My hand is outstretched and even though a jungle appears in front of me, I don’t say anything. I refuse to acknowledge it.

Because it can only mean one thing.

That my father is wrong. That the concussion isn’t mild. And today isn’t just a bad day, it's the worst day.

I don't say anything. Because for a second, I thought he was proud. He called me Son. And I want to hold onto that moment just a little bit longer - a moment where he believed I was fine. That I was strong enough. That I was going to be alright.

So I close my eyes against the towering trees, their widely woven branches, the thick foliage that swallows the sun, the long vines that twist and hang to listen - for the sounds of home. My ears stretch for the ticking of that grandfather clock. The hmmm of a kitchen fan.

My mother. Humming.

But I hear whoops and calls of birds, their feathered chirrups. The bays and and barks of beasts I've never heard before, whoops that worry my ears more by the moment.

Already the hot, heavy air licks my back and sends a trickle of sweat, making my pits balmy. I smell the strange pollen of wickedly real flowers too wild for any walkway.

It doesn't fade.

So I open my mouth to say the words, finally forced to acknowledge out loud, and admit -

Weak.

“Something’s wrong. I’m not fine.”

So many times I’ve choked them back, swallowed them, as I chewed on the laughter. Tasted the pain.

Now it's too late…

My brain explodes - I open my eyes to the end.

The hallucination of the jungle is just the backdrop. My vision is lacerated with layers of color. Each varying hue a dart soaring through my sclera, tearing through sight and sanity.

Every sense becomes inundated as I expire into eternity, inconceivable sensations saturate me in a slow sickness, my mind is flicked like a coin, sent spinning across the scenery.

Some I understand - the smell of salt water forced up my nose on a wave of cut grass, the taste of peaches late in the summer, the sound of moonlight splashing across a stream.

When it becomes impossibilities that simmer my senses into confusion past disbelief, I'm forced to lick tears off an angels eye, take huge spoonfuls of sadness from the dustbowl as I choke on crystalized catharsis.

Symbols. Thoughts. Ideas. Memories. Locked in my brain - released. No, battering down the door of my thoughts, forcing me to see -

All of existence.

It swirls in a nebula before being strained through my mind, like the thoughts of God. I only know they are bigger than me, by how much?

The coin slows and each new face offers a chance of comprehension as pieces of the familiar begin to coagulate and pull together - a running banner of sanity to carry me out of the schizophrenic.

DGHAPIDNG:LKSNG{OIDN*&FNIAFOINEAS(* Analyzing...Language...English...Fail...Fail...Fail....Fail...Auditory...Visual...Fail...Fail...Systems...Compiling Communication Module

And then the coin stops - balancing on it’s edge and I see the face of it.

My face.

YOU HAVE BEEN TRANSPORTED. YOU HAVE TAKEN THE FIRST STEP ON THE PATH OF ASCENSION.

SURVIVE AND ARISE.

FAIL AND BE FORGOTTEN.

And the coin, my existence starts to fall over me, crushing through me.

Scanning...Modulating...Converting...Calculating...Imperial System Measurements Converting...Converting...Current Stats, Equipment, and Abilities...Analyzing...Analyzing...Human. Male. Adult. Weight:135. Height: 5'3. Name: Cody James Abbot. Psychological Profile Complete. Physical Profile Complete. Historical Profile Complete. Value Analysis Complete. Recent History Complete. Calculating Skills... Motor Skills - Insufficient. Practical Skills - Insufficient. Social Skills - insufficient....Sampling...Rebalancing...Plotting...Insufficient Data...Projecting...Insufficient Data...Wild Card Estimate - 99.999126...New Location...New Species...New Organism...Comparing...Variables...Compiling...

All my value, all my worth, the sum total -

SUMMARY COMPLETE:

Strength: 1

Vitality: 2

Endurance: 1

Agility: 2

Dexterity: 2

Perception: 1

Wisdom: Incompatible...error.

Intelligence: Incompatible...error.

Health: 20

Mana: Null

Stamina: 10

Skills:

Null

Abilities:

Null

Analysis Complete - Summary Result: Failure

Death: Imminent

Insufficient.

Failure.

Like always.

I fall face dawn. Tails.

Death. Imminent. I lose.

