Flesh Book Corridor-3721

The first sensation was cold.

The air was chill enough to seep through fabric. Not refrigerator-cold — more like the damp chill of a stone corridor that had gone years without sunlight. Cold crept in at the cuffs of my hoodie and slowly tightened around my wrists.

At the same time, sound was unnaturally dead.

I could hear my sneaker soles press into the floor. But the noise didn't carry. It didn't spread so much as get absorbed. The corridor itself was swallowing sound.

Then came the smell.

Old paper and dust, the mildewed stink of a neglected archive. And underneath it, very faintly, something like wet meat.

Before me stretched a truly long corridor. There was nothing else to call it. Dense structures lined both walls — towering constructs that reached the ceiling, half display case, half bookshelf. Pillars at regular intervals. A dim yellow light.

From a distance, it looked like a stack room. An old library hallway. The kind of place where a librarian ought to come drifting out any second, finger to their lips.

A blue window flickered into view at the edge of my sight.

I read the line and stopped for a second.

Corridor of Flesh-Bound Books.

The moment I properly took in the meaning of the name, the air here turned a degree more foul. I hadn't really looked at anything yet, and already I was certain this world had nothing good in store for humans.

I slowed my steps.

I could see the things slotted into the walls on either side. They looked like books. Thick, old spines in every color — some like aged hardcovers, others like damp, swollen wads of paper. Some were dark red. Some yellowish. Some far too white.

But the closer I got, the stranger those spines became. Too organic. Lines that should have been straight bent in tiny curves. There was grain on the surface — not paper grain. Something like skin texture...

I took one more step closer. And stopped.

What I'd taken for book spines were vertebrae.

"......Huh?"

My brain flatly refused to process it. They were spines. Backbones set upright in neat rows. Each joint had looked like the groove of a spine on a book.

What had seemed like covers fitted on either side weren't leather — they were human hide. The thin sheets stacked and folded like pages weren't paper at all. They were paper-thin slices of flesh. Extremely thin, almost translucent meat, with blood vessels showing through like threads.

I held my breath without meaning to. My vision narrowed hard.

...No.

That couldn't be right. But my eyes had already seen it.

The black patterns that looked like print weren't ink. They were veins and dried bloodstains, the grain of dark, clotted tissue. The yellowed edges weren't faded paper — they looked like dried layers of fat. A few of the books rose and fell in the slightest motion. They were breathing.

My throat clenched.

Something moved down to my right. I looked that way on instinct.

A large book was crawling across the floor. More precisely, something shaped like a book. Its cover writhed like a damp eyelid, and teeth showed through a gap at the bottom. Thin little arms and legs stuck out from either side. Not as fast as an ant, but not slow either, it scuttled along the corridor floor and left a thin, wet trail behind it.

I froze solid.

And that... wasn't the only one. Farther off, there were more of them. Some walked about still shaped like books. Others stood like people, but their posture was wrong — too stiff, shoulders hunched forward, barely moving.

It took me a long moment to understand why. Down the center of those person-shaped things ran a deep vertical split. Their upper bodies had opened as if folded at the waist, and inside, instead of organs, were layers of flesh arranged like pages.

People — that became books when you opened them.

I stepped back without thinking. In that same instant, a single sentence took clear shape in my head.

This place was built so that people themselves were the things being read. It wasn't that the books looked like people. It was a world that read people as books.

The thought went through me, and my entire spine went cold.

A sound came from the far end of the corridor.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Shhk... shhk... shhk.

It sounded like pages turning. But it wasn't regular. Too wet. Like fingernails peeling damp flesh.

I turned my head slowly.

At the end of the corridor, under a very faint light, something was sitting propped against the wall. Human-shaped. At first I thought it was a person sitting and reading a book. It wasn't. It was a giant book, and it was tearing open a human that looked like a book and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠turning its pages. The entire inside of the body was split into layers like bookmarks, and the giant book was flipping them one by one with its right hand. With every turn, the red grain inside flashed. Between its knuckles came the sound of thin membranes tearing.

