Digesting Sanctuary

A sigh slipped from Na-bi's lips. She had thrown herself onto the counter and was looking down at the floor. The transparent bubbles that had been welling up from the cracks between the tiles only moments before were now greedily lapping at the red bloodstains, the yellow urine, and the sticky pools of cooking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠oil she had spilled.

Like crabs scuttling from holes in a mudflat to snatch at prey, the grout between the tiles parted by a hair's breadth and drank the liquids down. She could almost hear it — a wet, obscene slurping. In an instant the floor was clean again. Only solid matter remained: the dildo, the shards of plastic. Every organic fluid had vanished beneath the tiles.

"Did I… wake it up?"

Na-bi stared down at her own hands, trembling. Blood and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sweat and waste. All of it was nourishment to this place. The fluids she had shed had stirred the sleeping convenience store's stomach. Prey had come in. Fresh meat broth had dripped onto its ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tongue.

"I can't stay here…"

Instinct screamed a warning. But there was nowhere to go. Outside lay darkness, and the mannequins had their faces pressed to the glass, laying siege. Inside was a man-eating convenience store. Trapped between two terrors, Na-bi curled herself into a corner of the counter.

There was only so long she could hold out on that narrow, hard surface. Indomitable had closed her wounds, but her stamina was gone. Her legs still shook, and the fatigue of days of torture pressed down on her shoulders like lead.

"Nnh…"

Her body swayed. Sleep crashed over her — and it was not ordinary drowsiness. Something was mixed into the air. A scent both sweet and metallic, like overripe fruit on the verge of rotting blended with the sting of disinfectant, wormed its way up her nostrils.

She lost her balance and slid off the counter. The floor again. Na-bi startled violently and tried to scramble up, terror seizing her — the tiles might melt her flesh.

But the burning pain she had braced for never came.

"…Huh?"

She touched the floor with a dazed expression. The marble tiles that should have been cold were lukewarm. No — they were warm. Like human body heat, or like a spot where some animal had just been lying, a cozy warmth transferred through her palm.

And they were not hard. She put her weight on her hand. To the eye it was a white, smooth square of tile, but when she pressed, it yielded, sinking in — a sensation like a thin plastic membrane stuffed with raw meat or fat. Not stone. It had become an organism with elasticity.

"What… is this…"

Na-bi recoiled, trying to snatch her hand away.

A nauseating sound. The palm that had touched the floor would not come free. It clung as if painted with adhesive — and it was nothing like stepping in gum. It was the suction of a living mucous membrane, tiny suckers pulling at her skin, determined not to let the prey go.

When she forced her hand loose, a transparent thread of viscous mucus stretched between her palm and the floor, then snapped.

"No… I don't want this…"

She scooted backward on her rear. But the more she moved, the worse it became. The greater the surface of her buttocks against the floor, the more the floor gently depressed to match her shape. Like a memory-foam mattress, it wrapped her body in a cozy embrace.

The problem was that the comfort was fatally sweet.

"Nn… so drowsy…"

Her eyelids grew heavy as lead. The lukewarm heat of the floor spread through her veins into her whole body. Tension melted. The horrific pain the mannequins had inflicted, the foreign sensation of something gouging through her guts, the tearing terror — all of it blurred, as if behind fog.

The pain was gone. This was not healing. It was sensory paralysis. The floor seemed to be injecting anesthetic directly into her nervous system.

I have to get up. I can't fall asleep.

Her reason was screaming, but her body was sinking into a sweet swamp. She tried to lift her heavy arms. Her forearm stuck to the floor — and this time the suction was stronger than before. The red grout lines between the tiles twitched, gathering toward her skin. Like vines climbing a wall, the floor's crimson capillaries were creeping, little by little, up her clothes and her flesh.

"Hah… mmph…"

Na-bi gasped and looked around. The convenience store's scenery seemed to warp. The snack bags on the shelves inflated and deflated as if they were breathing. The refrigerator's humming motor was no longer a mechanical sound. It was a deep, wet rumble — the sound of digestion from inside a vast stomach. The white paint on the walls glistened as if it were sweating.

She understood. This was not a building. The Abyss itself was one enormous organism, and the convenience store was that creature's stomach — or its larder. And right now Na-bi was prey stuck to the inner wall of that stomach, waiting to be digested.

