Segment IV:
Bad Skin
Alex spent the next week still trapped inside of this ugly place, a long with the rocky triangle and his battered, bloodied, bruised head. The schizophrenic caterpillar made a tendency to pear down upon Alex and watch over him while he wasn't looking. The caterpillar was fascinated with the sufferings of this man and was repaid for this evil curiosity by having to dodge rats who would try to eat him in the ventilation tunnels.
Dried brown blood had now stained the top of the rocky triangle. Alex had no means to wash the blood off himself either. He was filthy and developed some kind of rash, specifically on his face. He spent the majority of his days scratching at this irritation and developed a strong hate for his skin.
No longer did Alex bang at the door, screaming and pounding for help. He was too tired. Too exhausted. Too hungry. Too cold. The only thing left to do was day dream.
One day he developed an erection out of no where and decided to masturbate. A perfect way to pass the time.
"Yes," he thought to himself. "No matter how deep you're in, you can always have a good wank."
He perked himself against the door of the cylinder and began to bring himself off with his left hand. What a superb appendage it was.
Slowly Alex slipped into serenity and he watched his hand morph into a beautiful blond woman. Marita. The woman he was in love with. She was a friend of his, but she also worked with that cigarette-smoking bastard who had trapped him in this hole.
There in the damp, smelly cell, Marita and Alex made love. She glided on top of him with angel wings and a silver silk gown. Alex's left hand had become her, and his arm had morphed around her anus, the hand stuck up it, as if she were a puppet. She gave him the experience of a life time... one which he would never forget. Alex would make a habit out of this.
On another occasion, he became so hungry that he decided to retreat to the portion of the cylinder which he usually did not occupy. There he found food within his fecal excrements. A nutritious but bitter snack; rations which did not last long.
But these rations were toxic and caused vomiting. The vomit was too dank and slimy for him to ever re-consume. Instead it left an even worse stench. Alex learned his lesson that meals could not be recycled.
As he settled off for a nap, the schizophrenic caterpillar watched him from above. That was when Alex was interrupted by a disturbing noise. It was coming from the rocky triangle.
"Join usssss," "Join usssss". The words were barely words. More like a deep echo that had been traveling for eons. Alex could not ignore this. The sound continued and he followed it to the back of the triangle which was propped against part of the cylinder. He squeezed into the tiny section and discovered something which was not there before. There was an open crack on the side of the triangle, with the numbers "three", "eight", and "two" written above it. Alex looked inside of the crack and saw pure blackness. The numbers three, eight, and two captivated him.
"Join usssss," "Join usssss". The sounds continued. They were coming from inside of the crack. Realizing this, Alex decided to crawl inside of the triangle through the crack. He barely squeezed through.
Something like an eternity passed for Alex until he woke up inside of the triangle. He had passed out again. When he awoke there, he found himself in a new world. There was a red sky, thick and cloudy. It was more red than blood. The ground was pure dirt, darker than a black sky.
This was certainly a weird place to be in, but it did not bother him. He was now all too familiar with the bizarre. Instead he got up to walk around. He looked back and saw the crack sticking up in the middle of the air for if he were to escape. The hole just hovered there, making little sense. Alex was inside of the rocky triangle! But obviously this was no enclosed space at all. It was a whole new adventurous, but haunting world!
Alex giggled to himself about this new, unexplored place. That's when he smelled the aroma of cooked meat. He followed it down a path which had been made by being trampled on. But whatever had crossed this place before was not human. There were tracks, and they looked to be from a pack of bears.
So he followed the tracks further to the smell of the cooked meat. Eventually he saw something up a head. Upon arrival he discovered a black and white panda bear, standing upright eating the drum stick of a turkey. The red mist from the sky loomed over the panda bear and collided with the smoke from the turkey.
"Join usssss," "Join usssss," the panda bear murmured.
Alex payed no attention. Is all he could think about is getting a piece of the turkey to fill the void in his stomach.
"Might I have some turkey?" he asked.
"Yes," answered the panda bear. "But first you must join usssss."
"Three Eight Two, Three Eight Two," he answered back. "I have to find out about Three Eight Two."
That's when the both of them heard a scream. A scream of pain? A scream of joy? They couldn't tell. Alex twisted his head to the left and that's when he saw it. Put off to the side were a group of skinny gray humanoid creatures which were crucified to wooden crosses. Green blood streamed down from their wounds and they all let out wails, possibly not of pain, but of ecstasy. Their heads were big and oval shaped. They had tiny mouths and large black eyes. No nose holes seemed present on their peculiar faces.
Alex was troubled by these creatures suffering on their crucifixes. His fear intensified as more panda bears approached. The panda bears were not troubled. They just stood there staring onward at them, eating their turkey drum sticks.
"You did this to them, didn't you!" cried Alex.
"But of course we did," declared the first panda bear in a deep eccentric voice.
"YESSSSS!!!!!" wailed one of the gray creatures abstractly. "You see, we are from another planet and we hate skin. We came here and ordered the panda bears to skin us alive. Those of us which cannot tolerate the procedure are punished on these crucifixes! It is our way."
"They sure are racist aliens, aren't they," said the panda bear as he choked on some of his turkey. "They hate skin of all kinds! They let us keep ours in exchange for this favor." Then he pointed to the right where there were a group of more of these aliens. Except, these ones had no skin. They were bare, and their ribs and bones showed. Green blood fell from bits of their bones like small water falls. Only their big and black eyes were identifiable and similar to the grays. Their white bones looked like breakable Styrofoam.
The first panda bear whom Alex had spoken to got up and picked a knife off the ground. He walked to the side and bent down to dig into the dirt with his paw. With it, he pulled one of the gray beings out of the ground. With the knife, he stripped the gray being of its skin.
"Orders of the grays themselves," he said. "And to think we get payed to do this!"
Alex began to go dizzy once again. His body swayed to and fro.
"Look!" he stammered. "I have to eat some of your turkey and I have to find out about Three Eight Two!"
"Have you checked your pocket?" asked the panda bear.
Alex put his hand in his left pocket and pulled out a key with the numbers Three Eight and Two on it. He felt the key with his hand and examined it with his eyes. Then the entire setting began to spin before him and he felt like puking. That's when he found himself on a paved road. The red sky was still above him, but the setting had changed. Only the one panda bear stood before him, and there was also a mailbox which had something like one-hundred compartments. They were numbered three-hundred to four-hundred. Alex took the key and opened compartment Three-hundred and Eighty-Two. Inside was a disturbing revelation... his own decapitated head. He felt the urge to remove it from the mailbox, and did just that.
Alex's head still remained attached to his body tightly. But this other head looked exactly like his. Maybe it was. It had been decapitated smoothly and evenly. No blood poured from it.
The panda bear handed the knife to Alex. Upon receiving the knife, he felt another urge. This urge was to be like one of the racist aliens and remove the skin from his own head. So he dug the blade into the loose skin from the decapitated head as if he were carving a pumpkin. Then he plucked the skin up off the head with the knife. Blood poured from the wounds. The skin came off like a rubber Halloween mask. That's when the head, now an oozing skull of blood, blinked. Alex became frightened.
Sometime later he awoke back inside of the jail-like cylinder, outside of the triangular rock. He was soaked in sweat and still frightened. He decided not to return to that place again.