The Room - Chapter 1

Silence.

Can you hear silence?

Does nothingness make a sound?

I don’t know but I don’t hear anything. I open my eyes and I don’t see anything either. Am I blind? I hold my hand out in front of my face to make sure but I can’t see a single thing. I push myself up off the floor and can hear dirt rub in between my palms and the concrete under me so I’m not deaf. Where the fuck am I?

“Hello?!”

I call out but all I hear is the sound of my voice bouncing off the walls. At least I know that I’m in a room. A room that doesn’t seem too big by the sound of my voice coming back at me. I get up on my feet and start to reach out for anything I can grab. If something happened to my eyesight then I have to be smart about this. I take small steps forward and with each step I reach out a bit further hoping I touch something. Finally I feel a wall. It’s cold and from what I can tell it’s made of concrete too. I start to carefully move to the left while still keeping my hands on the cold wall and eventually I reach another wall. Great, a corner. At least I can lean against this and not worry about being scared that someone is going to come from behind.

“Hello?! Can anyone hear me?! Get me out of here!”

Nothing. No response. Why? Why am I here? My body starts to tense up as I hear footsteps in the room with me. You know that feeling you get when you can feel the presence of someone next to you. I’m getting that now. I can feel someone right in front of my face. I hesitantly reach out but nothing is there. Then I hear a deep gravelly voice that chills me to the bone.

“You will sufferrrrrrr.”

I start to kick and punch into the air almost on instinct just hoping that I connect but kept feeling nothing but air.

“What the fuck did I do to you?!”

Then suddenly a light on the ceiling of the room starts to flicker and come on. It’s so bright and takes me a bit to focus my sight. Okay, well at least I’m not blind. I look around and I’m the only person in the room but the weirdest thing is that there are no windows or doors. It’s just an empty concrete room that couldn’t be more than 10’x10’. Where did that voice come from though? No intercom or vents. What the fuck is this?

“I want out! Let me out of here!”

I start to walk around the room inspecting the walls to see if there’s any weak point. Who am I kidding? Even if there was a weak point I have nothing to hit the wall with besides my hands and feet. I just don’t understand this. I’m trying to think back at where I was or what I was doing before I woke up here but I can’t remember. I remember what I had for lunch last week and I remember that it was raining yesterday but not anything after that. I seriously don’t understand this. I don’t get it. I walk over to the wall on the opposite side and press my hands against it.

“What kind of game is this?!”

Then I hear the mysterious voice again like its right in my ear.

“Games? There are no games. This is only the beginning.”

Then I hear a thud from behind me. I get startled and turn my body around quickly to see a door in the middle of the wall in front of me. What. The. Fuck. How the hell did that happen? Am I going crazy? I walk slowly and cautiously towards the door and very reluctantly reach for the door knob. Before I can even touch it four loud bangs come from the door like someone is pounding on it from the other side. I pull my hand back and watch the door knob as it shakes and turns. I can see the door being pushed from the other side and with each push I can see the door frame wanting to give. I do the only thing I can think of and lean all of my body weight against the door in hopes that I can stop whoever is on the other side.

“Leave me alone! What do you want from me?!”

As soon as I finish my sentence I start to hear guttural and raspy heavy breathing coming from the other side of the door and that’s when I realize I’m not dealing with someone but a something. The door frame starts to crack and my body starts to slide as the pushing gets harder and harder. Then everything stops. The pushing, the breathing. It all just stopped. I wait, still pushing my weight against the door and not wanting to move an inch. I lean my ear closer to the door to hear what was going on and I start to hear a gurgle. Almost like bubbles in a glass of water. That’s when I look down and see blood rushing in the room from under the door. I get up and step away from the door as blood continues to flow and create a bigger pool that begins to spread quickly across the floor. It reaches my feet and starts to surround them. I back up as far as I can and that’s when I hear the door knob jiggle, a click and then suddenly the door creaks open a few inches. I prepare myself to fight but I highly doubt I’ll be able to take on whatever is on the other side. I wait and wait but nothing happens. No noise and the blood on the floor seems to have stopped flowing. If I don’t step through that door then there’s a possibility that I’ll never get out of here. There’s also the possibility that something is waiting for me out there. I start to step towards the door and that’s when the blood on the floor begins to bubble. I step aside but everywhere I go it starts to bubble more and more. I can see something faintly different about the bubbles so I take a closer look. Very tiny arms start to protrude and with each bubble that pops they start to get larger. They are as red as the blood on the floor and seem to be trying to claw their way up. As I look on in disbelief, one of the demonic hands grabs my ankle and I immediately scream in pain. It feels like someone threw hot water at my feet. I stomp on the hand with the foot that I have available and look at the room. It’s filled with full sized arm pulling themselves up and I catch a glimpse at what wants to come through. It looks like a man with six small horns on his head with the face that looks like a skull. I then make the quick decision to run for the door. As I turn and make my way towards the only exit I have I can see what seems like thousands of arms coming from the floor. They try to grab me on my way out and a few are able to graze their fingers across my pants which immediately start to burn. I make it through the door and it slams behind me. No turning back now.

