The Changeling (The Story of Id)
She wasn't certain about how she had come to be compressed in so tiny a space. As she had come to, she was aware of walls surrounding her.
It felt warm, abnormally so, and the compression and the warmth calmed some of the panic that filled her. As she forced herself to remain calm, she thought that she could feel a pulsing sensation ripple through the forgiving material that encased her. Small movements also gave her the impression of a thick substance – a type of mucus? - covering the walls of her chamber.
She recoiled from the feeling of the substance clinging to her, disgusted. She tried not to move, mindful of the sensation of it sticking to her.
What was she to do but wait? She felt a disinclination to move, to feel the walls press against her in protest of her movement, to feel the wetness leak onto her, disrupting the radiating warmth that soothed her.
She waited in the dark, barely keeping herself conscious, when a bright light bathed her curled-up legs, cutting through some of the darkness and her shut eyes.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the new source of light, but when hers did, she realized that where she was was a membranous chamber that was dripping wet.
She thrashed, hard, trying to push the flesh back and away from her, trying, in a panic, to minimize contact with the walls. As she became resigned to the fact that the walls were not retreating, and to the contrary, they seemed to contract tighter around her, she fell into forced calm, stilling her body so that the walls would not suffocate or drown her in the sticky liquid. As she stilled, and the walls began to ease up on her, and she became aware that the light that had been shining had grown in strength. It now shown brightly, so that her eyes, used the the perfect dark, had to shut for the shock of it.
She began to try to twist her body, so that she could turn around to face the direction of the light. This endeavor proved to be problematic, as she felt the tunnel grip her in a strong spasm, squeezing her more roughly with each movement. As she tried – and failed – to turn her body around, she succeeded only in feeling the walls compress themselves to a painful degree all around her. Struggle as she might like to try, the walls had tightened so that she was completely immobilized by the space.
She felt faint – awful, beaten down, frightened, and confused – and she was also vaguely aware of movement, as though the walls were contracting purposefully around her, pushing her towards her feet.
Finally her feet were freed of the tunnel, and they dangled freely. The walls contracted, nearly crushing her, and she felt herself being hurridly pushed from the tunnel, till it was only from her elbows up that she was trapped. She spilled over the edge of the hole, flopping futilily as she tried to ease the excruciating pain as it was only her neck that was trapped. She winced in pain, scrabbling at the edge of the thing, trying to force her head free from the tunnel.
The walls contracted one last time, and she fell loose from the lip of the tunnel, falling, falling, falling down.
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