The rain soon ceased and with its abrupt end the sun's rays began to quickly infiltrate through the low cloud cover, slowly warming the saturated ground below. I emerged out from the shelter of a cool, dark cement building which provided adequate protection from the rogue rainstorm. Walking out into the lush forest, the stark change in temperature immediately caused my clothes to stick to my skin and my camera lens to fog. Peeling away the shirt fabric from my chest only resulted in my shirt sticking instead to my back, which would later prove to be advantageous. Soon after, my jeans began to bulge up in terrible places, until ultimately rising up into my ass crack, deepening further and further with each step forward as if Mother Nature herself was giving me a personal wedgie.

Small plumes of steam could be seen evaporating into the air off from the warming ground, creating a dense atmosphere heavy with humidity, nearly too thick for the lungs to easily filter. The air was so bogged with moisture that the cooling effects of evaporation could barely be felt. Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead then funneled past a channel of skin existing as a fold between my nose and cheeks, accumulating into large drops of sweat before finally plummeting down to the ground off from the tip of my nose, as if I had been stricken with a terrible winter cold in the middle of the summer.

Perhaps it was the scent of human perspiration that attracted them in the first place. That fetid, sour, salty mixture of a funk, oh so reminiscent of a high school locker room must absolutely tingle their fucking wings with joy as they follow in droves the stench to the prize, buzzing around like champs, alerting all their buddies of the new found blood reward. For that's all I am to them, just a flower blooming with the pollen of fresh, warm, blood. They swarmed my entire face and neck, quickly quenching their thirst. Every exposed bodily cavity served as just an open invitation for possible exploration. Hastily, I swatted away at the bastards, but to little avail for literally thousands of the fuckers had now descended upon me. They filled my nose as I inhaled, for not a chance I would open my mouth to breathe. They flew up my ear canal, buzzing around looking for anyplace to pierce my skin with their needle-like, blood hungry probes. Fortunately the humidity which had caused the fabric of my clothes to stick to my skin prevented them from feeding even further.

I felt the back of my neck, bumpy from the effects of their bites. I then looked down to my arms, now covered with inflamed red bumps. I managed to smash a few of their blood bloated bodies as they sucked away at my skin. I then watched as small dots of red began to expand over my arm, spreading out in abstract patterns, as my arm hair served as a barrier of sorts. The blood however was not oozing out through my own wounds but rather leaking out from the severed one's bodies which I successfully managed to squash to death. They even got into my eyes as I had to rake them out from the corner of my eye sockets with the tip of my finger, much like how one removes the nasty eye gunk which forms after a good nights sleep. But this was no eye gunk, this was masses of dead gnat bodies. Relentless, unforgiving, mutant gnats unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Some so full with my blood that their puny wings seemed to struggle to lift their heinously fattened bodies back up into the air.

As time prevailed, the sun's rays ate away further at the cloud cover and the humidity started to dissipate as hinted by a blue sky which began to peak out between the weakening clouds. A slight breeze was soon birthed out from the lifting clouds, as if a gift from Mother Nature herself. With the advance of the breeze the swarm of gnats retreated back to their Hell, round and full with my blood. Any time now the itching would soon begin to commence, but what followed first was an itching to finish exploring the empty buildings and ascend the looming water tower. The ride home I would leave to be miserable.