Author's Notes: Hello everyone! I know its-GWEN ISN"T DEAD!- been a while-GWEN ISN'T DEAD!-since the last chapter of this-GWEN ISN'T DEAD!-story.
However, I have been hoping to get the next chapter of this story uploaded before Halloween. But before getting to this chapter, I have to address some concerns.
Firstly, Gwen is…NOT DEAD! I feel the need to directly say this, mainly because the pervious chapter had been more successful than I guessed it would have been. The last chapter was intended as a mind-fuck, and a glimpse both into things to come and things that might come. It was meant to make you question if it was really happening or not, and it seems to be have been successful by in large. Also, most of the "flaws" of that chapter: the awkward shift between comedic and hardcore horror, the sudden spike in hardcore horror after the largely cartoony feeling second chapter, and the abrupt abundance of horror without proper build-up…were all completely intentional! God, I've been waiting so long to say that! :)
Secondly, I have to give a massive shout out to "Nyhlus" for being the first reviewer to comment on the use of present tense! Seriously, I was beginning to wonder if ANYONE would notice such a huge change from most of my other stories. I've been waiting just as long to acknowledge this review and now I finally can! Also, to "Nyhlus" and everyone else, pay attention to the use of present tense in this chapter, and how it is absent from a particular trinity of scenes, and the very last scene too. ;)
Ok, there's just one last thing that I need to say here. This chapter is where the real horror starts. And once it starts, it will be relentless. However, I won't be commenting much on it in author's notes like this one. This is the last time for this story that I'll be using a massive author's notes like this. The reason for this is because I feel like reading long author's notes might distract from the chapter itself when the purpose of the chapter is to unnerve and frighten you. Also, long author's notes would have me explaining things and I won't be doing a lot of that here. I will explain some things in this story directly but a lot it will draw on subtle hints since something is much scarier when you aren't completely of what it is or how it works. The more you explain and define a monster or force, the less scary it becomes.
Having said of that, here is the fourth chapter of "The Doctor Will See You Now": Hell Hath No Limits
"Gwen? Are you all right? Gwen!?"
Feeling like a link has been severed, Gwen's eyes close on reflex before opening. The harsh contrast causes her to jump back a few paces, startling all those looking at her.
As her teal eyes dart around her, the enormity of its mundaneness overwhelms her. She isn't lying on the floor. The floor is solid and dry, made of title and hidden, deeper stone. Her body doesn't have so many fresh, searing stab wounds. There are no corpses walking around with phosphorescent things like fox furs. The others are alive and unharmed. She sees the four faces of the other members of Team Amazon focusing squarely on her.
"Gwen, are you ok!?" A voice, a soft human voice, asks in alarm as Gwen moves back and forth a bit, with two solid objects on her shoulders.
The shaking anchors Gwen fully in reality, or what she hopes is reality. She sees someone right in front of her, shaking her. It is Cody. On instinct, Gwen sucks in a frightened gulp of the stable air, which still has the faint odor of dried blood within it, at remembering what she had just seen…or maybe what she had only thought she had seen?
Cody sees the look of fear that flashes across Gwen's face and he instantly lets go of her shoulders and backs up a few steps. "Y-you…you alright?" He asks for a third time, clearly worried.
It is the concern in Cody's voice, and the observation that his skin isn't chalk white or that his eyes aren't corpse yellow, which allows the Goth to find her raspy voice.
'No, I'm not all right, nothing is right.' She thinks.
"Y-yeah…I-I…I'm fine…everything's fine." She says.
The others aren't convinced, but they don't know how to respond to this situation.
"What happened, Gwen?" Courtney asks, as she places a hand on Gwen's shoulder.
The Goth's mind flashes back to the image of the C.I.T. haunting her, that of her beautiful mocha face being hung upside down with it deeply slashed from ear to ear. The feelings of guilt come back, brief glimpse of her kissing Duncan flash before her in real time but seem to be muted, like they are developing an acrylic edge the longer she looks at Courtney and sees her concern.
Slightly turning away, Gwen says, finding her voice to be getting more and more stable as she sees the run-down conditions of the asylum, with the saliva substituted for dust, "N-nothing…Court. I guess I just spaced out. Must be the two night challenges in a row." She starts rubbing her head, trying to get the chaos up there in order with her mere hands.
