Hope may be foolish, but courage is certain doom

Is it fear that keeps your legs pumping fruitlessly against the shifting ground beneath you, or some instinctive knowledge that turning to face your fate will condemn you for certain? In that moment, the difference doesn't matter. Running isn't your best hope - it's your only hope. Running is a reminder that you haven't given yourself over to the despair of this barren hell.

How naive.

You scramble against the loose ground sucking you back toward oblivion, fingers clawing against the rough shards of silt too large and sharp to really be called grains of sand. Your hands and knees are stained a bright red from the abrasions laced across your skin, a reminder of your once precious life. There's no time to reflect on this - the world disappears around you. You scream, but the sound is swallowed up as surely as you are.

One hellish landscape is replaced by an equally vile setting. You tumble, you're squeezed, you're crushed by warm, sticky flesh that sucks you down the creature's gullet. On your journey, you can briefly glimpse the amber glow of vesicles containing other swallowed souls... is it digesting them? You'll soon find out, as you're deposited into a fleshy chamber of your own. A sphincter closes behind you. The space is compact - you're squeezed into the fetal position, and there's still barely enough room to struggle. Beyond the lack of space, you're not restrained, so struggle you do, kicking and scratching at the membrane separating you from the outside world. You can almost see shapes sometimes, when your captor isn't swimming beneath the surface of the sand, but the translucent flesh doesn't afford anymore visibility than that.

Mucous begins to fill the chamber. It drools all around you, covering your entire body, matting your hair against your skin. You've no idea what purpose it could serve, not at first, but then you see them. Swimming around in the thick fluid, thumb-sized and mostly transparent, like little jellyfish. You feel a slight pinch wherever they stick to your skin.

The feeling is unpleasant, but the thought of being trapped in here with whatever these... parasites... are is even more unsettling. Will they burrow under your skin and eat you alive? Are they preparing you for something more sinister? You're reminded of the sacs discarded from the creature's back. Were those victims used-up, or something else...? You skin crawls at these thoughts, and you're compelled to squeeze the horrible things between your fingers. They crush into little pulps of gore easily enough, but the mucous continues to fill the chamber, and it brings more and more of the disgusting pests with it. You can feel them wriggling all around your legs now, sliding up between your thighs to get at your sweet flesh, crawling up your torso, burrowing into your navel, oozing around your breasts...

Swallowed by an enormous monster... drowning in its filth... devoured by parasites... you scream and cry and thrash about in your prison as a thought strikes your mind... This terror and hopelessness is just what you're supposed to be feeling. It all makes so much sense...