#judgmentrush o1

     He’d hardly the chance to move much after the announcement. It felt as though the air had suddenly become suffocating, every breath drawn furthering that restrictive feeling burning his lungs. He could hear the shuffling of feet, watch the dancing of shadows race past against brick walls, the stir of chaos only steps away from the shadows he’d taken refuge in. Sweat, spittle, and tears pooled against the concrete. Flashes of heat - then chills - then numbness, riding in unrelenting waves bringing spasms with.

     A month’s worth of slow brewing mutations had all but suddenly began returning at once. He hadn’t noticed it before... Or maybe he’d simply ignored it. The high cruelly gifted from those pulsating mushrooms - those addictive cravings had easily overshadowed worries and rational thinking, yet now it seemed as though the world had decided to punish him for it. 

     Another overpowering convulsion throws him to his side, body thrashing despite all feeble attempts to curl into a fetal position. Soft wheezes drowned out by those harrowing sounds beyond the alleyway. He can feel a scream brewing. Wet gurgling being all he could muster before the shakes - the sweats - the unfathomable fever... Stops.

     And just as sudden, he finds himself able to breathe again. Heavy gasps - a hoarse cough - rattling his body as strength returns with every breath. By the time his body finds itself swaying upright, whatever had overwhelmed felt more a distant memory than any other.

     There was a minute moment of disconnect after that. One moment, his mind had recalled how he’d shambled weakly out from the darkness pooling between towering buildings, and the next he’d found himself stumbling down a road he’d no memory of. Perhaps it was some kind of safety buffer - a weird and unpleasant way for the human mind to cope with such drastic changes - it certainly felt like a fitting theory momentarily.

     But nothing conjured in his rattled mind could explain how or whom had returned his belongings. Bruised fingers rifled through a worn sack, finding every last bit of scrap and every poorly taped together weapon all in place. It was both instinct and fear that drove him to carry the pistol in his hold, the very same he’d wasted no time in firing once the moment tired eyes caught sight of red.

There’s a thing down the road.

It is not a beast or a man.

I don’t know what it is. I can’t understand what it is. I don’t want to understand what it is.

Yet I had foolishly fired in its general direction despite no such apparent aggression or even the plausibility of its knowing of my existence. If what my eyes had perceived from one mere glimpse is to be true... If that really is Śmierć coated in red...