"But aren't you use to staying up late?" Cody asks, before his face shows worry as quickly as a flash. "Uh…not that I'm profiling you because you're a Goth or anything! I'm sure you like to go to bed as soon as the sun sets too!"
Cody's feelings of worry vanish when Gwen lightly chuckles at his haphazard stumbling. Truthfully, Gwen only finds it mildly charming or worthy of chuckles, but after the vision, or whatever the hell it was, that she just had, any lightness is good. The Tech Geek flashes that gap-toothed smile of his, which adds a little more lightness.
"No offence taken, Cody." Gwen says flashing a small smirk, which makes Cody joyful and Sierra glare at her with her black eyes like hardened silts. Ignoring both reactions, though Sierra's more so than Cody's, she asks, "So…uh, what is your current situation?"
"We are in this run-down crappy asylum, on the second floor, I believe." Courtney starts to say, planning on bringing her new alliance ally and friend up to speed. "We have to find some pieces of junk, which are identified on the scroll that Heather won but refuses to let any of the rest of us see." She pauses to glare at Heather, who glares back just as harshly. "Anyway, we have to use the scroll's hints to find two pieces of paper on this floor, which when combined with four more piece of paper from floors three and four will reveal where the object we need to find to win the challenge is on the fifth floor. In sixty minutes, Chris will lock this level's doors. Even if we haven't found the object on this floor by then, we'll have to move to the third floor very quickly or we'll be stuck here all night…all night…with Heather and Sierra." The Goth lightly chuckles again. "Oh, and we haven't seen Team Chris since we got here so be on the lookout for them. They can steal our team's scroll and if they do that, we'll be royally screwed!"
Gwen is silent for several moments that feel much longer than they actually are. Her mind is spinning. She remembers hearing about the scroll, the pieces of paper to find, the threat of being locked on a floor all night, and that Team Chris can take the scroll…but she didn't remembering hearing anything about it being sixty minutes when the doors will start to close, and she had seen Team Chris with them the entire time on this floor!
'What is going on!?' Gwen thinks. She feels that familiar feeling of dread and confusion threatening to overwhelm her. Again, the others notice this and don't quite now how to respond to it.
"Just when I thought nothing could creep me out more than Sierra French-kissing a wall, your act is making you surpass it in creepiness, Weird Goth Girl, well…at least more than usual, that is." Heather says with a nasty smirk that the Goth wants to smack off. "But we've wasted enough time. Seeing as I have the scroll, Courtney, I'm calling the shots on this one! If you don't like it, then you can wait here to spend the whole night." Courtney starts to fume a little, before Gwen pats her shoulder to calm the C.I.T. down. "Alright, as Courtney said, we need to find two piece of paper based on two riddles. The first riddle is: 'The one that uses it never knows he's using it. What is it?' And the second one is: 'If you feed me, I live. If you give me a drink, I die. What am I?' Now, does anyone have any guesses to what those two geeky loads of nonsense really means!?"
There is silence as the teens look at each other with brows showing confusion.
Eventually, both Gwen and Cody raise their hands, with the Goth saying she might now what the first riddle means and the Tech Geek having a few ideas about the second one.
Despite vagueness at work, Heather smiles. This is about the best she could hope for!
"All right then, we'll spilt up into two teams." Heather says, enjoying the feeling of being in-charge. "Gwen, you'll go with Courtney and Sierra and search the left side of the floor. The Geek will stay with me as we search the right side."
"Heather, no!" Sierra loudly shouts, sounding somewhere between whiny and angry. "I'm supposed to be the one who always goes with Cody! I'm his soul mate! I'm-!"
"-Likely to get on his good side if you comfort Gwen." Heather says, interrupting the Stalker. "The Pale Weirdo is clearly jumpy for some reason, and she needs a lot of support. I surely don't have to tell you how much her well-being means to Cody, right?"
Sierra is about to argue that point, but she realizes that Heather is right. Though it made her boil over with frustration and rage at points, even Sierra could not delude herself into ignoring the fact that Gwen's well-being meant a lot to the object of her affections.
"Fine, Heather…I won't let Gwen out of my sight, for Cody's well-being." Sierra sadly says as she lowers her head in defeat.
