When he woke Myrio’s head ached. His immediate attempts to move his body were hindered by a stabbing soreness throughout his muscles and the fact that he was still stuck in a hole barely large enough for him to curl up in. His hands felt around the confines of his nest to locate the opening, he was still in total darkness after all. They found the opening and Myrio breathed a sigh of relief that he had not been buried. He reached out of his little hideaway hole and his fingers made contact with the hard outer shell of the Den’s inhabitant. It was just barely warmer than the surrounding dirt. Otherwise it had no lifelike qualities. No softness, no motion. He recoiled immediately, but there was no response to his touch. The beast seemed to be asleep, or at least inactive. It’s bulky coiled body took up most of the space in the main den chamber and blocked the opening to Myrio’s little nest. He was stuck in place for now.
At the very least, he was granted an opportunity to really think for the first time since he’d awoken in this new world. Despite his aching body, the dirt was not uncomfortable and the den was pleasantly cool. He took the time to lay, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, and pondered his situation. For now, he concerned himself with the centipede. It had not yet eaten him, but that could change at any time. If he was going to escape that grisly fate, he needed to do it soon. The den was deep, but not so deep he couldn’t climb out of it, even in his current state. The centipede had to leave sometime, right? Though he realized he didn’t actually know that. It could be days or weeks before the thing awoke, maybe years! How could he be certain about anything with such an alien creature? He racked his brain for any information he might have learned about centipedes as a child but found nothing. They had always just been curious little creepy crawlies in the dirt of the playground. He had watched them as a child but knew little about their biology. Besides, who knew if that knowledge would even carry over to a goliath descendent like this. His anxiety mounted and he made an attempt to quell it. If this thing did decide to eat him or starve him or bury him... there was nothing he could do. His only option was to wait and seize any opportunity presented to him.
He placed his hands on his belly and gasped in horror as they felt its shape. It bulged outward, tightly filled with eggs. In the heat of all that had happened, Myrio had not fully realized what had been done to him. Now though, he had no delusions about what stretched his innards. That thing had laid eggs in him. His breathing quickened as he was overwhelmed with nightmarish visions of what this meant for him. Would the eggs hatch and eat him from the inside out? Would they burst out of his stomach like a horror film? He began to press down on his stomach in an attempt to push them out, but his bulging belly stayed firm, filled with a thick fluid to keep things in place. The eggs would not budge.
His panic was interrupted by the stirring of the beast beside him. He froze, terrified that he might have woken the thing. Was it angry at him for trying to expel the eggs? He stayed completely still, eyes staring helplessly into the darkness, listening to chitin scrape and shift, the sound of a multitude of legs stabbing into the dirt. When sounds grew distant Myrio realized the centipede was climbing up and out of the burrow. It was leaving.
He remained still for several minutes after that. He could hear no sign of the beast but was still hesitant to move. What if it was waiting for him just outside the burrow? What if it was a cruel trap? He remained paralyzed with fear for another few minutes and still heard no sound. Realizing that this was perhaps the only opportunity to escape he would get, he forced himself to move. It was painful and laborious to even pull himself out of his little hole, but now that he had started, he had to move fast. The monster could return any moment. He moved his arms and legs deliberatively, clenching his teeth through the pain. The eggs inside him were bearable laying still, but any movement emphasized just how unnatural it was to have all those things stuck up in his intestines. Still he pushed on, determined to get out. His thoughts faded away and he became singularly focused on his goal. Left arm, right leg, right arm, left leg, commanding his limbs to drag him up further towards the entrance. His crawl was slow but he did not stop. Every ounce of strength left in him drove him towards the light at the end of the tunnel, literally. He could feel the movement of air from above and see the dim glow of the opening. He was a scrawny boy with little strength to speak of, but he had the particular mental and physical aptitudes that enabled him to endure just about anything. It was why he was selected as one of the candidates to jettison into the future as one last desperate hope for survival. Their plan for humanity had failed, but Myrio had still ended up here in the new world. Perhaps he would survive, even now.
He felt the faintest glimmer of hope as he pulled his ailing body into the moonlight above. It was night now. He had no way of knowing how long he’d slept but it felt like it had been a while. The primal call of sleep tugged at him now. He let his body rest, laying beside the den entrance for a mere moment and already was tempted to shut his eyes and return to blissful oblivion. But he couldn’t. He had to keep moving. Now that he was out of the den, he could stand. His legs shook terribly at first, threatening to topple him, but he pushed through the first few steps and found his balance, gaining speed as he pressed on. He looked down at his pregnant belly, sticking out and adding an awkward weight to his front. Terrible images of young centipedes eating their way towards his heart filled his mind. He tried to calm himself. All he needed to do way get a safe distance away, find somewhere to hide, and he could then find a way to get the eggs out.
And then what?
The question occurred to him like a wrecking ball occurs to a brick wall. He looked up from the ground in front of him to the horizon. A vast plain bathed in moonlight, sparse spindly trees, the lonely edifice of some mountains, and little else. There were no cities, no roads, no other people. He couldn’t even see animal life. He was utterly alone. He had been so focused on the immediate danger of the centipede that he’d forgotten about the real reason he had to despair. He was alone, for all he knew the last human alive, in a cold uncaring unfamiliar world. There was no one waiting for him, there was no one to console him, no one even to acknowledge his existence. The realization broke him. He clutched his full stomach, tears forming in his eyes as he began to whip his head around, scanning the desert in all directions for anything! Anything to give him any hope that he wasn’t alone here.
“Please,” he croaked, the sound of the word strained and feeble. The plea of a dying animal to an uncaring god.
He fell to his knees and wept. He had cried of shock when he first awoke, of pain in the den of the centipede. But now he wept more sorrowfully than ever. He cried tears of loneliness. He howled and wailed into the night. His fingers clawed at his thighs and the dirt. His drool ran down his chin and his body convulsed. He wanted to be held and comforted. He wanted to hear kind words... or any words. But he would have none of those things ever again. He did not remember many people from before the hibernation. He’d led a lonely life, even then. But now, in this moment of despair, he remembered his mother. The image of her with soft brown hair and large gentle eyes exactly like his own. He wailed for her, longing for her touch and her warmth. But she was gone forever.
“I love you I love you I love you I love you,” he said feverishly, praying to a memory, as if it might summon her to him.
He wept until he could weep no longer and then he fell into the dirt. He had made it about 100 yards from the den.
Time passed before he saw the movement in the distance. The centipede with its upper body raised, hurtling towards him at maximum speed. He stared at it, watching it approach until its furious hissing and clicking could be heard. He did not move. He had nowhere to go.
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