It burned and sliced and throbbed all at once. He managed to pull up the edge of his shirt, and saw streaks of red-and-purple flesh embedded in his stomach. It looked like they were growing. Rennick laid his head back down on the metal deck and fought to suppress a sob. Medical attention could hardly reach him now. Damn, damn. Damn it! Where was his way out? What else could he do?
The pain oozed around to the left side of his abdomen. Whatever this was, it was spreading, fast. His fingers shook. He resisted the temptation to glance at it again.
The headache increased in pitch; he hadn't thought it was possible. Whispers reached his ears from nowhere, with no source. Swirling in the overcast clouds, he could see vivid, madly jumbled shapes and colors. Images coming too quickly to read yet instantly recognizable, nostalgic and familiar. His mind dissolved into a blur of color when he closed his eyes. Feverish, he suddenly felt heavy. Fighting was too difficult. He usually felt like he was fighting the whole world, anyway—trying to pull the fucking crew together was enough of a struggle to begin with—but until now, the threats had always been outside of him. Raindrops mingled with the beads of sweat in his forehead, slid down to his eyes. With unsteady fingers, he managed to push his glasses up and wipe at his eyes. It didn't help.
The headache disarmed him and made him weak to pain. Without even looking, he felt the blistered flesh on his stomach start to move. Huge coils of bruised body mass, like snakes, burst out and swelled from just below his navel. He could feel them writhing; he didn’t even have to look. Desperately, he clutched his head between his elbows and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the pressure to subside. The sickening slide of flesh against flesh—like scraping internal organs against one another—drowned him in misery. Bizarrely, he could feel his abdomen spill out and become much larger than it was. Even though he was lying on his back, he swore he could feel the cold metal of the deck on his side and upper thigh.
This isn’t… isn’t how it goes, Rennick thought helplessly. God, not how I’m supposed to die. The hallucinations had his mind in a chokehold; putting together even an unspoken sentence was tough. As the word “die” flickered through his mind, so did visions of what should’ve been his Christmas away from the rig. The warm glow of a tree. A few days blessedly free of work. Family. Fear and grief erupted in his chest. The bulging, infected masses moving in his guts suddenly became too much to take.
Rennick turned over and caught himself with his hands just in time to vomit on the ground. It came out deep reddish-black and oily. He had only a second to glance at it and react—internal bleeding?—before unbearable nausea welled up again and he choked up more blood. His throat tightened. Vomit slicked the back of his throat and dripped in thick strands from the bottom of his chin. His tongue was coated with the stuff. Badly weakened, he slumped over on his side and tried to loosen his necktie with one hand.
His fingers caught the knot and pulled. It barely eased his choked breaths. He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt next and managed to pull a few apart, unevenly. The infection continued to throb and burn hot. As the heat suffocated him from the inside, he found himself trying to tear off his coat, loosen his belt, cleanse as much bare skin with the rain as he could. Red veins ran all over his body like a surgical wound gone rancid.
Growths, deepening to purple, could be seen on his bare stomach and upper abdomen. Rennick began to hyperventilate. His breath came in shallow, hitching gasps for air. Rain soaked his remaining clothes and bare shoulders. Fat raindrops collected on his glasses and welled into his eyes.
Thick horror mingled with anger and re-ignited. He had more fight left in him, yet. He shouted, irrationally, at the infection. “Fuck your bleedin’ fuckin’ tumors, you sick, sack-of-shite—” his voice dissolved into a stream of semi-coherent profanity. Still driven by rage, bolstered on by newfound energy, he made an attempt to stand.
He lurched to his feet, staggered two steps, and felt his right leg burst.
Like it had been melted in an oven. Globs of red, purple, and anoxic blue expanded outwards and tore through the seams of his jeans. The flesh collapsed, unable to bear weight. Rennick tumbled to the ground, unbalanced, and slammed his shoulder hard against the metal floor. It would bruise terribly. His leg was a senseless morass of infection. It wasn’t recognizable as a limb anymore, but it was still attached to him. With horror, he tried to move it and watched it tumble over itself in a sickening pile. Now thoroughly unchained from reality, he began to scream.
While he watched his leg seethe and blister, dramatic changes swept through his entire body. The infection had reached critical mass; rather than slosh and swirl just beyond the blood-brain barrier, it could begin cracking his nervous system apart directly from the inside.
Rennick felt a thick blanket of calm slide over him, beginning to blot out everything else. A heavy, slurried feeling of lethargy, reminiscent of strong painkillers, suffused his veins. His breathing slowed and dropped below resting rate. Finally, he thought nonsensically, my vacation. He lay back and put his head against the ground. His shoulder no longer hurt. The life-threatening fever engulfing his body began to feel more like a blanket, muted and harmless. His head still pounded, but the pain was dulled almost beneath awareness. With every breath, he retreated further into delirium, even euphoria.
