Cherreads

Chapter 21 - Fleshscape

Passing the tongue, he reached the throat. The throat extended straight ahead. As he slowly moved forward, a dim orange light began to brighten the cave. Reaching its end, he stepped out. 

Before him lay a colossal, endless landscape. Its hilly ground consisted of skin. Black hairs formed the grass. Trees made of deformed hands stood sparsely. Branches of finger phalanges were scattered around. On them hung sharp nails, waving in a breeze. Huge, bent elbows formed the mountains. Their arms ranged from muscular to thin.

The sky reddened with flesh. A yellow-orange iris illuminated the surface. Evaporated body fat made up the clouds. Streams flowed with liquefied grease.

Inezeya gazed around in awe.

"Hah. This is beautiful for a fleshscape."

 

A light wind blew.

​Casual, slow steps carried Inezeya forward. After walking for a while, ​a valley appeared before him. Smaller elbows lined the valley, crossing over and along it. The valley stretched toward a hill. Whistling while looking around, he followed the path.

When he reached its peak, he saw the valley stretching downhill. Inezeya paused briefly. Watching the landscape in front of him, he relaxingly inhaled.

At a mountain made of elbows stood a man leaning against a tree. The back of his medium long gray hair was tied with bells and his front hair hung loose. A white fox mask covered his face and chin. Red symbols and a mark resembling the number nine adorned the mask. Twilight obscured his eyes and lips beneath. He watched Inezeya. The breeze blew gently. Bells in his hair chimed softly.

Upon being noticed, the man straightened up. Shadows of the leaves lifted from his eyes. Inside the gray irises, black silhouettes pressed their hands against the cornea like prisoners.

Yellow clouds gathered. A light fat rain fell. Its drops oiled the two men.

His gaze locked onto Inezeya's eyes. He raised his left hand to his forehead. With his index and middle fingers, he tapped his temple three times. Dropping his hand, he walked slowly behind the tree. 

The surface trembled as he moved. The man vanished. Inezeya exhaled in frustration.

"Hell's crying again… "

Rain of oil turned into a downpour.

"My Nes is tiring out my soul… I shouldn't use it in case…"

 

A huge hand crashed through the clouds, landing palm-open beside Inezeya. Afterwards hands rocketed from the sky. Ones near Inezeya smashed toward him like magnets. Elbow bones adorning the path shattered.

With a calm demeanor, Inezeya wove through the falling hands. As he somersaulted over the broken elbows, a hand fell from above. He leaped up. Twisting his body in a half-flip, he inverted his body. Planting his feet against the hand's underside, he launched himself toward the next elbow without losing speed. Sliding beneath an elbow, he bounced from one to another. 

The skin hill rotated sideways to the left. Rivers of sebum poured down in waterfalls. Blood dripped from the sky. Screams of pain and insults ring all around. 

"You monster! Devil's son! Demon!"

 

Through the oily clouds pierced burning, enormous misshapen bodies, extending their arms toward him. The entire sky swarmed with them.

"Why are you still alive?! What gives you the right to exist?! Only what you deserve is pain!"

Inezeya sat on the base of a sideways elbow. Emptiness filled his eyes.

"I'm regretful that I couldn't save yall… Please pardon my existence…"

Embers of flames burning their bodies cascaded in harmony with the gravity. Fury and sickness blinded their minds.

"How dare you insult us?! Fry in Hell!!"

Countless colossal, burning hands, elbows, feet and knees stormed toward him, saturating the sky. Everything felt slow to him. He calmly stood up. In his light-blue irises intertwined black threads chaotically.

"Sorry, but I can't die yet."

Proffering his closed hand, he opened his fingers. Muscles, bones and organs of the bodies were pressed outward. Rupturing their skin, their whole anatomy spread around. As some of the bones planted deeply on the surface and mangled it, falls of blood streamed down.

Rotating left, the fleshy surface turned completely upside down, with its hand trees and elbow mountains hanging. From its gargantuan fissures erupted gigantic lungs, livers, stomachs, folds, intestines, kidneys and drifted into the abyss below.

After leaping from organ to organ, a fierce, heavy wind roared. While his light-blue hair and white furry scarf thrashed in the wind, Inezeya stood on a lung dizzy and tired, placing his hand on his head. Leaves of sharp nails snapped from the tree branches and streamed with the wind. Reaching atop the viscera, dirty and chinked nails merged into armored knights, carrying heavy weapons made from sharp unguis.

As countless knights faced him, they walked calmly to him. Because of his exhaustion, he kept himself barely upright. While he tried to dodge them, the knights were calmly feinting their strikes to taunt him. 

"HAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!"

"Tsk," Inezeya clicked, bored.

