Ria picked up the knife, eyed the surrounding –to see if Em was anywhere nearby, watching her from behind a stalwart bush- and finding the target of her concern nowhere, started prowling toward the hole. Something had happened to Em’. He was hurt and she was the reason. He hadn’t tried to harm her in any way. He was like a child with curiosity- a selfless being. But here she was, getting hurt and hurting everyone she was meeting, just as she had done in the past.

With worry grew anxiety, taking her to a stroll through some moral questions.

I can’t be the first one here. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands of other people, brought to this sewer in the past. Other who must have crossed the same path I am crossing, purged and forced like me.

How many from them had met the sewer croc? How many had entered the light? How many had reached the exit, and how many were still buried beneath the lies? The number that had forfeited their lives is not actually the large number, but the hundreds of thousands who were left stranded in the search were the biggest tragedy brought on by this place. How many mothers might still be roaming the alleys and roads where their precious pearls were last seen? How many families must have and were still being torn apart from the sudden loss of their cherished individuals? It is an enigma; one, which will never get answered.

I am not the only one. There must be other survivors. The idea surged strength into her whole being. It helped her overcome her fear of the unknown waiting for her inside the pillar of light. But where are they? Why haven’t I actually seen anyone else? However, the idea of not being alone also made her sense impending doom, bringing with itself the collapse of everything natural.

She had feared to have to either jump or climb down holding the braided branch into the square hole, rather the world changed around her when she entered the light. Her feet fell on the solid ground upon stepping inside the detained circle. Neither could she see inside from outside, nor did she see anything outside once she stepped inside the light. The light didn’t blind her. It was bright, but not impeding- it felt like a curtain to her, separating the outside from the inside.

The ground spun under her feet the moment she settled in. The noises, the chirping, the smell, the freshness everything vaporized in a hectic spin of silence and flashing lights, until eventually, everything calmed down: the ground stopped spinning, the lights frizzled to nonexistence, and a new stage opened. Nausea struck her with force as the ground stabilized. She fell uncomfortably, raising a cloud of dirt, and started retching.

She crouched leaning on the ground with her hands holding her stable. Her headache subsided slowly with her breathing. The place she found herself in wasn’t as well lit as the garden. It wasn’t even a room. She could make out the shape of a tunnel from the light coming inside from the exit. It was a soft orange light, most probably from a fireplace or torches.

She hesitated at first, and then stood up using the walls as her support. Her vision hadn’t stabilized yet. Groaning in annoyance, she pulled her knife from the ground once her feet stopped floundering and her balance normalized. She didn’t know what to expect, but she made a wild guess –comparing her previous tasks- and couldn’t help but think about having to kill a human. The voice had called this place a Grave after all; and death, unfortunately, is not anonymous to graves.

She slowly walked toward the exit, her steps echoing gloomily in the narrow space. She was accustomed to the darkness by now. She had been in the darkness for a fair share of time. The darkness had haunted her, scared her with its stickiness and its unlimited depth, but now she could see it as nothing other than a phenomenon, as the opposite of light. If she could feel safe under the inspecting light then there was no need to feel naked in the darkness. If anything, darkness provided the perfect cover.

That doesn’t, however, mean that she had dropped her vigilance. She held the bone handle of her knife hard enough to turn her hand pale. She walked with bent knees, chest hunkered and both hands spread at a safe distance in front of her. She was yet to acknowledge her changes, but they served her perfectly, nonetheless.

She reached the exit and saw shadows twisting under torchlight like claws shaping up toward her. She hesitated at first and then kept onwards, walking past the threshold. She breathed in relief upon finding the new open chamber empty, as if expecting to be pounced upon by a monster hidden somewhere nearby. The Grave of past, she saw written on a tombstone used as a tile to cement a straight path forward in the dirt-filled chamber. The words were engraved into the grey stone, chiseled–most probably- to preserve the words against the toil of being stepped upon for an unknown amount of time. The grave is the moment -the next few tombstones read- empty for now, place within a body, and fill this un-holy ground. The words were all engraved, deep and heavy, and their tone: chilling. The tombstones must have looked different at the time of their creation, for they all had similarly aged, cracked and, eroded.