System Analysis Complete.

Message:

Welcome, Cody Abbot-

You have entered a Basic Dungeon. You are ineligible to participate due to insufficient status, because the System lacked the data on your species to reject your transfer, you will be upgraded to the minimum projected success rate for entry - 1%.

Congratulations!

Current Total Stats: 9

Stats Awarded: 31

DUNGEON DIFFICULTY: Basic. Extra rewards and opportunities available!

Inventory: Available

Wallet: Available

Store: Available

Upgrading Physiology...Generating Profile...Please Wait...

I feel a cramp, a small twist in my core at first but it spreads, writhing snakes escaping the basket of my body forcing me to spasms and then I’m bouncing, tearing across the ground like a puppet in the hands of a hyperactive child.

My brain bubbles and fizzes, a red bull poured over mentos, the wild experience expands like a caustic volcano and the last of my sanity explodes out before I’m left empty.

System Upgrade Tested And Complete...Nutritional Imbalances Corrected...Sanitation Process Complete...Psychological Trauma Nullified...Modesty Barrier Adjusted...Human Database Expanded...Language Database Expanded...Sensory Database Expanded...

Slowly, the iron filings of my ground lost sanity are slowly pulled back into my mind, small splinters of understanding and meaning to form a fuzzy whole. I understand what’s occurred, even as the terror, the invasion and forced transformation slips away, forgotten.

“Ah. Oh, oh…that was horrible," I whisper, “Thank you?"

Overview: Cody Abbot

Vitality: 5

Strength: 5

Endurance: 5

Agility: 5

Dexterity: 5

Perception: 5

Wisdom: 5

Intelligence: 5

Health: 50

Regen Per Minute: 5%

Mana: 50

Regen Per Minute: 5%

Stamina: 50

Regen Per Minute: 5%

Skills:

Null

Abilities:

Null

Inventory: Empty

Wallet: Empty

Store: Available

What's left is a summary, and even that fades into a portrait - a sad reminder of how lost I always feel, as the mask finally slipped when I entered the jungle.

Dungeon Mode: Basic Dungeon! Seventy-two hours. (72:00)

Reward: Choose One - Item, Skill, Ability, Pack of Six Full Restore Potions, Three Stat Points, Genetic Enhancement, Neural Enhancement.

And then an hourglass forms in the other corner, an old glass container slipping fine sand already as I look as the remainder of the latest concept - I hardly notice these small changes compared to:

I feel the straps of my backpack, I feel them, looking across the jungle floor expecting to see it littered with books and supplies to explain the change, but it's whole. Just not heavy - no longer a burden.

I look at my hands, my arms, expecting to see them bulging with strength to explain my ease. But there’s no difference. I'm no bigger than before, and I can detect no change.

Not from sight alone, I realize, but as I open and close my grip I feel like I’m grasping potential - squeezing it. That my small muscles twist like tight cables to move the machinery of my hands.

That even my soft breath has the stirrings of a storm. I feel my gym clothes against my slight frame like a sheet laid over a motorcycle instead of the bicycle I rode here on. While it's no muscle car -

Even Brandon’s musky odor was purged from the cloth, the absence of his pungent victory no longer taunted me, my head was clear and my black eye now unblemished, I find myself glaring at the indignant memory - instead of turning away like normal.

As he looms across the ring from me -

Remembrance doesn't float like a ghost on the wisps of laughter. It's as clear as a movie, paused for my purview, I find myself replaying the moment.

Looking up again I see every muscle and bulge across the body before I meet his eyes. They're blue, like mine...not brown and flat like I'd imagined, somehow. And even though they're filled with hunger...

Challenge.

As he squares across me, still brutal and hard as a cocked gun with me in his sights, I search for the crude and callous arrogance, wait to feel it again as we -

Slam.

The gloating, as he hands me my humiliation, then rubs it in.

Except that didn't happen, I realize. He doesn't gloat. He whispered.

The realization hit me harder than he did. That I'd been so used to people bullying me, so used to their ridicule, that I hadn't even realized when it wasn't happening. Because Brandon was so much bigger and stronger, had so much skill -

Of course he would beat me. Should he have let me win?

