Book Eight, Chapter 77: Unfolding
by inkadminI could use words like “explode” or “melt” in a situation like this. I might invoke visuals of molting insects, growing plants, or decaying bodies. I could do all of these things, and I would never be able to describe what I saw the man in the boat do.
At first, I was confident he was transforming. It was simple. I had seen that before. I had once watched Antoine turn into a werewolf out of the corner of my eye while pretending not to. I had seen statues come to life. These eyes had witnessed many impossible things.
But what I saw happening to the man below deck defied all description because it wasn’t even possible. My mind literally couldn’t perceive what was happening. His size was changing, sure. That was easy enough. Or maybe, his true size was being revealed.
But when the ropes tying him to the chair began to loosen as if falling through his body without breaking, I had to assume that he was some sort of spirit. But that wasn’t right either. It didn’t look like they had fallen through because he was intangible. It looked like they had simply gone around his body from the middle out. It made no sense. My brain couldn’t comprehend it.
Because my brain could only comprehend three dimensions, and this man’s body was far beyond that. I remembered being in high school and having a teacher try to explain to the class how the dimensions worked. Not dimensions like other versions of the world or pocket universes, but dimensions as in length, depth, and width. Those were the three ways that we observed things around us. But if we were two-dimensional, we would only see length and width, and if a three-dimensional creature were to stand in front of us and step to the side, it would disappear from our vision.
That was what I was seeing.
The man was being consumed by another dimension. His body was going everywhere, as if it were exploding, except that wasn’t exactly what was happening. It was more like it was unfolding in front of me, a mass of organs, viscera, and limbs that were all connected, but not in ways that I could perceive.
He was unfolding further and further.
“Back up the stairs,” I said loudly. I had half a mind to tell my cameraman to stay down there just for the footage, but I thought better of it. “We need to get to land,” I said.
“I’m on it,” Anna said. “I’ll take us to a nearby marina. Hopefully, we can avoid the gunmen.”
Oh, right. The guys with guns. They weren’t so scary suddenly.
“What’s happening down there?” Antoine asked.
“He’s getting… bigger,” I said stupidly.
“I saw that,” Antoine said, “but what is happening? I’m not sure I understood what I was looking at.”
I kind of wanted to slap Antoine just to get him to stop asking questions. He was going to make my character look stupid because he was trying to get me to give information I didn’t have. We were all losing our cool.
I took a few deep breaths and tried to act as if I had a grasp of the situation.
“I don’t know what’s happening to him down there, but I have a feeling it’s not going to stay down there,” I said. “Is there a life raft on this boat?” I asked.
I already knew the answer. Everyone did. There was one of those emergency dinghies with a tiny outboard motor on it tied up at the back of the boat. Unfortunately, Carousel had seen fit to give it a five-hundred-pound weight limit written in big bold letters on top.
We needed something bigger, and there was only one way to get it. I only needed Anna to realize it.
“Yes,” Anna said after a moment of thought. “I have one up here on deck, but the bigger emergency inflatable’s down below.”
“Where down below?” I asked.
“It’s in a cabinet down there,” she said. “It’s right by the door.”
“I’ll go grab it,” I said as I moved toward the door. “Stand back.”
This was pure improvisation. We needed a larger emergency craft, and it was believable that Anna might have one somewhere, but we would have to take a risk to get it. We were going to have to look at what the man down below was becoming.
No matter how we cut it, whoever opened that door below deck had a good chance of dying. At least if it were me, there was a chance I could stick around for a while afterward and help out.
I crept down below. My cameraman followed. It was kind of sweet of him when I thought about it.
I opened up the wooden door, and what I saw on the other side continued to defy my understanding.
I was staring into a large mucus-covered throat.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It was still unfolding, but whatever it was, it was a creature, an enormous one. Its entrails had folded over the boat almost like a tarp being stretched over sticks to make a tent. Muscle and saliva stretched over the things inside the cabin.
I didn’t have time to understand what I was looking at, but I knew being inside of a large extra-dimensional creature was generally considered a bad thing.
Luckily, the interior of the boat wasn’t so big that I had to go that far to find the cabinet next to the door, open it, and grab the large, bright orange canvas bag inside.
Bobby said that his team had survived on the river with one of those that they found in an airplane. Not a bad idea to improvise one into existence.
The interior of the creature continued to unfold, forming around the boat’s architecture, imbuing it with life, sickening wet life.
I quickly closed the door, turned, and ran up the stairs, my cameraman following.
“What did you see?” Camden asked.
“Are you familiar with the story of Jonah in the belly of the whale?” I asked.
“Yes, kind of,” he said with a scrunched-up face.
“It looks like we’re about to have a retelling,” I said.




0 Comments