The Choice Is Yours
by Stacey Janssen

It stared off as just another normal day.

Nathanial had left the house early, kissing his wife, Julia, lightly on the cheek as she slept. Jogging had been part of his morning routine for ten years, ever since his doctor had told him that his health was in serious danger, and that it was start exercising or have a heart attack within the year. “Ultimately, the choice is yours,” the big man had said with a shrug.

So, Nathanial had chosen.

As he stepped outside, the cold air assaulted him as it did every morning, and as his muscles grew taut in the chilled air, he thought of how comfortable his bed would be right now, as he did every morning. And just like every morning, he shook off those thoughts and warmed up his muscles before his run.

Nathanial and his wife had lived in Big Bear for nearly fifteen years now, and while snow season on the mountain always forced him to take a different, safer route, his favorite path was the very same one that the cars took to get up to the city—large, secure rock face on one side, on the other, either a beautiful view or large trees in some places, but as Nathanial ran through these places, he felt as though he were the only person that existed.

This morning the streets were still wet. The rain had stopped hours ago, but the sun still refused to show its face. It wasn’t quite snow season yet, but the leaves were starting to turn, and Nathanial knew that he’d have to switch to his other route all too soon.

Some of the puddles on the ground were deeper than they appeared today. Already, Nathanial’s sweatpants were soaked to the knees from misjudging a few of them.

His lungs ached from the cold air and he longed once again for his warm bed—or at least his warm shower. Running was keeping his body temperature up for the most part, but he could still feel the cold air biting at his skin.

Seeing a very large puddle coming up —it was at least ten feet across—he began to veer to his right. He could have gone all the way around it, but decided instead that he would just cut through the shallower section—he was already soaked to the knees, after all, so as long as he didn’t run right through the middle of the thing, then he knew he wouldn’t be any worse off than he was already.

As his foot landed in the water, he felt the ground give a little under his weight in a way that he hadn’t felt before. Before he had time to really process what that might mean, his next step landed in the water and his whole body weight fell forward as his foot landed on nothing.

His body went under with a large splash and he immediately began waving his arms around in an attempt to grab onto something so that he could pull himself out. When they landed on nothing but more water, he forced himself to calm down—it was only a puddle, after all—and began treading water to keep himself afloat. As he looked, he saw that the asphalt was only a few feet beyond his reach. He began moving in that direction. He didn’t even have time to wonder how on earth a puddle in the middle of the road could swallow his entire body.

He reached out his arm, the road now inches from his fingertips, and something wrapped itself around his leg. He tried to pull his leg away, but the ropelike object only got tighter. He reached down to try to pull his leg free, but just as his hands wrapped around what felt like seaweed, another vine of it slithered up from the depths and around his arms. Struggling to twist himself free, he realized that he was being pulled down into the water—Some puddle this turned out to be, was his last thought before losing consciousness.

#

He was conscious of the dim light surrounding him before he opened his eyes. Shadows of figures moving around the room played across his eyelids. He heard hurried, hushed whispers coming from different parts of the room, all in the same language that was like nothing he had ever heard. It gave him the strange impression of somebody playing a recording backward, only it came across in a more pleasing way, not as gruff as he might have expected.

Had he been expecting anything, that was. Had he any idea of what to expect.

Slowly, it occurred to him to wonder things like where he was and how he’d gotten there. He remembered that he had been running, as he did every morning and that it hadn’t been raining, but the ground had been wet because it had rained the night before. Then there was a puddle—what about the puddle? He had run through it on the right, but then…

Wait, that wasn’t right. He had tried to run through it on the right, but instead he had… he had…

No.

His eyes almost flew open in shock as the memory filled his head and it was only with the sincerest effort that he managed to force them to stay closed. Had anyone been staring directly at his eyes, they surely would have noticed them twitching, but he didn’t sense that anyone was near him just right now.

He had fallen into the puddle. Fallen into it! A simple puddle of water that couldn’t possibly have been more than a few inches deep and he had fallen completely into it, as though there had been some huge gaping hole in the street that he had just conveniently missed on every one of the other thousand times that he had run along that road.

