(Namespace: headspace)

Visually, these are highlands. It makes little sense that we understand them as a valley. But so it goes. The valley is out on the edge of the forest mountain island, and its cliffs overlook the shore.

Perpetual acid rain curses the valley, hence the name. There used to be a village, but the rain has dissolved it over the years. The only two buildings left are a cabin and its associated toolshed.

At some point in the village's history, it was attacked by something called a “chiwamara.” I don't think that name actually means anything in any language. I'm pretty sure it's nonsense. Wonder why my mind called it that.

It began with a sickness that had spread across the village, and a plague doctor had been sent for to investigate. The sickness in question: Every day, one random person would suddenly be unwilling to leave their home, standing rooted to one spot and wearing a robe, and would behave uncharacteristically. The next, they would be gone, with only a hole in the earth where they'd last stood, and someone they knew well would have contracted the illness.

It took the plague doctor until only one patient remained before a diagnosis was possible. The doctor then finally understood where the others had gone. They confronted the last patient standing. “Chiwamara.” And the patient said: “So, you finally figured it out.”

And then, the robe fell away, and what should have been a human body bloated outward and then shot up from the ground revealing some half-a-mile further of coarse, slimy flesh. Scars opened all along the beast's length. But they were not scars. They were leering eyes, and groaning mouths. The serpent was composed of hundreds upon hundreds of conjoined human faces.