Alone.
That was the best way to describe this hellish place. He was alone here. It was a lonely forsaken place. Nothing sane lived here. Monsters, beasts, mind-numbing impossibilities, oh this place crawled with them.
Wilson stared into his meager campfire, listening to the sounds around him. Within the inky blackness distances didn't seem to matter. The snoring beefalo he knew to be only a stone's throw away sounded farther than the croaking frogs several clicks distant. That darkness was oppressive, dangerous, and Wilson had the very real sense that if he stepped out into it, the darkness itself would be the thing to take him.
He poked at the fire as he thought.
He thought wistfully about his laboratory. Not the first time he fantasized about turning that damned radio off, never shedding his blood for the pursuit of some 'hidden knowledge' that no man was ever meant to know. But unlike every other time he thought about it, the expected regret...
It wasn't there. Not anymore.
His life out there had been so alone. He was alone in his laboratory. He'd fled his family when he learned they were going to have him sent to a sanitarium for his experiments. He had no wife, no children, no colleagues, no friends, no one to miss him. No one to comfort him. No one. It was a lonely forsaken place.
The darkness crept forward as his fire sputtered in the dark. He tossed another log on the flame, stoking it back to brightness.
A faint snoring caught his ear as the darkness pulled away. Wilson glanced down at the creature he'd found, that followed him loyally all through this place. Certainly no sane god designed this creature with its wooly coat, its round feet, its bounding gait, its hinged jaw, even its unwillingness to digest those things he asked it to swallow. 'Chester', he'd named it. A play on words, a pun concocted concerning its usefulness. Wilson ran his fingers through the creature's fur, listening to it rumble in its sleep.
A small smile played on his lips as he sank to the ground to sit next to the creature, pulling it into his lap. Chester awoke, confused, but didn't resist; it merely snuggled into its new position and fell back to sleep as Wilson continued to stroke its fur.
Perhaps he wasn't so alone. Not anymore.