What Judas Wrote #2

Judas does not turn on the lights when he gets home to his studio apartment. He throws his things onto his bed, peels off his black hoodie after being uncomfortably warm all day, and collapses into the chair that faces his desk. Not many thoughts run through his head at this time. This is a typical afternoon for Judas after a day of being out. After running on autopilot to get through the anxiety-inducing encounters, he has a hard time staying in the moment. He stares at the ceiling with a face of complete indifference, as if to hide whatever he’s feeling from whoever may be watching — or maybe just himself. 

Our subject looks down slowly at a black laptop screen, hardly outlined in the darkness. Unsure why, he peels the curtains back, revealing only a small amount of light from the setting sun. His eyes already adjusted to the darkness, the red sky dribbles into the room, filling the black with a slightly warm shade. When he does turn on the computer, the bright white page that was waiting for him hurts his eyes, yet he does not flinch. He gets to work, starting with the title;

The Fields of Contusion

He can’t tell anymore whether the fields are getting to his head or that he’s just acclimating. When did his standards for sustenance change? Despite not knowing where they come from, he still refuses to suck the marrow out of the finger bones that jut through the bruised flesh floor of the hills that slowly move across the land, but the trees made of twisted, yellow bones, specifically the branches that fruit limbs of unidentifiable creatures, are fair game. He remembered his first crossed line were the beetle-sized creatures that look like quivering blood clots. They reminded him the least of humans. Finishing his bland, juicy, cooked limb, he packs up and continues his journey.

He was especially unmotivated today. He got up long after the large eye in the roof of this world opened. It still seemed to stare only at him. The eye was already red and bloodshot from not having closed or blinked all day, making the bloody biome an even darker shade of red. Night, or what he referred to as night, was approaching, yet he still decided to try to make some progress. Every day he wondered why the eye still took so much interest in him, even after all this time. All this time with no idea how to leave this cursed land.

His hope grew grim and ever more so grim every day. His shoes were already starting to fall apart. He decided a while ago that he would save his shoes for expanses of veins swimming in and out of the ground, often protected by tiny bone splinters covered in long dried blood. Thus, he walked barefoot across the never-ending skinless flesh. Sometimes, on bad days, he puts his shoes on anyway. The warm chunky pus that pools out of gross sacks in the ground that he sometimes stumbled into couldn’t be dealt with easily by even the bravest. The hair-hidden pits that suck on your foot aren’t pleasant either.

The eye closed slowly over the course of probably an hour as smaller eyes across the ceiling began opening up. They gave off a lot less light than the big one, but he knew he wasn’t tired enough to sit still. He’s been doing this more and more recently; walking until he is too tired to wallow in his sorrow. This has resulted in a few more cuts than normal, as he stumbles across an especially sharp bone or tooth in the ground. Instead of scabbing, these wounds grow a plate of bone over, falling off like a loose tooth once healed. Originally, he worried they might have some terrible long-term effects. Now, he doesn’t care.

Snapping out of his dissociation, he barely stops before a cliffside. If the bone edge wasn’t eroded enough to show white through the red darkness, he would have fallen. Swaying in place, he wondered what to do. Who knows how far around the cliff edge goes? He’d rather die than go in circles or backtrack. He peered over. Thick locks of hair covered the entire cliffside — they could almost certainly be used to climb down. The issue, though, is he doesn’t even know how far down it goes or if there is even solid ground at the bottom, it was too dark to tell. He wasn’t quite tired yet but decided he wouldn’t die today, and began setting up camp.

Typically, the night creatures left him alone as long as he remained quiet, mistaking him and his camp for random features along the flesh surface. Tonight, however, he sobbed liberally. Quiet, but thorough. He snapped out of it when he heard noise. Rattling. Squeezing through the opening in his tent was a bony creature. It peered into his eyes before either moved, what seemed to be its spine quivered, lightly knocking against ribs attached from the sides of the skull. The only soft material was a brain seen only through the eye sockets and a heart strung along behind by a cord also attached to the brain. He pounced first, grabbing the thing by its head and ran outside. It shook violently in his hands but he held tight. He stomped on the heart, the blood covering his foot but soaking quickly into the tender anatomy below, before whipping it off the nearby cliff. He had a slight realization at that moment; his apathy only left in place of fear.

Returning to his tent, he started his grim mantra that he does silently every night before giving way to unconsciousness. He doesn’t remember when he started or why, nor does he know why he insists on it being so grim every time, yet he does it all the same. He justifies that it helps ground him. This land of blood and bone does not care. For such a warm womb, I feel so far from any love or mother. What horror is around the corner? What deeper bottom lies at the foot of this plateau? How much longer can I drink blood, clots filtered through my torn clothes? When will I become just another monster, searching this land for the one thing it has in abundance? I fear what would happen should I die in this place. I fear more the lengths I will go to not.

Judas takes only a couple seconds to reflect on his piece. He does not edit. He does not intend to continue the story. He does not intend to read it again. He closes his laptop and pushes it to the end of the desk. The tired typist stretches his arms and legs before cradling his head on the desk. Gross, he thinks, drifting off.