How humiliating. How shameful. He didn't have to try, not to beat me. I was insulted he came at me 100, that he trounced me. I thought it was an insult.

That he treated me like I actually had a chance?

Respect.

And when he poked and pinched. In the exertion and excitement. If it bothered me, why didn't I tap?

I wanted to search for more, to understand what else I had missed as my mind buzzed with so many questions, so many thoughts. But I found my focus pulled outward - because of the buzzing.

It tickled my awareness, the hairs of my arms standing up in electric excitement at the immediacy.

It buzzed like a bee?

I throw open the windows of my perception and a green flit is swooping down at me, a curveball for my nose. I throw my hand up, swatting it.

Contact, a sharpness that sticks fast instead of bouncing away, a stab of ouch before raw agony is pumped inside my hand -

I scream.

My fingers convulse.

And all of existence melts into suffering, held within the palm of my hand like molten hell.

Damage: -3 HP. You have been Poisoned. -1 HP every three seconds.

Never. Never.

NOW.

That is pain. No past. No future.

NOW!

I fling out my arm and shriek at it. I moan a screeching, slandering whimper. I see the path and the wings flipping and flutter, fanning the violation and slicing my palm like paper.

It’s just kisses. Tickles to the terror already there.

My hand swings itself to escape because my mind can't move, something automatic climbs over and takes control as my hand spasms, convulses and locks into an unwanted prison around us both, the bug and I, trapped by the pain in my hand.

It stings again!

Not worse, It can't, just - more - more - more - MORE! PAIN!

Damage: -3 HP. You have been Poisoned. -2HP every three seconds from all poisons.

Only a shred of self can see through the anguish, can watch as my left fist comets into my right. My blurred vision is filled with the thrashing path of my spastic applause, at how such a small thing. Such a little guy.

Can contain more suffering than I’d known to exist in all the world.

-2HP.

The punches that crack the bones of my knuckles and tears off skin and nail are just a massage, a soft manicure with as little meaning or importance as the -1 HP’s that accompany it.

All the messages that sprinkle my conscious with facts are meaningless to the flood of anguish.

You have killed a Green Acid Wing. 3 Coin Reward. Congratulations!

Clink! Clink! Clink!

-2 HP.

I bend over and follow the stream of vomit that gushes to the ground, nothing of life can reach me except the pain. The buzz. The promise of more.

-2HP

It's the same drunk fool that drives my body - locked into the misery - surprised there's more here with me then just a broken mind. I'm a frightened failure that would lick deaths boots for absolution, and I can only watch as I go thrashing and crashing through the growth.

-2 HP

I’m digging, my shoes lost to twisting kicks and spasms while I gallop and flop, scoot and crawl across the ground - one limb held away. My mind is like a rubber band stretched too tight, my body two popsicle sticks.

-2HP

Buzzzzzzzzz!

It swarms around me through the retreat. Further, faster. Trees that I slam into become diving platforms, Hanging vines that tangle become life lines as I pull myself across the ground, grab and spin until it breaks and it drops me -

-2HP

Finally I tumble, slipping and tripping through a gap, sliding down a washed out ravine that collapses in my haste. I drop beneath its overhang - Expended, I can't run, can barely breath.

I can only hide.

-2HP

I curl up under my backpack, clutching at my hand. Trying to hide it from another bite. Trying to keep every part of me from being -

Tap! Tap!

Buzzzzzzz!

-2HP

Still it threatens, and I can’t escape - it’s already inside me.

I can't bare to look at it, too afraid of what I'll see, it's not possible for a hand to remain. Not when it feels like splintered bones combing the devils beard.

Buzzz

-2HP

A part of me realizes I'm dying and I want to wave at death, invite him over. I look for some thread of joy, some reason. Any small comfort that could make holding on one more second.

Worth it.

I reach inside, reach through my memories for comfort. As easily as opening the freezer and reaching for a bag of frozen peas - for comfort.

Except it's empty - empty of everything, except more pain.

Because how long have I been running from it?

I didn't notice I'd left everything else behind.

And still it always managed to find me.

Now I'm empty. It's all that's left.

A Dungeon. The Jungle. Bugs.

No future hopes and dreams.

No past triumphs to cheer.

Just the worst day.

-2 HP. Today.

And pain.