text: Dark, wet stones are beveled from the age and erosion that they suffered from years past. Droplets of water drip from the ceiling to the weathered ground below. *Plip... plip... plip... plip...* As each drop falls, footsteps could be heard falling upon the stones in disharmonic time with the water droplets. Crimson robed figures walked with a brisk pace only seen in these men. Their pacing did not make sense. It was slow, blurred and choppy as if filmed through a smudged and malfunctioning Super 8 camera. But it was not filmed. It was not staged or scripted. What one’s eyes saw was reality. These enshrouded figures clad in crimson velvet cloaks, they were out of touch. They were not in time with the natural harmony of the universe. Each footfall taken was a shattering step that seemed to shake and bubble the reality in the eroded hallway. Their movement defies explanation and defies known reasoning. Each step taken was like a sickly palpitation in an otherwise healthy body. As these figures traversed down the hallway, green torches bound by otherworldly tendril-like clasps upon a dark material of an odd, rotting and nearly fleshy appearance. With every passing shadow, a wraith-like wisp of smoke reached out from between the cracks of the old stones and grasped at the passing figures. The figures paid the malevolent smoke no attention. The sound of the droplet was almost deafening. It felt as though it got increasingly louder with each passing second. And with each passing second, the seconds seemed to grow longer. Each tick of each microsecond felt like an agonizing eternity. The figures entered a round stone chamber that housed a large-gilded statue of two rings within each other with eyes along the inside bearing many wings. Light seemed to radiate from the statue, basking the area in a low, golden radiance. The figures walked upon the stone pathways that lead around the statue. From the spaces in between the stones their discordant feet walked upon, black, viscous liquid started to seep through and form into puddles on the floor of the stone chamber. It made low squelching sounds as it creeped across the floor, following and conforming to each little crevice and crack in the stone. As the hooded figures started to encircle the statue, sounds were heard. Ungodly sounds, like those from the depths of the non-divine and formless void. Rumbling echoed through these ancient stone walls. The sound wet, slobbery flesh being dragged on wet stone. The robed figures started to shake as if they were being controlled by some force that was beyond their own will. One of the figures reached up a gloved hand and stood silently as the leather glove split and shredded from inside, revealing grey-green pustules of the black viscosity that had seeped through the ground. Silently the hooded figure started to rip and tear at his robe, as if it were covered in insects. He ripped off the velvet shell to reveal more black pustules growing at a horrifying rate. His skin had now started to grow bone-like protrusions. Piercing through his flesh and spearing inches out from his deteriorating flesh. He started violently scratching at his flesh all over his now naked body, creating deep gashes that bled profusely. All this happened while his other robed companions stood idly, looking straight into the amber light of the statue. Soon after the man started scratching, the other robed figures started to show similar symptoms. Black pustules filled with black, viscous puss and protrusions, followed by violent scratching. The bone like protrusions had started to inflict deep cuts and gashes with every small bit of movement, inflicting more agonizing trauma upon the tormented bodies. Eventually, the once robed figures started to tear pieces of flesh off to rid themselves of the deathly ailment. The sickly sound of shredding flesh echoed in the silent room. Crimson blood poured from the deep holes that the men were inflicting upon themselves. One of the men had gotten to his ribs and started to break off individual ribs and bones that were covered in the black pustules and the ever-increasing number of cancer-like protrusions. Another had grabbed scratched so much at his exposed skull that his fingernails had broken and cracked, causing more blood to spill forth from his shredded digits. With each piece of flesh discarded, more pustules showed up in the place of the flesh. Eyes were being ripped from sockets in futile attempt to rid themselves of this disease. Intestines were ripped and grasped at from their place of rest. Countless feet of fleshy, bloody rope had fallen onto the clean stone floor, painting it the morbid color of the men’s life force. Then, one by one, the men fell to the ground, splashing down in pools of blood and piles of self-mutilated viscera. Shredded and bloody genitalia and split muscles littered the bloodied stone floor as the last man struggled against the affliction before finally grasping his head by the jaw and his crown and sharply yanked it in a clockwise motion. A sickening crunch resounded through the chamber before silence took over. The room was now devoid of life. Blood covered the floor. The carcasses were completely devoid of pustules and bone cancers and no black puss was in sight. Only the stinking of freshly butchered flesh remained. The silence of the gallery of butchered viscera was cut short by a low warbling resonating from the statue. The statue began to become misshapen, contorted and dull. The golden luster of the statue turned to a writhing, seething mass of festering maggots and worms. The grotesque mass of detritovoric worms fell to the ground, spilling the thousands of flesh-eating worms down and onto the viscera. The maggots and worms started to feast upon the deceased carcass-flesh of the dead corpses, using their tiny mouths to rip bits of flesh off and digest it in their tiny body, making it come out of their anuses as putrid excrement. Hours pass as the worm’s fester and feast upon the rotting and putrefying flesh of the once living men. Then as the last bit of flesh gets devoured by the man-eating worms, the low warbling returns, pulling all the worms back to the center of the room, molding them back into the shape they were once before. The unsettling texture and sound of thousands of wriggling worms disappears as the golden luster fades back into view, leaving nothing but the sound of water droplets dripping from the wet corridor. *Plip... plip... plip... plip...* The sound of disharmonic footsteps can be heard clashing with the steady beat of the water droplets.