Drip, drop.

Drip, drop.

The boy awoke into the world with a gasp for air.
He moved his head back and forth, opened and closed his eyes, but could see nothing. He could see more closing his eyes than he could with them open.
He felt droplets plop on his hair. He stood up, and moved out of the way of the droplets. They began to hit the pavement instead of his hair. His bones shuttered with their every impact. The boy felt his hair-the liquid was much more viscous than water, sticking to his fingers as he brought them down. But something about the way it interacted with the pavement-it just didn’t seem right.
He stood under it again, just to get rid of the awful sound. The boy came to realize that the sound managed to only get louder while standing underneath it.
Curious, he held out his hand, letting the droplets tickle his palm. Bringing them up to his face, he opened his lips and let the tasteless liquid slowly seep down his throat. His neck trembled upon their descent, the viscosity of the liquid putting him off from swallowing any more.
“GAHHHHHH!” he screamed, grabbing his ears. The noise! The boy broke into a sprint and fled from the sound. Yet it continued. He could hear it over the sound of his own breathing and footsteps.
He stomped on the ground, the echo reverberating through the area for a good ten seconds. “WHAT IS THIS PLACE?!”
As he calmed down, the boy’s thoughts began to solidify, his breathing becoming less shallow.
“Where am I?” he muttered under his breath. The sentence dissipated slowly in the heavy air, replaying in his mind over and over again. He could nearly feel the words sticking to the humid air in his hands.
The boy brought his hands to the ground, his fingertips tingling while brushing them over the ground. The ground was covered in the same mucus-like liquid that he had encountered earlier. Over the stench of his sweat, he could notice a musty smell coming from the liquid.
“Agh!” he shrieked. The dripping was back!
The boy scooped up a handful of the liquid and stuck it in his ears, in an attempt to block out the sound.
Drip, drop.
Drip, drop.
The sound echoed louder than before.
He dug his fingernails into his ears but the liquid would not budge. Letting out more shrieks of frustrations, he began writhing on the ground, caking him in even more of the liquid. He stabbed his ears with his fingers, but the liquid did not come out; only blood.
After breathing through his nose the liquid was sucked deep up his nostrils, and his mouth covered in a layer of the substance.
Although he could no longer hear the stomp of his footsteps or the croak of his voice, the dripping continued.
The boy removed his shoes and the rest of his sticky clothing with his fingers that had developed callous-like pads from the liquid, their feeling absent, causing him to operate in crude motions.
Then he ran, trying to escape the only noise that was still in his mind, torturing him.
As his body tired he ambled to a stop.
He saw something.
He saw a light.
He thought he was imagining it at first, as it was just a flickering spot in the distance.
But as he approached it, he witnessed it enlarge, and felt its heat on his exposed flesh. As he got closer, the dripping sound began to fade away.
He approached it until it had enveloped his entire world. He looked down and finally saw his hands covered in the solidified goo.
The noise had stopped.
He listened, yet heard nothing. Not his breath, or his movements, nothing at all.
He took a few steps back, so that he was between the dark and the light, noticing the dripping sound slowly come back to him.
It was almost rhythmic.
He put the palm of his hand on his chest.
Because it was.
The noise was perfectly synced with his heartbeat; with every drop, their was a beat. When his beat slowed, so did the drops.
The boy took one last look at the light-felt it caress his skin, felt it itch his scalp.
He then turned away, and walked straight into the darkness.