[?]: Meet Calvin

You are running. You don't have any idea where you are going. Behind you, the sound of dragging footsteps echoes and lurches towards you at breakneck speed. It is too much. You can't run anymore. You feel your legs give out on you and then they are on top of you. Claws rip into your skin and your head becomes a ringing cacophony of thunderous pain as you feel your body smash into a wall. Blood seeps out of giant gash wounds in your back, but you can't tell if that's your back or your front as your leg is facing the wrong direction. You feel one of them wrap its hand around your twisted leg and drag you unceremoniously across the freezing ground. You are airborne for a couple seconds before you impact something slimy and squishy and the air gets knocked out of your lungs. With what's left of your consciousness, you look to your left and the eyes of a fellow victim stare with blank horror back at you. You feel hands begin groping at your body and feel yourself sinking deeper into the mounds of flesh around you. You try to call out, but your mouth is already filled with pools of your own blood. The mounds of bodies close in around you and you can't breathe. You can't move. It hurts.

Gasping for breath, your eyes snap open.

You can feel your heart still pounding in your chest and your breathing is ragged and strained. You are covered in a cold sweat and you shiver in response.

It was just a nightmare. You're ok. You're not bleeding anywhere and you're not drowning in a pit of bodies…but you're not at home either.

You shakily prop yourself into a sitting position and take a look around you. You are in a small room. A torch is steadily burning on a wall near a door with no windows and there is a desk and a bookshelf on one side of the room. How did you get here?

You realize you are clutching something in your hand and reveal a candle. It is unlit and only about a third of it is left, but it feels comforting. You glance down at the shackles still clamped to your wrists and suddenly, everything comes back to you and you jump to your feet. You stand there listening for a couple seconds, but the only sound comes from the torch on the wall. This room seems safe enough at least for now.

There is a chair sitting next to the desk and you sit yourself down in it. Luckily, it is not rotten, so it holds up your weight with no problems. You take a moment to gather your thoughts and calm your mind. You still have no clue who you are save for some little details and have no real plan for how to get out of here.

That pit…you can't get that pit out of your mind. Who would do such a thing? Just thinking about it makes your hands shake and you quickly try to focus your mind elsewhere.

You wonder how long you were out. It can't have been too long since the torch is still burning strongly, but it couldn't have been only for a moment because your body feels stiff, not just physically tired stiff from the strenuous situations you were in before, but you slept on a hard ground for a couple hours kind of stiff. Regardless, nothing seems to have found you. You were lucky.

You absentmindedly shift the unlit candle around in your hands and stare at the contours in the wood of the desk. You know you have to get moving, but you know the moment you step out that door, it will be a continuous life and death struggle with both your body and mind in hellish torture. Maybe just a little longer…

Resting your head on the desk, you close your eyes and listen to the soft crackle of the torch on the wall behind you. If only things could stay this peaceful. If only you could rest in relative comfort for even a couple minutes, but the moment you begin to doze off, the nightmares return. You wearily push yourself back up into a sitting position and start checking the drawers of the desk. If you are not going to spend the last relatively peaceful moments of maybe your life sleeping, you might as well do a little investigating. You don't know what exactly you're looking for, but you never know what you might find.

In the top drawer, there is a bundle of crumbling papers tied together by a string. You pull them out, gently untie the string, and begin sifting through them. Most of them are so faded and decomposing, you can't make out anything, but there are words here and there that you can catch. They seem to be a series of journal entries dating back almost fifty years written by a certain Calvin Finley. Of the ones you can read, most of them are about superficial things such as chores being done in some castle or complaints about work load.

Then one of them catches your eye. The writing has changed a little. You can tell it's still Calvin's, but the writing style is much more rushed and sloppy and jumps around a lot as if he couldn't get his thoughts straight.

"…wine…!... blood…..Michael…he started bleeding from all over….trapped down here…Charles said he doesn't feel very good either…..master locked the door and blocked it with something…why?...can't stay here…..weird noises that send chills up my spine…running out of torches…..have to find a way out….."

You can feel the hair standing up on the back of your neck and glance around the room as if you were doing something inappropriate. You are afraid to read more, but there might be something that can help you. You flip through a couple more pages with the sloppy handwriting until you find another you can read.

"George says there's a way out through the side of the castle…I agreed…..been there before when taking out some stockroom supplies…..need to get to upper floors….like a labyrinth down here…Charles could barely walk today….."

So you are in a castle, and there's a way out! You hurriedly sift through the entries for another legible one and continue reading.

"Charles!...oh god…flesh started peeling away…..jaw unhinged….started caving in….his hand!...what is happening?...started going crazy…killed Jack…..George and I ran…could hear screams of the others behind us…"

The enthusiasm from before is quickly stifled by a sharp chill as it shoots down your spine again. So that uneasy feeling you got when you first saw that thing was correct. It was human! You can feel your stomach churning in response and put down the papers. You pick up the unlit candle again and clutch it in your hands to steady your emotions. For some reason, it reminds you of warmth and happier times and was the first thing that helped calm you down when you first began exploring this hell hole.

