In Winter It Began

Many battles I've surpassed, conflicts mind and flesh. Many horrors have I witnessed but none I couldn't fell.

Within these few pages I scrawl before I die. With this final trail of ink, I hope to clarify the circumstances of my death and bring to light the bleakest truth. Reveal a human abscess…

In winter, it began, when I was approached by a shadow of a man. He proposed we take to the south, into the uncharted, into adventures mouth. I drank his faux words like honey. He spoke of wonders, where the oceans freeze. The stranger's tales entranced me - proud, bold and youthful, definitely naïve. Human weakness in the extreme.

I assembled a party of my closest friends eager to uncover that, lying at the earths end. Unaware of: the conclusion, lying-in-wait, in the wastelands. Our intrepid voyage doomed to fail.

Unfathomable occurrences began to plague our ship - comrades evaporating, disappearing into nothingness; servants mutilated; events remaining unexplained. In search of truth, that which id been denied, mentally in turmoil, my patience had been tried; I began to exhume the bowels of the ship; hunting for suspected conspiracy within in.

I entered the compartment that validated my fears. The misadventure's instigator; grinning from ear to ear. The gentleman's complexion, whilst pale at best, had shifted from an earthly hue to something impious. My colleagues of decades, in days, had devolved to something quite inhuman; painful to behold, Blasphemy incarnate, twisted and profane, rife with boundless lust, undoubtedly insane.

My frenzied departure came to an abrupt halt. My exit was barred by an obstruction impenetrable to the sane; a quagmire of viscera…

The creatures loom behind me. Frantically I scrawl in this diary; an inane endeavor to document. No word will escape of my predicament. Reluctant to willingly tread through the vat of human remains; I'm caught between cause and effect, evisceration and the resulting mess. The brutal swarm, I cannot face. I'm driven to a saner fate: self immolation.