Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota

A small figure walks alone.

Trapped in a darkened hollow where the smothered snapping of twigs are found underfoot and the muted calls of chicks reach out to their mother for warmth and sustenance.

Split from his classmates, whilst out on a trip to the national park, Bobby found himself isolated, confused, and cold. His phone was back at the cabin the students had been staying at, so texting for help was out of the question.

He had grown dependent on others for many aspects of his life, so this unforeseen isolation had pierced a hole in the protective bubble he had grown so accustomed to.

His eyes frantically search for something.

Anything that could be of use to orient himself to the land. A large tree, a mountain, or even a lake would suffice. But none reveal themselves to satiate his desperation.

As he travels down the forest path, movement tricks the corners of his eyes, shadows flickering and taking form within his peripherals. The paranoia intensifies as the echoes of night cascade across the forest in silent turmoil. Beginning a campaign of conquest against the last strands of light on the horizon, that signified the sun’s imminent departure.

They must be aware of his missing presence by now, but in light of that, what should he do?

Stay put in the hopes it will be easier to locate him, or move elsewhere, perhaps to higher ground. With nightfall approaching, he chose the latter.

Their calls to him could not be relied upon anyway and might only attract the forest’s more dangerous, nocturnal denizens that came out to hunt.

As the evening’s energy sprang to life, Bobby climbed a hill as high as his adolescent body allowed him to. There, he found a rocky outcrop that potentially offered protection until morning. A slit in the rocky surface was just large enough to allow his small body to enter it.

Here he curled up into the fetal position and attempted to rest as the night’s breeze gently hummed, resonating lullabies to him through the gap in the rock, though he paid them no heed. His attempts to sleep were hampered by thoughts of other inhabitants within his cavernous shelter. Snakes, scorpions, and other various insects could be within his proximity, with Bobby none the wiser.

This realization stopped his sleep and instead forced him to lie and experience the forest with his other senses.

He could see the trees below thrashing in the wind that had begun to intensify. Their sedated howls, unable to reach Bobby as they desperately waved for his attention. Amongst the heavy swaying of the flora, he thought he could see a shape.

Something with a tall, thin stature, watching, waiting.

His imagination ran rampant as he stared at it throughout the entirety of the night, but it never moved, forcing him to conclude it must have been a piece of a branch or perhaps just forest detritus.

When morning came, he was tired, and his body ached from the exposure of cold wind bombarding his joints. He engaged in workout activities such as star jumps and stretches in an attempt to warm his body up and stretch the aching muscles and joints.

Then, after checking his backpack for sufficient food rations, he scanned the forest until he found an old oak tree that displayed splayed branches enabling easier climbing. He ascended its trunk, breaching the top of the tree to see what he could observe.

All hope was not lost.

He could make out the lake where the log cabins, used by the school faculty, were situated.

Though it was some distance away.

After making a mental map of the direction needed, he descended the tree, his feet hitting the ground with a light thud.

He stopped momentarily, seeing a large footprint in the dirt near the base of the tree. One that did not belong to a human.

Bobbie’s gaze reaches out into the maze of trees, frightened of what they might find. Many predators operated out in these lands, such as bears.

His high alert was warranted, especially after his visions from the night before still haunted him. A light breeze carried with it a ghastly stench, causing him to recoil from the nasal assault.

However, nothing presented itself, allowing him respite and emboldening him to keep moving.

Without hiking experience, Bobby estimated a day’s walk to reach the lake. He pulled out a packet of potato chips from his bag and began eating them.

“It’s always important to keep your energy levels high.”

Something his father had always emphasized energetically, using his hands to motion the eating. The over-the-top gesture always made Bobby laugh when they camped out together in the past.

Even though he was no longer around, Bobby had never forgotten all the things he had taught him. Such as marking trees with blades to remember routes, though this time, a permanent marker would have to suffice.

He wished he were still here; it was always easy to communicate with him when times had become tough. As a loner, no one else understood Bobby`s perception of the world and the many things it lacked. His father did, and he always made every effort to fill that void of loneliness for him.

But that all changed one day, when he went out to a Lake on a fishing trip and never returned.

After six months of searching, everyone had given up, some assuming he ran off with some woman, others thinking he had met with an accident and was most likely dead. But Bobby never believed any of it, he held on to the hope he would walk through the front door one day, with the same cheerful face on him as he left.

It was the one year anniversary today, since his disappearance.

As he continued to travel further through the forest towards his goal, Bobby noticed the trees increasing in density, though someone of his size and stature had no real issue navigating them. Whatever happened, he had to remain in the same direction no matter what, following the imaginary line he had envisioned in his head. He removed the marker pen from his bag and began marking trees to help his navigation, as well as serving as anchor points, should he have to return the way he came.

In time, the little hairs on his arms and neck began to stand to attention. He had always relied on them over other senses to warn him of things he might not initially be aware of, similar to the spider senses his favourite comic book hero possessed.

Something felt off.

An unknown presence surrounded him and the ghastly stench had returned.

The forest was deathly silent as he looked around, warily attempting to sense the disturbance that taunted his inability to detect it.

Feeling the possibility of it being a bear or a cougar that had previously gorged on rotten prey, he ran as fast as he could through the densest part of the forest.

He ran for what felt like hours, but most likely were mere minutes, ducking and diving through branches, withholding the temptation to stop and check if something was following. He knew more than anyone that the absence of sound did not guarantee that nothing was in pursuit.

The anxiety hit him hardest as his stamina reserves emptied, forcing Bobby to stop regardless.

He looked back, but nothing followed, and the presence he felt before seemed to no longer linger, along with its deathly aroma.

It was at this point that the sharpened spear of realisation had pierced him through.

He had run off the track of the memorised direction.

There was no way of knowing where the hell he was now, most likely leagues away from the lake. He smashes his arm on a tree branch in frustration as tears fall from his eyes.

“This was such a bad idea?”

After getting it out of his system, Bobby pulled himself together.

He hated defeat, most of all admitting to it. This wouldn’t be his end, he`d been playing his entire life on hard mode.

The sky groaned before emitting a sudden flash that startled Bobby, he instinctively found a tree for cover from the imminent deluge of rain. The pause gave him time to reflect on the past, why he spent most of his time alone. In short he was just never able to fit in with other people, they couldn’t understand him and often mocked his inability to understand them.

The storm gradually cleared.

After recovering his stamina and consuming the last of his lunch box, accompanied by a bottle of water, Bobby began to warily retrace his steps.

Though this time, he circled around the path to avoid whatever it was that he had encountered earlier.

Once he returned to an area of familiarity, he continued on the manifested path to the lake, completely unaware that some of his tree markings had been scratched out and replaced with new arrows, etched from something misshapen and primal.

Eventually, he came upon an area that opened up from the treeline into a small kind of grove.

At first, Bobby failed to notice the hostility being projected at him from nearby. The movement out of the corner of his eye jolted him in its direction.

A boar.

A large one too, with many young cowering behind it. It seemed to feel threatened by his presence on behalf of its children. An act of parental protection, he couldn’t fault the animal for.

Its head shook in an aggravated manner as it started stirring up dirt with its legs in a motion that suggested it may charge him.

Bobby froze, unsure whether he should run or whether he should just remain still and hope it loses interest.

Before he is able to make a choice, the boar freezes in place too. Its eyes looked behind him to the treeline. Before he had time to turn and see what distressed it, the beast sprinted off in the other direction, with its young fervently following.

The uncomfortable feeling of observation returned as the hairs on his arm stood upright once more.

He gazed out into the vast forest.

Who`s there?

No point in calling out.

“If it were a predator, surely it would have attacked by now?”

He thought to himself.

Silence continued its eternal reign of supremacy.

then he saw it…

A shape darted and flickered between the trees. Too fast to see what it was in its entirety, but slow and large enough for Bobby to know it wasn’t just some piece of foliage in the wind, as he was briefly able to make out the shape of antlers.

He finds himself running again.

Though this time, he makes sure it is in the right direction. His heart pounded so hard he could feel its reverberations up through his entire body as he sprinted.

He could feel everything in his desperation.

The breeze on his face, the leaves brushing past his body, and the cracking of sticks underfoot.

The curtain of darkness began to fall again.

He had been on the move for hours, hopeful he had lost whatever stalked his presence. The lake couldn’t be far away now, but trees were all that still greeted Bobby. It was looking likely that he was going to have to sleep one more night in the forest before he could go home.

He desperately looked for somewhere safe to rest, due to the lack of sleep the previous night, his mind and body were now wracked with fatigue.

In time, he realised his only option was to climb.

Bobby nestled into a nearby tree, as high up as he could possibly climb. He was all too aware of the dangers of attempting to sleep up here, especially for people like him, who shuffled a lot in their sleep.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a t-shirt. Simultaneously tying it around his waist and a branch deemed sturdy enough. This formed a kind of human sling that stabilised Bobbie’s body, preventing any falls.

“Thanks for the old trick, Dad.”

His eyes automatically fell heavy from extreme tiredness, causing him to drift off into a deep sleep.

He dreamt of the day his father left for Sand Point Lake, Bobby tried to call to him, but it was too late as he shut the door on him. Suddenly, the world of the dream started to aggressively shake, as if an earthquake were occurring.

Bobby awoke to the sudden motion of his tree shaking violently, like something was smashing it from below.

He looked down to see the form of his attacker, but the pitch black of night embraced their body, making them invisible to the moon’s light that was blocked by the treeline. The attack would continue for some time, attempting to dislodge Bobby from the tree. But he held steadfast and refused to let go of it until the shaking suddenly stopped. He could feel violent tremors on the ground, travelling up through the trunk of the tree. These continued for a short period before they also stopped.

Yet again, a night’s rest escaped him.

When morning came, the stench of decay surrounded the tree as he descended it, and a gruesome sight greeted his eyes.

A brown bear’s corpse lay at the base of the trunk, its ribcage ripped open and gutted of all entrails and organs. That wasn’t the only disturbing event; the tree line had also been flattened in a certain kind of formation, creating a pathway in the direction of the lake. To Bobby`s disbelief, markings on the trees at its outer edges matched his own, though they were not made from ink, but instead from the blood of the bear.

Not wanting to wait around, he followed the path of downed trees until, nearly an hour later, he reached the cabins, where the flashing lights of police vehicles could be seen. The officers seemed to be examining the fallen trees with a degree of intrigue, indicating it was not deemed a natural phenomenon.

As Bobby’s dishevelled figure emerged from the path, his supervising teacher, Mrs Harriot, ran over in tears and embraced the boy, whilst crying uncontrollably. The seriousness of the situation seemed almost unbearable to her, though Bobby seemed unfazed as his attention was elsewhere.

He recollects the past few days in his mind.

He had snuck out of his cabin in the evening and run off into the woods, in search of something, and after pondering everything that had occurred, it looked as though he had found it, as he smiled towards the forest.

The outline of a tall, antlered being slinks back into the trees.

Mrs Harriot takes Bobby’s hand and walks him past the students and other faculty members as they stared silently.

They passed a sign by the cabins.

A sign that read `Welcome to Sand Point Lake.`

The neon lights of an ambulance blinded his eyes as a paramedic seated him in the open back of the vehicle and checked him over while asking him questions.

He doesn’t answer, not because of some kind of malicious intent or ego, no, he doesn’t answer because he cannot understand her.

Mrs Harriot knelt down in front of him and made a set of gestures with her hand.

Something that he finally understood.

`Time…to…go…home.`

Warning, if you suffer from sedatephobia, now knowing the outcome of this story, you may be triggered if you attempt to reread it with this in mind.

Subscribe now

Warning, if you suffer from dentophobia or odontophobia you may find some of this content triggering

A cold winter’s bite assails Ben and the others as they huddle around a barrel-lit fire. Exposing their hands in an attempt to claw at the warmth. It created an aura of light that barely expanded beyond the border of cardboard city.

The place they called home.

When Ben was cast out onto the streets, the residents welcomed him with open arms. Their camaraderie knew no bounds, asking no questions of his situation.

Everyone respected each other’s personal boundaries here.

The grey, lifeless city of Detroit was a cruel mistress during the winter months. The cold didn’t just creep into your clothes; it assaulted your joints and muscles, causing them to seize up if you were unable to find a source of warmth. It was not unheard of for there to be fatalities among the homeless population in these conditions.

