One Piece: Madness of Regret

This is starting to turn into a horror and mystery show. I would love to read of it or watch it but not live it. Fuck, the ocean voyage is getting in the horror genre. 

I am not a scardey cat by any means, but this scene is just eerie. All I could see around me were barnacles, buggers, some empty patches and a slopes. No sign of predator or at least one much much higher in the food chain. Neither are there are any organisms that could bleed this much. So how did this get so much blood that it became a layer.

I might not be a forensic specialist but blood is never this thick or makes a layer when fresh. I could see the layer form after a long time with enough blood. But who would have that much blood to make such a sticky layer? A normal person could not even cover a tenth of this layer. 

I hesitated. The more I touched it, the more wrong it felt. Thick, unnatural. Gnarly. My fingers hovered over the surface before I finally pulled—just a little. The layer came off in chunks. It wasn't just blood. It had _pieces_ in it. Chunks of… something. Flesh, perhaps.

It felt like someone had blended a organism, bones and flesh whole, and made a layer. Fucking hell, which sick abomination did this? Hunting and feasting on the carcass I can understand but leaving a blood layer like this. This is a sickening job of an even sickening being. 

Few questions comes to mind after seeing his. What did this? How did it do this? Why did it do this? Am I in its menu? Will this blood layer be my fate? Can this blood layer be useful to me in someway? 

I have no answers for the first few questions, but the last one? I intend to find out.

'This is going to be disgusting', I muttered in my head. I peeled off some of the blood layer. There were even more deep inside and they were harder to pull out. The ones I did pull out were a bit slimy and sticky but still relatively wet. It almost felt like blood stopped in the process of clotting but did it jobs anyways. Almost like jelly but an slimier and stickier version. 

I can't just rely on my hands to dig through the layer. My crippled right hand has just started to form scab. Using it unwisely might make it start healing once more, losing me precious resource to survive. While I could use my left hand for it, going so deep inside this layers might be counterproductive. I need to use some sort of stick to poke the layers. 

And lucky for me. I can see tens and twenty of them feasting on the blood layer. I surveyed them, all of them and chose the one with the biggest pointy edges. Not to repeat my previous mistakes, I grabbed it from front and the back holding on to the smaller edges. 

And I pulled. This bugger had made quite a hole on the blood layer. A finger big hole. It was like a inch and a half deep and I could see the layer go from dark red to the darkest red I have ever seen even in the cold, starlit night. The lower layer was so thick that it could make blood suckers jealous.

What can make blood so condensed, so thick that it is almost pitch black? Why does this blood layer feel of the eerie kind of supernatural? 

Fuck, I know I shouldn't do this. My instinct were shouting. I could feel a chill, not from the cold breeze but from something inside me. As they say curiosity killed the cat, I wanted to know what the lower layer was made of. The curiosity in me wanted to know. I wanted to know how deep the nightmare goes. 

I wanted answers even if I will be damned.

So, I did the most logical thing a man has ever done. I poked it. I poked it with my left index finger. I could feel the stickiness go away to being non sticky in the middle to slimy in the end. A little more fingering at the bottom and I could feel my fingers touch something moist, something wet, as if I touched a surface of some kind.

I couldn't pierce the surface, no matter how hard I poked it. It felt like hard jelly. So, I started scrapping it with my nails. I could feel some of the layer get under my fingernails. I scrapped a little more knowing that I am close to an answer. Then my finger felt moist and I could smell an irony scent for just a moment before it dissipated with the air. 

I took out my finger hoping I could see what was beyond the jelly surface. Just then, reddish black liquid flowed out of the hole. I could tell it was blood. Far more black and red than what was humanely possible. I could see it gush out. It came out slowly. Moving not like water but something more viscous. It didn't flow down the slope, no it went upwards the slope towards the colony of buggers, something scientifically impossible.

All the buggers that were left feasting on the blood layer quickly discarded their feeding spot and rush towards the overflowing blood. I could even see the bugger in my hand squirming. I hadn't seen any of the buggers squirm so hard when I pulled them out of my leg. 

It almost looked like moth attracted to the sun. They are dead when they touch it, but they try. The blood was attracting the buggers. It was defying physics, yes but it created an eerie sense of something wicked, something unknown. 

The buggers stayed still when they touched the blood. The ones who touched the stream of blood froze in their places. No squirming, no movement, no nothing. The blood started to climb atop the bugger. No, it was wrapping the bugger. Not just one, all of them that were touched by the blood.

The blood was sentient. The blood was alive. I could feel it. 