 

One knight constructed of clean and smooth nails dragged his sword along and sliced through the lung's floor, leaving a trace of gushing blood and outward crawling flesh. A kick to his leg let Inezeya kneel. Clenching his arms and pressing sharp weapons to his neck and torso, they pinned him. As their leader closed in, the knights in his path stepped aside and watched. An amber iris on the crimson sky shone from his side. Blood from the fleshscape began to shimmer.

His feet came in the eyesight of Inezeya. Holding the bloody edge of his sword under Inezeya's chin, he pulled his face upward.

"I pity you."

His weak eyes drifted to the leader's helm. The overlord's voice was consistently crammed with majesty and pressure.

"Your fears disable you to realize."

Inezeya's lips trembled with fatigue and smiled faintly.

"H-Hell nah-h… N-Nothing scares m-me…"

Sighing, he stabbed his sword into Inezeya's chest slowly and slightly. Inezeya coughed in pain.

"Look at you. Despair panics your body."

 As the leader yanked his helm off, his fox mask became visible and his grey hair flailed around.

"25 years. If you don't become a man until then…"

Afterwards he crouched close to Inezeya, gazing solemnly into his eyes with silhouettes in his irises.

"...I will make any second of your breath regret you." he whispered.

When he rose on his feet, his sword diffused into nails. Beckoning with two fingers, he turned his back and moved forward. While they followed on, the knights dissolved into the air and cut Inezeya. Meanwhilst straightened Inezeya up, while stepping forward.

"W-Why do you even care?!"

All had already retracted to the tree branches. An aggressively sucking wind came from the inverted fleshscape above, driving the grume spilling from the traced lung upward. Worn down by sheer exhaustion, Inezeya slouched and exhaled while his hair and scarf wildly flailed in the current that ripped him toward the gigantic fissures of the fleshscape.

Battering against the skeletal frames hidden in the subdermal sea of blood, he erupted from the fleshscape, soaked in gore and pain. 

 

The sky was wrapped between two fleshscapes. Hills draped in black hairy skin elongated into colossal worms, plunging into the surface and emerging back out. Crashing onto one of them, he grabbed its coarse hairs and clung tight as it dragged him heavily in and out of the surface, washing him in blood. From the mountains' muscular biceps, triceps, and forearms, tremendous eyes peeled open and tracked him. Swarms of blood-fish swam inside their pale sclera. The mountains, the hills, the trees, the eyes... the entire landscape heaved to the ticking pulse and sound of a singular heart. 

 

The worms bored through the dilating pupils. With every yard they covered, the colossal heartbeat grew faster and more violent. The strain snapped the hairs out of the skin beneath Inezeya's grip. Pitching sideways, he scrambled to catch another clump of hair that slipped his fingers off by their sweat. Falling through the sky, he shot into the upward-slanting canal of a giant ear.

Landing on his back, he slid down at full speed and smashed through the eardrum, shattering it. Trying to stand and skid on his feet, he powered his legs and leaped across. Extending his legs in mid-air, he smashed through the giant cochlea and entered it.

Within the cochlear vortex, he continuously spiraled. Pressure rose aggressively. Torn hair cells from their roots surged with the current, cutting him slightly. Planted ones vibrated wildly. Inezeya squinted against the violent ringing in his ears. Slammed from wall to wall by the accelerating stream, he felt his bones crack slightly and his wrists and ankles sprain.

Clashing through the cochlear wall, he reached its center. As he tumbled through the air, fluid from the cochlea poured into the darkness like a waterfall. Millions of glowing white nerve fibers covered the surroundings. As he landed on one, the giant head tilted, sending him skimming downward.

Face coated tongues opened their red eyes in the darkness to watch Inezeya. Smiling widely and showing their teethless gums, they stuck out their face covered tongues. Striking the brainstem, he plunged inside and slid deeper into the brain. Emerging from one brain fold, he soared through many others.

Roars of flames echoed. As he crossed the brain folds, he entered the poles. A snowy, hilly landscape stood before him. From it hung a wooden village. His eyes widened in shock. As he dove into the village's sideways standing houses, he shot through them horizontally like a bullet. One after another, he blasted through wooden walls and windows, crashing hard into a burning house. Screams echoed from everywhere.

"Sera! Sera! Please be alive!"

Traversing the burning house, he drifted through the brain folds and dove into the eye of a burning plush rabbit, swallowed by an opening mouth. Reaching one of the veins nestled between ribs, nearby him rested a heart that beat violently.

"THUMP… THUMP…"

Atop a giant rib bone sat a red-haired man, his hair undulating upwards. With his fingertips steepled together, he burst into a maniacal, mocking laugh, staring at Inezeya. A scar was etched on his chin. 

Launching from the veins, Inezeya fell between webs made of nerves. Countless tongues rose like a forest. As he landed on a tongue, the mouth devoured him toward a grave.

He had arrived at a massive graveyard.

 

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