CH 12 | Ancestral Guilt.

Sadie stepped into her lonely apartment and reached into her tight denim pocket for a chunk of cake leftover. She sprinkled it near the wall where Big Mac lived.

"The fatty is going to have a nice surprise when he comes out of his hole comes the morn," she thought, feeling a pang of affection for the rodent.

Afterward, she hurriedly removed her top and carelessly tossed it onto the floor before collapsing onto the bed. Her face sank into the soft purple sheets, while her legs dangled over the edge of the bed, toes almost skimming the ragged carpet.

In the realm of sleep, Sadie never encountered dreams; her slumber was a pitch-black void. It was as if she experienced a temporary state of nonexistence, a tranquil and silent emptiness that felt as an undeniable truth.

This stagnant perception persisted until the sun forcefully invaded her sleep each morning, its relentless rays breaching through the fractured blinds of her window, tormenting her delicate eyelids with needle-like precision.

She felt like a captive, trapped in a drugged state, perpetually deprived of rest and subjected to recurring torture to keep her awake. It seemed as though she would never be granted the mercy of death, instead serving as a plaything for a sadistic deity's satisfaction.

With each approaching end of the cycle, she knew the torment would start anew. Every day began with the arduous task of dragging herself out of bed to face yet another repetitive and monotonous existence, just like the days that preceded it, and the ones before that.

But this time, pain did not wait until she was awake.

It struck with relentless intensity, manifesting as excruciating spasms coursing through her sides. Even in the depths of unconsciousness, Sadie's body reacted, and she found herself drenched in sweat, the torment evident on her contorted face.

She managed to stagger out of bed, her feet slipped slightly on the soft cat skin hide carpet beneath her before she started crawling towards her bathroom.

These harrowing symptoms were all too familiar to Sadie – a severe inflammation caused by Crohn's disease, a condition she had been battling with for a long time.

Her attention fixated on the half-open drug cabinet above the sink, her vision blurry and guided only by the flickering light bulb inside.

But once her trembling hand started reaching for anticonvulsants pills, the spasms intensified all a sudden, crippling her movement, as if someone callously exploited her vulnerable extension to thrust a blade deep into her stomach.

The bottle slipped from Sadie's weak grasp, pills littering the ground near the toilet, and she found herself leaning on her left arm, on her knees, unable to move due to the excruciating pain that had rendered her nearly immobile.

A persistent and violent cough continued to rack Sadie's body, as though a furious demon was trying to claw its way out from within her. Dark crimson blood pooled beneath her recumbent head, and her shivering arms struggled to support her weight.

As the creeping sensation of complete paralysis overcame her, Sadie's heartbeats accelerated to dangerous levels, their frantic rhythm echoing in her ears. In the dim, hazy edge of her sight, a figure seemed to materialize, hanging on the dark corner of the wall.

However, she couldn't trust her own mind in her weakened state, and she desperately tried to dismiss the unsettling sight as mere hallucinations from her peripheral vision.

The figure in the wall corner began to take on a sinister solidity, its presence growing more palpable the longer she ignored it. Despite the excruciating pain that gripped her body, Sadie found herself compelled to muster enough strength to turn and face the entity.

As she painstakingly shifted her body, a haunting moan, akin to a low mournful dirge, emanated from the shadowy corner, sending chilling shivers down her crippled spine. And what she witnessed caused the hairs on her skin to stand on end.

She focused on the source of her terror, her widened eyes met the unblinking gaze of a creature clinging to the ceiling with ghastly long nails. Its face contour started to take shape, it bore a grotesque resemblance to that of a sloth, with eyes clouded over in a dull, lifeless manner.

Horrified and disturbed by the sight, she locked eyes with the being in macabre defiance. The creature slowly tilted its head, causing time itself to appear to distend and slow down.

With seemingly imperceptible movements, it began to creep along the ceiling corner, pulling itself upwards as if its long nails were eerily trying to dig into the darkness of the corner.

Unable to tear her gaze away, Sadie grappled with the surreal notion of what was occurring right before her eyes, was she suffering from sleep paralysis?

She struggled to even take notice if the sloth-like creature was making progress in its movement or hanging dead and merely being animated by the strong winds. Amidst the obscurity, lone its beady, blind eyes stood out, holding a faded color reminiscent of a lifeless animal, eyes that seemed to reflect a surrender to extinction.

Pain started to subside the more she stared into them. A heavy peace overcame her senses, a peace that comes when the prey no longer fights its sacrificial fate, she entered into a dream-like state.

