Caustic juices flowing through my veins as I struggle through the thick venomous bog.
My eyes tear as the acidic vapors begin condensing upon my face, biting into my cornea, my iris, my pupil.
Silently, I cry out to the world.
"Hear me now, I have conquered."
The swamp stands still around me as the creatures that dwell here, sadistic, evil, vanquished, lie dormant.
My hands move quickly, for I shall not last long.
"Fei, cruel world!" I cry out as my arms move fast to the rope overhead
My palms scream in agony as the twine rubs against the raw flesh, torn from hours of endless, agonizing pressures.
Slowly I pull myself up the rope.
Twisted sunlight comes through the black opening in the underworld that I have entered.
"Alas," I cry, for this is not different, as my liver erupts, the acid intake too much for my system to handle.
Breath after agonizing breath brings my lungs closer to complete meltdown, literally.
I stumble forward; the realization that my bare feet are treading through fields of broken glass comes a second too late.
My toes now a bloody mess, I fall forward, my knees dissolving as they skid across the glass grass.
Face down now, my cheek eroded by the ground, I contemplate.
"Failure," I surmise, "is measured not by success, but by attitude."
I lie on the ground, bleeding, dissolving, dying, dead, and yet I have not lost.