It attracted the buggers to feast on it and it feasted on them. I watched it, as it slowly wrapped every single buggers there was. There was no struggle that I could see in the viscous blood flow. All I could see were some bulges that were the buggers wrapped with blood. The blood was feasting on them. 

I could see the bulges get smaller and smaller at an incredible rate. And when the bulges got to the blood stopped moving upwards. 

I could see the blood move back. I could see the blood start to move down the slope. I could see it leave the artificial rectangle and land on the ground. It didn't fall drop by drop to the ground. It fell like jam, no break in its flow. Just like a viscous liquid. It was slow, but it was coming.

The blood was moving, engulfing whatever laid in its path. And it was coming towards me. I moved a few step behind and landed on an bugger. I didn't fall but I could see every step backwards, there was a bugger. I could see hundreds, if not thousands of bugger come to the blood, attracted to it. 

The blood wanted buggers and I laid right between it. So, I stepped aside. The blood divided itself in two stream, one for the bugger and another for me. Hell, I could even see the buggers near me come for me. 

Fuck, why the hell are both of them coming after me? The blood, I can blame some supernatural stuff. I could even blame the bugger I have in my hand. For the buggers, I have no idea and I don't believe that they care so much for their brethren in my arm. 

I threw the bugger in the blood wave and it engulfed it. The blood stopped moving towards me. I could see it change its movement towards the bugger that were charging towards me. Every bugger it went near to, all of them walked straight to it to met an silent fate. The blood was never after me, it was for the little snack littered all around. 

And I could see the wave feasting on the thousands of moths walking straight towards it. 

I am a hundred and a few tens of steps away from the artificial thing, my target on the voyage watching the blood wave feasting as the top dog on the food chain. It was horrifying.

It was unnatural.

It was… beautiful.

It was true.

This is my reality now. The answer to an unsolved and unspoken question. 

A step closer to Lovecraft. A step closer to insanity. A step closer to thriving.

A step away from death.

The world has gotten more and more insane. I need to match it or get engulfed by it like the buggers. Logic has no place, not in this world, not in this place. Logic in me shouts, screams run away, far away. Anywhere but here. Anywhere to survive. But where can I run? 

Back to the barnacles, away from the blood wave. Far away from answers? Fuck answers. Fuck everything. 

This world is insane. I need to match it. No, I need to exceed it.

What is insanity if not survival's evolution? If the world is madness, then sanity is a weakness. A flaw. A death sentence.

If I cling to reason, I will break. 

If I fight against the tide, I will drown.

So, I will accept it. 

Logic be damned. Survival be damned. Answers be damned.

Here, Madness is the answer. It is the question.

Oo, How much I want to smile at this world. How much I want to laugh at this world and all its insanity.

So I did.

I laughed. I laughed at all the sanity left in this world. I laughed at myself. I laughed at the absurdity of it all. I laughed at nothing. 

And I smiled for myself and this world.

The world was insane. Time to match it.

My legs took a step forward and another. I didn't tiptoe. Hesitation, I forgo it. My legs were running. 

I should be terrified. I should be running in the opposite direction. But fear has done nothing for me except slow me down. Fear is the leash that keeps prey from thinking beyond survival. And if I stay prey, I will die.

So I ran as fast as I could to the source. The source of the blood. 

I stepped on bugger, they gave me cuts. It didn't matter. I stepped on the blood, I fell.. It didn't matter. 

I crawled. I stood. I walked. I ran. 

I don't care of the cuts, nor that I stepped on the bugger. I don't care if the blood engulfed me. I had nothing else to care. 

I reached the source. It was flowing with blood. A wound in the world itself, bleeding endlessly, gushing with something far beyond life, beyond comprehension. 

I clawed at it. Nails scraping, fingers sinking, tearing away at whatever lay at the heart. Chunks came loose, wet and pulsing. 

I clawed at the source. 

I shouldn't touch it. 

I shouldn't touch it. 

I touched it.

I bit into the wound. 

I tasted iron. 

I tasted... something.

I tasted understanding.

Do I go this deep into insanity? The last scraps of logic whispered.

I laughed.

I bit again.

I chewed. I swallowed.

It tasted of everything and nothing.

It tasted like a secret the world never wanted me to know.

Logic had left me the moment I stepped into this world. Reason had been a fool's dream the moment I resisted. There was no logic, no reason. There was only instinct. Survival. Madness. Insanity.

I felt insane. I was insane. I am becoming insane. 

The world had a abyss in it. It was staring at me. I was staring at it.

The abyss wanted me to blink. 

The abyss wanted me to blink.

The abyss wanted me to blink.

The abyss couldn't make me blink.