Flesh



I first saw him outside my farmhouse. It kept the variety of crops I'd amassed along my travels, mostly from villages: wheat, carrots, potatoes, turnips and pumpkins. The only kind of plant I wasn't cultivating (or hoarding) was melon, coincidentally what I was about to set out to do before I spotted him. The hilly terrain rendered him somewhat obscure, but from the hundred block distance I could make out some distinctive features. The best way to describe him was as a chunkier, human enderman. He was a little under 3 blocks tall, and sickly skin shined on his face and arms. Almost immediately upon me laying my eyes on him, he rushed off with incredible speed - to the lazy eye, it would look as though he was teleporting in spurts. After he carried himself away, I stood still and silent, contemplating the mysterious figure. I reached the conclusion that he was a mistextured enderman, tried my very hardest to ignore the fact that the explanation was poor at best and went on my own way to find some melons.

It was a few days later when Flesh, as I'll now call him, next made himself known. I'd been caving for a few hours, attempting to gather a sizeable portion of emeralds. I was traipsing around a small, potentially fruitful cubby that I'd found through a stripmine. I prided myself on playing on the Moody setting exclusively, and I fumbled around with my inventory for a second, crafting a new batch of torches and placing the first of them down. As I did, I glanced around for any attractive ores, but instead I faced the second appearance of Flesh.

The clarity of torchlight and frightening lack of distance revealed much more about his design. His clothing was fairly ordinary - subtle black shoes, immaculate grey jeans, buttoned up white shirt, but his face was a horror. The excess skin hanging off his forehead, the blisters and boils that littered his cheeks, the swelling that obscured his features all gave the effect of a face that had been drowned in pulsating flesh. The only clear part of his face was his mouth, twisted into a questioning oval. I couldn't pretend this was an enderman. His blocky figure contorted, and he leaned into the side of my head while raising a hand, as if mimicking a whisper for a game of Charades. The resulting hiss emerged from my speakers surprisingly gently. "You don't want any."

It felt as though it should have been posed as an insulted question, but that wasn't the case. It was a hopeful, yet fearful remark, seemingly asking for clarity. I typed, slowly and deliberately into the chat: "I don't want any." He leaned away, his mouth now shifted into a contented grin, and went to scurry down my strip mine, his head and upper body disappearing into the stone. Of course, he wasn't banished after this confrontation/affirmation - he showed up usually every week, with the same contented grin on his face. In a way, he's almost comforting.