With her face looking at the filthy floor, Sierra misses the various reactions to this from the other four teens. Both Gwen and Courtney are glaring at Heather quite viciously, with both girls finding the tall and tan stalker to be only slightly more tolerable than Heather. Cody is confused, conflicted, and content all at once, with all of those emotions stemming from the fact that never before had a girl, other than Sierra (sadly) directly state they want to be around him and that this means he would not be choked by Sierra the whole time! His joy over both of those things allows him to not mind too much that he isn't the one comforting Gwen. But it is Heather who has the strongest reaction of them. Her face is a smile of unhidden smugness and pleasure at her plan going off perfectly. Ever since the plane landed, Heather has been wrecking her capable brains out trying to figure out a way to get Cody by himself without Sierra hovering over him…and here it is. Plus the fact that Gwen and Courtney would likely be very miserable is icing on the cake.
"Now that that is settled," Heather says, returning everyone's focus back to her, "let's get going. Even if you haven't found what you're looking for yet, meet back here in thirty minutes to regroup. Let's go and find those pieces of paper!"
With that, Team Amazon took their separate ways. Though their thoughts are different, five teen's goals and concerns are firmly grounded in the human and understandable…except for one. That one person is rendered askew as she breaths.
Gwen notices that the smell of copper and blood has finished in an instant. It confuses her. Usually a smell fades away or lessens, always being a slow, gradual process. But that is not what happened here. It is there one second and then not in the next without a trace. She knows that she should feel happy…but she doesn't. While the air is devoid of smell, something else fills it. But it isn't a smell or even a sight…it is a feeling.
It is a feeling of some creeping doom; a bleak, barren, soulless hollowing that the flickering lights of the asylum cannot pierce. It is a darkness not on the color spectrum, it isn't a darkness of black; it is the tenebrous shadow of bad omens and doomed futures.
It is encapsulated in that inhuman voice like godly thunder repeating itself in Gwen's mind, saying that one last cryptic message broken by its own insidious depth as a mantra.
"Alone…not you alone…you not alone..."
They remained still.
They remained still, savoring the sweet, stale air as the gusts of the seas snuck inside. Even these airy current acting as carriers for the scents of the corpses of cannibalized creatures were like the most enticing perfume to those who for so long smelled nothing. Many of them cursed themselves, bitterly recalling all of the years of squandered breaths that were not savored. There was a time where, despite logically knowing that it wouldn't be the case, those who were breathing for the first time in many, many long and grief-filled decades believed their breaths would be infinite. They acted like they'd never die.
But they had died. They had died, painfully and bitterly.
But they were trying to not think about things like that.
They tried.
They tried…
…but over half a century of time had passed, over fifty years of nothing.
And tried…
…spending some of those years simply staring at what to them was a ceiling, not knowing if it was but knowing that they had a longing to stretch their limbs again.
And tried…
….spending some of those years examining a single crack or spec of filth, determined with a unblinking eyeless gaze to find a new wonder to behold where none existed.
And tried…
….spending some of those years remembering all of the flies and beetles that had ventured into their hollow eye sockets, and transforming these insects into grand mythic characters, fashioning backstories and epics for each worthy of a master writer.
They tried…
…and tried…
…and tried…
…but it was no good.
Not with the noises of feet with flesh still attached to them making so much noise above them, flooding the holes on the sides of their skulls that once housed ears instead of cobwebs. Not with that forgotten sensation in their limbs, that some of them remembered calling twitching when it wasn't seen as the gift that it was. Not with that indefinable energy making them feel like both a block of ice and burning coals at the same time.
They all couldn't stay asleep.
They all couldn't stay still.
They all couldn't stay dead.
Suddenly, there is a low thrumming sound all those in the asylum feel. It isn't very loud, but it is big, very big, as if it comes from the earth floor beneath the asylum isle itself.
The floor of the asylum, on every level, literally reverberates with the sound's passage, the tiles and stone echoing with a booming din almost matching gargantuan steps.
It isn't simply a noise: it is almost a motion in the earth, a roar that seems seated in the substance of the isle's bedrock.
Thunder, is it? No, too rhythmical, and it didn't come from the sky…or outside. It came again, through the soles of the feet…
Boooooooooommmmmm.