After falling, he had a memory of something pulling him down, but that was it. After that it was all black.

 

 

Was he dead? He couldn’t say for sure, but he had a pretty good idea that whichever afterlife his chosen path would end up taking him to, it wasn’t going to involve him lying in a dim room with his eyes closed, listening to people all around him speaking some sort of backward pig-latin gibberish. He’d always pictured it as an all-or-nothing sort of deal. Either put on your party hat or start up the barbeque—right there, right away, the second you’re through the door.

Ruling death out, though, how many options did that really leave him?

He became vaguely aware of pressure against his arms at his sides and he realized that they must be strapped there. He was suddenly aware of the same pressure across his chest, then across his forehead and finally he realized that his legs must be strapped down, too. He felt his heart begin to race inside his chest and he was afraid that they would be able to hear his heart quicken and know that he was awake—and what would they do then?

Silently, he held his breath and waited. The sounds all around him continued—the strange, backward-yet-pleasant dialect, the hushed and rushed voices, the sound of bodies moving about. It didn’t seem as though anybody had taken any special notice of him. He began to get the impression that they were waiting for him.

And then what?

A shadow fell in front of his eyes and he knew that someone was standing next to him, staring down at him. Realizing that he was still holding his breath, he let it out slowly—almost imperceptibly—so as not to arouse suspicion. The person continued to stand there, presumably just staring at him. Gazing out of curiosity? Waiting for him to make some sort of wrong move? About to discover if he made a tasty snack?

Finally the shadow moved and the person was gone.

All at once, Nathanial realized something that bothered him a great deal. His last memory was of being sucked under the water. Although he hadn’t bothered to look yet, he was certain that he was not under the water now.

So where the hell was he?

He strained his ears to listen for some clue, some sound, some anything that might give him any idea where he was. As he lay there, however, it seemed that the same sounds just kept going, over and over again, like a CD on repeat. If not for the fact that he could hear the sounds coming from different parts of the room and the fact that he could sense their presence, he would have thought that that was exactly what it was.

Well… what now?

What now indeed—that sure was the question. If he opened his eyes and saw what was going on around him, then the festivities—or whatever—would commence, very likely to Nathanial’s extreme discomfort. On the other hand, he couldn’t very well just sit there, could he?

Could he?

What exactly would happen if he just sat there, not ever moving, not ever giving any hint that he was awake? Would they just sit around him until they all died away or would they just get started without him being conscious at all?

He became aware that the figure had approached his left side again. He only had a moment to wonder what was going to happen before what felt like the entire world landed right in the middle of his stomach.

With a scream, his eyes shot open and he struggled against the restraints as his body insisted that he move immediately. All he could focus on was the intense need to breathe and the feeling that everything inside his body was about to be squeezed out of his person some way or another. Still screaming—though where he was getting the air to do so, he had no idea—he struggled to focus his eyes on whatever was currently flattening his gut. His eyes had flown open but they felt as though they were bulging out of his head, like one of those plastic balls that you could find at novelty stores which did just that. They couldn’t focus on anything, they could only pick up colors—gray and green and black, mostly.

Finally, he felt all his strength fading from him—he hadn’t been able to get a breath in what felt like a hundred years—and just as he thought he would lose consciousness, the world was rolled off of his gut. He heard it hit the floor with a loud thud! that shook the ground. Nathanial gasped in deep breaths of air, the pain in his stomach dulling. When he felt that his eyes might actually be of use to him, he opened them and looked to the right of him on the ground where he saw an object that he couldn’t identify. It looked similar to a very large rock, but it was definitely no rock—at least, it was like no rock that he’d ever seen.

Turning his eyes up to the ceiling, his mouth hung open in silent horror. He hadn’t been able to focus on anything when he’d first opened his eyes, but now he could see. Now he could see perfectly.