A Dark Day: Part XVII

"What's your name?" I ask the motel owner. "Hank.... the name's Hank. What's your given name?" he asks. I hesitate for a moment but tell him anyway "Aiden". "Well hey, I don't mean any harm. I was just bringing you back some meds. You looked like you needed them. You're not gonna get much further the shape you're in." he says. He hands me over some pills and I grab them. Slowly my shoulders begin to drop and the adrenaline fades away. Hank starts to talk but all I hear is garbled speech and the only thing I can make out is "you need to get some rest". I can't rest anymore. There's too much to do. I get up and start to make my way out of the room. "Hey!" Hank yells "If you're gonna leave, at least let me help you out a bit". Hank walks past me and gives me a hand motion to follow him. He leads me back down to the lobby and up to the front desk. He sees the money on the counter. "Did you leave this?" he asked. "Yeah" I told him. "Thanks!" He grabs the money and shoves it in his pocket. "Now comes the good part!" he says as he reaches down and opens up a trap door behind the counter.

We make our way down a rickety staircase and into a makeshift basement. The sight I see when he flicks on the light is complete insanity. "What the hell is this about?!" I ask. He begins to tell me "I'm not proud to admit it but this motel was known in this area to accommodate drug dealers, hitmen and the mob. When certain deals went sour then we had to step in and clean up the mess. You can consider this the scum of the earth version of a lost and found". The room was packed from wall to wall with guns and all sorts of weapons. The one item I start eyeing specfically is a grenade launcher. This would be perfect for taking out a horde of those things at once. I look to my right and see a big plastic bin full of shotgun shells. Thats so perfect. I walk over and start stuffing shells into my bag like a madman. These are exactly what I need. I can still travel light and not worry so much about ammo. I pause for a moment and I hear what sounds like footsteps above me. Human footsteps. Then there's silence. The trap door slowly opens. Hank and I look up waiting for someone or something to come down. I start hearing a clinking sound coming from above then I see a light quickly zoom past my left shoulder and a shattering sound against the wall behind me. I look back and everything is on fire. Someone threw a moltov cocktail down here hoping to get rid of me. That just means I'm getting closer. Hank runs over to the trap door and it slams shut. I hurry over and try to help him open it but it wont budge at all. I look back at the other side of the room and the fire is continuing to spread. There's not much time left.

A Dark Day: Part XVI

He picks me up from the floor and starts walking me over to the bathroom. He slides me into a claw footed tub and leaves the room. My first thought is to jump out of the tub and run because he's probably going to come back and hack me to pieces with a machete but I'm so weak that I can barely move. I try to pick myself up but I keep slipping back down into the tub. I should've pulled the trigger on this guy when I had the chance. I should've known better. People are desperate in this "forgotten world". Well the few people that are left anyway. Its crazy how when the world went to shit everyone that didn't become those things turned on each other instead of banding together for the greater good. It sickens me to know what we've become. No better than any of them out there.

I make one last effort to pick myself up and with the last bit of strength I have I'm able to dump myself out of the bathtub. I need to get to my gear in the other room. My vision is blurry as hell and I can't stand so I have to resort to "army crawling". Every inch I take I have to stop for a breather. I can see my gear from here but it still seems so far away. I keep my ear open for any indication that he's coming back and sure enough I start to hear his heavy footsteps getting closer and closer. I start to scramble towards my stuff faster and finally make it to my sawed off. I aim towards the door and wait. The door opens slowly once again and I'm ready to take my shot. I see a foot step through the doorway just like before. My hand begins to shake slightly as I continue to hold it up. As I look at my hand shake, in walk four of those infected sons of bitches. I jump straight to my feet out of reflex and take a shot. I take out a shoulder and part of its face but that not enough to stop it. Along with the three others they continue to make their way towards me pretty fast. Actually, faster than usual. I stand my ground as they get closer and one walks right into the barrel of my gun. I pull the trigger and watch its head blast open like a party favor knocking the one other one down in the process. I jump across the bed leaving a decent amount of space between them and me and as I'm about to take my second shot I realize that I need to do this the "smart" way. I look at my bag and estimate that it's about 8 feet away or so. I take the chance while I can and flip the mattress onto those rotting fucks, pushing them back against a wall. I hurry and grab my bat and without even much as a second thought I go to town on these things. Their heads turn to mush, almost like ground beef, as I swing so hard and so much that I start making a hole in the sheet rock. Suddenly I hear something to my left so with my bat in my right hand I draw my gun out with my left and aim. It's the owner of this place. "What the fuck happened?!" he says as he walks in the room. I take a quick look at him. He has no weapons. I hear a scraping sound coming from the floor. Its the last one crawling towards me. As I comes closer I look at it and see the total "blankness" in its eyes. No ones there. Just like an empty room. This is all it knows. It doesn't know any better. It gets pretty close to my feet and for a moment I almost feel sorry for it..................almost.

::Stomp::