The contestants believe this to simply be another effort of Chris MacLean to scare them, with it being the most successful so far, though it merely added the tiniest bit of edge.
Chris MacLean and his crew in the isle's mansion attempt to discover what has caused this, with it not being an effort of there's.
But the largest effect of the low, thrumming sound is shown by another sound that follows. It is a mass of buzzing, a vibrating of billions upon billions of tiny tones, the suddenly fretting voices of hordes of flies formerly claiming the asylum as their own.
Suddenly the air turns black. Not because of smoke or shadow, but because of swarms.
All over the asylum, billions upon billions of flies take to the air to do one thing.
Flee.
Massive tendrils of treacle black thoraxes and clear flapping wing membranes appear all over, briefly covering everything in their mere mass before absentmindedly moving on.
They pour out into the night through the windows and cracks and worn down openings. The calm, jet-black skies outside of the asylum become trapped in a thunderstorm.
A thunderstorm of flies; a thunderstorm of buzzing instead of booming.
As the black shells of the swarm vanish into the darkness passing over the exposed moon, some clouds start to hover unnaturally along the rims of the orb's milky white glow.
"Uh…Ha-Heather…" Cody says, finding his voice wavering for the briefest of moments, "what-what was that? How did Chris get all of those flies to, well, fly past us at once?"
"How the hell should I know!?" Heather bitterly shouts in annoyance that Cody had actually managed to let this pathetic display by Chris get to him a little. Then, she remembers that she needs to be nice…er, to Cody than usual to get his vote. So, with that in mind, Heather says, "It doesn't take much to get a bunch of flies to come to you, after all. All you need to do is stink enough. Maybe Chris forgot to wear his deodorant today?"
Cody chuckles at that. "Good point, Heather! Thanks."
"Whatever." Heather says, truly indifferent as she resumes searching the area. It is a vestibule of some kind. The Queen Bee doesn't know or care about what it is called. What she does care about is how the place is all dust and mildew and decaying décor. The only noteworthy thing about it is that the lights are all clearly fake artificial lights in a sad attempt to make this place "ghostly" looking. It disgusts her!
Regardless, she remains focused. While winning today's challenge is a given, even more so than usual, there is something that Heather knows she needs to deal with first.
"So…Cody," Heather says after searching for about another minute in vain, "have you been thinking about you hope to do in the game?"
"Actually, no, I haven't thought that much about it." Cody says while searching a nearby wall. "I don't have much I want to do aside from get rid of Sierra and win Gwen's heart."
"Well, what if I had mutually beneficial idea that might allow you to do both?" Heather asks.
"What do you mean?" Cody asks, curious but cautious.
"Well," Heather begin, smirking, "its no secret that most of our team, mainly Courtney, is gunning for my elimination, and I don't want that, for obvious reasons. Also, despite your geeky nature, you're the one person on our team who I can tolerate. The merge is likely no more than three challenges away at the very most. So, why not help each other get rid of the biggest thorns in our sides while doing so would be fairly uncomplicated? I've even thought of a way it could work out. You could convince Sierra to vote with us against Courtney. Then we can frame Sierra as the mastermind based on how much the C.I.T. treats you like crap. Then, we'll have Gwen's help in booting off your stalker. Once that's done, you'll be in her good graces and you might be able to make your move, with her truly considering it for once. Would you agree to that kind of…arrangement?"
Cody is silent, suddenly finding a very strong desire to search for the riddle's answer. Truthfully, he is torn. On the one hand, he knows all about Heather, and her dirty ways. He had seen how she often treated alliance members during Total Drama Island on the Gophers. And he suspects that what Heather is telling him is only half of the truth. However…he would be lying if he didn't admit that that deal sounds very appealing. The logic is tight enough and it would effectively do all of his long-term goals all at once. Unable to choose for himself right now, Cody asks, with a voice full of uncertainty, "You mean…like an alliance?"
Heather rolls her eyes and scoffs while crossing her arms in mild-annoyance. "Call it what you will. But the facts speak for themselves. You've been trying to get rid of Sierra since this game started and you haven't succeeded. Courtney has been riding your ass with her bitchiness ever since this game started. And while you're not as bad as Courtney would say you are, Cody, you are still unquestionably the weakest Amazon member. Without Sierra's delusional, fanatical support you would have been eliminated long ago. Tell me, Cody, have you considered what will happen once the teams are dissolved?"