Especially the elderly.

Ben leaned closer towards the fire as its heat waxed and waned under the cold barrage of the weather.

`Our numbers are looking a little thinner lately.`

An elderly woman, huddled across from him, known as Joyce, responded.

`Well, Jamie and a few others haven’t been around for a while.`

The wind whistled hymns under the large bridge containing the settlement, shaking the cardboard homes and causing the barrels’ flames to dart around in a panic.

`Did they find somewhere else?`

`I don’t know, kid, they haven’t been seen for a while.`

She always referred to anyone younger than her as `kid.`

Didn’t matter if they were only a year or so younger; this made him chuckle, though he wondered deep down if she had no children and this was her way of staving off that absence in her life.

Ben coughed, wheezed, then brought up a small amount of phlegm.

His bronchitis had been getting worse as of late; the harsh winter served to amplify it. He barely felt his extremities as the cold gripped his body, his blanket being pulled closer to cover any areas that might be exposed to the elements. Joyce was visibly struggling; her age belied her frailty. He had already given her one of his blankets. As much as Ben wished to give her his last one, it would be dangerous for him in his condition.

As a train darted over the bridge above, shaking its foundations and causing dust to descend from the ceiling down onto the camp. Another group of people entered under the bridge, bringing wood and paper to add to the fire. They then settled down in front of it, joining the group. One of them had scored some extra blankets from the charity of a local church, giving one to both Ben and Joyce.

Their harsh discomfort was downgraded to minor frostbite, now that they had gained another layer of armour against the cold.

That was until the late hours of the night crept in, bringing a whole new level of eviscerating frost with it. No one could sleep within their cardboard hovels; they offered no insulation to the point that it would be dangerous to attempt resting within them. So everyone sat around the barrel for the entirety of the night, sharing stories of their pasts, feeding the fire with everything they had, and could scavenge nearby.

Although at first, Ben was reluctant to relive his previous transgressions, he eventually opened up to the others after realizing it would be selfish, after how much they had done for someone they had barely known. He allowed the words to flow forth, telling the tale of his youthful days full of joy and happiness, before the inevitable dive into the depths of despair brought on by gambling addiction, alcohol, and other vices.

He spoke of how it alienated him from his family and partners; eventually, it got so bad that he bet everything he owned away, including his home, when he gambled with local mobsters.

He awaited judging voices and contempt, but he received no such responses. Instead, looks of pity and kindness. They must have thought he had already faced judgment, and this current existence was his sentence.

It offered him a strange form of relief to be able to unload this burden without assumptions. It felt surreal to him, how people with barely anything willingly gave so much. Compared to those who had so much but were willing to share so little.

Ben felt anger.

Not for himself. He had brought his situation about through his own actions.

No, he felt anger for those among him now, such as Joyce, a kindly old woman who had slipped through the cracks of a broken society. And for the others around the fire who had similar situations.

This city was corrupt to its core, unfunded or unwilling to help its citizens, forcing them into these shanty towns in a first-world country.

That’s why the homeless communities called it `The city that loathes.`

As the early hours of the morning approached, one of the other men sat around the fire, attempted to brighten the mood.

`Did any of you guys hear about what our illustrious leader, Mayor Wiggan is doing for the homeless?`

They all looked towards him in confusion.

`No.`

`He’s mandated that the homeless will get free dental.`

The group scoffed and laughed at the remark, including the one who had spoken it.

`How nice of him, instead of things we need more pressingly, like oh…I don’t know, food, water, and shelter. He’s happy for us to have shiny teeth?`

Many others nodded their heads in disapproval, with one being heard voicing their disgust in the background.

`Asshole!!.`

`Well, if anyone does intend to use it as it’s free, the nearest dentist office offering it is down Smart Street in Clay town.

The cold wind increased its intensity, causing everyone to bury their heads in their blankets and coats.

`Smart Street? I thought that was just a residential area?`

`It is, the guy running it runs a dentist clinic from his home.`

Ben felt around his mouth with his fingers. He was sure that a couple of molars and maybe an incisor were possibly rotten. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he could do with a little work done, especially as it was free.

Later that day, he and another of their group, Greg, headed up to the clinic. Smart Street was only a twenty-five-minute walk away; it was manageable, and the hike kept them warm. Greg was a large, built guy, the kind you wouldn’t want to bump into in an alleyway on your own, but everyone back at the camp told Ben he was a big teddy bear. But if things went south, you could rely on him. By the time they had nearly reached the destination, they were practically best friends, their mannerisms gelled together in such a way that conversation flowed back and forth between them like water.

When they arrived at the address, it really did just look like someone’s home, not a dentist’s clinic.

They knocked on the door.

Shortly after, a tall, slender man opened it. He wore the attire of a dentist: white coat, latex gloves, and a partial face mask, pulled down under his chin.

`Can I help you, gentlemen?`

Both of them looked visibly nervous to ask the man; he picked up on their shyness.

`Are you here for a free dental service?`

`umm yes, please, sir, if that’s ok.`

The dentist looked them up and down.

`Sure, come on in.`

He ushered them into the home, checking outside to see if anyone had seen them enter, before closing the door.

They followed the dentist down a set of stairs to the basement, which had been renovated to resemble a clinic reception. It was nearly unrecognisable, save for the small, ground-level window that basements generally had.

The man pointed at the seats and a water dispenser.

`Make yourselves comfortable, there’s water there if you want any, I’ll be with you as soon as I am done with my current patient.`

He disappeared into another room while Ben and Greg sat down and took their coats off. The underground floor was heated exceedingly well, meaning they did not require the extra layers.

As time went by, they studied the surroundings. The walls and floor were immaculate; not a shred of dirt or marks could be found. This man clearly held a lot of pride in his business. Either that or he employed a very competent cleaner.

Ben noticed another door that seemed like it might lead to another floor down. A strange addon for the type of property it was. it had a large padlock across its latch. He pointed it out to Greg, who joked that maybe he was a doomsday prepper and it was a nuclear bunker.

After twenty minutes or so, the dentist re-emerged and called out Greg’s name. Greg got up and turned back to Ben, blowing a raspberry at him as if to say.

“Haha I get to go first.”

Ben just flipped the bird at him and laughed nonchalantly before retorting.

`Dick.`

Greg and the dentist left for the clinic room, leaving Ben alone.

Nearly thirty minutes passed before the dentist returned, but with no sign of his newly found friend.

`Where’s Greg?`

`Oh, he’s ok, I just had to give him some sleeping gas to do some work on his teeth, he’s sat in one of the clinic rooms relaxing while it wears off. I’m ready for you now, Ben.`

The dentist throws a slightly synthetic smile his way before holding the door open for him. Ben gets up and walks down the hallway, past multiple clinic rooms.

“He must have spent a fortune renovating this basement?”

He thought to himself.

They passed a room where Ben could see Greg lying on a trolley, seemingly comatose. It must have been a strong hit of gas to make a man of his size go all funny.

The dentist chuckled.

`Your friend is so big, I had to use an extra concentrated dose of laughing gas to dull his senses. Otherwise, I couldn’t remove his rotten teeth easily.`

Ben laughed back, but it was mostly fake. Something about this guy made him feel uneasy. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly. Whether it was how he nonchalantly laughed about drugging people, or perhaps it was just his weird basement setup. He felt the need to probe the man for information in order to satisfy some of the discomfort.

`Say, where’s that other door in the reception go to? Can this place travel down any farther?`

For a few moments as they reached the clinic room, the man didn’t answer as if he was gauging how to answer, before finally responding.

`Oh, that door, it leads to a bunker. Yeah, someone had that built before I had moved in, like if bombs fell or something, I guess.`

He couldn’t believe it, Greg, that bastard was right. He got the feeling he would never hear the end of it once he’d tell him later on. This put a smile on his face and alleviated some of the suspicions he had.

Ben got onto the inspection chair and attempted to relax as the dentist pulled a large suspended lamp over his face and began checking his teeth.

`Yeah, I can see quite a few rotten teeth like with your friend. I’m going to use a dose of the happy gas on you, too, so that I can extract them without causing you pain and discomfort.`

Ben wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but he didn’t wish to have multiple infections in his mouth either, not with his Bronchitis seemingly getting worse.

With reluctance, he accepted the gas.

With his senses dulled, the dentist got to work. He could still feel the drill chipping away at his teeth, but the numbing sedation kept the pain at bay. Its eerie whirring continued for some time, with chunks of tooth occasionally flying out of Ben’s mouth. Though he had no nerve sensations, he could feel the friction of the drill and the dentist’s hook tool digging around his mouth, grinding against his teeth.

He found himself constantly slipping in and out of consciousness, which felt a little odd. The dentist also kept checking the meter on the gas container.

“Is something wrong with it?”

Later, he came around, not knowing how long he had been out for. The room was dark and empty, its equipment and tools in stasis. He attempted to sit up but felt an immediate wave of nausea wash over him. After nearly vomiting, Ben pulled his sluggish body to its feet.

“Where’d he go?”

The gas had begun to wear off, allowing pain to come flooding back into his mouth. When he felt around his gums, Ben could tell that the infected teeth had been removed, leaving behind a kind of pain he had never experienced before, sharp and unrelenting.

He ventured out into the hallway, peering back into the room Greg had been resting in. He finally understood why the big fella might have needed time to rest. Especially if his dose was greater, the one Ben currently had was kicking his brain about the place already.

He leaned in the doorway to speak to him, but Greg was gone.

“Maybe he’s already recovered and is waiting out in reception?”

Ben made his way out of the hallway into the waiting area. He pressed his hand against his neck; it was emanating reasonable amounts of pain, too, for some reason.

Upon entering the reception, he couldn’t find Greg anywhere; he couldn’t find anyone at all, for that matter. The dentist was still nowhere to be seen. However, the large door that was padlocked was now ajar with the lock removed.

He warily approached it.

A set of stairs that seemed to stretch down for metres into pure darkness was all he could see. Out of curiosity, he started to descend the stairs, but got no further than a few steps down, when an echoing scream that undoubtedly belonged to Greg rattled its way up the staircase from below, followed by a foul stench that bombarded Ben’s senses.

He yelled down the staircase.

`Gregg! Is that you!?`

For a moment, silence perforated the stairwell until he received a response that made his eyes widen.

`Run Ben! Get help!`

He darted back up the stairs into the reception, before bolting up the stairs and out of the home’s front door. A wave of frosty air washed over his still partially numbed face as he left the property. He stood in a panic, trying to hold his stomach’s contents in, unsure what to do. There was one obvious option, but the likelihood of being believed was practically non-existent.

Nevertheless, Ben ran as fast as his semi-sedated feet could carry him. He had lost track of how long he had fumbled through the wind and frost before reaching Detroit’s police station. All he knew was that he nearly collapsed upon entering the building due to exhaustion and pain.

An officer rushed over and helped Ben to his feet, guiding him to a chair.

`Are you ok there, sir?`

`No! I’d like to report a crime!`

After checking him over for injuries, they escorted Ben to an officer’s desk, where he proceeded to tell them everything about his experience. Throughout the recantation, he could see the same look on their face as others who had held doubt in him in the past. But he needed to be believed, more now than ever, for Greg’s sake.

He guiltily interwove some additional made-up details about seeing suspicious individuals outside the clinic and suspected a gang operation. He knew they would have to take it more seriously then. The story managed to convince them to send an officer over to the address to check it out.

He felt guilt from deceiving them, much in the same way he had done to his family and friends, but it was a necessary evil at this point.

One of the officers gave Ben a hot cup of cocoa before he left.

The long walk home gave him the time to think over all the details of what had happened.

“How did he know our names? We never told him that.”

The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that the dentist might have been running some sort of illegal operation, perhaps sponsored by gangs or mobsters.

It was too early to know for sure; too many details remained unknown.

Over the coming days, he would receive no news from the police; this, however, did not surprise him. The law never took anything the homeless communities said seriously, despite living on the literal front lines when it came to gang issues.

The more Ben thought about it, there was no way that the gas the dentist used was laughing gas; it must have been some form of sedative. His Bronchitis partially blocked up his airways, which must have meant only a certain amount of the gas actually got inside his body. He must have woken up earlier than the dentist had planned. He had thought about it a lot, as well as Greg’s screams. He came to the conclusion he was operating on him down there, perhaps for a black market organ donor ring. I mean, a bunch of homeless people missing wouldn’t be noticed by anyone, so it was a perfect cover-up. It all fit into place with the only exception being the foul smell that came from the stairwell.

