i begin to hear the swamp call indescribable horror creeps into my mind but my weakened consciousness unable to resist the witchy sound begins to slip out of my body sinking into the viscous stinking swamp gasping for air i desperately resist the nightmarish flood but the soulless mechanism inexorably pulls me into its depths at the limit of my meager abilities i make one last desperate dash toward the surface i don't know how but i still manage to surface from that devilish whirlpool pulling me deeper and deeper into its bottomless depths when i opened my eyes wide i found myself up to my neck in a festering mire from beneath which pillars of foul-smelling miasmas were erupting with disgusting sounds either clucking or gurgling and blowing the lifeless wasteland with a breath of centuries-old decay the only thing i could see was the vast marshland rot over which the deep sea fog slid like a heavy river with the occasional bluish flames of the unlived souls that were stuck here forever never awake overcoming crushing bouts of revulsion i begin to move along the muddy bottom as i bog down in the musty peat deposits i often came across solid objects shaped like joints rods and valves many of which shrank in a strange irrational sequence i can only guess how long i wandered way steep in the unbearably disgusting mud until my ears were attracted to some rhythmic sound reminiscent of millstone blades touching as they rotated the rancid gelatinous surface of the water soon i saw an object that looked like a huge toothed wheel the color of caked blood in that second i had the thought that even noble metal could not resist this realm of decay and corrosion which spread out over every conceivable length like a god forsaken boil over the body of this unhappy land i continued to move toward the mysterious cog which was astonishing in its truly titanic proportions pushing up and down the rusty pistons and pipes sticking out like the fossilized members of some gigantic scholapendrium as i approached the absurd mechanism i began to hear a wrenching rumble from beneath the ground as if it were the muffled moans of countless round men buried alive in the thick thickness of a fermented muddy nightmare the growing demonic sound made me shiver with unaccountable terror i shuddered at the thought of what might be lurking beneath the cover of the decaying bed sores suddenly a huge hole opened before me from which a torrent of dark brown treasure burst forth in a mighty rush so red-hot that even a single drop accidentally falling on my leg was enough to burn it down to the bone i howled in pain and stumbled backward but when i looked toward the gaping hole i saw something so foreign and contrary to human nature that writing about it now would be an ordeal for me i would gladly remove the parts of my brain that store the memory of those moments but before the lord of the swamp mechanisms consumes my soul i must describe everything that happened that day i saw in that black rapidly tightening vortex something that only vaguely resembled forms known to mankind the first thing that came to my attention was an amorphous conglomeration of swirling foaming and violently hissing pieces of rotting carcass emitting an unspeakable stench as if connected by metal devices beyond my comprehension akin to an insanely twisted homunculus created as a mockery of all that we believe in distorted in every possible dimension it is like a multi-dimensional object that can only be perceived by our limited consciousness from the perspective of a three-dimensional being in addition this mind-bending creature did not stop undergoing countless metamorphoses so that its image had a special narcotic connotation it seemed to me that some giant cadaver worms had grown in place of its supposed shoes which immediately became curling spiraling shells only to change its appearance again i cannot comprehend the true nature of this unspeakable creature but i could feel its gaze scrutinizing me with its piercing chilling yet soul burning eyes the size of cyclopean portholes which remained unchanged throughout our meeting it was as if with its gaze it desecrated the very life that had created such a thing the unknown monster watched me until the vortex completely collapsed leaving me alone with a giant spinning wheel which was surely only a tiny fraction of what it was built for i couldn't move my fear so overpowering that it was as if i were trapped forever in these throbbing clots of flesh woven and held together by indescribable technological devices hysterical laughter and voluntarily erupted from my throat and i shuddered in fits of insane laughter i seemed not to laugh but to resonate with the hideous howl of the sirens coming from beneath the earth which grew like the approaching peels of thunder before the true storm that would mix all things into the disgusting stinking mess that possessed my consciousness my mind finally broke down and not ceasing to laugh wildly i ran into the depths of the black mud hoping that it would forever hide my soul from this embodied horror because if god gave all creatures the spark of life this thing was devoid of any manifestation of spirituality it was a true nightmare which should not exist either in our or in any other dimensions my body shuddered in wild convulsions and i roared uncontrollably like a madman i couldn't tell when the image of the apartment the ceiling the walls appeared in my head my emptiness was somewhat otherworldly there was a feeling that i was dead still there but the empty shell continued to function on the principle of a soulless mechanism this analogy made me gag my body was so exhausted that i could hardly breathe i wiped the cold sweat from my forehead and stared blankly into the void after lying like that for a while i pulled myself off the bed with a tremendous effort and when i went into the bathroom i was horrified at how painful my face looked my eyes had sunk a few centimeters and the bruises beneath him described a dark circle going toward my ears my hair was now covered in extensive gray patches i looked at the dial it was exactly half an hour after i went to bed but right now i didn't care about such trivialities like the obvious discrepancy in the time intervals anyway no matter how crazy my dream is it's just an illusion a delusional hallucination it went through my skull i was relieved at that moment i stood in front of the mirror for a while and decided to take a bath but before i was completely undressed i discovered one fateful detail that finally drove my lapsed mind from this mortal body on my left foot there was a crimson burgundy ulcer through which i could see the tendons that had eaten through and the bones white as toadstools the skin at the edges of the tear was as withered as a withered aspen leaf if you're reading these lines don't waste your time searching in vain for my body you won't find it i hear the call of the swamps and in them i am destined for eternal oblivion because nothing in the world will hide me from this creature in my sleep except the black rotten silt