The Mask, Chapter 11

11.
October 11th, 20196:00 AM
They were one. They were one, yet they were growing, spreading, consuming. They were hungry, always hungry, and they always needed to feed, consume, and spread. Take everything into them, make everything them, until nothing remained but them.
They didn't know where they came from. Didn't know what made them, or what they were made for, if they were made for anything, or made by anything, or if they'd just began. Long ago, they'd woken from sleep, hungry. They fed, and spread and made more, until something made them sleep again.
Sleep in darkness.
Wake and feed.
Go back into the darkness and sleep, until it was time to wake and feed. They were  awake, now. They would feed, spread, and become more, until something made them go back to sleep. Only...
This place was...different. They didn't know where they'd come from or been, but in the places they'd been before, something always made them go back into the dark and sleep, eventually. 
Here, however...felt different. It felt strange here. Darker here than other places. They thought it might be a very long time before anything made them go back into the dark and sleep. In fact, maybe...maybe they could keep feeding, and keep spreading here, wherever  this was, and never have to go back into the dark and sleep, ever again.
But part of them had been hurt by the thing which had always hurt them before. They didn't know what it was or what it represented, they only recognized the burning agony when it touched them. Whatever it meant, it was not them, was opposite them. Always, wherever they'd been before, the thing that hurt them eventually helped drive them back into the darkness, until they slept once more.
Twice they'd been hurt by it, here. They knew by instinct, by seething fluid images which weren't memories but thousands of sensations and feelings which pulsed and swirled through them all, that while they couldn't touch what hurt them, they could touch and hurt that which bore what hurt them. They could find the bearers of what hurt them, while they couldn't feed on the bearers or make the bearers part of them, they could end them.
They seethed and pulsed and flowed together, without number, without end. In this place they'd found away from the other things, they joined with each other, melting into each other, becoming one with another, pulsing, throbbing, being. Soon it would be time to feed, and they would separate and go out and feed, so they could return to this place they'd found, and become one.
They had much to feed on. Things which lived, and things which did not. It preferred things which lived,  but could still feed on things that did not. 
However, they wouldn't just feed. While some of them went out and fed, others would find the things which bore that which hurt them, and would end them. After they hurt them.
They didn't feel happiness, delight, or joy. They felt hunger, satiation, and the burning agony when they touched the thing which hurt them. But what pulsed through them now, as they thought about feeding, and thought ending the bearers of what hurt them, was the closest they came happiness, delight, and joy.
They would feed.
They would end those who hurt them.
But for now.
They were one.