That he still couldn’t explain.

But he was determined to get answers.

After three days of hearing nothing, Ben and a few others from the community went down to the precinct to inquire about the investigation. To their shock, they were informed that another investigation had been opened around that address, for the officer sent to check on it never returned. But they were looking elsewhere for leads after interviewing the dentist, who proclaimed the officer had inspected his property, then moved on. Ben and the others knew this must be a lie; he probably had the officer’s car discarded or hidden by his affiliates, but without any evidence, making accusations to the police was pointless.

By then, he knew what he had to do in order to save his friend and potentially others who were down there in the dark, alone.

He returned to the dentist’s address under the cover of nightfall, with one of the settlement’s younger residents, Johnny. Serving as a lookout while Ben attempted to break into the clinic.

He was friends with Jamie and the others who had been missing, so his suspicions drove him to aid Ben, as their disappearing act was out of character.

Ben demonstrated skill with a lockpick, something he was not proud of, but a necessity after he had gotten himself into debt with the mobsters. He learned the talent in order to burgle homes for priceless items that could help him recover the debt.

He unlocked the front door and crept inside, trying his best to stick to the shadows. The door to the basement was unlocked, but he remembered that it let out a slight creak as it opened, so he took the utmost care in gradually opening it with slow, soft movements.

Ben ascended the stairs, down to the reception area.

The lights were out, but he had brought a flashlight that Johnny had lent him. The large door stood before him, staring in anticipation.

He cared not; its secrets would soon be revealed as he fumbled around in the low light to pick the large padlock.

It was already unlocked…

A pang of nervousness rushed over Ben.

Was the dentist already down there, cutting up victims?

Nonetheless, he drummed up the courage to descend the stairs to the lowest level, even as the foul stench of decay attacked him once more.

As he reached the bottom, it stretched out in many directions like a great expanse of catacombs. The vile aroma filled the very air here in much higher density, causing Ben to cover his mouth in protection against its curdling odour. After hearing what he thought to be sounds in the distance, he lowered the beam intensity of the torch and continued through the area, using as little light as possible.

As he pushed deeper, he could hear a noise that grated on his eardrums. It sounded like two hard chitinous surfaces grinding together. It echoed all around Ben, creating an uncomfortable aura of sound akin to nails scraping down a blackboard. Ben kept low and moved slowly, so as not to get the attention of whatever was making these unnerving sounds.

Eventually, he stumbled upon a light source, which came from an ajar door. The light of the room from which it was coming seeped out into the catacombs, only offering a small amount of illumination.

As Ben approached it, the grating sounds became accompanied by a soft, supple squelching of something fleshy being torn apart.

After a brief moment of listening carefully, he could hear a third sound, one that unsettled him greatly with its recognisable human tone.

A voice.

Screaming out, but muffled, suggesting its owner was somehow gagged or covered.

As Ben peered into the room, what he would see would make him wish his assumption of black market activity was correct.

The dentist was standing over a body. One that was still alive and frantically wriggling to break free from restraints. But as he looked even closer, he realised he couldn’t make out any features whatsoever, because the entire body was covered in some sort of hard, white material.

As his eyes focused more on the light to get a better view, he almost let out a cry in shock, holding his mouth over his hand to muffle it.

The body was unrecognisable because it was completely covered in human teeth. Even facial features such as the eyes, ears, and nose lie under a blanket of molars and canines.

That wasn’t even the most terrifying detail of the scene before him.

The dentist was warped out of shape, their limbs far longer than the average human, and a set of misshapen wings pierced through the flesh of their back. A long appendage-like tongue was coiling out of their mouth; the end of it opened up into a jaw like that of a lamprey eel.

It was latching onto the body and ripping away chunks of teeth, along with strands of flesh and sinew. It clearly did not desire the meat, instead carefully removing it from the teeth and depositing it on the floor. This was the cause of the abhorrent wailing sound coming from the victim. The reason it was so muffled was due to the fact that the teeth had even grown internally, partially blocking their oesophagus.

As Ben looked around, he could see other bodies scattered about the room at various stages of consumption and decay. One that had been attached to the wall had been stripped down to its skeleton. He could see that even the bones had been fused with teeth, like some sort of calcium statue, caught in a pose that encapsulated their last agonising moments.

The flesh littering the floor had partly rotted, causing the horrific smell that now darted about the catacombs. Ben struggled to hold back the urge to vomit. In his attempts to hold it in, he made the sound of a small cough. This caught the creature’s attention; it reared up even higher than before and sniffed the air.

Had it detected him?

It slowly turned its head, even though its body remained in place like that of an owl, slowly twisting and contorting. Looking back at the doorway. Ben’s heart froze as he panicked. He hugged the wall, praying to whatever god saw fit to listen, to keep it from detecting him.

After a brief period, the muffled shrieks started again. The creature had continued indulging in its meal.

As he calmed himself, Ben noticed that the grinding sounds from before had gradually gotten louder; they were all around him now. Something he had missed due to the previous distractions. The noise seemed to stop just on the edge of where the light from the room reached within the catacombs.

Ben drummed up the courage to slowly lift his torch, hands shaking in anticipation. In the brief silence between, he switched the torch on.

Multiple shapes stood in the darkness, humanoid but no longer recognisable as human.

Covered in teeth.

The calcium edges across their bodies grated as they shuffled towards him, signalling themselves as the source of the grinding sounds previously heard.

As they got closer, Ben began to shuffle across the wall in preparation to run, but he noticed the other sounds from before had stopped as a shadow blotted out some of the light that emanated from the room. His eyes widened and slowly turned towards the doorway to see the face of the dentist staring at him. Its long tongue had disappeared into its mouth, now replaced with a large, soulless grin, aimed directly at him.

He ran.

As fast as his body would allow, as a roaring shriek could be heard from behind him.

The creature was in pursuit, and Ben had forgotten the route that he had entered. In a panic, he ran into a dead end, surrounded by shambling beings encased in teeth. The creature’s unsettling face peered around the corner at him; its disturbing grin had grown bigger.

He thought that this was the end, that it would capture him and inflict the same horrible ending upon him as the others. But something else happened that subverted that grim expectation.

The beings infected with teeth suddenly surrounded the creature and attempted to hold it down. It flailed around, sending some of them flying into the walls, smashing the teeth off of the surface of their bodies. They cry out in pain as flesh tears away with them, while others continue to swarm the beast.

Ben’s eyes began to tear up as he had time to look a little closer at what was unravelling before him.

It was Greg…and Jamie, as well as many others, that he recognised from cardboard city.

They were almost unrecognisable, with the calcium growths nearly engulfing their bodies in their entirety. But parts of Greg’s face could still be seen, as with Jamie and the others. They hadn’t been completely converted into teeth farms for the creature just yet.

Greg took one look at him, with signs of sorrow coming from the last parts visible on his face.

`Run Ben!`

A weird sense of déjà vu hit him, but he ran just like Greg asked. He ran as they pinned the creature down. It would eventually break free, he knew that, so he kept running until he found the exit. Climbing both staircases once again, out into the cold air of the suburbs.

Johnny greeted him by the doorway with a look of concern.

`You ok, Ben?`

He relaxed for a moment, a mistake he realised too little too late as the door swung open and an elongated arm stretched out of the doorway, grabbing Johnny, dragging him into the darkness of the home as the door shut behind him, screaming for help.

Ben hyperventilated in shock, but forced his body to continue running out of the residential area for a second time. When he finally returned back to Cardboard City, he collapsed, falling unconscious. When he woke, he was next to the fire barrel with Joyce and a few other residents looking over him.

`You scared us there for a moment then, Ben.`

His head experienced sharp spikes of pain, like a hot poker was occasionally being jammed into his ear.

`How long have I been out for?`

Joyce looked back to the others before returning her gaze to Ben.

`Oh I’d say probably a couple of hours, what happened?`

He couldn’t face not being believed again, but he built up the courage to speak of the ordeal. If anyone would believe it, it would be the members of this kind community.

But instead they all began to laugh at him.

`What a fool!`

`Yeeesss a complete fool!`

The laughter intensified.

`Whats going on!`

They all stared at him with dark maniacal eyes, as cardboard city darkened around him.

`You really thought you got away?`

Within a momentary blink, Ben is somewhere else.

Somewhere dark.

The smell is awful, and his wrists hurt, the source of the pain coming from something attached to them.

Suddenly, a light comes on.

It’s at this point, once his eyes have focused, that he realises he is in the catacombs still. Chained to a wall, with others tied down around him.

The creature stood before him in its unnatural form, staring fervently.

It speaks to Ben, uttering only two words.

`Welcome home.`

Its long tongue unravels out of its throat, splitting open and revealing a long proboscis. With horror, he witnesses it plunge the tip into the neck of another victim in the room. Something is pumped into them through the long tube.

It must be how they are transformed.

It finishes, then withdraws the tendril, turning to him with that same soulless grin. He closes his eyes, awaiting the inevitable perforation into his body.

Instead, the room suddenly lights up with a flash, as a gunshot can be heard. The creature suddenly falls, wailing in pain as another two shots ring out, causing it to cease its cries and lie motionless.

A figure stood in the doorway, but Ben couldn’t make them out with his sedated eyes. Instead, he kept slipping in and out of consciousness again, no doubt the same effect as before.

He awoke back in cardboard city, led by the barrel fire with Joyce looking over him.

Déjà vu?

Not this time, the cold felt real as he looked up to Joyce.

`What happened?`

`You ok? Some guy dragged you back here, said I should watch over you as you had a concussion.`

Ben cupped his painful cranium.

`He gave me this note to give you when you woke up.`

She passed him the letter. He opened it and began reading the contents.

You’re lucky I got there in time, bud, otherwise you’d have become a gnasher sandwich. I sorted it out, the things dead now. I’m sorry I couldn’t save your friends. I made sure it was quick and painless for them, though. I burnt the sick fucks clinic to the ground. But my work is far from over; these things work in pairs. I just wanted you to know peace, even though you’ll forget about everything once you’ve finished reading this.

As Ben reached the bottom of the note, the glow of a strange glyph emanated from the paper. As soon as he put the note down, Joyce inquired about its contents.

`So what did it say then?`

He briefly exhibited a blank expression before answering.

`Oh, that? The guy was just telling me I was knocked out by a guy trying to mug me, that’s why I’m a little shook up.`

`You poor thing, I can’t stand these damn delinquents! They got no honor!`

`Yeah…oh by the way! I found out the others have moved elsewhere. I met up with them before the incident, they told me to tell you, they say hi.`

A small tear slid down the corner of his eye. He attributes it to the cold before swiftly wiping it away and continuing.

`I think it’s about time we found a new home too, Joyce.`

He scratches his neck, causing a small piece of skin to come away, revealing a hard white object jutting out from the flesh underneath.

Elsewhere, a man sitting in an office is reading a newspaper; on his table is a plaque that reads `mayor`. The article in the paper talks of a local dental clinic being burned to the ground. It blames gangs and degenerates for the destruction.

The man’s hands tighten their grip on the paper in anger, ripping its edges. As the paper drops partly below his face, it reveals a pair of black soulless eyes.

Subscribe now

Warning if you suffer from trypophobia, apiphobia or depression, some scenes in this story may be triggering

A sun gently rises across the horizon of a deathly silent world.

Waves of light cascade across the surface.

Revealing ruined, overgrown buildings that towered over destroyed roads and streets. Overlooking the rusted wrecks of vehicles, whose owners had long passed from this plane of existence.

An infinitely still image, paying remembrance to a forgotten past.

Vines and weeds seized buildings and rubble, creating a green carpet effect that blanketed the ground. Metal had rusted due to the elements and confines of time, like a mosaic of wild beauty infused with the natural cycle of degradation and decomposition.

A wild doe roams the back alley of what was once a bustling city, feeding on berries and grass. Its foraging is disturbed by the lone figure of a man, treading with great caution.

The doe stands still, staring at him in bewilderment before something else spooks it, causing it to dash away in a panic.

The wanderer enters a state of high alert.