Cody shakes his head back and forth.
"I thought not. Let me lay it out straight for you." Heather says, before pausing when she hears something. It almost sounds like footsteps, coming from a far distance away. Her mind returns to earlier in the empty bedroom with the scroll. With the gears in her head turning, she returns focus to Cody. "Ignoring you and me, there are seven people left in the game. The Weird Goth Girl who hasn't done one thing to help you Sierra this season; the psychotic stalker who probably dreams of breaking your legs to keep you near her, the ruthless bitch that hates you, a low-level punk who gets a kick out of bullying nerds; a suave mastermind whose blinded you to the truth; a jock who's worst enemy is gravity; and a disgusting fat ass whose only gotten by on bodily functions and sheer dumb luck. Outside of those last two, there's no one else who's shown they'd be willing to help you get what you want. And Tyler and Owen would be of no help in an alliance of any kind, and they are the only two who I could see even considering helping you with your goals. Everyone else is either indifferent to your plights or actively adding to them. In that kind of hostile environment, do you think that you've got a shot doing what you want to do?"
Again, Cody is silent. He knows who Heather is but he knows that what she just said made a lot of sense. The views on Courtney, Duncan and Sierra spoke for themselves. And while he did like Owen and Tyler, he secretly knew they wouldn't help him much, his mind flashes back to watching the pitiful attempt of the "guys only" alliance on TDI. Gwen hadn't really done anything to help him once; he had barely even talked to her. And what little he had interacted with Alejandro wasn't enough to cancel out the conviction of Heather's claims. Finding his desire to resist being less, Cody asks, "But what about Gwen?"
"If you agree to this alliance, I won't attempt to eliminate her until the merge. After all, she'll be a partial, unknowing alliance member. And, after the merge, she won't be the first target on my hit list. Other people deserve to go out first." Heather says truthfully.
"But you hate her, for far longer than Courtney."
"I never said I didn't. But I can overlook that in my desire to win this season." Heather says, before noticing Cody's look of confusion. Heather sighs, knowing she needs to explain herself. "While I despise Gwen as a person more than you can grasp, we have proven, against all odds, to be a effective team. Remember the final four of Island, where we were able to outwit Duncan and Owen?" Cody thinks about it and then nods his head. "Its rare and fleeting but me and Weird Goth Girl can work together and do it pretty well. I highly doubt I'd be able to do that with Courtney. No matter what, the C.I.T. would gun for me. While Gwen will mostly likely do that as well, there's a small chance she won't. And when you get to the post-merge, any little advantage could be the difference between elimination or a million dollar prize. That combined with you might be the edge I need."
Again, Heather's logic makes sense. The last of Cody's will to resist is gone after hearing that. He knows it's likely to backfire somehow but he needs to make some progress with Gwen. After three seasons of failure, he's willing to try almost anything to succeed.
Cody sighs heavily. "Ok, Heather…you've got a deal. As long as it gets rid of Sierra and spares Gwen, I'll help you eliminate Courtney."
"Good decision, Cody." Heather says, smiling at her victory.
Looking away from Heather's smile, Cody sees something, the kind of thing he's been looking for. He sees a flickering torch on the wall, which has a glass next to it on a shelf.
Seeing that, Cody runs over. Confused, Heather follows. Taking the glass, Cody pours the water inside it onto the torch while remembering the answer to the riddle: 'If you feed me, I live. If you give me a drink, I die. What am I?'
Once the torch was put out, a small hidden area opened up, revealing a piece of paper. It confirms that what Cody had thought was the answer was correct: fire.
Smiling anew at seeing the piece of paper, Heather grabs it.
Then, a moaning and groaning shape flies out from the rafters above! It swoops by them! Pale hands fly out, attempting to claw at them, but seeming more focused on Heather.
Cody screams in fright. Heather appears unfazed. Instead she focuses on the swinging shape. Once its close enough, she rises one of her fists and punches something very hard.
"Esto no está bien!" A pained, high-pitched voice sounding like it is on helium squeaks as the shape covers his gonads, before with snap he falls onto the hard title floor.
Cody stares in disbelief, until he realizes that it is Alejandro, covered in ashen grey dust and several ropes connected to him as if they are part of a pulley system.
