Anthesis of Sadness

I was inside the slug. Or what could be called inside.

An enclosed, moving, wet, living space.

As if I were being swallowed by an endless throat, a mouth that meant nothing but "die."

The walls pulsed around me, compressing me with rhythmic, fleshy spasms.

The heat was inhuman.

Not just hot. Suffocating. Devouring.

I was bathing in a thick, red-orange fluid, halfway between acid and lava, too dense to be liquid, too hot to be real.

My skin screamed.

My muscles peeled off my bones in places.

My flesh melted before my eyes, blistered, torn, boiling, even as my cells desperately tried to reform.

But they didn’t have time.