He slowly backs into the doorway of an old, ruined shop, frantically scanning the area for movement and abnormal sounds.

The environmental calmness dies, shattered by the thick, repugnant smell of rotting flesh and harrowing, unearthly shrieks.

A decomposing hand embraces the corner of a wall as a shambling form enters the alley. The partly rotting corpse of a woman staggers into view, its eye sockets empty, save for small unidentified shapes moving from within them. It seemed to rely on other methods to navigate.

The man in the doorway stayed perfectly still, practically merging into the wall that they had braced their body against. The woman let out more cries of pain, laced with an inhuman tone over the top. It created an effect of two different voices layered over one another.

Like two entities that were trapped within one single body.

She briefly stood motionless, listening out for sounds due to a lack of sight.

The wanderer held their breath and clenched their muscles tight; no sounds left their body.

In time, upon detecting nothing, the corpse staggered down the end of the alley and out of sight, allowing the wanderer to relax their stance and exhale a sigh of relief. His facial expression could not hide the fact that the decayed screams of wandering victims had been grating on his sanity for some time now. It had not been the first time encountering this situation, and he held no doubt it would be the last.

This world belonged to them now after all.

Before moving on, he pulls out a half-eaten cereal bar from his backpack and consumes it. A teddy bear hung from one of the shoulder straps; parts of it had worn through and were covered in dirt.

Much in the same way as its owner.

It wore a red ribbon around its waist like a belt. A necklace with a key attached to it was wrapped around its neck.

As far back as he remembers, he woke with it on his person, and a part of him wouldn’t allow it to be left behind. At times, he even found himself conversing with the stuffed toy, as if it were a real living entity.

The backpack and teddy are flung over his shoulders as he continues to press on.

The streets began to open up, instilling a feeling of exposure in the wanderer; this concrete wilderness had become a great expanse of inhuman dangers.

When he first opened his eyes in this world, large parts of his memory were blank, but he knew this city held importance to him. It was highly probable that this was his home in the past, as certain sights seemed to spark something reminiscent of recollection within his mind.

He looks up into the sky as birds flock high in the clouds, away from the devastation below them. He often contemplated what the world must have been like before the end began. The wanderer imagined the car wrecks as working vehicles with drivers and passengers. People on the streets, going about their daily business. Couples holding hands, people going to work.

Parents playing with their children.

The pleasant illusion is jolted back to reality as some of the imaginary people warped into the infested, and the buildings and vehicles returned to wreckage. Causing him to suddenly wake from the daydream and take cover before being detected.

Their hideous, perforated forms continued to stumble around, trying to find new hosts for the cargo contained within. These shamblers did not emit any screams of agony, unlike the shrieker previously encountered.

For death had already claimed them long ago.

The wanderer had seen what had happened to people who became infested, a grotesque process where an unrecognisable species of bee swarmed out of the rotted corpse of their current vessel to attack new prey.

It only took one sting to fully paralyse an adult. The rest of the swarm would then cover the body, rolling out the red carpet for the queen to approach.

Should would burrow into the ear canal of the unfortunate victim, straight into the brain, all while they were still fully conscious. Here she had full control of their body and its movements.

But the mind still belonged to the victim.

Those that scream and shriek do so because the hive has burrowed through their body, creating a honeycomb maze throughout their flesh.

The drones are meticulous, avoiding all the major organs so as not to accidentally kill the host. It is because of this that they are forced to live for months or longer, feeling every last agonising sensation as their body is gradually consumed from within.

No numbing sedation, hope, or finality.

When the nutrients from the hive were no longer enough to support this walking nest, the body would finally succumb. Creating these silent shamblers, whose bodies were decomposing, barely holding together.

This made them dangerous, though, for no sound heralded their proximity, unlike the shriekers that screamed their approach due to their constant state of agony.

The wanderer couldn’t risk being out in open ground with this many of them around. As far as he could tell, the shamblers could see body heat. It was the height of summer, he wore a cowl and was sweating profusely. Detection was all but inevitable, so he swiftly moved away from the area towards the suburbs.

By the time he had finished looting some of the homes in the area, the afternoon sun was starting to descend from the sky. He needed to find somewhere to rest for the night. The first home he tried had multiple infested wandering its halls. The second was heavily boarded up, though there seemed to be no signs of life inside. The third was badly damaged, but good enough that he was able to blockade a bedroom with furniture.

Once he finished checking that everything was barricaded securely and sealed so that not even a single bee could enter, the wanderer finally allowed his body to relax, sitting on the dusty old bed in the centre of the room.

He began to empty the contents of his backpack onto the duvet. Grabbing a can of peach slices. He retracted his switchblade, cutting the lid and prying it open.

The fruity aroma caressed his nose as he began to devour the slices. Alongside this, he brought out a 9mm handgun and rested it on the bedside table. The magazine contained only one bullet, saved for himself, should it look likely that he could not escape the same fate befallen to the rest of humanity.

Lastly, he propped the teddy bear up against the backpack and stared at it. A ritual he did every night with no inclination as to why, other than a continuous compulsion. Eventually, he would also start talking to it, having seemingly human conversations with the inanimate object.

“It won’t be long now.”

A sign, perhaps, that the isolation of this world was taking its toll.

He lay down on the dirty bedding and allowed himself to drift off, if only for a little while. In the middle of the night, he suddenly sits upright in a heavy sweat.

A nightmare.

Sirens were going off and people were screaming, but he couldn’t make out any of the images; it was all too fragmented. After regaining composure, he looks down to find his hands tightly clutching the teddy bear. He remained awake for the rest of the night, holding it ever tighter, unable to fall back to sleep.

As soon as first light arrived, the wanderer began packing his things, and after a quick check to make sure the coast was clear, he cleared the room blockade and went to leave the home.

On his way out the door, he noticed a picture on the mantlepiece in the living room.

He picked it up.

A family of four smiled joyously with arms locked around each other on what looked like a camping trip.

A single tear fell onto the frame of the photo as he held it.

He put the picture down and left the home, glancing at the teddy bear with a little hope in his heart that the family had found peace now.

“They are together, I’m sure.”

A concept that ached his heart whenever it entered his mind, reminding him just how isolated he had become in this dead world. To find peace as a group with loved ones was a desirable ending he could never obtain.

The journey continued with the intent of hitting the local shopping areas. Far more supplies were needed than what he currently had if he wished to travel through the wilderness away from the city. He had to know for sure if others were out there, grasping onto hope that he wasn’t really alone.

But that hope had been fading for some time now.

The wanderer enters the remains of an old convenience store. Many floor tiles had been forced up off the floor by weeds and plants growing underneath them.

He was seeking tinned goods.

They could last for years without spoiling. Perfect for a long journey.

As he searched the shelves, he would stop momentarily. Listening out for any sounds such as the shuffling of feet, laboured breathing, or buzzing of insectile wings.

Once satisfied it was safe, he would continue, a process that had become completely automated to him.

He finds some tinned goods, and after checking their dates, he stashes them into his backpack. A sound causes him to swiftly stop and freeze.

Buzzing.

The wanderer instantly falls to a crouching position and attempts to listen more intensely. The sound was already coming from within the shop floor area, but it was not accompanied by any footsteps.

He slowly crept down the aisle, remaining crouched as the teddy bear hung loose behind him.

“Be careful.”

As he approached the end of the aisle at the back of the store, a corpse that was slumped against the wall came into view. The buzzing was merely the product of flies that had already begun the process of laying maggots within the carcass, not those of the drones.

He still remained vigilant, intently staring at the honeycomb-shaped holes across the entire corpse, anticipating bees to crawl out of the folds.

But they never did.

The hive had long abandoned this body, practically unrecognisable as human anymore; they had devoured most of its internal organs and limbs, leaving nothing more than a fleshy meat suit behind. They could not have sustained it any longer and must have gone in search of a new host.

A sharp pain stabbed at the wanderer’s cranium.

The headaches had gotten stronger lately. He took an old pack of paracetamol before leaving the store, taking two of them with a swig of old warm water from his bottle, anxious to visit the next target of interest.

The shopping mall.

This would most likely be the toughest place to scavenge from, as the infested would sometimes gather inside buildings in groups. The bigger the building, the bigger the horde usually.

It would inevitably contain some of the tools he would need for the journey, so he carefully made his way through the city towards its location, using the back lanes and alleys for cover.

Part of the journey took him through an old administration building. Its offices lay in ruin with chairs and desks strewn about. Various weeds and vines had grown their way inside, merging with the furniture and walls.

The wanderer sought packs of paper as they would make for good fire-starting material out in the wilderness.

He entered a much larger office, the kind someone in a more important position might use. A figure sat in the office chair, which initially caused him to pause in shock. He soon realised it was not one of the infested. The body had almost completely decomposed down to the bones, but it looked like it had done so naturally. The old blackened blood splatter on the wall behind and partly up the ceiling painted a picture of the path this man must have willingly taken.

Sure enough, after a quick check of the floor, an empty revolver was found.

It was something the wanderer had contemplated on more than one occasion, but leaving this place for the wilderness in the hopes of finding others seemed to snap him out of those dark thoughts. There was something else that dissolved the desire to end it all, but he couldn’t put his finger on it with a haze of amnesia blocking the source.

After rifling through drawers and filing cabinets, he finally found a sealed pack of printing paper. After stashing it in his backpack, the wanderer walked past another office area. As he did, a sharp jolting pain hit his head again.

An image entered his mind.

In the blink of an eye, the room had changed into a pristine office. He looked into the reflection of one of the windows and saw that he had a suit and tie on.

He had worked here?

Before the world had ended.

A man wearing the same kind of attire came up to him.

`Good work on the Huxley report, Rogers, you’re going places, my friend.`

Another sharp pain.

That was it…his name was Ben Rogers.

In a flash, the man suddenly grabbed him by the arm.

“Pleeeaassee heeelllppp meeee!!!”

The man’s face and arms began to ripple, lumps crawled under his skin before finally erupting. Bees poured in and out of the holes, devouring everything in their path as the man’s body broke apart in Ben’s arms.

He suddenly came back to reality, heavily breathing as sweat traveled down his face. He grasped the teddy bear, which seemed to have a calming effect.

“It’s ok now.”

Ben reached into his backpack and pulled out a bag of dried fruit, nuts and seeds. He realized that he had barely eaten anything since this morning, and it was already approaching midday. It was important to ration, but he had to keep his energy up, too. There had been multiple times where he barely had the stamina to lose his infested pursuers, resulting in him nearly being caught.

With two more bags in his backpack, it wouldn’t be an issue just yet. He would eventually need to find more food to resupply. One objective at a time was the process he always followed; it helped prevent stress and anxiety from building up too high.

After stopping off at other points to loot, he eventually made it to the mall.

The entrance had been smashed open, likely the result of when the infested first attacked, or just before, when panicked people raided the shops for supplies. It was at that point that the government probably lost all control of its citizens.

It’s not easy to enforce compliance when all that surrounds you is chaos and panic.

As he entered the smashed open entrance, there were definitely more recent signs of a struggle further in.

But how recent exactly was uncertain.

Ben’s body began to tremble with anxiety as he moved inside slowly, darting from cover to cover. The bear jolted slightly loose, hanging lower from the backpack.

“Please be safe.”

He moved slowly and patiently through the main hall, which opened up to multiple levels of old shops. The roof had caved in at some point, allowing beams of sunlight to flood downwards, which he stayed clear of to avoid being warmed up by the heat.

He had to keep his temperature as low as possible to help avoid detection.

A recon of all the food stores proved largely useless, save for a bag of expired gummy bear sweets. Ben’s mind jolted with a sharp pain again as he picked them up. So much for the paracetamols he had ingested, though they were most likely out of date; he had never bothered to check the box beforehand.

As the pain subsided, he made for the DIY store on the second level. The shop itself had remained largely intact, thanks to the immense shutter door that had dropped almost completely down. It looked as though someone else had already attempted to pry it open, but it was unclear whether or not they were successful.

Ben grabbed the bottom and pulled as hard as he could. It took all of his energy just to lift it a small amount. As he knelt by the shutter, catching his breath. A familiar sound sent him into a panic.

Slow shuffling footsteps approaching from down the hall.