Are you going to turn into one of those things? What's going to happen to you? Does that escape route really exist? How do you get to the upper floors? All these questions begin spinning around in your head. Even if it is bad, you have to read more. You put down the candle and pick up the papers again and read on.

"…..dead….George fell….slashed to pieces…couldn't do anything….they're all dead…..they are lucky…the things are everywhere….so fast…nearly slashed me in half but I fell into a pit…filled with bodies…..don't even care…so dark…haven't eaten in perhaps days….so thirsty…howling….echoing…need sleep….can't stop….."

"…darkness…pain everywhere…..head going to explode…just want to sleep…just want to die…..can't…"

The entries end there. You try to tell yourself that it'll be different for you. You'll get out for sure. You'll go back to school. Everything will be normal…but you can feel yourself shaking. Is this how it's going to end for you too? Are you already left here alone to slowly go mad until you either die or turn into one of those freakish monsters? No…there has to be a way out. Maybe there's more.

Gathering your willpower, you open the next drawer. There are more papers, but these aren't tied neatly in a bundle. Instead, they are tossed haphazardly in the drawer. The writing is Calvin's from before but this time, it is barely legible. Most of it is chicken scratch and none of them are more than a couple lines.

"not so dark anymore…piece of skin fell off…so hungry….tasted good…..maybe try pit…."

"…..he came…..give me food…..tasty…..say strong…tell me to kill woman…..gave me more food….so nice….."

"…mre kill…..fel goood…hed hrt gain….."

"arm gon….masr gv mtl arm….mre kill…..tasty…hed kil me….."

"Hed….."

What?

What is going on here? Calvin apparently was not immune to whatever it was that turned all of them into monsters and it had eventually caught up with him, but more disturbing was the slow degradation of his humanity coaxed along by some "he." So there is a mastermind behind all this. What did they want with you? Why a random college student from California? None of this makes any sense. Who ARE you?

In a daze, you slowly close the drawer and stare at the wall. This whole situation is insane. How are you supposed to get out of here? Calvin mentioned needing to go upstairs and that he encountered the hidden exit when taking out stockroom supplies, but that could be anywhere. What are you supposed to do? If it was just a matter of exploring, it would be no problem, but according to the letter, there are multiple monsters scouring the depths down here and apparently even Calvin himself. If it was a labyrinth for them, what's it going to be like for you?

You clutch your hands to your head in frustration and rest your head back on the desk. Would it be better if you just let it happen? Should you just wait here until you starve to death or a monster finds you? So many questions and you can't come up with an answer to a single one.

The torch suddenly gives a loud pop behind you and snaps you out of your daydreaming despair. The unlit candle sits undisturbed on the desk, silently waiting for you to pick up all your pieces. You reach out and rub your finger over the cool wax. What are you thinking? Like you'll let it end like this.

You reopen the drawer and search around for anything you can poke a hole with. A loose nail juts out of part of the drawer and you wrench it loose. Neatly and methodically, you drill a smooth thin tunnel through the top half of the candle, making sure to avoid the wick. Snatching the string used to tie Calvin's earlier entries, you gently thread it through the tunnel and tightly knot the two ends together. You won't use this candle until you can't take anymore of this.

You place the candle around your neck and sluggishly push yourself out of the chair. You'd like to take Calvin's entries with you, but…what is that? Tucked away underneath the desk, a small messenger bag lies worn but completely usable. You quickly move the chair out of the way and drag the bag out from under the desk. Dusting it off, you can only assume it was Calvin's. It's old and plain and is definitely not the type of bag you'd bring to school unless you were Indiana Jones or something, but you sling it over your neck and let it fall to your side. Gathering Calvin's notes, you place them into an inner pocket in the bag and head towards the door.

You carefully lift the torch from its place on the wall and press your ear against the door. This is it. Once you step through this door, you'll probably never get another moment like this again. Nothing seems to be stirring outside in the hall and your sense of smell that saved you before isn't giving you any signs of danger as of yet, so you place your hand on the doorknob and walk out into the hall.

All this stuff is a little convenient, but hey, game logic. Calvin is less an OC and more of just so I could give the monsters names for no reason other than give XXXX and co. the ability to crack smart aleck comments at them later.

So did that series of journal entries bring up memories of "itchy, scratchy" Resident Evil reports? Well, it was the same concept, the slow degradation of one's humanity, so yeah.

I never finished writing this, and I haven't touched it in years. I never even got to the part where XXXX even meets John and Karkat. I'll try if you want, but I'm kind of out of my Homestuck obsession right now, so my inspiration is lacking. I do have the first part of the next chapter written and John and Karkat were coming up in perhaps that chapter? Karkat might've been the next one…I don't know what I was planning; this was so long ago…