There were bodies. Suspended from ropes and hung upside-down, there were hundreds of bodies. No, Nathanial saw as he looked closer. Not even bodies, but pieces of bodies.

Most were tied at the feet, and the mangled torso hung from the legs, but that was it. Most didn’t have arms. None that he could see had heads. His eyes lowered to the wall, mostly so that he wouldn’t have to look at the rotting torsos above him, but immediately regretted it and screamed as he saw a wall of rotting faces staring back at him.

 

 

“What the hell is this place?” he screamed without even realizing that he’d done it. He writhed and convulsed beneath the straps that held him down, using every ounce of strength that he had to try to break free, to try to get out of whatever God-forsaken pit of hell that he had found himself in. “I only wanted to go for a run,” he whimpered, more to himself than to anyone else. His head felt as though there was something inside of it, trying to eat its way out. What if there is, he suddenly thought, but the thought left his head almost as quickly as it had entered. He found that all his thoughts were disconnected and it was getting so much harder for him to concentrate. His conscious mind vaguely acknowledged that the dull pain in his stomach had turned into an unidentifiable feeling of discomfort. He felt his eyes rolling in his head and forced them to focus on something that was not the ceiling or the wall. They came to rest on the person who had been standing next to him the entire time. As soon as his eyes locked on the face, he let out another scream.

Nathanial wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been expecting, but he knew that at least part of him had expected it to at least resemble something human, although after having seen what hung from the ceiling and what was mounted on the walls, he wasn’t really sure why.

The person—no… the creature—in front of him looked like nothing that he’d ever seen before. There was no definite shape to it—at least, not one that Nathanial could see. It had tentacle-like things—more than he could count, but he’d guess for sure at least fifty, maybe even twice that—all knotted up and tangled and twisted together where its body really ought to have been. They were constantly moving underneath of it and around it and reminded him vaguely of the way he’d always seen Medusa’s head of snakes depicted. Above the tentacles rested a spherical greenish gray appendage that split down the center to reveal rows of large, pointed teeth. The tentacles—only they weren’t quite tentacles, Nathanial knew—were able to position themselves so that the open mouth on the head would be facing him, and consequently that the creature could look at him.

Because its eye was inside its mouth.

One of the things that weren’t quite tentacles raised in the air and Nathanial was able to get a better look at it—covered with a charcoal-gray fur on the outer side and a sticky-looking sort of coating lined the inside. All up and down the appendage, sharp nails extended and retracted, much like those of a cat. The arm reached toward his stomach and the head leaned forward as though inspecting something.

Nathanial realized that the feeling in his stomach was more than just unpleasant now—it was starting to grow once again into actual pain. He turned his eyes down toward his stomach and they immediately rolled back up into his head as he let out a loud groan. He dropped his eyes to the right of him just to confirm what he already knew. Sure enough, the large rock-like thing that had been sitting on his stomach had been one of the things that was standing next to him—a female, presumably—and it had curled its arms all around itself as it had been on top of him, apparently to provide a bit of privacy as she ate part of his stomach away and did her business. Now she lay on the floor beside him, her arms sprawled and unwound from her body. She appeared exhausted.

Drawing his eyes back to his stomach, Nathanial groaned again as hundreds of marble-sized green balls that could only be eggs shook and jumped and chittered as they incubated inside of his gut. Feeling his gorge rising, yet knowing there was no place for it to go, he tried to force himself to think of anything that might settle his stomach.

How long would it take for the eggs to hatch? What would happen when they did? He could see that they were already rising up above his stomach—all that he’d been feeling must have been their growth—but how long did he have? An hour? Two? Fifteen minutes?

The large eye of the creature beside him peered out at him from between the sharp teeth. It’s eyes locked with Nathanial’s and held there for what seemed like a very long time, but may have only been a second, then it spoke in that backward melodious language and two more of the creatures came and stood beside it, appearing to be awaiting orders. The first spoke again and the other two slithered off in a direction beyond Nathanial’s line of sight.