Without thinking, he immediately attempted to squeeze under the shutter door, but it was too tight. He squirmed like a bug trapped under a boot, desperately trying to get through as the footsteps got louder, now accompanied by a shadow on the wall merely meters away.

He held his breath and forced himself under the shutter, dragging the backpack in behind just before the shambling corpse of a man wandered around the corner into view. Ben quickly sat up against the wall next to the shutter inside the store, trying not to make any sound.

But something had caught the thing’s attention. He had gotten very hot and sweaty from the ordeal of getting under the shutters. It must have deposited residual traces of heat behind.

When the corpse eventually reached the mesh door, it got on all fours and pushed its face through one of the spaces in the metal curtain, barely a meter away from Ben’s position. The rotted flesh on its face peeled back and away as it forced its face in further. The smell almost caused Ben to wretch, but he managed to control it by covering his mouth.

His heart raced violently as the creature continued searching.

It had the same milky white eyes as the one he encountered in the alley, but unlike that one, it was clearly dead.

A stroke of luck, for if it were still a living host, its main senses of sight and hearing would most likely still be functional. It didn’t stop Ben from almost hyperventilating however, when he saw the face of the man.

His jaw was fully locked open. Looked like it had been that way for some time. Ben dared to think what had caused such a face of anguish to remain that way after death.

It’s what happened next that would test his self-control.

As the infested body’s head leaned in further, it was now nearly level with Ben’s. He could see drones crawling in and out of its rotted mouth, through the decomposed folds of flesh in its cheeks, one even crawled up its face into its eye socket, pushing the eyeball partially out of the skull. All of this, coupled with the smell of the rotted flesh, continued to bombard his senses with the urge to wretch. He had to do something before the bees would fully crawl out and detect him.

Ben slowly pulled a flare out of his bag. He had been saving it for the moment he escaped the city, but now seemed like a more pressing time to use it. In as quick a motion as he could, he activated it and threw it under the shutter, causing it to roll down the corridor a few meters away from the DIY store, ejecting its hot, fizzling sparks. The corpse suddenly turned towards the corridor, picking up the heat signature of the flare. It pulled away from the shutter doors and began shuffling in the direction of the smoke.

Ben now knew he had limited time, for it surely would have also caught the attention of more infested within the vicinity. Then, when the flare eventually goes out, he would have to contend with slipping past an entire potential horde.

He crept further into the store, checking through the shelves for tools such as bolt cutters and other instruments for breaking into locked places. However, all he was able to scavenge was a pair of pliers and a chisel. Not the outcome he had desired, but he took the tools regardless, as they may still have a use.

Ben finds himself eyeing up the small hand-held chainsaw on the bottom shelf. Using it to fight the infested up close in melee would be suicide, but another idea came to his mind. After a short search, he located a small canister of fuel for it and began filling the tank.

A quick check in the backroom found a sink full of water. It looked as though it was used to clean some kind of tool or apparatus, making it oily and undrinkable, but after dipping his hands in it, Ben realised the indoor temperature had kept it reasonably cool. Without a second thought, he scooped the water up and splashed it all over his body in an attempt to cool down.

Everything was set in place and ready.

He nervously approached the shutter door, slowly peaking down the corridor. To his horror, the flare had indeed drawn an entire mob of infested who were now standing over it in a sort of stasis.

One of the corpses, who had yet to feel the embrace of finality, turned to the sound of a revving chainsaw. It pushed up against the shutter, only to nearly lose a leg as the cutting tool slid out from under the metal gate into the corridor.

Ben had made sure to keep himself out of the infested’s line of sight while doing so, meaning it turned to chase the movement of the chainsaw, along with the other shamblers who were roused by the warmth of its presence.

The blade darted around, striking the floor, which caused it to spin uncontrollably, all while the infested attempted to reach for it, cutting their limbs open or even sometimes off in the process. The bees swarmed from their bodies, attempting to attack this new threat as well, but with even less success than the corpses under their control.

This was his only chance.

Ben darted under the shutter with his backpack in tow and made for the opposite corridor in an attempt to put as much distance between the horde and the swarm circling it as possible. But as he got to the end of the hallway, he made a heartbreaking discovery. The strap holding the bear had caught as he had slid under the shutters.

The stuffed animal stared at him from the floor next to the metal curtain, meters away from the horde.

“Get out of here!”

He couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind; his head hurt, and his body shook uncontrollably, until he slapped himself out of the shock and stealthily made his way back to the storefront.

His heart was racing; he could feel it pulsing against his ribcage.

As Ben reached for the bear, making as little sound and movement as possible, a terrible epiphany struck him.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

The chainsaw had switched off.

Ben stood perfectly still like a statue.

Very little noise permeated the hallway as some of the corpses turned in his direction. A bead of sweat slid down his face. He held on to false confidence that none of them could see him.

He had forgotten that one of the infested had yet to become deceased.

A shriek reverberated down the corridor, causing all of the infected to stand. The bees returned inside the corpses, perhaps to relay their findings to the queens controlling their vessels.

New meat had arrived.

Moments after, the horde began moving towards Ben in a strange, twisted unison of flesh.

Panic set in as he picked up the bear and ran for his life, while a swarm of bloated, withered corpses slowly followed behind, like a tsunami of decay.

He sprinted down the hallway, practically leaping down the deactivated escalator back to the main hall on the ground floor. All the while, more and more shamblers emerged from the smashed open shops and food courts. Stirred by the sudden detection of warm-blooded prey.

As he ran from the mall entrance, the streets erupted into life as even more horrors emerged from destroyed buildings around him. Ben embraced the teddy bear closely while reaching into his backpack for the pistol. If this were to be his end, it would be on his own terms.

“This isn’t the end! You can make it!”

He suddenly released his hand from the pistol and shut the bag. His survival instincts kicked in, and he ran as fast as his legs would allow.

He couldn’t leave this world yet. His heart told him there was still much more to discover.

His pursuers were relentless.

Although they could not match Ben’s speed, they had no issue with stamina. They could chase forever, with no requirement or strain being put on their unused lungs, unlike Ben, who would eventually tire. He eventually became aware of this and changed tactics to hiding instead of outrunning his foes.

As his eyes frantically darted around for possible hiding spots, he came into an open area of a park. In the centre of it stood an old, overgrown funfair.

As Ben entered the grounds, he passed under an old Ferris wheel. It stood like a relic from a bygone era. Moss had largely claimed its surface, hiding most signs that it was a man-made construct.

Seeing the opportunity, Ben immediately began scaling its frame in the hopes that his attackers would be unable to reach him. This proved to be true as they bundled underneath the giant wheel, trying to reach up to him.

Some attempted to climb up to Ben’s position, but their rotted frames did not possess the strength for such a task. As their arms grasped the Ferris wheel at height, they ripped and tore away at the shoulder, their muscles and joints too decomposed and eroded to hold their own body weight. They came crashing down to the ground, their bodies erupting in a cloud of viscera and bees as they impacted the floor.

Ben clambered into one of the Ferris wheel carts and regained his breath. He had hoped that remaining up here would cause the remaining infested to lose interest after they couldn’t detect his heat anymore. This proved to be futile as they remained at the base of the structure, trying to reach him, even as nightfall began to approach.

The outcome looked dire.

What use was it in being away from their grasp if he still couldn’t ultimately escape them?

As Ben and the teddy bear both lay in the cart, staring up at the night sky. He looked in wonder at the stars above, while the moaning of the infested below continued.

Perhaps an ending under such a beautiful setting wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Have faith.”

A light pattering noise shakes him from the daydream. It began lightly before it built up to a crescendo of impacts on the Ferris wheel’s frame.

For the first time in a long time, Ben smiles as he frantically gets his water bottle out of the backpack, while the rain pours down on him and the open cart. It brought a cool, rejuvenating sensation that calmed the nerves.

As he left the bottle out to refill with fresh water, Ben lay back in the cart, even managing to drift off to sleep in the middle of the downpour.

He felt safe for the first time in a long time.

The rain continued into the night, never relenting, as if it swore to protect Ben until morning.

When morning finally did come, Ben, feeling much more refreshed, peered over the edge of the cart to find that all of the infested had gone. The rain likely brought his temperature down to a point that they could no longer detect him. With the only shrieker being one of the victims of the Ferris wheel, the coast was clear for now.

Ben eventually climbed down the frame of the colossal wheel, taking care not to slip on the wet metal surfaces. He briefly inspected the splattered remains of the infested, making sure no bees remained among the detritus.

Once the area was cleared, for the first time since arriving here, he looked around the park. Old game stalls littered the grounds around the giant wheel. Shelving with dust-covered prizes sat at the back of old game booths.

As Ben wandered further around the stalls, a sharp pain entered his head, a memory flash. He had been here before, played games on some of these very stalls. He reached into the backpack, pulling out more paracetamol and swallowing them with the newly acquired fresh water from his bottle.

He strapped the bag to his back with his companion still attached to the back of it and went to leave the fairgrounds.

“Lets go.”

As he wandered past the last few game stalls to exit the grounds, he failed to notice the multiple teddy bears with red ribbons around their waists, sat atop one of the reward shelves.

Now that Ben had narrowly escaped death, and had a collection of tools to hand. He was nearly ready for the journey into the wilderness. His last attempt to find companionship in this harrowing world. He only needed to stop by one last place for medical supplies before he would leave this city forever.

Condemning it to the same isolation it had inflicted upon him.

His search eventually brought him to a pharmacy near the outskirts of the suburbs. He wanted to check if antibiotics and other important medicines might still remain here.

Ben sneaked up to the front door of the building, his head was still pounding with headache pains that not even the pills could quell.

He entered the building, watching every corner and standing still every few seconds to listen out for any movement. After clearing all of the rooms, he began to work his way through the cabinets and cupboards in the pharmacy stores. To his dismay, all he could find was a few bandages and vitamin pills.

It would have to do for now.

He went to leave but as he passed by a shelf, he noticed an item on it that he had seemingly missed during the search.

An inhaler.

He wasn’t asthmatic, but he was drawn to it, to the point that he found himself picking it up before he had even thought about doing so. As he did, the pain in his head suddenly intensified, causing him to drop the inhaler and cup his head in his hands.

Images came flooding back to him.

Memories.

Ben stared at the inhaler as tears uncontrollably poured out of his eyes.

“Oh God! How could I have forgotten!”

He grabs the bag and inhaler, then dashes out of the pharmacy into the street. Instinctively heading toward a suburb with renewed vigor. Intense desperation covered his face as he ran until his legs could no longer hold out. But Ben pushed them to carry on, even through the urge to vomit, he kept running, and running, and running.

Then he reached the street and stopped, panting heavily. He reached into his bag and downed a few mouthfuls of water from his bottle. Then he headed straight for a particular house, even abstaining from checking that the surroundings were clear. The survival instincts that Ben had carefully honed all this time had suddenly been overruled by a different kind of instinct.

A deeply internal one that nothing else would ever be able to stop.

He approached the front door of the boarded-up house and reached around his back for the teddy bear hanging from the backpack, tearing the key from its necklace.

Ben slots it into the lock, frantically pushing the door open and calling out without any care as to who or what hears.

`Bella!`

No reply.

`Bella its me!`

Still nothing.

Ben frantically paces up the stairs towards a bedroom and barges the door open.

He drops to his knees the moment he sees into the room, his face welting in anguish. The teddy bear falls from the bag onto the floor as he crawls across the ground towards a small bed.

A small discoloured hand belonging to the deceased remains of a child, held tightly onto an empty inhaler.

It had been for some time.

Sharp pain intensified in Ben’s head as his mind quickly rebuilt bridges once broken.

The nine-to-five grind of an office job, the people in the park with their kids, in the mall buying things and having fun together. You were in all of those images too; you just never saw it before. It was an empty blank space back then.

But now you remember.

The mall you took Bella to. The gummy sweets. She always loved those gummy sweets. The fairground. She loved the fairground too. you won her something from one of the game stalls on the shooting range.

The bear.

you remember when it all started, you had boarded up the house. But she was always on limited time. Bella was asthmatic, and her supply of inhalers was starting to run low. You knew this, you knew you would have to find more eventually.

She begged you not to go, that she would be fine. But you knew she wouldn’t be, so you went.

She gave you the bear for safety so that you could bring it back to her when you returned.

But you never did.