He could barely feel the tentacles sliding out of his body and grasping at the ground. They scraped and stuck to the environment, forming thick strands of flesh. More raw, red flesh than he’d ever seen in his life. It couldn’t all have been from his body. Where’s it all from…? He wondered lazily.
They formed a bed beneath him, slipping and writhing. They curled upwards around his body. He lay inside it, his eyes glazing over behind rain-drenched, misted glasses. His breathing ran slow and ragged. Tentacles pawed at the deformed flesh on his abdomen, across his leg. He felt soaked, but could no longer tell the difference between rain and sweat. Deliriously, he felt as if he were being buried alive, consumed, but he didn’t mind one bit. The shape’s poison had a sweet edge to it. A neurotoxin, designed to sedate. Screwing with the nervous system had the side effect of keeping the victim drugged and euphoric.
Rennick began to feel a little out of breath. His breathing quickened to compensate. His right leg and stomach were unrecognizable, but the infection had kept his left leg and lower abdomen nearly untouched. Tentacles oozed out of the infected masses and rasped over his skin. The sedative coursed through his veins and made every inch of him prickle with hypersensitivity. His nerves begged for touch, and the dragging flesh of the infection electrified him with every move. Ropes of flesh moved over his stomach, giving him chills. His whole body felt tense. He scarcely noticed that beneath his torn jeans and unbuckled belt, he had a stiff, aching erection. As infected flesh brushed and slithered over his leg, his chest and shoulders, every touch made the feeling worse and worse.
A coil of red, bruised flesh erupted from a tumor on his upper stomach and attached itself to the ground between his legs, barely brushing his cock. Pleasure shot through him so intensely it made his ears ring. The infection responded. Tentacles began to coil around the base and slide gently across the shaft, leaving streaks of blood and brine. Rennick didn’t dare move, but each gasp for breath began to taper off to breathy moans.
He couldn’t move, for the toxin. He watched helplessly as the tentacles slid over every inch of his body. Pleasure rippled through him like the violent surface of the sea below. The last, vestigial, rational part of his brain went mute with horror. The creature’s touch had gouged his body into an unrecognizable mass and given him more pain than he ever felt, and it had now moved to completely violating him, tossing and turning him like a plaything. Every surge of pleasure felt tinged with raw, wretched sickness. A sense of complete and utter ruin.
Ruin, he thought, the word clanging in his head as the tentacles tugged at him. Ruined, ruined, ru—and the thoughts abruptly stopped, replaced by head-splitting pleasure. Mindless ecstasy. A few more slippery touches from infected flesh threw his nerves into overdrive. He came violently.
The paralytic effect of the sedative gently subsided. He felt his limbs unlock and he was able to move again, though not ready. His breathing still came in gasps. When he looked down, the rest of his legs had dissolved into an unrecognizable pool of tumors and bloody flesh, like innards spilling out from nowhere.
A tide of nausea came back. Revulsion, until then churning quietly in his guts, took its chance. He lurched forward and vomited again, clutching at his mouth with both hands, vainly trying to stop himself. He threw his hands forward to keep from falling over. Vomit ran from his mouth and nose. His nerves were still numb and pleasure-shocked; he barely felt it. A prickling numbness began to creep over the left side of his face, behind his eye. He reached up to paw at it and he couldn’t feel the touch of his hand. He couldn’t really feel anything. The rain was still falling, but it brought no sensation. The metal of the deck held no cold. The entire world of touch receded to his innards: there was only fever, body heat, and the slow, tingling spread of the infection. He slumped forward. His glasses slid off his face and hit the deck. The lenses shattered on contact.
Rennick felt himself lose control of his arm. The infection took it, but it didn’t burst into wet tumors; instead, it grew sharp and long. The bone broke as it snapped fully backwards. He didn’t even feel the fracture.
His inner world was in complete turmoil. The rapid advance and recess of blinding pain and unbelievable pleasure had left him almost without an inner voice. Hallucinations clawed at the edge of his vision. He had exhausted all reserves of disgust. There was numbness everywhere save for the one small, struggling spark he always carried inside of him: rage. His most habitual emotion, the one fallback for everything. His one inner defense against fear, humiliation, and rejection. He found it in himself still. Even his hallucinations began to twist and focus around his growing, blistering anger.
His arms lengthened into sticklike limbs. He felt a splitting pressure in his head, but he could no longer do a single thing about it. The breath in his throat grew raspy and audible; when he tried to speak, it felt like forcing mud through a sewer grate.
Escape filled his mind. His instinct screamed to escape himself, escape the rig. Escape the creature that had already claimed his body and mind. And the last goddamn thing that reached his consciousness was the recollection of watching McLeary send the lifeboats to their graves. Of McLeary standing on the landing pad while the helicopter lurched and spun out of control: crashing and shattering the last hope of a doomed crew. Escape, gone. Snuffed out.
Rage overtook him completely. A helpless, ineffectual scream tore out of his throat and, through now-monstrous vocal cords, became an unrecognizable roar. His last refuge was a single flame in total darkness, a single flickering beacon of unrelenting rage.