When I looked at where its face should have been, the places for eyes were packed solid with tiny titles and black dots like print.

I gagged right where I stood.

"Ugh."

Nausea surged up. At that moment a blue window flared hard into view.

The moment I read the words, my breath came back, just a little. Mental Protection. The passive that had been handed out like spam earlier. Only after seeing that it was active did I understand — that might be why I was still holding on to something like sanity while looking at this.

Or maybe I was already going crazy, and I just wanted to believe that.

I clamped a hand over my mouth. And even then, the wall under my other palm felt wrong. Cold. Slightly soft.

I groped along it on instinct. Beneath the smooth surface, something like a faint pulse. Not stone. Like living tissue with a thin coating over it.

The nausea got worse.

"Shit...!"

I jerked my hand off and stumbled back. Whatever I'd been holding down broke.

"Fuck... fuck! Ah — ugh...!"

I threw up. Head down, retching onto the floor. The smell of stomach acid rose and mixed with the corridor's stench and made everything worse — wet paper, old blood, meat, my own vomit. My senses were so tangled I didn't even know what I was smelling anymore.

And through all of it, the corridor stayed quiet. Quiet enough to be worse. Nobody screamed. Nobody flinched. Book-things crawled or walked. Person-things were opened by books. The corridor only made the sound of pages turning.

This wasn't the kind of horror that lunges at you and threatens. It was the kind where the whole world calmly insists it has always been like this. That made it harder to endure.

The line read almost like an order. I didn't even wipe my mouth. I just thought about going back.

Return... now... right now...

I hauled up the will, and a crack opened in the air. Through a vision blurred with tears I shoved myself toward the dimensional gate.

The corridor began to fold. The bookcases on either side bent inward and rolled shut. The vertebrae closed all at once like spines, the flesh-sheets stacked like paper, and the shape at the far end tore into a thin line. The page-turning sound rushed into my ears all at once — then cut out completely.

I hit my knees on the floor of my one-room apartment.

"Kh— ugh...!"

The vomiting came right back up. I staggered into the bathroom and grabbed the sink. Stomach acid poured out. It was a different pain from the glass beach. That had been a physical cut. This was my head turned inside out, the nausea climbing all the way into my gut.

I turned on the water.

Shhhhh—

The sound of cold water hitting the basin was so normal it almost made me heave again. I dry-heaved for a long time. Tears and spit ran mixed down my chin. My hands on the rim of the sink shook. The vomiting had stopped, but my body kept remembering it. It felt like my head was throwing up, not my lungs.

"Huu... huu..."

I steadied my breathing and lifted my head. The face in the mirror was a mess from the eyes down. The thin cut on my cheek from earlier was still there, tear tracks smeared over it. My eyes were bloodshot from throwing up. I looked pathetic — but I was alive. That was almost funny.

"Jesus..."

My voice came out shredded. The Dimensional Archive didn't answer. It only quietly put up a log at the edge of my vision.

I read through it and stopped on the last part.

Mental Protection Lv.1.

"If it hadn't been for that..."

The rest of the sentence stuck in my throat. What came after was too easy to imagine.

I turned the faucet on again and rinsed my mouth. After spitting a few times, the sour taste in my throat eased a little. My stomach kept rolling anyway. I still felt like I could hear pages turning. Close my eyes and the image came back — vertebrae lined up like book spines.

Looking at dimensional gates felt different now. Up until a little while ago, even when I was scared, there'd been some vague hope that somewhere out there a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠decent world existed. Not anymore. Now, every time I picked a dimension, I needed real resolve. Pretty names made me suspicious because they were pretty. Ugly names looked more dangerous because they were ugly.

I walked slowly back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The blue window still hung there, vertical.

Below Flesh Book Corridor.

Atlantis-1334.

That bastard... is that the Atlantis I know?