In the chaos of the outbreak, you found yourself being chased by the infested. You ran into an old apartment block where they managed to corner you in one of the apartments. So you took a big risk and jumped out the window, trying to land on the steps that went up the side of the wall on the next apartment block over. But you misjudged the distance, landing on the steps halfway up the building, then losing your grip, falling backwards onto a van below. You badly hit your head, knocking yourself unconscious.

You were dragged into a basement apartment by an elderly man called Jim. You had suffered a bad concussion and amnesia.

You slept for days before coming to.

You stayed with Jim until he eventually succumbed to the strain of his health, passing from a stroke.

That’s when you chose to head out in search of answers to the gaps in your memories.

“Where were you!?”

It had been nearly two months since you had the accident by that point. She never stood a chance.

“I waited for so long!”

All this time. You were never alone in this world. You had someone within arm’s reach who needed you, but you failed them.

Everything had come flooding back as Ben cradled the tiny body in his arms.

His broken mind and heart were unable to endure the onslaught that befell him all at once.

He cursed himself for not regaining his memories sooner, picking up the teddy bear up off the floor and putting it back into her arms.

“You brought it back.”

There were signs on her frail body that made it obvious she never gave up, refusing to believe her daddy had abandoned her.

“You promised.”

He reached into the backpack and pulled out the pistol. The Tears and sorrow on his face ceased as he pointed the barrel at his head.

`I won’t leave you alone ever again...Bella`

A sudden bang startles a group of birds on the roof of the house, causing them to fly away.

Two weeks later

A truck pulls up outside the house. A group of survivors depart from it, some armed men, a woman and a little girl of no more than 6 years of age. The men warily enter the property first, casing it for supplies. Once the ground floors cleared, the woman and the little girl enter.

The men make no noise from upstairs, piquing the little girl’s interest. She ran upstairs playfully, much to her mother’s dismay, as she chased her. As she peeked around the corner of the door into the bedroom, the men shouted to the girl not to look, but it was too late.

She saw them.

The man cradling the little girl.

They could be mistaken for being asleep; they looked so peaceful. But the stains on the wall and the smell of decomposition quickly helped her realise that they would never be waking up ever again.

“Even after, you never let me go.”

Her young, innocent mind didn’t know how to process the scene in front of her. She walked over and picked up the teddy bear, deciding that she would look after it for the deceased girl.

“Take good care of them for me.”

Her mother sprints in and covers her eyes, pulling her from the room. The armed men stand in tandem and lower their heads in respect. One of the men utters a prayer, hoping to guide their souls to a better place before they move on.

The little girl looks out the back of the truck with the teddy bear in her arms as the house gets smaller and smaller on the horizon, soon to join the ranks of other empty homes.

Their occupants forgotten by time.

The truck crosses onto the highway in search of hope, perhaps doomed to play out the same cycles of survival and loss that many others in this world already have.

Two figures walk off into the light holding hands.

“I love you Bella.”

“I love you Daddy.”

Subscribe now

Warning if you suffer from Spectrophobia, you may find content in this story triggering

A sharp ringing noise forced Annabelle’s eyes open, with a painfully gradual squint. She struggled to focus her vision on the surrounding environment. All that could be perceived was merely a spiralling collection of blurred images.

The bright flickering light on the ceiling eventually became a point of calibration, bringing everything into view in clearer detail.

In a state of torpidness, she sat up from the floor and propped herself against the closest wall as a wave of nausea washed over her body. Gagging on an acidic taste as it lined her mouth. Her throat and lungs felt intensely sore, giving the impression that something foreign had been lodged inside her airway.

It would be some time before the various afflictions would begin to recede and weaken, but once they had, Annabelle stood up and set about investigating her surroundings.

A dim, empty room with bare red brick walls surrounded her. She clutched her cranium, caressing it to drive away the pain that emanated from her skull. Unable to recollect any previous moments that brought her to this place.

There was only one door leading out of the room. She approached it warily, unsure if her assumed captors might still be nearby. Instead, she found it to be left completely unlocked, putting her head against the panel to listen for any movement on the other side. Nothing but silence, so she slowly opened the door, its wooden frame lightly creaking on metal hinges from the momentum.

What would greet her on the other side would be an endless maze of mirrors, with countless reflections looking back at her. When she stared out in various directions, the same gaze would be returned, no matter the location. With nowhere to look laterally, she decided to peer upwards.

The ceiling was too high and the room too dimly lit to see where it ended; wherever this was, the space gave an impression of boundlessness.

As she continued to look around, she noticed a hole formed from a large crack in the wall, not far from the doorway she had just passed through. It was big enough to fit a person through, but completely pitch black inside its interior. Staring into the opening gave Annabelle a cold feeling of unease. A black substance oozed down the outer edge of the entrance; it gave off an aroma of decay, causing her to back away in repulsion.

It seemed that the only option remaining was to navigate the maze, but where to begin when every direction is a replication of itself?

Annabelle picked out one individual path and stoically kept to its route. As she traversed the labyrinth of mimics, a sense of paranoia crept into her mind. It reached such heights that the occasional reflection staring back at her gave a sense that its gaze was observing her instead of simply emulating her movements. The previous head trauma might have been making her see things, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling of surveillance.

Suspicious stares were not the only unnerving detail Annabelle was seeing within the mirrors as she travelled further down the trail.

Upon closer inspection, the images presented throughout the hallways were not all carbon copies of her as she had initially thought. Some of the reflections wore her skin at various stages in her life.

In one instance, she was a small child, no more than four or five years old, holding her favourite cuddly toy, a white deer with sprawling, large antlers.

A gift her grandmother had knitted for her.

When she was a little older, she had explained to Annabelle that it would protect her from all the evil in the world. Having the ignorance of childhood at the time, she believed it and took it with her wherever she went. Even now, it was nestled in a box in the back of a wardrobe, back in her apartment.

She could never throw it away.

After her grandmother passed, it was all she had left as a memento of her kindness.

In another mirror, she was a very frail and elderly woman, cradling a walking stick in one hand and, curiously, the same white deer toy in the other. This image was the most confusing of all that she encountered, for Annabelle was only in her mid-thirties.

The mind subconsciously had a way of portraying and visualising potential futures, within the hopes and dreams that every human had.

was this perhaps a portal into that process?

It was at this stage that panic began to settle in her mind; the images seemed far too elaborate for this to be some kind of strange dream or illusion. She felt real pain and too much physicality to simply be imagining any of this.

She walked up to one of the mirrors and focused on the reflection, intensely staring into its eyes. To test if what stared back was just a mimicry of science, or one of supernatural origin hiding behind illusion.

She stared closer, her heart racing.

For what seemed like minutes, there was nothing but a carbon copy of Annabelle staring back. She was about to admit defeat as her nerves were failing, when she suddenly noticed over her shoulder, the reflection in the mirror behind her. It was staring intensely with dark, obsidian eyes and bright blue pupils, from a stance that Annabelle was not making!

She swung around, startled. But within the short time it took her to turn, the reflection had returned to normal. She calmed her shaking body.

They were not what they appeared to be, of this she was now convinced.

It was at that moment that a loud, harrowing scream echoed across the maze, some distance away. Her nerves shuddered and her hands began to shake.

Being unable to look anywhere with clarity, with constant eyes gazing back, made her feel open and exposed, and now a tirade of vocal suffering was being added to the ever-growing list of anxiety-inducing events.

The many small hairs across Annabelle’s body suddenly arose as her eyes frantically searched for an exit.

Realizing there to be no other option, Annabelle nervously paced further into the maze, her body shivering and feet dragging, leg muscles unwilling to be marched forward.

She had attempted to trace her way around the labyrinth’s edges, but the orientation and confusing arrangement of the corridors made it all but impossible, forcing her to travel further down the refractive rabbit hole.

As Annabelle moved past the various reflections, darting her vision side to side, she found herself scratching an irritation on the joint of her forearm, despite nothing visibly being there. It felt sore, similar to the pain inflicted by a cut or something piercing the skin.

Another scream echoes across the massive interior of the room, this time much closer and resonating more deeply into Annabelle.

She falls to her knees, clutching her head and retreating into herself!

It was then, in her darkest moment of despair, that a light static sound caressed her ears; it slowly and softly blotted out all other sounds until only it remained. As she stood still, confused by the unknown sensation, the sound stopped, leaving only pure silence.

A kind of nothingness that strangely soothed her mind.

Out of nowhere, a light, whispering voice echoed words into her ear that immediately sent chills down her spine.

“It’s close…run!”

Without even questioning the command, Annabelle sprinted down a corridor in the opposite direction from where the scream had originated. Ignoring the pain and anguish coursing throughout her body, she just kept running!

Once she had cleared some distance and stopped to catch her breath, tears began to cascade down her cheeks, formed from both fear and a feeling of blissful familiarity.

The voice belonged to her late grandmother, someone whose memories summoned motherly love and protection.

Something that should not be possible.

Her entire body ached and suffered from periodic bursts of pain, both muscular and nerve-rending. She couldn’t keep this momentum up; her body collapsed from atrophy.

The reflections stared over her body, some with concern, others with a predatory gaze...

When she eventually returned to consciousness, a frosty chill swept across Annabelle. Causing her to shudder at the thought of cold stares surrounding her in her moment of weakness.

She pulled herself to her feet and continued to navigate the maze with a brisk but steady walking pace, not wanting to repeat the sensations she had just subjected herself to.

Moving past the vast lines of mirrors at any amount of pace tricked the senses. Sudden movements, tipping, or sharp turns of the head caused the whole room to move and shift, serving as a catalyst for the already prevalent nausea that Annabelle was stricken with. It reached an eventual crescendo, causing her to stop to catch a breath; otherwise, she most likely would have passed out again.

While regaining her stamina, a repeating paranoia continued to gnaw in Annabelle’s mind as she stared at her reflections.

What if they were something else, simply wearing her face?

The static sound surrounded her again as the familiar voice whispered into her ears once more.

“Be careful, it knows you are trapped here.”

She desperately calls out.

`Grandmother…is that you!?`

No response, instead another chilling scream reverberated down the corridors, this time it was long, drawn out.

After experiencing a strange sensation, like ants crawling across her body, she no longer felt confusion at the situation. Though she tried, it just seemed impossible to enact the emotion now. Instead, that feeling became replaced with acceptance of the situation.

This feeling seemed to embolden Annabelle, instilling a sense of duty in escaping and discovering the truth. She gave up on watching her reflections and moved on with renewed purpose.

Eventually, after staggering around for what felt like hours, she came to a corridor that widened, and with it, the mirrors also changed in size and shape. A colossal statue sat in the centre of the hall.

It was the white antlered deer of her childhood.

It towered over her, up towards the dark, endless ceiling, emanating a Snowy white majesty. Before she got the chance to fully admire its grandeur, the sound of sniffling brought her senses back to a state of alertness.

Annabelle slowly crept around the statue towards the back foot, pacing with the stillness of a cat stalking a mouse. There she found another human, sitting against the deer’s leg, cradling their head in dismay.

They detected her presence and looked up.

Annabelle stood motionless in shock.

For the human was none other than herself…

The being stood up, and the two figures stared at one another with equal measures of fear and uncertainty.

Eventually, Annabelle broke the silence. Asking who she was, receiving a preposterous answer in return.

She claimed to be the real Annabelle.

Everything about the two of them matched in detail. Their clothes. Their hairstyle. Even the injuries Annabelle had sustained all the way up to this point in time, the other Annabelle had them too.

She continued to probe the impostor with questions of a hostile and confronting nature; she did not trust them after everything else that had already deceived her in this place.

After realizing their endless bickering over identity would get them nowhere, they calmed down and began to ask each other questions of a different nature. Such as this place and what they knew about it.

The question seemed to trigger shaking with intense anxiety upon the imposter, unable to steady her hands.

A problem that Annabelle had always struggled with from childhood all the way up to adulthood. She would get bullied in school, the children called her shakey Annie, which only made the uncontrollable movements worse. The only thing that could sate them was her grandmother when she was alive.

When she left the mortal plain, that mantle fell onto her last creation, the white deer.

Having no useful answers to give, the pair recollected the past to each other in an attempt to prove the legitimacy of their claims.

Their discussions lead into deeper territory, such as Annabelle’s quiet upbringing in the countryside by her now estranged parents, all the way up to the current situation.

