Chereads / Saint Christopher's Belly / Chapter 35 - Rei: Part One

Chapter 35 - Rei: Part One

Faint in appearance, then obnoxious in vibrance, the blue color of water surrounded Fausto. Above him was the smooth crashing of waves, like a child being baptized or a person without the knowledge of swimming, all he can do is look. The beautiful outlines of each individual dissected patterns of water come colliding and becoming as one. "Where am I?", Fausto wondered to himself. "Did I drown?", he whispers to himself. Although the thought of dying was something that has haunted Fausto in those late nights of restless moving about in his bed, the idea now, dying slowly at the bottom of a body of water, seemed calm and fitting. He has finally had enough of all these peculiar occurrences, where now, struggling to return home or the idea of coming back to something that resembled a comfort, "What was the point?", he thought. "At the bottom of the sea. Looking at the beautiful tides over my head, all my worries are gone. I am neither dead nor alive. I am just", calls out a voice.

Fausto just stays motionless watching the waves above him, the voice murmurs softly behind him, "Stay down here with me, it is too hard to be alive: to be human. Hear my soft voice and know that I am your only true chance of salvation. Stay here and I would nurse you of the ill that the world has caused upon you. Mother will care for you..."

"But what about everyone? Paul? Alora? John? Rachel?"

Slowly, Fausto feels a wriggle moving and wrapping around his leg. The smooth sailing of the ocean begins to turn violent. "Do not reject the warmth of mother's love!", the voice screeches out. Fauso looks down at his leg and sees that a dark mass of some kind of flesh trying to ensnare his leg. He quickly tries to grab it but find that the tentacle like object is covered with sharp scales, causing him to cut the palms of his hands. The blood floats gently around Fausto as he turns around to see that more of those things are coming from underneath him.

He begins to thrash around, trying his best to free himself from the creature that lurks deeper within the sea. He realizes that the water around him, doesn't quite feel like water but has the consistency of something far different. What was holding him up for that long period of time wasn't ocean water but an oil like substance.

As he begins to lose hope and the thick liquid begins to enter his mouth and lungs, he takes one last good look above him and accepts his faith with a final thought, "What was the point?" Suddenly, a small black shadow appears above him, moving at very fast speed. It breaks into the ocean and swims towards Fausto in an incredible speed. It soon plops it's little body on top of Fausto and makes its way towards the tentacle wrapped around his leg and begins to gnaw at it. "Fuck that! I want to live!", exclaims Fausto in his thoughts. This free's Fausto and he begins to swim upwards with the the little thing that rescued him.

When he breaks free, through the surface he is suddenly wakes on Paul's back.

"Finally you're awake you jackass!", shouts Paul. He throws Fausto on the ground and Fausto looks around him. He is still in the forest and finds that it is still night time. Fausto says to Paul, "Oh my god! Paul!", as he jumps to him for a hug. "Why were we running? Did something bad happened?!"

"No, you scared me, you touched those vines and passed out cold. I carried you on my back, trying to get back to john's truck but we got lost", angrily says Paul. "Man I thought something serious had happened to you, like those vines had some sort of chemical in them."

Fausto notices that Paul is holding onto his thigh and asks, "What happened to your leg?" Playing tuff, he shakes it off and says, "Nothing, I just tripped. Man you sure are freaking heavy." Fausto, still shaken up with his experience with wherever he came from, is filled with so much relief that he is back with a familiar face. He thinks to himself, if he should even mention all that crazy stuff that happened. "Come on, now that you are up. Let's go find that bastard and his truck", says Paul as he helps Fausto up from the ground.

"What rescued me?", is the question that fills Fausto's mind, "It was probably that little shit Bowie... hmm, I guess he isn't all that bad." However, the thoughts of the ocean came back and the voice he heard, at first it sounded really loving but at the first hint of defiance and the thing went apeshit. "It called itself Mother? Mother of what? It was a real motherfucker, that's what it was", giggles Fausto to himself.

"What's so funny?", asks Paul.

"Nothing, I just thought of something funny."

Fausto started to feel uneasy the more he thought about it, "Would Paul understand what I just went through? Should I just tell him? He'll probably say it was just a side effect of the vine or maybe it was a freak dream from passing out but... but it felt so real." A burning sensation started to take over his hand, he looks down at his palm and notices that it had been cut. Trying not to jump to conclusions, "Maybe I cut myself, when I fell from passing out. But why did I barely notice it?"

"Hey do you see that?", stops paul.

This takes Fausto's attention away from his hand, "No what?"

"A man? Someone went in there", says Paul while pointing a small shed in the distance. "Maybe it's that asshole John."

"Are you sure you saw something? Better yet, why would John go in somewhere like that? Doesn't the place give you haunted ghost vibes or a witch can live there?", Fausto says and as result: scares himself. "Don't be a weiner, come on", cheers on Paul.

The two men carefully and silently march towards the small shed in the middle of the forest. With their intense training of watching action movies, both men position themselves by the door. Paul takes a peek around the corner to look inside the shed but no one is there. Fausto watches as he takes a step stealthy inside the shed. At first it appears that no one is there and the man Paul claimed to saw was just his imagination but then he is violently taken down to the floor by some entity.