Ch 1: What's going on here?
"Guys!! A certain 'playboy' rapper is finally releasing his music after half his fans have grown old and died." said the man on the Tube in a news segment—
This was the dream Theo was dreaming of, before it was abruptly shattered.
Stab.
Theo's eyes snapped open. He saw towering trees, lush greenery everywhere near him. The air was humid, it felt wet. The smell of the vast forest was fresh. He couldn't concentrate for long on such things as the harsh reality got him back to his situation.
He looked down to see where the stabbing sensation was from.
What's that?
Then he felt heat.
Argh, It's so hot.
The heat near his chest felt so blazing hot
It felt like he was on fire, but it was not fire. There was no fire at all, there was something stuck to his chest.
The heat was from his nervous system. His body realized that several nerve endings were cut.
He felt intense heat and intense pain. He felt like he would die.
Fuck! Don't tell me I'm going to die in such a way, this is the saddest way to die; I don't even know what's going on.
"Please, not here. NOT NOW." He shouted out loud, it was a voice not familiar to him. His own voice was different before.
He instinctively used his right hand to remove the thing. His body was leaning against a tree.
He moved his shaking hands and touched the cold hilt of the object. His hands trembled. The heat was flaring up, He grasped the object and extracted It slowly, Blood spilled from his body, The object was a bloodied dagger. He dropped the dagger and took a glance at the 'hole' in his chest.
He saw the flesh and was stuck with horror. The flesh inside, it was wriggling-- It was moving. Like tiny worms with a uniform mind. They were moving in motion and twisting together.
Why is this shit happening to me, I beg you god please let this be some sort of sick prank. He thought to himself with incredulity.
I need to get up or ask for help or do something
He tried to sit upright, and due to that he bled more. He used his right arm to get up and his left-
*Thump*
He fell back onto the ground.
He looked at where his left arm would be because he did not feel his arm.
His arm wasn't moving—-most of his left arm... was gone. The left arm had a half-cut stump of flesh left. It was twitching, wiggling as if it wanted to grow. He felt the same sensation near his chest.
It was "regrowing"?
He felt an insatiable itch but did not dare to touch the wound due to fear of it getting infected.
It didn't hurt, but it was horrifying. For a man who has never seen gore or violence, for a man who lived in the peaceful 21st century. This was something straight out of a horror movie.
This shouldn't be happening. What is going on? He thought to himself, feeling something coming up from his stomach.
His eyes widened and he bent down.
*Bleurgh*
He vomited near his legs.
It was just mere moments but for Theo it felt like an eternity.
He was pale, taking sharp breaths in pain and he felt itchy, in short, it was overwhelming for him.
Squelch.
*Bleurgh* he vomited again.
He felt overwhelmed and scared. That gorey scene of his flesh growing was terrifying to him.
After he felt his left arm feeling itchy. He turned to look at it only to see that it had regrown. He controlled his arm, and it felt normal, it felt fine.
Is this a hallucination? How did both the wounds heal. He thought to himself with utter disbelief.
Don't people usually go to therapy or something after their arm- Oh. Never mind, their arms usually don't grow back after being cut like some lizard-freak. He had a self-deprecating smile.
He used his hands and pushed himself up from the floor and staggered on his feet. He looked around himself and saw a dense forest.
Trees with moss growing on them as far as the eye could see, bushes, foliage, mossy rocks and flowers. A cold breeze was felt throughout the forest. The smell of the fresh air, the blood on the floor and the smell of mud, the sounds of birds chirping in the distance.
*Huff*
He took a deep breath to calm himself down, and sure enough, the air felt very fresh compared to his world.
He rubbed his forehead and then, he slapped his cheeks.
"Calm down." he mumbled to himself.
Such fresh air. This is definitely a dense forest; I remember watching a survival show featuring Mr. Cage and the forest looked similar to this. It was some dense forest in Africa. He had never seen a forest in real life, usually he had seen them on his computer or his phone.
He looked around the forest, half-expecting Korean cameramen to pop-out and say its some extreme survival show like the shows he's seen. His mind reeled; his breath was rugged.
Then it hit him, In almost every novel he reads these days. The genre where the protagonist of the story gets transported to another world or transmigrated
His body was alien to him, this forest, the voice, the randomness of the situation. It felt strange, a little too strange to be reality—- "Could it be…."
"No way.. Right?"
"Have I been...."
"t-Transmigrated?"