Micah Castle

Flesh Beginnings, Earth Endings

I open my eyes at the sound of the walls cracking, the floorboards moaning beneath me. I wipe the dirt and dust from my forehead, and look to where the sound came from. Thin, gleaming green vines, speckled with star-shaped fungi, poke through the broken wall, sprout from the floor, inching their way towards the collapsed ceiling.

“Not yet,” I say, standing.

The door frame is empty, and outside the green is lush, unimaginable, so vibrant that it almost hurts to look at… but not as vibrant as the sky, the soft pinks and reds, yellows and oranges and purples, the waves and intertwining tapestry of colors stretching to all horizons, pulsating with distant life from the place beyond the stars they were summoned from… My temples throb… There’s a voice… Guttural gibberish. Frantic, throaty words… I reach for my watering eyes, my hands gnarled into claws…

“No!” I shout, breaking the trance, stare at the blindingly bright grass. Long things slither within, things layered with ripping, tearing flesh, revealing maws teemed with warped needles…

“Don’t look up there,” I say to myself, “no, no, no…” I shake my head, and scan the horizon, keeping my eyesight low.

There! A squat, brown structure, maybe three miles away, maybe five, maybe thirty…

I glance over my shoulder. The dilapidated house is now entirely covered in vines, sprouting even more star-shaped fungi. I face the structure in the distance, and step over rattling grass.

One.

Two.

Three.

I’m before the structure in the darkness. The light from the colors above illuminate the pale, pearly grass below. I walk to the side, find no vines; then the other, then the back. No vines anywhere.

The front, thick door hangs from the bottom hinge. I push it open; it creaks before the hinge snaps and it slams onto the ground with a loud clap. Inside is bare, except for an ash-filled stone fireplace, a chair missing two legs, and some opaque picture frames hanging on the walls.

I move towards one of the photos, and the floor expands, stretches, placing miles and miles between me or, maybe, what’s lurking in the pearly grass outside. After a couple more steps, the floor refuses to recede.

“Nevermind,” I say aloud, sit near the fallen door, and stare outside through the empty doorway.

The grass grows as tall as the house.

The grass shrinks, dwindling to toe-height.

Tiny brown veins sprout from the ground, twist and unify into a structure as they grow; needle-thin purple things spill out from warped and elongated branches, streaming like water, turning the pale grass yellow.

I yawn.

A small, hairless creature with burn marks matching the constellations runs up the brown thing, to the streaming purple, places its beady snout to it and inhales… Glowing purple markings spider web through its body, coursing through what might be veins, infusing with it… It's no longer hairless. Patchy tufts erupt from its four ears, six arms, two tails… It looks up, nose twitching, and its black eyes open wide, and begin to bubble and boil. They melt, intertwining into a spiraling, pulsating tendril that reaches for the sky. Its body drops from the branch when its eyes ascend. The grass leeches onto it, blankets it, and recedes, leaving nothing.

I yawn again.

Glance over my shoulder.

Pictures still miles away.

No vines.

I lay down, cradling my arm under my head.

The brown thing outside becomes pale. Clumps of branches fall like hardened clay, and the purple fades to ivory— I close my eyes.

I wake up to the sound of lapping water.

Blink a few times. Sit up.

I’m on a raft made from vines and yellow driftwood, moving on a body of crimson water rising vertically, flowing into the sky.

I crawl to the side of the raft, peer down, careful to not see the sky’s reflection.

Black, submerged silhouettes with large webbed arms and sporadic sprouting fins. They eclipse the enormous burning dull red orb in the silt, carelessly left eons ago. I hear faint words spoken in the silhouettes’ dialect but I can’t decipher anything.

I move back to the center of the raft.

Something pokes my leg’s underside. I shift and find a star-shaped fungus sprouting between the wood.

“Not yet,” I say.

Look right.

Look left.

Not up, never up.

Lean overboard, no silhouettes near. I stand. Recheck the water. Good, good. Then step onto the hard, crimson surface and walk towards land. Few moments later, there’s solid ground underfoot, and a golden peaked, colorless mountain looming overhead. Crude marks slash and burrow into its surface. They glow like smoldering embers, life blown into letters and words brought down from the stars. The ground trembles, long rocks fall, smashing into pebbles and roll past me.

Carved into the mountain’s bottom is a cave. I walk towards it but it sinks into the mountainside, reappearing near the peak. The world ripples like radiating heat. My eyes sting. I close them, rubbing. I open them and I’m on a transparent, reflective pool and below is a golden peak.

I look…

Vines hang from above—

Don’t!

—they’re everywhere, forming tight-knit walls of star-speckled fungi and greenery. I try to pry it open, but my fingers are too large, and more fungi sprout, cascading onto the ground.

I stumble back, turn—

More green walls, more fungi.

I stomp on the ground.

Nothing shifts.

Look at the sky?

Let the colors take me instead?

All the same place, isn’t it?

The tan fungi halt at my bare feet, and circle around me. They bubble and grow, form bodies, limbs, heads. Dozens, hundreds, of star-speckled figures — some tan, some deep red, some purple, dotted white, or with zigzagging, kaleidoscopic stripes — surround me.

I spin.

I face the colors.

Take me.

Black overwhelms the world. Something heavy encloses my head.

I grip the coarse, doughy thing. Try to pull it away. Can’t, like the walls. It bombards, fills, my nose and mouth.

It spirals into my skull, lungs, and coils behind my eyes.

It whispers like wind. Words I can’t understand, then do.

“Cannot escape what is to come; flesh beginnings, earth endings; cannot stay in the past; must be a part of the abandon—”

I can’t hear.

My stomach clenches. My bowels and bladder release what little there is. Something grows inside me. Coats and fills innards with a thick, heavy substance, yet vine thin.

Can’t always escape.

My legs give and I collapse onto hard things that must be fungi, and I’m plummeting into endlessness. I can’t breathe; can’t see; can’t hear; can’t do anything but fall and fall; things are coming growing from the holes in my body and it burns. Oozing from pores and oh God please — why why why were they summoned — why why why was I one of the last; why why w— A suffocating fog and—

Can’t…

Impossible…

Becoming…

them…

Bio: Micah Castle is a weird/horror fiction writer. His stories have appeared in various magazines, websites, and anthologies, and has three collections currently out.

While away from the keyboard, he enjoys spending time with his wife, aimlessly spending hours hiking through the woods, playing with his animals, and can typically be found reading a book somewhere in his Pennsylvania home.