"Oh, man! Al, Al?! Are you ok Al?!" A familiar voice shouts out in worry. Suddenly Owen comes ramming through a nearby wall of plaster, almost like the Kool Aid man.
From the same gapping hole comes Tyler, who looks at Heather with concern.
"Oh, no! Al's not breathing!" Owen says in terror.
"Uh, Owen?" Tyler says after looking at the fallen Latino. "I think he's just out cold?"
"BREATHE, DARN YOU, AL! BREATHE!" Owen shouts as he starts to punch Al's chest fiercely, as if the Latino had been drowning and the water has to be forced out.
POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW!
With it being possibly because his lungs are full of water, with it being much more likely because of the rapid flare-ups of pain on his body, Alejandro returns to consciousness.
Owen shows a full smile as he says this. "Al, buddy, your alive!"
POW!
"Ugghh…yes…" Alejandro weakly says.
POW!
"…yes I am."
POW!
"That's great, Owen. "
POW!
"I'm awake now…"
POW!
"so can you please stop…"
POW!
"…pounding on my chest!?"
POW!
"Oh, uh…ah ha." Owen chuckles nervously. "Sorry Al."
POW!
Cody and Heather leave after Al is awake, mostly because Heather enjoys the show. It doesn't take them long to get to the place to meet the rest of Team Amazon.
"How did you know that that was Al?" Cody asks.
"I didn't." Heather says with a smile that chills Cody and makes him cover his gonads. "But I recognized that as the same trick that Harold had me do during Action in the horror movie challenge. And since all of Team Chris is male, a fist to the balls is just what the doctor ordered."
Then they meet up running into the other members of Team Amazon, minus Sierra who is currently ripping apart some costumed interns who had dared to mock Cody. After Heather retells them what happened, she hands Gwen the scroll, saying that she's sure that Team Chris will try another stunt like this. Plus, since she and Cody have the first piece of the paper and she now knows the other riddle, they don't need the scroll anymore.
As Cody and Heather resume searching for the second piece of paper, Heather smirks. Her plan is playing itself out beautifully.
Everything is coming together.
Everything was coming together.
Not knowing how, everything came back, slowly. Bones shattered in reverse and hardened. Milky muscle marched and snowy skin slid over their newly recovered bones.
Powers of motion came to them, they stood and strode after so very long. They felt joys as small as stretching their creaking limbs and rubbing out the cobwebs from their sockets with their elderly, yellow knuckles before the flesh like light grew over them.
Powers of understanding came to them; they remembered what it was to think again.
But for some of them, even this dreamed of joy was found to be a bittersweet realization.
Some of them knew of things past this, some of them knew of the still living world out there. It was a world that had continued on without them, indifferent to their grim fates.
Was this what it felt like to be alive…frustrated, sleepless…and forgotten about? Didn't anyone know of them? Were they not worth remembering? Didn't them being their fellow humans merit them anything? Was this what all of their hardships lead to…to them all be rendered a nameless mass of fables and stories? To be a fragment of history?
They didn't like that. They didn't like finding their first feelings of substance and thought were the feelings and thoughts of being buried, obsolete, ignored, stuck…of being dead.
They didn't like that.
Again, thrumming and throbbing like thunder roars. But this time it is louder, deeper.
In the earth, in the deep earth, a rhythmical tread, as if of a titan, comes, by degrees, closer and closer. The din is becoming louder, though only for a part of its existence.
BOOOOOOOOOmmmmmm.
Itdoesn't sound like anything natural. The closest point of comparison outside of thunder in the earth's crust is the call of some ancient eldritch leviathan that has been slowed down into the virtually sub-sonic range and projected from huge speakers very far away.
But the speakers are getting closer.
The human minds in the asylum's bowels of brick and metal all unknowingly think the same thing, they don't know what is causing this rumbling but it unnerves them.
But once again, the beings that react the strongest to this sound are not of human minds. For the second time tonight, there is a great mass of darkness filling the asylum's ceiling, a much larger bombardment of black courses through the upper spaces of the asylum. But this newest wave of ebony doesn't shine or buzz. It isn't totally ebony either, with their being a light salting of specs of white and an only marginally larger peppering of brown.
