The Steve Origins

Evolution of the Creepers

By Steven D. Hoskins

Chapter 1: Nightmare

"Huh?" was all I said after waking up from a familiar nightmare. Where I stood, breathing quick pulses of cold air while frozen in thick, distorting ice was unknown for all I knew was what I felt. I was freezing cold, extremely confused due to my current amnesia, and scared out of my mind, not understanding the situation that I was in. I felt like an idiot for not remembering anything from the past. My past. I couldn't remember if I even had one. I can't stand not knowing or remembering things, especially if it is my own name or why I was frozen in ice.

Before I woke up for what felt like the first time doing so, I was having a nightmare. Strangely enough, it felt real just as if it had happened before. The nightmare felt like my past. Well, that is if I had one at all. It was a cold day, yet the sun was shining as brightly as it could. There was this colossal mountain of ice, rock, and snow combined to make the most beautiful work of art by Mother Nature.

The mountain stood tall, staring down at the layer of ice atop the lake that lay in front of it. It faced the lake as if it were thinking about its reflection from the flat, horizontal mirror of ice. As beautiful as it was, I didn't have time to enjoy the scenery. I wasn't a tourist or a hiker. I was prey being chased by a hunter. And not just any hunter, but a creature. It was something that wasn't human. Something evil. Something dangerous. Something that wanted to kill me.

I got a glimpse of my predator. It was tall and green, leafy in fact. Its eyes were locked on to me, the target, and they were sunken deep down into its thick, deformed skull showing its dark, wide eye sockets. It was galloping clumsily toward me on all four of its stem-like legs, coming fast. In fact, it was so fast that I almost couldn't get away. I didn't want to turn around after seeing this four-legged freak, so I wasn't going to. Unfortunately for me, there wasn't just one; there were several after me! And to make matters worse, plant beasts weren't my only predators; there were zombies after me, too! Their limbs were rotting off and they all ignited into flames as they chased me. They had the worst smell of anything in the world; dead, burnt carcass.

I was terrified to no end, watching my life become Hell in an instant and running away from plant monsters and dead people with their jaws falling from their mouths, covered in their own insides and dried blood, thin, greasy hair falling from their undead follicles, and even zombies that were missing their legs and crawling across the snowy plains, their intestines dragging behind. The snow wasn't even white anymore. It was blood red, smothered in the blood of the burning, repulsive zombies. As they clumsily raced after me along with the plant beasts, they left tracks of blood that you could trace all the way back to the mountain.

If you see undead creatures and plant monsters run toward you, then it's probably a good idea to run. That's all I did in my nightmare. All I did was run away from evil, mutant, zombie creatures that did nothing but eat and murder people. But I wasn't going to let them catch me. I refused to let my blood spill on the same, cold, hard ground along with the rest of the zombies'. I almost said that I'd rather go to Hell than let that happen, but then I realized something; my dream was Hell enough!

"Run!" cried a loud voice from the base of the mountain. A voice? A human voice? Now, I had good news and bad news; the good news was that I wasn't alone. But the bad news was that my far-distance company was about to get his brain ripped out of his skull, leaving me alone once again. Who was the voice that called out to me, begging me to run? I could tell that it was a male voice. He was probably in his 50's or 60's. Whoever he was, he must've been someone I knew… well, at least someone I'm supposed to know.

"Run, ste-," Boom! He never finished his sentence because one of the plant beasts walked up to him and exploded. Those things can explode, I thought to myself in disbelief. This was a definite surprise to me because I thought they just walked up to someone and ate them or something like that. Who knew those freaks could explode?

Now, the green, leafy creatures were grouping up and clumsily galloping toward me, their next victim. I had to think of something fast, or they would explode, me in the middle of the impact. As I was running, an idea had slipped into my head, and when I say slipped, I mean that literally; I had just remembered the lake that sat in front of the mountain. That was it! If I could just get safely across the lake of ice to the other side where the forest sat, I could probably outrun the monsters! I quickly ran without hesitation to the lake, the sun burning in my eyes.

I had finally reached the hard, frozen lake and I carefully started fast-walking across the icy plain of frozen waters. Behind me were all of the plant creatures chasing after me while the living dead people attempted to follow, but instead, they incinerated in the sun. As confusing as that was, it was fine by me, so I just kept running.

I was at least 14 meters away from the snow covered forest when the exploding plant beasts behind me slipped on all fours. With several hard thumps on the ice, they tripped and fell over each other as unsteady as they were.

"Ha! I'm gonna make it," I cheered in relief. However, I had cheered for no reason. Crack! I stopped in my tracks listening for whatever sound that was. Then it was as clear as the ice beneath me. It was also as thin as the ice beneath me; in fact, it was too thin for me to stand where I was. All of a sudden, fear was rushing through my veins as I plunged into the large gaping hole I had made in the ice. The water was so cold that my entire body went numb in seconds! This wasn't going to end well, and it was bad enough that I had no idea how to swim.

"Help! Please, somebody!" There was no response. I was violently splashing in the ice-cold water, struggling helplessly and trying to call for help that probably wouldn't have come. Then, I became too numb to move that my head sunk down into the lake. I tried to surface, but I didn't have enough strength to do so. I never came up for air.