There was something wrong about his chamber. These tombstones and the torches they didn’t mingle very well with each other. Why put the tombstones into the floor? That’s not their place! And not the whole chamber was lit either. Only a portion of the chamber was under the torches conviction, the rest was shrouded in similar pitch blackness- like ink had been smothered in the other half of the chamber.

Ria looked into the darkness. There was an eerie stillness to the chamber, but when Ria really concentrated, she heard a sound. A wheezed groan, she heard. She wasn’t alone. She stepped forward to locate its source and an adjacent set of torches lit up on her side, bringing another section of the chamber in its temporary custody. A previous set of torches –the ones furthest from her- however, burned out, extinguishing upon sensing her departure from their range.

Tightening her grip around the bone handle of her knife, she steadily took forward another step and another set of torches lit and extinguished, keeping her surrounded in a circle of radiance, dissolving the rest of the space surrounding her into a void. The sound also grew slightly louder, slightly enchanting. It was painful to hear. How painful must have the pain been to bear for the bearer? She shivered as the sound of her heartbeats rose to audible degrees.

Something shuffled in the distance. A sense of foreboding hit her in the exact next moment. She stepped back but held the ground. Steeling her mind against anything which might be waiting for her, she took three continues step forward and found the source of the painful groaning.

She had faced a naked goblin and stood her ground against a coat wearing crocodile that could speak. She had traversed through the dirty shunned corridors of a sewer tunnel and had lived through the hurtful maiming of her own body. Those hadn’t been her choice. they had struck her without any foreboding and she had dealt with them as timely and efficiently as possible. Nothing, however, could have helped her prepare for what she saw in front of her.

“Nicky?” She said, stopped and squinted, then screamed, “NICKY, YOU…” and ran under the sound of torches glowing and extinguishing around her.

Nicky was her friend; her best friend. She was the one who took her along to parties and helped her meet people. She was the one who had forced her to give the world another chance and be a part of it. She was the one who had helped her meet her Ex-Jason; The only one who understood her truly. The only one who cared for her without asking anything in return? And the most important person of Ria’s life now lay in a pool of piss and blood, missing all of her limbs, with her abdomen swollen to the point of bursting and the flesh of her chest nibbled to bits and pieces. It was her, who had picked Ria up for clubbing one last time. It was her-

“Ria…” She froze hearing the weak whisper. Nicky’s bruised lips curled upward in a smile as her head twitched and faced her. Her eyes were open, but Ria saw no light in them. Her pupils were blown and wide.

“Ah! Where - are you – Ria? Why can’t I – see you? Aren’t you going to -turn on- the lights?”

Ria lost all strength in her legs and fell to the ground in front of Nicky. It can’t be real. It must be a dream. It must be! She was too stunned. The world suddenly didn’t feel so large anymore. The light she was so fond of felt constraining and crushing.

“Is it time?” Nicky lucidly asked. Her smile had never looked so hurtful, so sad. She was genuinely happy. Ria could feel it in her smile and in her words. It was as if Nicky didn’t know about her condition- Like she was in a trance so deep, so strong, that it had erased a part of her memories to keep her from breaking down completely.

“Are you here to- take me? Are we going clubbing? But it’s still so early! Look- I can’t even -get up.”

Nicky wasn’t bleeding from her wounds. They had mysteriously healed and closed; Just like Ria’s wounds had after eating the glowing fruit in the garden. The blood under her body hadn’t been expelled by her missing limbs; the only place still red on her body, was her crotch.

“A slap might -wake me- up. Why don’t you give me one?”

Ria touched her face with a trembling hand. Tears unknowingly had started flowing out of her eyes.

“It’s good that you are here, Ria. I was really scared, but I am not anymore. You know you came at the right time. Can you help me sit up?”

“Nicky… what happened to you?” Ria asked.

