Beast of Bugs

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He was waist deep in it. He waded through the immense, dry weight of it. It poured past him, smooth and slow, around his legs and through his clothes. It made an ungainly sound, like rotten oats rushing down a chute. It filled the air with a rocky, foul, choking smell. It flew up in small flakes, getting into his ears, his mouth, his tearing eyes. It smeared his face with brown flecks and smudges. It eroded his skin with sandy dryness. It chafed his arms and flayed his legs and burned his feet as he heaved his body through the swells and dips. It pained him, disgusted him.

Dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt.

That’s all that filled Alec’s mind as he swam through the sea full of dirt. Dry, lifeless. Dusty, choking. Weightless, heavy.

Dirt, dirt, dirt.

But the Tablet of 4612 was in here. Somewhere. The nugget in his mind twisted painfully, and he knew that it was here: either sliding over the pseudo-solid surface or sinking slowly into the soup. He could feel it through the expanse of dirt, pulsating. He kept paddling, ignoring the scratchy screams of pebbles and grains, and ignoring the fact that his feet had stopped touching the stone ground. Now he was suspended in it, swimming as if he were wading through wild honey, shoulders barely above the surface.

If not for the grainy complexion of the ocean and the relaxed speed of its waves, it’d look just like a normal sea. He could almost imagine himself swimming off the shores of his own homeland. He remembered sailing off through that very same sea, the Sundering Seas, away from his home forever. What was once his home, anyway. And the home he found after that was lost as well. Now he was trudging through a bottomless pit of dirt. It sucked the sweat from his very pores and formed cakey clumps on his hands. His toes clung uselessly to his crimson sandals, and he struggled to keep going with them on. With a silent farewell he let them go – his heart panged as his feet became dreadfully naked. Those sandals he had worn since childhood.

Time rolled by, slower than the currents. Alec wasn’t sure where he was going. He’d long ago lost track of his direction in this brown swampy landscape. The nugget in his head had grown confusingly silent. His lungs pressed desperately against the cramped walls of his chest. He fought the tide, hands seething and legs aching, but all that he could see was just another ridge of scree. His eyes scanned the whole horizon for something out of the ordinary – his Tablet’s telltale glow – but it was all just dirt, dirt, dirt…

Something. Alec paused. A different sound had entered his ears: a slow, rhythmic pounding; drums in the deep end. Like something far below him in the dirt was paddling just like he was, with hands far broader than his own.

Something alive? Or a just a natural quirk of the deeper currents, like the grander quirk of this endless sea?

A great thud snapped Alec out of his musings. The sea was bubbling at a round patch on the surface nearby, dirt flying about in a most frantic matter as if they’d come to life. Then the sea exploded as something arose from the sea.

Two dark shapes swung out of the dirt – limbs, followed by a black, undulating body that arose with a crash and a tumble, surfacing like a deep sea diver after a long swim. Alec could spot neither a head nor tail come out of the dirt – just the top of a blob covered in black, downy fur that sparkled in the sunlight. Its 2 limbs were ornamented with a pair of clawed hands, and its puffy fingers twitched sluggishly like eyes squinting into the pale sun. Alec just noticed that it had stopped raining, and through the murky clouds he could see a muted pinpoint of light that bathed this world of insanity in daylight.

The claws of this massive creature looked large and long enough to grab him and tear him limb from limb with ease.

But this animal didn’t seem to care about Alec. There was something else squirming about in its patch of dirt. He’d thought the waves were bubbling and flying about because of the creature’s ascension from the deep, but no – some of the grains of dirt were not grains of dirt at all, their movements not as random as the usual inert pebbles. Too darty, too purposeful. Insects that blended perfectly into the monotony of the ocean waves.

A trunk, long and thick, rose out of the dirt, bending and twisting like a stubby worm. The trunk protruded from what must be the animal’s chest. Fur ran all the way down its length, but at its puckered end the trunk was divided into many small tubes, as if the animal had got it stuck through a grinder.The creature’s arms sprawled across the dirt to keep its body afloat. Unlike a human, it would sink through the loose particles if it didn’t anchor itself. But just like an animal, such a thing would need to eat to sustain itself.

There were hundreds of those noodly tubes like bits of an exploding firework, and they all squirmed and groped about the broiling surface of dirt. If Alec squinted he could see those shinier grains of dirt jump and flee as the animal’s trunk glided by, as slow and smooth as the passing waves. It used its wide arms to round them in nearer, then the little noodles of its trunk went to work to suck them all in. Every little tube focused on its job, zipping from one little grain to the next, distinguishing the live ones from the dry, dusty ones.

While the giant mole creature continued its lunch with indulgent fervour, the insects continued to flee across the surface of the dirt. A couple skittered in Alec’s direction. Paddling closer, he prodded one of the little things with his finger. It stuck to him, smaller than a bead. It shone darkly like a hidden skin spot, and filaments stuck out of it like miniature paddles on an oval-shaped boat. They jutted out in a circle around the carapace, waving about like flags in the wind or anchoring the insect to his massive finger. It rolled about inquisitively in this huge new world, just as Alec was in this great dirt sea.

Then a lightning shock; abrupt pain consumed his finger and Alec shook the thing off. He screamed aloud.

The little bug bit me!

Alec scrambled away through the dirt, kicking up awful rocky sents in his fray. He’d better leave those bugs to the professional. But now the waves rolling through him began to toss and turn, faster than usual. A cold emotion entered Alec’s mind. He turned round, mid-stroke.

The monstrosity of fur and muscle lumbered right for him, tossing dirt in all directions as mighty claws pushed its massive bulk forwards like a fat orca. The animal had sensed him at last.

Lunch was over, it seemed, and supper had revealed itself.

This is a revised version of a story from 2 Feb 2023.