See no evil chap 1

All I can remember was rushing away, hiding under the very first thing I saw as that thing chased me. Its rotten smell chased me more accurately than the creature itself, and the maggots falling from its skin still clung to me. I barely managed to prevent a gag as I quivered in raw primal fear.

I must have let out too loud of a sob, because the very last thing I saw was it stopping right in front of my hiding spot as I shut my eyes, awaiting my death. But when it all went to black, there was no eternal light or endless fire—just a grassy green field everywhere I looked as I stood up.

I wandered around the seemingly looping field, searching for anything to help me discern where I was. All I found was an oak tree, though it held more value to me than I ever could have known at the time.

Leaning against the tree was a woman, her ginger hair gleaming as the ever-present sun shone on the field. I approached her with a slow yet panicked walk, asking her with a noticeable stutter where I was.

“What? Do I know you? Where did you come from?” she responded, avoiding my question despite how visually troubled I was.

I spoke again, this time in a begging manner. “P-please, I-I just…appeared here! I-I have no idea w-what’s going on…I need help.” I barely managed to stifle a cry as I asked for help a second time.

I could hear her let out a small noise of annoyance as she complied with my begging. “Fine, I’ll take you to the town, but you better not be some weirdo. Keep up,” she said in an aggressive way, starting to walk away from me. I sheepishly followed her from behind.

It was at this time I noticed the rest of her appearance aside from her striking hair. She had to have been the largest woman I’ve ever seen, and most muscular along with that. Her face was, for lack of better words, disgusting—there was a certain grime and rage to it, along with her large nose and misshapen teeth, that set me off quite a bit.

We reached the town she mentioned, and it was desolate at best, entirely empty at worst. She turned to me with the newly familiar glare and spoke. “We’re here. You know where you are now?”

I shook my head no, almost scared to talk in her hateful presence. She sighed and continued, “Do you live under a rock?! We’re in Porsec, it’s the only village around here, moron…”

I questioned her further. “W-well, what country are w-we in? And t-this is still Earth?”

She quickly replied, looking at me as if I were an alien. “We’re in the west district of Vacal, and OF COURSE WE’RE ON EARTH!” She had clearly snapped at me, but the information reassured me much more than she could’ve scared me.

While I was never quite good at geography, I was sure there was no country called ‘Vacal.’ Despite that, the simplest statement of the very planet we stand on was enough to calm me down for a bit.

“Is there anyone here?” I asked, with a more tranquil tone compared to my initial fear. She took a deep breath to calm herself down and answered me, “A few of us, but most of us died during the food shortage.”

As I heard this, my worry returned, the idea of starving in this foreign land lingering in my mind. “Uhm, did this food shortage end?” I further inquired.

“There’s still not much food, but there’s fewer people to feed, so we’re surviving…just know if you’re hungry, you’re going to have to get your own food. Freeloaders will be killed,” she said. I shuddered at the thought and continued with my questions.

“So I need to hunt for my own food? I’m sort of hungry right now…do you have guns?”

She gave me a strange, confused look. “A ‘gun’—what’s that? If you want to hunt, you’re either going to need a knife or a bow, and you need to pay for those.”

“B-but I don’t have any money…” I said, my nervousness from arriving here returning.

She looked at me with her wide, brutish eyes and spoke. “…Are you serious? You don’t have any form of currency at all?” She sighed and rubbed her eyes for a moment before continuing with a begrudging kindness. “Fine, you can borrow my knife once, but you’re on your own after that!”

She took a fine blade out of its holster and shoved the handle into my hand before her mood soured once again. “Go. I don’t want to see your freeloader face any longer than I have to.”

I clenched the handle of the knife and walked off aimlessly into what seemed to be the woods on the opposite side of the town from where I came. I would’ve preferred to ask her more regarding where I should go, what I should hunt, and most importantly, how to hunt at all. But that killer glare from her was all I needed to know that I wasn’t welcome for much longer, her statement only supporting that feeling.

The trees, uniformly next to each other, all stretched into the sky and pierced the clouds with their very own leaves. Yet somehow the strangest part was the coloring—the bark of the tree a deep purple and the wood itself, seen from the base of one of these giants that was chopped down, a soft blue.

As I began to look around these wooden pillars for any animal, I compared these trees to the oak one I had seen when I awoke in that field. That comforting, familiar tree felt misplaced in wherever I was.

I continued to ponder before spotting a blur of what appeared to be a deer in my peripheral vision. I quickly turned to view it better and…there was something off about it, even more so than the trees. It lacked ears, a nose. It had short black fur, mantis-like legs, and it had more eyes than I could count, all contained on its small face.

Despite its size being that of a prey animal, it had a gaping mouth with teeth as sharp as the knife I was holding in my very hand. I couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle to myself, comparing the mouth of the beast to the mouth of the woman.

And inexplicably, it turned to me, clearly having heard me despite its lack of ears. My fear truly set in when each one of its eyes focused their oddly human-shaped pupils on me.

Before I could even fully comprehend what I was seeing, it was charging at me. Its strange legs pumped against the ground with a ferocious speed as its disgusting maw widened, now leaving a trail of slobber behind itself.

I ran. I ran almost as fast as I ever had. It wasn’t achieving much—the creature was quickly closing the distance. I collapsed as it jumped on me, dropping me to the ground with a surprising amount of strength. It slobbered on the back of my head, its mouth drawing closer and closer to my supple flesh.

This didn’t make any sense…how could something like this even exist? It went against every single thing about biology I could think of—it didn’t even have genitals! The fear and confusion was evident on my face as it went in for a bite on the back of my head…