3:13pm

[REDACTED]

His footsteps ring out. They ring out through the concrete husk he finds himself in, yet he cannot hear them. He only feels them. Beads of sweat streak his face, causing him to wince as it flows into the gash on his left cheek as he flees from the howling thing which he still cannot hear, the stinging slap of its naked feet pounding the flooring as it pursues him cause vibrations to reach the man, spurring him to run faster and faster yet, he cannot help but feel that the gaggling monstrosity that wishes to tear him to shreds is still over-matching his speed.

Its perversion of clawed hands almost snagging the cloth that would do little to protect him if he was caught. He looks back at his assailant as he runs from it, he wishes he hadn’t done so as he gets another much clearer look at all of its misshapen features. The thing that pursues him reaches its arms out like a scared child reaching for their mother, Its sickly red-brown flesh pulled far too tightly over its form yet sagging in some places, The thing possesses no hair and no genitalia or other discerning human features yet looks like a person in most other ways.

Its knobbled knees buckling into each other as it moves with ungodly speed for a creature with such bad limb welfare. It has no ears on the side of its head but does possess ear drums that are where a person’s ears should be, dried streams of a sickly blackish-red blood run from where its eyes should have been yet there was nothing but emptiness.

​

As his hearing slowly begins to recover, a wet churning, grinding noise causes him to look over his shoulder again, the thing has drawn ever closer and its bottom jaw has segmented like a sprouting tulip with a sickening crack, stretching the previously sagging skin taught, revealing its true mouth. Yet he still cannot identify the persistent churning.

6:03AM

[REDACTED]

Somewhere in Nevada.

The man walks down his home’s patio toward his truck, keys rattling in his pocket as he waves to his neighbor; he gives a wave back as he herds his three noisy, nagging children through the front door of his home.

​

He jumps as a slabbering dog stands upright against the fence to see the man that it could smell behind it. It barks and woos excitedly at him, its tail wagging and making a loud meaty clunk as the limb impacts the dog’s bottom from the absurd force as it wags its tail wildly; He draws his mouth into an amused grin as he walks over to greet his friend.

The Nevada Desert

7:28 AM

The endless desert around the man glistens and shimmers with the unforgiving heat of the sun above, nothingness slowly shapes as an abandoned ore refinery comes into view. He drives the last few miles and screeches to a halt inside what must have been the car park at one point, he leaves his car locking it as the door settles again in its frame.

He walks to the back of the truck; slinging his heavy equipment sack over his shoulder, he feels as if he forgotten something and he turns, his brand-new sledgehammer gleaming in the sun as he lifts the tool of destruction and creation from the place it rests and tucking it beneath his occupied arm, he turns his head to find a suitable target to no avail. He thinks he has journeyed for naught, then, his eyes settle on a large sign mounted to the middle of the main building and he reads into himself “Machine room”

The entryway has been overwhelmed by a thick layer of dust, nothing moves, nothing is alive; This is dereliction. Then, doors buckle and their chain bindings rattle, once, twice and they break from their frame, falling to the floor, the dust soon follows. He stands triumphant and tall in the broken doorway, his eyes fall upon the dusted machinery; he thinks of the money and steps forward.

The heavy weight of the hammer arcs through the dusty air and smashes through an unfortunate machine’s casing with a loud and screeching clang as a segment of the panelling is sent to the concrete flooring. For ten minutes this continues without halt; His hammer filling the air with a loud clamour, though through the monotony of it he hears a series of clicks.

The man swings his gaze towards a small corridor that leads into a large access hall and sees nothing but the things that he expected to see, his muscles relax as he swings his hammer over his right shoulder as he cackles to himself, “Well, that wasn’t my brightest moment, got so worked up over an old building settling into itself. Right then, time to get back t-“ A loud crashing sound sends the him barrelling into a state of panic and a tangible sense of dread defiles the very air surrounding him. Shakily, he calls down the corridor asking for a conformation of presence. “He-Hello?! Is anyone down there?”

The clicking picks up again, this time joined with the sound of what is awfully close to naked feet on smooth stone or concrete, which begins to get closer to the junction between the hall and corridor, leaving the man in complete horrified shock as a lanky figure wobbles into the junction, It looks more confused than the him, yet he can tell it is moving with purpose.

He calls out to the shape again, “Hey! Are you alright? Do you need some h-“ The thing begins to intermittently twitch as an alarming crack tells the him that it has swung its head to face him, then a rattling breath as it begins to turn the rest of its body toward the now terrified man as he lets out an alarmed yelp at the height at which the thing stands.

​

The thing moves down the corridor at an alarming rate as the man swithers over whether to run or to see if it really is a person, as he attempts to make a decision, the thing’s head hits off of a door frame yet it keeps moving. As it comes into the light, he sees the thing is not human in any way, “The hell are you!?” A deafening and godless scream reaches him as he begins to run with his ears now bleeding and something unnatural pursuing him.

He drops his hammer and turns to run, stopping in time as another… thing comes shambling towards him, blocking his exit, it doesn’t look like the other one, but he doesn’t care; he knows it wants to kill him too. He turns to the right, there’s a hall, no choice, he darts towards it and sprints down the narrow passage, luckily there’s a staircase at the end of it that leads to the second floor.

The man jogs up the stairs as fast as he can, though he feels he isn’t fast enough. Reaching the top, he looks down in between the snaking rail, it’s down there, but in his periphery, it’s charging up the last set of stairs towards him, he hadn’t heard it, only now remembering that his ear drums were most likely burst.

With a start he spins around and bolts down the hall towards the small window at the end.

3:37pm

[REDACTED]

He screams in pain as the thing grabs him, previously unseen barbs catching his skin as he struggles to pull himself through window leading to the scaffold below, so he may drop down onto it and escape from this place. Yet the pressure on his leg increases as it unexplainably becomes wet and oddly warm, although it is too late by the time he realises that his leg is in the thing’s maw. A new agony shores up and down his leg as now known teeth rotate inside of the thing’s throat as his leg is eviscerated.

The man is now numb from the knee down and there is a meaty crackle as his shin is now severed from the rest of his leg, the thing’s grip releases suddenly as he slips through the fencing and falls a good few feet to the ground below, sirens wail and lights flash in the distance as his rescue comes, his crushed phone having served its purpose.

He wakes up in a hospital with an IV slipped into his forearm and his leg missing, he cries over the loss of a limb before becoming quickly adjusted. A doctor enters through the curtain and asks him questions, one of them being if he can remember his name, to which he replies

“Thomas Barnsley”