From the exchange, they both came to a sobering conclusion.

They were one and the same.

Everything she had experienced and done in her life, the other Annabelle had also done. She proved this by describing specific events that had happened before Annabelle had even asked.

With barely any ground being made in figuring out what was going on in the present, Annabelle reluctantly recommended that the two of them stay close. Though she felt she couldn’t trust this being, the sounds she had been hearing in this place, which precluded to possible danger, overruled that concern for now. She decided to keep close tabs on her, not entirely convinced that this wasn’t potentially some sort of ruse.

She would get her answers eventually, but not right now.

As time continued to pass and the pair travelled further into the maze, more shocking discoveries would be made.

More Annabelles.

However, with copies of herself now surrounding her in abundance, there was one difference between them all that became much clearer with observation.

They all displayed different personality traits, ranging from anger, happiness, and determination, even reaching into more extreme cases, such as narcissism, pessimism, and jealousy.

She only felt frustration, being no closer to answers than when she had first opened her eyes, wracked with pain.

Annabelle also noticed that she was the only one with reflections in the mirrors; none of the others possessed any. For some time, she wondered if perhaps she had vacated her own sanity. That these doppelgangers didn’t really exist, and she was simply talking to herself.

Perhaps none of this was real.

Every single one of the copies that Annabelle had encountered since the first shared the same harrowing message.

They were being hunted by something. Something none of them had yet to properly see.

The group would initially travel together while attempting to find an exit, but soon, due to the major differences in personalities, some of the copies began to clash over ideas of how this should be achieved. This resulted in some of them splitting off from the group to find their own answers.

One of the mirror reflections with a blackened pair of eyes and glowing blue pupils watched the arguments that ensued from afar.

All attempts made by Annabelle to convince these individuals of the folly of their plan fell on deaf ears, as they set out into undiscovered areas of the maze. This frustrated Annabelle to no end, at least for a time, until that feeling also eventually left her with the same crawling sensation across her skin, replacing it with nonchalance.

The remaining group settled down to what they presumed must be nighttime. The lighting barely changed in this place, making it difficult to tell what time of day it was. They set up a couple of Annabelle clones as watchers, keeping an eye on the mirrored corridors. Ready to alert the group to anything that didn’t resemble them.

Annabelle lay her weary head down in an attempt to sleep for the first time since waking to this nightmare. The itching sensation in her arm had been periodically appearing and disappearing, and her emotions continued to ebb and flow in all manner of directions. While others became lost to her, making it impossible to replicate the feelings they once produced.

But for a brief moment, her mind was able to find solace, and she dreamed of being in the fields near her home with her grandmother. The only woman she had faith in, who blessed her with love and care. But as the dream progressed, the imagery around her grandmother became blurred; she struggled to recall what the fields looked like as other parts of the dream began to warp and dissipate.

She panics.

Everything is disappearing, but at the exact moment she wonders why, she forgets the question altogether, a part of her is unraveling, exposing its soft underbelly.

Among the silence that had now encompassed her dream. A sound, though incredibly faint at first, began to gradually increase in volume and intensity.

It held a constant pace and rhythm between pulses.

Beep…Beep… Beep…

Annabelle suddenly woke as the sound reached its crescendo and was swiftly followed by smashing glass. One of the copies was being dragged into a broken mirror, kicking and screaming. Within seconds, she was gone, and only glass shards and black mucus-like slime remained around the edge of the seemingly endless void, with the signature stench of decay, just like the hole in the wall.

She began to hyperventilate, shaking and staring at the corridor. The beeping continued to intensify. The others, realizing her condition, helped Annabelle to her feet and immediately moved away to gain distance from their unknown hunter. It wouldn’t be until they had gotten far enough away and Annabelle’s anxiety had abated that she would learn the identity of the victim who was dragged away.

The first original copy that she had seen.

When told this by one of the others, she would claim no knowledge of this person they spoke of, as she picked up a shard of glass and studied it with steady hands.

It had become apparent to the group that their pursuer could use the mirrors to lay ambushes for them.

A deep sense of paranoia settled within the party as they moved down the corridors, creating rifts in their trust of one another. They would find themselves pushing and kicking against one another as they scrambled to stay as central to the path as possible when travelling, attempting to keep themselves at the longest distance from the mirrors.

Ironically, they had found themselves back where Annabelle had originally started; the door on the wall from which she had entered this place remained ajar, how she had left it. But as Annabelle walked around it to look inside for clues again, she made a peculiar discovery. The inside room had disappeared. The doorway had nothing but a solid brick wall behind it.

One other change she noticed was the dark hole in the wall.

It had increased in size exponentially. Now closer to the size of a large cave opening. The black substance had also multiplied, spilling out partly into the corridors, like a mold, growing and expanding.

One of the Annabelles volunteered to enter the cave, just in case it proved a valid escape option. This particular clone displayed signs of courage as it entered the black void in the wall.

The group waited for what felt like hours, with no sign of them ever reemerging.

Annabelle’s resolve to enter after them eventually disappeared, behind a spine-crawling sensation.

More screams echoed across the maze, forcing the group to move on. Annabelle stared at the hole as they passed.

Not even light could pierce through its darkness.

She found herself wondering why she was stood staring at such a thing, was there some sort of importance to this place?

They continued up another corridor with Annabelle at the flank.

As the group came around a corner, her grandmother’s whispering voice entered Annabelle’s ears again.

“Turn back now!”

The group suddenly backed up slowly, putting their backs against the wall. Confused with their actions, Annabelle peered around the corner.

It was the predator the others had spoken of, this time out in the open.

The creature was unnaturally tall, sporting long, bony limbs and black, empty eyes with glowing blue pupils. Its physique was skeletal in nature, with its spine protruding far out from its back.

The creature had a grip on one of the clones, which was desperately trying to shake free from its grasp.

Annabelle started to slide forward in an attempt to help, but the others held her back, covering her mouth.

She looked back in sorrow just in time to see what the others were so afraid of.

The creature’s eyes went up into its sockets, revealing empty voids. Its jaw bones crunched and snapped before dislodging and opening up much wider than what should be possible. It then proceeded to lift the clone up above it with its long, anaemic fingers, dangling her over its massive, open maw.

Anabelle closed her eyes, unable to watch.

It lowered the prey into its mouth as she wriggled and screamed. Within moments, both the shrieks and the Annabelle were gone, never to be seen again.

The group sneaked away as the beast crept back into the black void of a shattered mirror, disappearing from view.

There were clear signs of the party being on edge, arguing with one another about what to do next. All the while, Annabelle stood staring at one of the mirrors in disbelief at what she had seen. The mimic reflected the same teary-eyed stare as the beeping got louder again.

She slapped herself across the face to muffle the sound and stood back from the mirror, her realization of the danger they imposed suddenly returning. She then pulled herself together and gathered everyone together.

She attempted to rouse everyone with a speech, instilling the need to push on and survive. Despite the look of defeat in their eyes, it seemed to work; they composed themselves and prepared to move on.

It would not be long until Annabelle would start to lose faith in that same belief. In time, the creature would claim more of their number, slowly whittling the group in size.

Until only four of them remained.

Many of the mirrors were now smashed open, becoming dark tunnels with the black substance flooding out of them into the hallways. It caused the survivors to gag on the stench of filth that was infinitely stronger now.

Time was running out.

Annabelle had become a shell of herself. She had forgotten how to feel most things a human naturally experiences. All that remained was fear and uncertainty, laced with a speck of desperate hope.

How had she gotten here?

How to escape?

She couldn’t even remember if she had come across answers to these questions anymore.

As the group passed down a hallway that had turned into a dark, murky river, Annabelle suddenly fell to her knees, holding her head as the black liquid flowed around her.

The beeping sound was now akin to a banshee wailing directly into her ears, causing immense pain.

The voice of her grandmother called out to her again.

“You must keep moving! Stay away from its darkness.”

The others attempted to help pick her up, to keep the group moving, but as they tried, the predator appeared from one of the smashed mirrors behind them and engulfed one of their number with its dislodged jaw like a snake gulping its prey down.

The one who exhibited fear was consumed.

Within moments, Annabelle suddenly found the courage to rise to her feet through the pain.

The clones looked at each other, one forced a fake smile while the other looked deeply saddened.

They both turned to Annabelle.

They were giving her the signal to go now, that they would buy her time.

She looked at them with sadness, not wanting to leave, but their faces told her it would be an insult to their dignity to ignore the sacrifice they were willingly making for her.

The copies turn to face the creature slinking out of a mirror, as Annabelle wades through the black river as far as her wounded body allows her. She entered the next hallway as the beeping noise reached an all-time high of volume and pain. The soreness in her arms intensified into stabbing pains, and her throat erupted in agony and choking, causing her to slow down again.

The screams of the Annabelle copies rang out for the last time.

As she reached a point of teetering on the edge of blacking out, caused by both the pain and the stench. A bright light pierced the corner of one of her eyes. It was shining from behind one of the mirrors.

Struggling past the pain, she reached out to the mirror to find it was a door.

It was heavy, requiring an immense amount of energy to pry open, with the black liquid increasing that difficulty.

As it partly came ajar, the bright light emanating from it blinded her to the point she didn’t notice the creature had crept around the corner and was charging at her with immense ferocity.

The many different reflections in the mirrors screamed out in disturbing unison, as if they were attempting to warn her. Some of them cried tears of the black substance, while others shrieked like banshees with empty eyes.

Annabelle turned in reaction to the sounds, noticing the imminent danger.

She felt like she had no remaining energy to open the door enough to fit through it in time.

Was this the end?

The creature ceased its movement and stared at the other end of the hallway.

Annabelle’s gaze passed over to where it was looking. Another bright light gleamed down the hallway, inside it stood a figure that she felt a warm encouragement from.

Displaying sprawling, huge antlers and a majestic, snowy fur coat.

The white deer.

After a brief period of the two creatures staring each other down, the deer suddenly leapt into action, darting through the black river towards the creature, crashing into it with its antlers and sending it flying backwards into a mirror, smashing the glass across its body and into the water.

It rolls around, seemingly in pain, before pulling itself back upright, snarling at the deer with rage-filled blackened eyes.

The deer stared back at Annabelle for a brief moment, its eyes filled with sincerity and love, locked with hers.

In that instant, she knew what to do as it charged the beast again. Using every last ounce of strength she had left, she forced the door fully open and passed through the light.

She felt a sense of deja-vu, squinting with pain-filled eyes again as her vision focused on the room she had entered.

It was an individual hospital ward.

In the center, a patient lay in a bed, in what looked like some kind of induced coma. It was the dead of night. Heavy rain pelted the windows outside.

As her vision returned to its clearer clarity, she recoiled in shock. The woman in the bed, much like those she met in the labyrinth.

Was her.

She instinctively touched her neck and rubbed her arms as she noticed the equipment attached to the bedridden version of herself.

The pain in her throat was the tube the doctors had inserted into it to help her breathe, the soreness in her arms was the cannulas feeding medication into her veins, and the beeping was the heart monitor that kept watch over her comatose body.

She looks across the room at the bedside cabinet where a photo shows her as a little girl, holding a cuddly toy, while another older woman holds her hand. But she cannot identify the woman or the toy; their images are completely blurred, and she struggles to recollect them.

As she stood dazed and confused by all before her, the sound of something impacting the ground by her feet made her jump. She looked down, and her eyes opened wide with horror.

The severed head of a deer stared back up at her, lifeless and frozen in a portrait of despair.

Long chitinous claws slowly began to grab her shoulders tightly, immobilizing her as the creature slowly stood up from behind her, peering over her shoulder with a twisted, elongated neck until it was level with her face.

It whispered into her ear with a deep, unsettling resonance.

“Your mind and body belong to me now, all that was you I have consumed, one part at a time.”

Her eyes widened, and the reality of what had occurred hit her as a bolt of lightning crashed across the sky outside.

She had been trapped inside her own body, within the confines of her mind. The mirrors were her memories, and the clones represented different traits and aspects of her personality.

It must have created the maze as a kind of defense mechanism against an intruder it had detected. The creature had gorged itself on the fragments of her subconscious in order to hollow her out, leaving behind only an empty shell that it could then inhabit.

