The Dragging in the Corridors
I.
It was twilight at Yamaku Academy. The aura of electric lights had just begun to fill basketball courts and cafeterias. However, the lights did not penetrate the mass
of shadow the heavens had projected over the track field. It was still immersed in the transition of day to night, the moon, round as a copper penny, guiding through
the center of the sky like the gold-and-marble altar of some grand cathedral. Emi Ibarazaki sprinted over the concrete road with ferocity akin to that of a dragon
liberated from his shackles. Her blonde pig-tails stood straight and erect behind her head, the force of her running keeping them from bouncing or falling in place. It
was only recently that Emi began to run more often in the night than she did in the day. She found it bettered her life. An eldritch comfort was derived from the
night-runs; Emi always saw the night as a time of indifference and cold betrayal. She could always relate, as she was more comfortable in an atmosphere of Randian
objectivism and self-preservation, and was horribly afraid of getting to close to someone, in fear that they would leave from her life and she would return to a valley
of misery and loneliness. Due to this attitude, she had just begun to see the symbolic merits of running at night as opposed to the day. So, ever since about a few
weeks ago, she began to begin her laps in the twilight, and finish around ten o'clock. Emi greatly enjoyed her new night-run schedule. Anyway to get more running
into her life made her enormously delighted, the marathoner's high a pleasure she could not live with less of, let alone none at all. While Emi certainly wasn't lacking
in exercise, she knew a little extra couldn't hurt, and the few more hours of running made all the difference towards her. Emi also acknowledged that her love-making
with her romantic companion Hisao had improved after the night-runs. She decided to continue her sprinting at the same pace for seven more laps, and then she
would retire to her room, were hopefully, if her instructions were heeded, Hisao would be waiting for her there.
When the moon adopted a haunting butter-yellow glow, Emi stretched and jogged gently to her quarters. A smile was on her soft, pink-hued lips, a giddy glee that
came with not only the lasting impression of the runner's high but the carnal pleasure to come. She was optimistic and knew her lover well, and was looking forward
to encountering Hisao on the bed. Emi passed through the bright-red doors of her dormitory and down the incandescent-reflecting polished-floored hallway.
Suddenly, the sound of dragging interrupted her. It was as if metal girders were being dragged against concrete. It filled her with dread, and Emi was not sure if the.
sound was really the dragging of inanimate objects or the screeches of some horrible feral animal that preyed on antediluvian man. As a bead of sweat ran down her
brow, she crouched and smoothly moved towards wherever the sound was coming from. This was no easy task, as her running legs were on, and they made the
squeal of a screw being slowly inserted into a mechanism whenever she took a step. The sound grated Emi's head, but she was determined to find the source of that
horrible dragging, screeching sound. She exited her dormitory, finding that the sound got louder and louder as she got closer to the campus. It was from there that
she knew that loathsome sound was produced. Emi walked stealthily into the academy, turning around and around the labyrinthine walls. It was then that she saw it.
The weird sight alone made her fall on her back, her stumps glued firmly to her artificial legs with sweat. As she stammered, horrible, crustacean-resembling
creatures marched through the corridor to the art room. They had many appendages, most of them ending with claws or ichor-covered grabbers, and gaunt,
membranous wings. Their heads were a mass of twisted ellipsoids, resembling a great, meaty rubber-band ball of organic material. They marched through the hall-
way until they found themselves at the art room. In each of their appendages was some surreal object, it look as durable metal but as shining and transparent as
diamond. Emi did not know what to consider it, or what to consider any of the current scenario. The creature leading the bizarre of parade of biological atrocities was
holding something that sent cold chills down Emi's spine: a glass cylinder with a human brain floating within green liquid! Bizarre glyphs and non-Euclidean carvings
were found around the cylinder, and queer wires and tubes were fully immersed into the flesh of the brain. The creatures walked into the art room, and deposited all
of their eldritch objects. There was a figure, a human it had to be, shrouded in darkness that emerged from one of the corners of the art-room. Emi could not make
out who it was. The creature with the brain-jar handed it to the human, and bizarrely, the figure picked it up with its feet, balancing itself with its elbows. The figure
than retreated into the shadows, as if it merely evaporated. With another gut-wrenching shriek, the creatures began flapping their membranous wings and exited
through the open window of the art-room. They flew higher and higher into the night sky until they disappeared with the stars. It was then Emi screamed madly and
blindly, and raced from the campus to her room with the sheer raw terror of a Neolithic human faced with a saber-tooth tiger.
Without hesitating, Emi ran to her room. She shut the door behind her with a loud crash and buried herself deep within her covers. She could feel the horrifying
image she had just witnessed eating into her sanity. Nothing was clear to her then, nothing at all. How could the universe allow such things to exist? Emi knew of no
scientific finding that could ever justify that they were ever there. Then, a deep dread took her over. What if she had just seen it in her mind's eye? What if she was
beginning to succumb to the mental effects of the car crash and losing her father? Would she be forever doomed to a world of padded cells and straight-jackets and
demonic visions? Emi prayed through puffed cheeks and tear-flooded eyes that she was not insane, that her mind was not delusional or hallucinating. But then, a fear
still persisted. If she wasn't insane, then the threat those creatures posed still remained! What do they mean, for her, for Yamaku, for humankind as we know it? Who
was the figure cavorting with them and what were they bringing to the art class? There was no possibility that gave Emi hope. She was either insane or her world's
safety was compromised by eldritch beings. Suddenly, flesh touched her hands. She jumped in fright at first, but a sense of safety than enveloped her. Hisao was
waiting for her the entire night, and had fallen asleep in her bed. "Were where you?" he asked. Emi felt foolish. In her dread she had not noticed her small bed was
occupied. But still, fear remained in her? What if those creatures proved detrimental to Hisao, one of the few things that gave her life meaning and balance? Or what
if she was going insane and she would prove detrimental to Hisao? If there was one thing she didn't want to lose, it was him. Not after her father and the years of
isolating herself from everyone around her. "Just go back to sleep. I'll tell you in the morning." Emi said in her most soothing tone, as to prevent any suspicion in
Hisao. He complied and fell back into dream. What awaited Emi for the rest of the night, however, was a hellish abyss of lucid dreaming on ellipsoid eyes, unearthly
stones of textures not known to this dimension, and a shadowy figure that handled objects with its feet.