And she was transported to prehistoric times,

some 15,000 years ago, in the late Pleistocene epoch.

Huddled in dry tanned skin, Sadie felt her feet clad in sandals made from woven plant fibers. In her hand, she held a stone spear with a flute running from the base to the midpoint of the point on both sides.

She found herself in the company of nomadic hunters. The leader of the group, a weathered and wise-looking man, was carefully examining giant footprints left behind, communicating through gestures and grunts with his companions.

He pointed west, to a region where the landscape transitioned from open grasslands to a marshy habitat, nestled amidst the sprawling arboreal entanglements and scattered shrubs. Sadie followed among the group.

The ground beneath her tied sandals became softer as they penetrated the swamp, with muddy patches forming between tufts of grass.

As they traversed the shallow channels, clumps of cattails and swaying brown reeds, with bluish dragonflies darting around them, arrayed the bog they were in.

a red-striped water snake slithered past Sadie's legs, momentarily capturing her attention. But her gaze was soon drawn to giant footprints where the creature had trodden. Her own foot seemed ridiculously small in comparison as she stepped inside its print.

Amongst the subdued tones of green and brown, yellow pitchers with purple lids and variegated purple veins caught Sadie's eye. She cautiously slipped a finger inside a shaking pitcher and bent it to look inside.

Upon closer inspection, she noticed a toad frantically struggling to escape from its confined space, its webbed feet sticking to the slippery rim.

The toad took countless half-jumps in an attempt to climb the smooth walls of the pitcher, but with each effort, it only slipped further down. The more it struggled, the more entangled it became in the sticky substance, which also happened to be digestive fluid.

"Life consuming life." Sadie whispered, as the pitcher's operculum veiled the process of digestion. The other hunters were already making their way out of the swamp, deftly pushing the dancing reeds aside.

Feeling a sense of urgency, Sadie hurried to catch up with them, not wanting to risk getting entangled in the treacherous embrace of the slimy swamp herself.

The nomadic group continued to carefully follow the traces of the creature, broken branches and claw marks affirmed they were getting closer. Suddenly, their leader, intrepid and composed, motioned for everyone to remain silent as he crouched and tightly gripped his spear.

An animal with a lumbering gait became increasingly apparent as they observed it from a safe distance, hiding among bushes. At first glance, it bore a resemblance to a bear, but as Sadie focused on its features, she noticed the peculiar hooked claws, more akin to those of a sloth.

One of the men, restless and acting precipitously, disregarded the leader's signal and impulsively hurled his spear at the slow-moving beast in an attempt to subdue it.

To his shock, the spear proved ineffective against the creature's seemingly impenetrable hide. This audacious move drew immediate attention to their presence, alerting the massive animal to their existence.

As the confrontation unfolded, the sloth twisted and arose upon its thick hind limbs, its formidable claws upraised in a defensive pose as it confronted its trackers. Its infant sloth scaled the fur of his standing stout mother to take shelter up a timbery limb.

The humans, following the strategic directive of their chief, approached cautiously from multifold directions, endeavoring to encircle the beast and divert its focus from any one of them.

Step by step, the fellow nomads closed in from all four sides, their hearts hammering with adrenaline as they aimed to surround the creature and confuse it from charging them.

The strain in the atmosphere was palpable, and Sadie, too, was intently approaching with them. Yet, her attentiveness was momentarily diverted when she noticed the infant sloth embracing a tree limb, defenseless and innocent behind the behemoth.

Her inattention has cost a life.

Before Sadie could react, the situation took

a horrific turn. With a sudden outburst of unanticipated velocity, the sloth giant lunged at one of the men, its powerful claws ripping his gullet open in a savage attack. The fellowship gasped in shock at the gruesome sight.

The rest of the hunters, driven by a mixture of dread and hatred, seized the chance to retaliate. They coordinated their endeavours and struck back, driving their weapons into the sloth's exposed stomach, delivering deadly blows. The once mighty creature now fell to its knees with crying groans, its imposing presence diminished to a huge corpse.

Heartrending cries emanated from the trees, the infant sloth was mourning the death of his carer, and Sadie wondered what was to become of it. Her answer came with the speed of the wind, as a spear whizzed past her and into the crying sloth.

The tiny creature, which had been an innocent bystander in the confrontation, now lay motionless on the branch, its once sparkling eyes hazy and dim.

The ambience around Sadie seemed to darken, and flickering lights cast Sadie into a familiar room.The lifeless baby sloth fell from the darkness, landing heavily on Sadie's chest, its claws digging into her spirit.