She trembles uncontrollably, for she had just shown it the front door to her body and the last remaining remnant of her identity.

Its large grin unhinges as its eyes pop up into its sockets. The maw opens and engulfs the last screaming shard of Annabelle’s mind.

The monitor by her comatose body flickers and beeps, the lights flash on and off in the room as a nurse hurriedly enters to check on the patient. As she is looking for vital signs on the monitor, the patient’s eyes open. Glowing blue pupils surrounded by a sea of obsidian black stare up at the nurse.

A man in a large trench coat and a trilby hat enters the hospital wing. A nurse swiftly approaches, asking him to put out the lit cigar that he was currently taking a large drag from. She is clearly annoyed by his lack of care for the rules of the hospital. Before she can ask why he is here, a scream echoes down the halls from one of the patients’ rooms, followed by the sound of glass smashing.

The nurse goes to see what the problem is, but is swiftly grabbed on the arm by the man in the trench coat.

“It’s best you don’t go check that out, nurse.”

He flicks the cigar on the floor and unholsters a revolver from behind his coat with glowing sigils on its barrel. After seeing the weapon, the nurse runs in the opposite direction.

Once it was clear, he began to make his way towards the room, eagerly caressing the weapon’s trigger with his finger.

He bursts round the corner of the doorway, weapon held high, but the bed was empty and the window had been smashed. Lightning flashed periodically, illuminating the dark room as the man looked out of the opening, across the vast forest that bordered the hospital grounds.

He walked back out into the reception area and picked up the phone behind the desk. As he entered a number, markings on his hand glowed with increasing intensity.

“I was too late, it’s crossed over from the other side, I’ll need backup to track it down, could be an Omen class threat, but I’m not sure without approaching it.”

He pulls a fresh cigar out of his coat pocket and lights it before leaving the hospital. As he looked up towards the forest from the entrance, heavy rain continued to crash down as thunder boomed in the distance.

A rip in the metal fence led to long tracks lying in the dirt, accompanied by shreds of a nurse’s uniform covered in black, viscous material.

The hunt had begun.

Subscribe now

(Warning, if you suffer from Thalassophobia this content may be triggering)

DARK WATERS

What is this place...

This darkened landscape before me…

An archipelago unlike any I have ever seen before.

There are paths that lie just under the water’s surface, like a vast submerged network linking the islands together. It’s difficult to tell if they are naturally formed or artificially created, though their patterns would suggest the latter.

Deep water surrounds them, an expansive abyss that fills me with intense anxiety if I were to stare at it for too long, as if something could be staring back, hidden behind a murky curtain of predation.

I decide to walk the shoreline.

The water sits deathly still, no ripples touch its surface for there is an absence of any form of breeze stirring in the air, nor is there any kind of natural force ebbing the tide in and out. No birds or other wildlife are present, and yet I can still sense the vitality of something here, alive, just unseen.

Despite its barren surface, this island still imposes a feeling of possession over me, like the very land itself is sentient, with the waning sun overhead as its eternal observer.

A part of me wants to touch the water, to make sure this is not all some vivid dream, however, my survival instincts scream at me not to be so foolish, terrified of what might grab me from beneath the surface.

I press onward to the next Island after realizing there is nothing here to aid me in understanding this place.

Many thoughts deeply rooted themselves within me as I traversed the abnormally silent aquatic paths. Dread, fear, and reluctance, to name but a few. The ocean around me is so vast that there is no evidence of land in any other direction.

Perhaps this is the only land at all.

I realized my phone was still in my pocket, I took it out and turned on its torch function to try and illuminate the waters that surrounded me. Although it was dark, it still possessed a certain level of translucency. Shapes and outlines far below filled the mind with all kinds of illusions about what might be dwelling in the depths.

I curse loudly after losing grip of the device, dropping it into the water. What it would reveal in turn would cause me to suddenly cease all movement and tremble uncontrollably.

As it drifted down into the darkness below, the torchlight flickered. In doing so, it highlighted black shapes darting around its illumination. It continued to drift down deeper, without stopping. As if the bottom were miles below, it became but a mere speck, surrounded by clinging darkness, attempting to claw at the light.

The glow was eventually breached, snuffing it out before I was able to see the ocean’s true depth, my mind wandering to the possibility that it might have just been devoured.

I snap myself out of the trance-induced state.

The idea had already tainted my thinking, however. I remained perfectly frozen, too terrified to cross the pathways.

Things dwelled beneath me that I could not identify.

After gaining control of my anxiety, I eventually drummed up the courage to slowly pace my way forward, moving gradually, so as to minimize the disturbance to the surface of the water, one foot gently sliding in front of the next.

A loose piece of stone causes my balance to stutter, teetering me on the edge of the drop into the void. I tense up, only just managing to regain my footing.

The ocean’s waters remained calm, much to my relief.

I press on, with a renewed desire to escape this alien place. I had crossed almost the entire distance across the path to the next island when the silence was broken by the gentle rippling of water behind me. I nearly freeze again, but manage to control myself this time, instead picking up my pace as land was within reach. The hairs on my back stand up, expecting something to happen as my mind screams at me to look behind, to turn!

I silence that part of me and continue, trying my best not to imagine what might be at my flank, stirring from my movements.

Immediately after arriving at the next island, I peeked over my shoulder to see nothing but minor swirls in the dark water. Whatever lay dormant remained so for now.

This particular landmass had a bigger array of scenery. Lakes, forests, and moors permeated its shores, giving it the illusion of a more vibrant ecosystem. Stars shone brightly in the alien sky, a beautiful sight mired by the reality of this world that surrounded me.

It was then that I realized that nightfall had arrived within mere minutes.

I stopped by a large open lake, suffering from dehydration, I took a few mouthfuls of the spring’s water with reluctance, for it was as dark as the open oceans that surrounded me.

I satiated my thirst, confirming it to be drinkable, but as I went to stand up, I noticed the shape of something at the bottom of the large pool.

My eyes focused on it too late to realize that the object was an eyelid of colossal size. It swiftly opened, and a giant pupil fixated on me. I dare not imagine the size of the creature it must belong to. Its iris glowed with neon vibrance, similar to that of the aurora borealis I saw as a child back home. Swirls of blue, green, and purple gazed at me with cosmic brilliance, but it held a power over me too. An intense feeling that made me feel small and insignificant compared to its magnificence.

The more it looked at me, the more my heart rate raced violently. It felt heavy and suddenly claustrophobic as I slowly backed away; the space around me became threatening and oppressive.

I`m running now, my body is trembling with shock, the creature had imparted a strange sense of dread on me that I had never felt before. It was at that point I could hear a voice quietly calling to me, its owner sounding weak, as if they were crying out from a considerable distance away. Their deep voice reverberated in my ears in an oddly relaxing manner.

They were a captive of this world, shackled to the isles, or so they claimed. I couldn’t explain how, but I knew where their imprisonment was located. They had somehow inserted this information into my mind. I received something else from the exchange too, though I could not decipher it.

Its language was unknown to me.

On the next island over rests a giant monolith, where I would find the one who calls to me.

First, I had to cross an island once more, across a dark body of water again. The hairs raise up on my arms and neck, fear of the unknown below grips at my very being once again, like icy tendrils holding me in a strangling embrace as I attempt to step forward.

Before I know what is happening, an unseen force lifts me from the ground at great height, above the island, up among the clouds. Immediately, I can see beneath the true scale of the horror before me. The shapes moving in the water, many in number, yet they all suddenly stop, as if they are waiting for something. The largest of the shadows seems to fill the very breadth of the ocean itself, so vast and unending.

A life form of terrifying expanse.

The force holding me aloft suddenly pivots my body so that my head points downwards and drops me with great pace directly towards the Ocean. The water below is rushing towards me now at blinding speed. My vision focuses on the murky tides. As I near the surface, the dark shapes begin to move around frantically in anticipation of my fall among them. My heart freezes, and my body tenses up as I hit the icy cold depths.

Yet when my eyes open, I am back on the partly submerged pathways surrounded by the water, my heart beating frantically, like it is going to erupt out of my rib cage at any moment.

Was that just a vision?

My clothes are wet, which adds to my confusion. It feels as if I am being toyed with.

The voice calls to me again as I approach the large monolith, its geometry a strange mix of angles and shades of darkened grays. There are rocks formed of strange non-Euclidean shapes, floating without any obvious explanation as to how they are achieving this feat. This imagery is reminiscent of father’s maddening dreams he used to suffer from back at the estate. I wonder now if they were just dreams after all.

In his youth, he was a great explorer. I’m sure he would have been bursting with excitement to explore this place.

Enough of these painful memories, I must keep moving.

The ancient crumbled artifact acts as a beacon as my eyesight blurs around me; it remains true, forcing my focus on its splendor. I can hear a multitude of voices whispering as I enter the structure’s dimly lit halls.

They do not seem to want me here.

Strange glyphs and carved images showing humanoid beings covered the walls. They were too damaged for me to make out the details of what was being depicted. The text, however, sparked something within my mind, the exchange with the being. It was the same language, though I was still unable to fully understand it. Merely able to recognize the runic symbols and the ancient tongue with which they were spoken.

Proceeding through the candlelit hall, I can suddenly feel the ground slope in a descending fashion. By a certain point, I feel as if I must be below sea level as the great expanse of water can be heard swelling against the walls, accompanied by the thrashing of the large entities aimlessly drifting through it.

My awareness of the danger is amplified, for but a small rupture in the structure, and the dark abyss would come flooding in on me.

I approach a dimly lit room, seemingly consisting of nothing but concrete walls, but upon closer inspection, I deduce one of them to be made of glass.

I could see the nothingness on the other side, and as I stood, trembling at its obsidian majesty, a large mass gradually drifted up to the glass.

Once close enough, I learned the identity of this world’s prisoner, its giant pupil uncomfortably fixated on me once again. It tells me I must activate the terminal behind me to free it of its eternal torment, then it will help me find a way home.

My instincts knew to treat its promise with a certain level of contempt, but I just wished to be back in the warmth of my estate, away from this cold, hollow world. I wanted the nightmare to end, so I pressed the release button on the terminal with hope that the entity spoke the truth.

Instead, I am greeted with instantaneous panic as water begins to flood the chamber around me. My fears confirmed that this had all been an elaborate ruse in order to get me to free it from its confinement.

It has reached my shoulders now as I wade upwards to escape this god forsaken structure, the lights on the walls are snuffed out by the flood, leaving me in complete darkness.

I hear something thrashing in the water behind me.

I need to get out of here now!

The ground begins to rumble as I reach the surface. A deep bellowing roar emanates from the depths moments before I see the colossal beast rise up out of the ocean.

It laughs with a deep bellowing tone and proclaims my new home is the sweet embrace of the cold abyss.

As tall as a mountain, with tentacles emanating from every inch of its body’s surface. The creature’s neon eye focused on me with an intensity I was unaccustomed to, almost as if it were looking into my very soul in judgment.

I had no time to ponder this as I was once again pulled by an invisible force, gradually, kicking and screaming towards the vast ocean, which was now rolling and cascading towards me. Likely caused by the beast’s colossal body erupting out of the water.

It seemed to take great delight in making the ordeal as slow as possible, so that I am able to see the ever-encroaching darkness of the water reaching out to engulf me.

Powerless to stop it, as I am pulled in.

I feel myself being dragged down deeper and deeper into the void below for what seems like an eternity. Looking down, there is only nothingness, until the outlines of large shapes around me begin to circle and slowly close in. I feel the current of the water around me change as they get closer.

Many colossal eyes stare at me as I descend.

Awaiting the inevitable maws to follow.

Instead, I woke from the nightmare in bed at my homestead, and relief became my most abundant sensation, so it really was all but a dream. I wanted to believe that more than anything, and I would have too. Had I not found my water logged phone under the duvet covers. When I opened it, I was informed with a notification that I had new photos to view, so I hesitantly opened the gallery to check what was there.

Dark shapes floating in the void.

But how can this be?

I gaze at the lifeforms on my phone as the sound of lapping tides enters my bedroom. In a heartbeat, I am surrounded by the same dark waters from my dream.

The iridescent iris of my tormentor stares at me from the maelstrom below the footing of my bed, as an irrevocable epiphany breaches my mind.

The strange language was a warning.

I had already been claimed by the depths long ago.

Subscribe now