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You get <span class="mu-s">BROWN,</span> or more accurately, count 'em, <span class="mu-s">BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN</span>: all your receptors pinging off, frantically, at once. You are surrounded by <span class="mu-s">BROWN.</span> The cavity is filled up with <span class="mu-s">BROWN.</span> Is there light in the cavity? No, of course not. But there's definitely unfathomable levels of <span class="mu-s">BROWN.</span>
Which is great and all. You're a big fan of brown! You're just a little skeptical of the readings. The <span class="mu-s">BROWN</span>ness, you're noting, isn't a nice woody hue: its yellowgreeny tinge reminds you of vomit. It also reminds you of the shade of Not Lottie's lips. And of the blood on her knife. And of Worm #1, now that you think about it. Every one of them was pukey brown, or so you've been led to believe.
Once upon a time, though, you saw lipstick and blood and giant worms through different eyes. Whittled down to size, you can still hold that impossible color in your memory. Savor it. Cherish it.
You are surrounded by <span class="mu-r"><span class="mu-s">REDNESS.</span></span> You are smack-dab in the middle of an enormous open space— 'cavity' no longer seems right for it. Chamber? You're smack-dab in the middle of a chamber you'd call big if you were fifty times your size: it's effectively infinite to you, and more-or-less unparsable. Your eyes are too small, and too weak, and you have too few: it is <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">RED,</span></span> they say, <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">RED,</span></span> and that is all.
And, above all else, this pisses you off. You dying? Fine. You dying in a nasty, embarrassing way? Fine. You don't give a shit. You dying in a <span class="mu-i">confusing</span> way? No. No. You don't know what the hell you made a wrong turn into, but it's too <span class="mu-i">big</span> to fit into Not Lottie's actual body, and this whole seeing-without-seeing business reeks of chicanery. This chamber isn't real. And, more importantly, it isn't even pretending to be.
Meaning <span class="mu-i">you</span> don't have to pretend, either. You don't feel human? Good: that removes your main reservation. You're not real. You're not even beetles, not actually— as Richard tried to tell you, over and over, you're a <span class="mu-i">concept.</span> A construct. You're made of thoughtstuff. The only thing holding you back is you, blah blah blah; you didn't want to hear it. You told him to stuff it up his ass, basically. But that was back when nothing was going horribly wrong, and you were a <span class="mu-i">normal</span> size, and you hadn't even considered shoving yourself down throats. When magic didn't exist. When you weren't bewildered and exhausted and, mainly, pissed off.
(3/4)