"Don't… eat me… I don't taste good…"

She muttered it like nonsense, twisting her body. But the floor did not attack her. It did not chew, dissolve, or tear. It only pulled her in, gently.

The floor whispered into her brain like telepathy. The comfort of a mother's arms. Was this how a fetus felt, implanting into a uterine wall? Her buttocks, her thighs, her calves were slowly sinking into the tiles. What had been solid stone had turned to jelly, swallowing her lower body.

"Ah…?"

Na-bi looked down at her own legs. Everything below the knees was gone. The floor had not eaten them. The boundary between floor and flesh was blurring. Skin and tile were fusing. The fabric of her clothes was tangling with the floor's tissue, becoming one.

This place was not trying to kill her. It was classifying her.

A foreign body that had wandered in. A small living thing, wounded, filthy, spent. The convenience store was deciding whether to process Na-bi as waste or keep her as stock. And the verdict, for now, was absorption — to be held, and kept.

"No… I'm a person… I'm not a thing…"

Tears ran down her face as she struggled to raise her upper body. But like someone trapped in a swamp, the more she moved, the deeper she was sucked in. The floor behind her undulated up along her spine, rising to gather her in its arms.

The warmth was so complete it was terrifying. Her heart began to beat in time with the floor's pulse. Thump, boom. Thump, boom.

Her consciousness flickered like a candle. If she closed her eyes now, it would be easy. A world with no pain, no mannequins, no hideous dildos. She would simply become part of the convenience store floor and sleep forever.

But in a corner of her unconscious, the life force of Indomitable screamed one last time.

"Hah—!"

Na-bi's eyes flew open. She saw her own right hand half-submerged in the tiles. Her fingers were turning into the pattern of the floor. White marble veining was spreading across the back of her hand.

"AAAAAH!"

She yanked her right arm back in raw terror. A sound like tape being ripped. Pain as if flesh were being stripped from bone. Sensation, thankfully, had returned. As she tore her hand free, the sticky mucus threads connecting her to the floor snapped one after another. The back of her hand was swollen red, stinging as if the skin had been peeled.

"I have to get up! I can't let it stick!"

She shook herself like a madwoman — hips, legs, waist. Her whole body was stuck to the floor like a fly caught on a sundew. Every movement produced a wet squelch, a clinging slurp, as the floor resisted, refusing to let her go.

"Let go! Let go of me, you monster!"

She clawed at the floor with fingers that had no nails left. The softened tiles tore under her nails. From the rips, a red, bloodlike liquid seeped out. This convenience store was alive. And it was trying to make her a part of its own body.

She looked around, desperate for something to grab — something still hard, something that was not the floor. Right beside her stood the ice cream freezer.

Na-bi stretched her upper body and seized the handle. Cold metal. The only thing that felt not alive. That coldness felt like a life vest.

"AAAAAAH!"

She gripped the freezer handle and pulled with everything she had, bracing for the pain of her lower body being torn from the floor. A wet crack. A ripping. Her clothes shredded, and patches of skin from her thighs were left behind on the tiles as she was ripped free. Her body was flung out and slammed against the side of the freezer.

"Hah… hah… haah…"

She hung onto the freezer, gasping. She looked down. The place where she had been lying — the tiles there were sunken in the shape of a human body. In that depression, fragments of her clothes and the flesh that had been torn from her remained, slowly dissolving. The floor gave a sluggish, almost regretful undulation, and began restoring itself to its original flatness.

"Monsters… everything here is a monster…"

Na-bi bit her lip, paralyzed with terror. There was no Safety Zone. Outside, things that would tear you apart. Inside, things that would melt you down. She crouched atop the freezer, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trembling as she stared at that white floor that would swallow her if she so much as touched it.

But she could not hang on the freezer forever. Her legs were shaking and the strength was going out of her arms. She had to hold on somehow. Minimize every inch of contact with the floor.

Her gaze turned toward the back of the store, to the employees' stockroom door. If she could get there — if it was bare cement, or if she could climb onto the stacked boxes — she might be safe.

"I have to go…"

Na-bi used the freezer as a foothold, stepped onto the display shelves, moving like an acrobat to keep her feet off the floor. The Floor Is Lava. A game she had played as a child had come back as a fight for her life.