This isn’t real, he realized. This isn’t happening. It can’t possibly be happening because this is just some crazy shit, and crazy shit doesn’t happen in real life. Crazy shit happens in those movies, the ones I pay eighteen dollars just for my wife and I to get into, and it happens in those books my wife reads, by that Kong fella, or Crown, or whatever the hell his name is. This kind of crazy shit just does not happen in the real world! I did not fall into a puddle in the road because that’s not possible. I am not here. There are not God-knows-what eggs incubating in my stomach. I’m going to close my eyes and focus really hard—all my strength and energy—and when I open my eyes, I’m going to be lying in bed next to my wife. Either that, or out cold on the fucking concrete, but hell, even that would be welcome over this shit!

He shut his eyes as tight as he could, repeating the words over and over like a mantra inside his head. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to block out all physical sensations so that they wouldn’t hold him back and keep him in the dream. After he felt that an acceptable amount of time had passed, he opened his eyes.

He was still in the cave.

At least now he had stopped screaming long enough to see that it was a cave. That brought his mind back around to the question of how he had gone down into the water and ended there.

A strange sense of calm disconnectedness had settled over him. His eyes floated back to the ceiling, in case he had missed something among all the bodies—he hadn’t really let his eyes linger very long after seeing what had been up there the first time—and, seeing nothing upon closer inspection, ran his eyes along the walls that he could see. Still seeing nothing, he found his eyes drawn to the floor beneath the wall on his right, out beyond the creature that appeared to still be resting.

It was a pool of water.

The lights coming from deep below the surface gave Nathanial the idea that that was where these creatures primarily lived, and that he had been brought into some ceremonial room, who knew how far away from where they had originally picked him up—or down, as it were. Lucky me, he thought, the disconnected feeling flowing through his whole body.

 

 

Time passed. He wasn’t sure how much and he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know. He was having a hard time getting his mind to focus but eventually decided that it was probably better that way.

Finally, the two creatures that had been sent away returned, carrying what resembled a two-person saw between them.

Distantly, as though from some other world, he knew what it was for. They stood behind the creature that appeared to be the leader and waited for further instruction.

The feeling in his stomach had grown quite a bit and when he looked down toward his gut, he saw that so had the eggs there. They were now just a bit larger than golf balls, and he could see through the green gel-like coating which served as their outer protection. They appeared to have taken most of the shape of the larger creatures, and Nathanial suspected that they were just about ready to break out.

He wondered what time it was and if his wife was worried about him yet.

Movement near his gut brought him back into the present. One of the creatures near the top of the pile of eggs was working its way out of the thick gel layer, one arm at a time. Nathanial watched with fascination as it pushed and pulled and forced its way through, then clumsily made its way toward his chest.

Then its tooth-filled head split down the middle and dived into his flesh.

The disconnected feeling fell away immediately and a scream began to build inside his throat as he saw the other eggs being torn through, as the other ugly little fucks found their way out of the incubator that had been his stomach and off to some other area of his body to feed.

His skin was on fire. The muscles twitched in painful spasms, not much liking being chewed on.

Finally, when the tiny creatures covered his body, the scream that had been building in his throat finally escaped, and once it had, it seemed that it might never stop.

His brain was on fire—it didn’t make sense and it hurt to think about; everything that was happening was very simply not possible.

But it was. Not only possible, but happening.

The two creatures carrying the item that resembled a saw came around behind him and stood on either side of him. He welcomed what they brought to him, as he was sure that the hundreds that had come before him had—death was far superior to even attempting to deal with what was happening to him. Physically, he had maybe a small chance of recovering, but he knew that mentally, he never would. It was too far-fetched to ever come to terms with.

They stood on either side of him, staring down at him and waiting. The words of his doctor from ten years ago once again flashed through his head. As he looked into the eyes staring at him, he realized that they were giving him that same message. The choice was his.

He nodded as vigorously as was possible with his head restrained by the strap. The blade was brought down across his neck and then the world was black.

Ultimately, the choice is yours.

So, Nathanial had chosen.