“What? Oh, you mean this?” Nicky said looking at her shoulder- unfazed at her missing arms. “Oh you know the party, I meet a guy there. You know me. I couldn’t resist him. He is a handsome person and so good at sex. God, I couldn’t resist him at all. He asked me to marry him, and I did. He asked me to feed my arms and limbs to his cousin from the second floor. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t say no to him. He’s a dream to look at. Anyways, help me up. Hurry up, it coming.”

“What is happening?”

“Don’t be surprised, okay. I… am pregnant. You are an aunt now. Here, push me from behind. Keep me raised. I think it’s coming.”

Nicky crunched hard -after Ria positioned her right- as if she had prior experience. Sweat trickled down her forehead as she moaned and groaned, pushing with all the strength she could muster from her broken body. And to Ria’s horror, her swollen abdomen convulsed and stretched. It peaked as if something was pushing from inside, and Nicky laughed tiredly, laboriously trying to push that thing out of her system.

“Come on baby. Come out!” She wheezed, shifting between crunching and breathing.

As Ria watched with a paling face and absolutely terrified of how to help Nicky, a small green hand poked out of Nicky’s crotch -covered in a mix of slime and blood- and curled its clawed fingers to form a fist.

“Yes, baby! Come on you can do it!” Nicky hissed as a shiver ran down Ria’s back and she almost baked away in horror when another similarly malnourished hand poked out of her crotch. They both clutched the sides of her hole and started pushing, to widen it.

“Yes! Yes!” Nicky screamed in glee and Ria screamed from behind her, when a green monster twice the size of a human baby slipped out of Nicky’s deflating abdomen and into the chamber- bringing along a deluge of blood, lining, and fluids. The monster didn’t cry. It didn’t look back. It simply started flailing its arms and wriggling away from the duo- one donning the smile of a mother and the other pale as a ghost and trembling from head to toe with Goosebumps erupting all over her body.

A door manifested at a short distance and the monster soon disappeared inside it. The door similarly vanished seconds later.

“Ria…” Nicky said looking at the emptiness which had swirled in place of the door. “Am I a monster?”

“NO-NO,” Ria yelled at her holding her shoulders with the strength of a vice, looking directly into her eyes. “You are not a monster! You are the best friend I could have ever asked for. You are my family. The only one I care for. The whole world can be monsters, but you are not. We are not.”

Nicky smiled. “I love you, you know.” Ria nodded.

“So kill me, alright.”

Ria didn’t reply.

“You can. I know you can. You are stronger than you know. You are definitely stronger than me. So kill me before I break down completely- before I completely give up… give up on dying too.”

They had first met in high school when some girls had tried to harass her. Ria had been ignoring their taunts as she had always ignored others. Then for some reason, while everyone else was busy laughing at her, Nicky had come to her rescue. She had never seen a girl pull out a knife and shove it inside another person’s mouth before. Those blondes ran faster than a cheetah after Nicky whispered something to the leader of their group. Everything after that had been pure bliss. Not only had her life changed for the better, but she had also found love; although they hadn’t stayed together for long.

“I-“ Ria whispered, noticing Nicky’s abdomen growing bigger in real-time. There was another monster growing inside her. Just how many time has she already gone through this? Why her? Why us?

“Please…” the voice came again, followed by a groan this time. Ria could almost imagine the monster growing inside her, eating her from the inside like a parasite- the cycle continuing until she was broken beyond repair. Ria spread her legs on the dirt ground and gently rested Nicky head on her lap.

“I’ll miss you Ria,” Nicky said holding the brightest smile she had ever seen her show.

Tears trickled down her face and fell on the cold ground, splattering in the air like the countless dreams they had shared with each other. She had never held anything close to the weight of the knife which she currently held. She delayed its fall for as long as her strength allowed after which it fell, soaking all of her strength. It plunged deep bringing a cascade of red, a sharp inhale and then, nothingness.

Ria sat there crouched next to Nicky body, her eyes staring and fingers rubbing the cheeks which had now lost all of their warmth. She hadn’t felt such loneliness in years.