Carnivorous: A Gothic Short Story

"I slipped into a point of darkness one Monday afternoon

Trying to reach for the sweet of nature’s bloom."

Life once led me to deep forests of verdant thickness and towers of shadow. The pain emanating from my body and mind combined into a deafening cacophony, crowding out any hope for rising above and breathing unencumbered air. I was born to be here and yet knew I had done it to myself and for myself, and the outcome — disappearance and dissolution — rested as an inevitability upon my heart. I had to keep treading: What else was there to do besides to walk, or to flail, onward — to survive one step through life after another?

It was quiet in that place, leaving nothing to occupy my senses besides the pounding of my stomach, and my muscles, and my wallowing and wailing thoughts. I felt pathetic, cynical, and distant. My environment remained unchanged, redundant — just a series of stones to catch my steps and towering trees to diminish me. After some time, in rash desperation, I cursed this world and its Creator, flinging myself into brush like a child in their bed hiding beneath a pile of blankets.

With that little maneuver, I began rolling and then sliding down a muddy hill obscured by the little plants, rocks, and creatures that reside in such places. I closed my eyes and accepted it, but it did not end me nor my journey. I felt stillness once more and, opening my eyes, observed that I was in a clearing — quite the uncommon sight given the thickness through which I was used to traversing. It was a little patch within the forest around the size of a bedroom, framed by trees on three sides and a rocky sort of wall on the other. The moon was aiming its pale, atmospheric light directly down into this strange place, casting a faint glow upon the grassy floor, shiny stones, and a strange object standing before me in the center of my vision.

I muttered, then grasped, then crawled, then stepped toward this figure of nature. It appeared to be a large plant but was purple-green in color and shaped like a vase. It stood proudly before me, as if it had somehow made itself a welcoming home amidst this grim world, of which both I and it were inhabitants. With curiosity and nothing to lose, I investigated further, running my hands along its smooth, slick sides and up toward its top, where I could perceive the lip of an opening. I could not see or reach the top, so I assembled some rocks and climbed upon them.

What confronted my vision was a large opening that led into the depths of this thing, which, despite the surrounding moonlight, was nonetheless obscured in totalizing darkness. There was something evidently quite eerie about this hole, but somehow it also drew me in. Not only would it separate me from the surrounding world; it would comfort me with shelter, with a small place that I could grasp at every end. The more I stared at it, the more it came to represent escape, however ephemeral.

I stepped, I slid, I descended. I felt myself falling into the dark and into myself, inverting within the life form I had discovered. Warmth enveloped me — I felt safe and secure within the green and within the entrails of this being. I also noticed a syrupy-sweet substance coating my body, my mouth, my mind. I gathered it with my hands and tasted, devouring its nutrients greedily. It made me feel good — I liked it, and yet it settled in as a pit within my stomach. Something inside of me rejected the proposition posed by this creature and its fruits. And yet in my clouded state, overwhelmed by my journey’s predicaments, I felt I needed this — I craved it and longed for it to be mine.

The deeper I grasped into the depths of the plant’s belly, the deeper I fell. What was once sweet became interlocking and sluggishly withholding, trapping me in my escape. My skin began to burn, ache, and redden. At first, I thought this damage was due to my struggle, but when I stilled, the pain only increased. Every other explanation for what was happening failed, leaving nothing besides a horrifying realization burrowed within my mind: This thing was eating me.

Now, when I tried pulling a part of my body away from the surrounding walls, the disgusting, thick mucous took more of my skin than I did. The lack of light hid the morbid reality of my situation, yet the writing was on the wall. My outsides and insides mixed with one another as all was eaten — all was consumed. And, with that, I closed my eyes and screamed.

I begged and pleaded in sorrow, lamenting my situation and every action leading to it. My life replayed before me in dislocated fragments, somehow stringing together a narrative of the devolution of my soul. Every step I had taken leading to this point was an excuse; it was pathetic. I was not on a journey: I was wandering, on my own power, toward destruction this whole time. Everything I had done was as wind. And yet I kept trudging on, looking for something — anything — that wrought light. And yet the light resided not within me nor within the world, and, in my current state, I was becoming one with that world — from dust to dust, as two darknesses darkening one another.

With this realization, something within my soul dislodged itself from the sources of prolonged suffering upon which I had once relied. No longer were there any pretenses of my body or the material things of this world saving me; everything was fading away. The only choice remaining was whether to degenerate inward or eternally emanate outward and upward toward the source of all light. Somewhere in the darkness, the latter spirit possessed me, and together we whisked away.