The ‘Cactus Man’

'It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!'

My brain was filled with nothing except the thoughts of pain as the brown worms crawled deeper into my flesh. Despite the paralysis due to the blood loss, I tried to move my right hand yet it didn't even budge. I lied there, on the ground filled with fog, squirming up and down with my torso because of all the pain.

Step! Step! Step!

As if the horror of the creepy worms wasn't enough, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed into the dark fog from my right. As I turned my head towards right, the strands of my long jet black hairs fell over my face, covering it. From between the messy strands of the hairs, I saw a tall silhouette of a man walking slowly towards me in the darkness.

It only looked like a dark shadow due to my clogged up vision, it felt very difficult to distinguish his appearance. In spite of that, I was certain that he was wearing heavy leather boots just from the heavy walking sounds he was making.

I thought I would feel hopeful and happy after seeing a fellow human but the flesh in my torso started to tremble just from the sight. Instead of feeling joy, I felt a grave sense of fear taking control of my emotions. It was as if my instincts got activated just from the sound of the walking shadow and constantly telling me to run away from the guy.

The pain on my left arm was not subsiding at all. The trembling and the fear were also constantly increasing. I was not in a position to call my inventory and maybe ask for a miracle because neither was I able to speak anymore nor could I flick my fingers due to the paralyzed arms.

The man was moving very slowly. As he got close enough for my blurry sight to be able to observe him, I noticed that the region below his knee was completely covered by the black fog. His clothing was indescribable due to the darkness inside the fog and my blurry vision. However, there was still something stranger about his appearance.

His face, it was not a human face! Instead, it was a cactus, or something similar to a cactus, I couldn't make it out properly. Even his exposed hands were nothing but cacti! It was as if he was a walking cactus dressed up as a human!

As the strange 'cactus man' got closer and closer, he slowly moved his left arm forward, as if he wanted to touch me with his cactus hand. I didn't know why or how but the pain from the worms got ignored by my mind. At that moment, there was only one thing that was in my head, only one single thought, 'If this hand touches me, I'll die.'

That unreasonable sense of dread felt so real that my torso started to toss and turn more and more violently. This helped me to somehow roll my body which was resting on its back to land on the stomach. As my body lied on its stomach, I started to crawl by bending my back bone in such a way that felt impossible. My torso was somehow crawling like a worm, just to escape from the approaching hands of the 'cactus man'.

Humph! Humph! Humph!

Exhaling heavily from my nose, I was somehow moving away from him. As my instincts calmed down very slightly after increasing the distance, the sensation of pain from the worms returned back into my head. The crawling was difficult, very difficult. It felt like dying would have been much better! But I didn't want to die from the hands of a cactus!

'It hurts! Run! Run! It hurts! I'm going to die! I'm going to die!'

My thoughts became unstable. I had already gone mad from all the things that were happening. The dam that I had built to stop my flow of emotions had already broken. My instincts were the only thing that was moving me now. It felt like I was already a dead shell, moments away from losing my soul.

Chirr! Chirr!

The jacket and the pants that I wore started to tear apart. The egg that I had secured inside it was already forgotten by my brain. I had by then accepted the fact that it must have already broken. Thankfully, the leather armor was still intact, keeping my torso safe from the friction of the ground.

Huff! Huff!

I was sweating all over. My paralyzed limbs and the mass of the hairs were, after all dead weights. Pulling them with just my torso and my head was not an easy feat, despite the high stats that I had had compared to an average human.

As I stopped to finally take a breather, I looked back at the cactus man. He was still quite close, steadily approaching me. From my previous position, there was a bloody trail which was formed due to my crawling. The red trail was filled with squirming brown worms that kept on following the fresh blood and entering the open wound.

The armor and the shirt which were earlier covering the arm, had already disappeared along with the torn jacket. My naked arm had become pale yellow in color. It looked like the arm of a dead person with worms crawling underneath the skin.

It was the most terrifying scene I had ever seen as I looked at the worms slowly creeping up inside my skin and moved towards my torso. If it continued, they would have reached to my internal organs! The fear just increased by a lot from that realization.

The cactus man was not too far but he was slow, very slow. I knew that I could crawl again to get away from him but I needed to first get rid of these worms.

Without thinking even for a second, my jaw opened and my head moved to my left. With a swift motion, I bit onto the biceps of my infected arm. As tears streamed down my face, I realized that the skin was actually harder than normal but I still managed to bite it off.

Pthoo!

As I bit off flesh by flesh of the arm, some worms also got into my mouth and I spit everything away. There was so much pain and my mind was constantly telling me to stop yet I couldn't stop. The pain was nothing compared to the one the worms were giving to my senseless arm.

Crunch!

As I bit more into the arm, my teeth touched the bone and broke it off, also taking some of my teeth along with it. The instincts warned me one more time as my flesh started to tremble. The cactus man had gotten closer once more. He moved his hands again to reach me.

As I started to crawl away from him just like earlier, the half chewed arm broke off from my body. More blood was coming out of my body. Looking back at the position of the glowing plant, I noticed that it was gone! There was nothing but darkness in that place.

There was no hope left for me. However, my mind had already forgotten what it must be thinking at this moment. I felt joy at that moment, joy of losing some of the dead weights as it got easier to crawl.

But that joy did not last longer. As I turned my head to look back, I noticed more and more worms were entering through the gaping flesh of my half-eaten arm. The pain became more difficult to bear. The worms crawled inside as some also fell out of the wound.

Soon I felt something inside my throat. Something was crawling in my food pipe as it then started to crawl outwards and came out as vomit!

Bleurgh!

I vomited out thick brown worms covered with some kind of translucent mucus and red blood! As they exited my mouth, they started to squirm and then crawl back towards the bleeding wound on my non-existing left arm. While they moved, some of them even got tangled up with my long hair! However, I was in no position to watch the spectacle as I vomited more worms again and again.

Bleurgh!

Then, my body stopped crawling. The torso was now getting paralyzed too. More and more worms were being vomited out of my body. As my stomach got bloated with more worms, it swelled. My body toppled over from my stomach like a turtle as it rested on my back and my face turned upwards.

I watched in horror as the cactus man got closer and moved his left cactus hand forward to touch me again.

'I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!' My head was filled with just a single thought. There was nothing else that I felt at that moment except the fear of death.

The cactus hand was inches away from me. The flesh in my body was trembling with a newfound intensity. Regardless of that, I was unable to do anything except wriggle violently like a fish outside water.

Despite all of the flailing, death approached me again as the spines of the cactus hands finally came in contact with my contorted face and I died…again.

***