As Matheson sat in the basement, which unfortunately did not muffle the sound of the scuffling monsters above him hungry for his blood, he reflected on the day’s events.
I should be dead, he thought. I should be dead twice over. But here I am, nary a scratch. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He felt positively horrible, his arms and legs sore, his neck stiffer than a forty year old scotch.
But he was intact.
That fall should have snapped his bones in half. He’d felt his skin singeing right off in that creeper blast. And yet something, or someone, had dragged him to the beach, fixed him up, and left him there, unconscious, but somehow protected.
Or so he thought. He couldn’t be quite sure that it had just been pure luck nothing had attacked him while he had 'slept'. He had a terrifying vision of waking up, on the beach, at night, a spider crouched over him, wrapping him up, preparing to sink it’s fangs into his flesh.
Tomorrow, he said, I’ll put a shelter up there. Something to make any awakening there a little more comfortable.
But even as he thought that, he somehow felt, without being able to explain why, that from here on out, he was on his own. It was like he knew he’d used up his two chances, and any further injury would spell certain actual death.
He stretched and leaned back. He was a bit peckish, and dug through his pockets for a snack. He had a handful of seeds- he tried to split them open in his teeth, but they were too hard, and all he got was a throbbing pain in his teeth.
Perfect, he thought, and spit them to the side with disgust.
He also had two mushrooms, a grubby, brown looking one, and a more colorful, red one. He eyed them over, but he had no idea how to tell safe ones from poisonous ones, and didn’t feel like trying his luck just yet.
He patted his stomach consolingly, leaned back, and shut his eyes.
On to the next post!
I should be dead, he thought. I should be dead twice over. But here I am, nary a scratch. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He felt positively horrible, his arms and legs sore, his neck stiffer than a forty year old scotch.
But he was intact.
That fall should have snapped his bones in half. He’d felt his skin singeing right off in that creeper blast. And yet something, or someone, had dragged him to the beach, fixed him up, and left him there, unconscious, but somehow protected.
Or so he thought. He couldn’t be quite sure that it had just been pure luck nothing had attacked him while he had 'slept'. He had a terrifying vision of waking up, on the beach, at night, a spider crouched over him, wrapping him up, preparing to sink it’s fangs into his flesh.
Tomorrow, he said, I’ll put a shelter up there. Something to make any awakening there a little more comfortable.
But even as he thought that, he somehow felt, without being able to explain why, that from here on out, he was on his own. It was like he knew he’d used up his two chances, and any further injury would spell certain actual death.
He stretched and leaned back. He was a bit peckish, and dug through his pockets for a snack. He had a handful of seeds- he tried to split them open in his teeth, but they were too hard, and all he got was a throbbing pain in his teeth.
Perfect, he thought, and spit them to the side with disgust.
He also had two mushrooms, a grubby, brown looking one, and a more colorful, red one. He eyed them over, but he had no idea how to tell safe ones from poisonous ones, and didn’t feel like trying his luck just yet.
He patted his stomach consolingly, leaned back, and shut his eyes.
On to the next post!
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