And that is thanks to the owls, which fly in unison with the crows and bats among them. All three classifications of higher-flying beast, including the bats flying with the owls that hunt them, find that their instincts are overwhelmed by one singular desire among them.
Flee.
Columns of coal carried on wings of feather and leather spread out without separation. They cover everything beneath them in their looming shadow before escaping.
They squeeze through the windows and cracks and worn down openings into the night. The calm, jet-black skies outside of the asylum become shrouded in great gusts.
Gusts of bats and birds; gusts with fur and feather that move to and fro in the wind.
Jet streams of these furred and feathered winds pass over the fainter looking moon.
They know what is forming, they can feel the crack that is gaping wider every second. They feel the growing presence that is as if it comes from another sky through their own.
They know that something is infringing on brittle world that they inhabit. Something is overwhelming the mere reality of it, stretching it to its breaking point.
The gap is growing wider.
Wider.
Wider.
The door pushes open wider, and Gwen leaves it.
Gwen searches through a section of the second floor's left side alone. The voices of Courtney and Sierra still faintly ring in the background as they shout at each other. The reason for their argument escapes Gwen's memory, though she imagines that it's trivial. The Goth has enough foresight to see that the two other girls might argue for a long time.
Truthfully, the Goth isn't sure whether to be pleased or displeased by this development. On the one hand, she is still jumpy from whatever the hell she had experienced earlier. It is just enough of an added edge to make the pathetic attempts of Chris MacLean to scare her be a little effective. But, on the other hand, Gwen is pleased to not be near Courtney. Just looking at her friend's attractive mocha face fills her with feelings of guilt and dread. The Goth keeps seeing the C.I.T.'s face upside down with it slashed from ear to ear.
Not wanting to focus on that image, Gwen searches through the floor's rooms one by one. After thoroughly searching through three or four rooms by herself, she finds nothing. She moves towards the first of another collection of rooms, but stops before reaching the first of the new rooms.
Across the space there is a mahogany door that stands half-opened. It is so silent.
Yet, something is scraping and tapping near by, with nothing around her. Images of transparent corpses in gruesomely glittering fox-furs flash before her teal eyes. She shakes her head, forcing the images out. The Goth reaches for another explanation.
Gwen's mind goes to and clings to the most likely explanation for the scraping sound, a morose deathwatch beetle that was in the paneling of the room. Despite her irrational misgivings, Gwen compels herself to pass through the doorway.
The Goth takes note of the room. There are three off features about it. The first is a black coffin on the right side of the room. But Gwen ignores that, focusing on the other two first.
The room has an odd glitter to it. Even though the candle stands are devoid of candle, they still illuminate the room, at least partially. The reason is because from the dozen or more candle stands there are long since spilled or melted streams of tallow that run down the room and cover several of the mantles and shelves. The flames no longer illuminate, having sunken into extinction long ago. The only light comes from a single light blub on a string hanging from the ceiling. The bulb's light turns the tallow into rivers of shadows.
Under that single bulb's light, the third feature that doesn't feel quite right is revealed. It's a painting, a large painting that takes up much of the wall behind the black coffin.
But, with a goal in mind, Gwen doesn't pay that much attention to the painting right now.
After opening the black box, Gwen pulls out the scroll and relooks at the riddle to make sure that she has the right one in mind. The scroll's first second floor riddle was: 'The one that uses it never knows he's using it. What is it?'
Having heard that riddle before, Gwen knew she is at the answer to it…a coffin.
Sure enough, upon opening the black box, Gwen finds a piece of paper, wedged between two fake bony fingers, from a equally unconvincing skeleton using it without knowing it, though in this case its because he's made of plastic and not because he's dead.
Gwen puts the rolled up scroll into the right back pocket of her skirt. Then she takes the paper. For the first time since this challenge started, she allows herself to smile.
Then her eyes fall upon the painting behind the coffin…and her smile vanishes yet again.
Gwen is an art lover, a person who strives to be an artist someday. She is also a lover of the macabre, someone intimately familiar with the written works of such people as Dante, Milton, Poe, Lovecraft, Machen, King, and Barker among others, as well as someone who has seen and studied the dark imaginings of artists like Bosch, Doré, Dali, Cole, and de Goya among others. All of that fact withers away at seeing this painting. Even a part of the image being blocked by the coffin doesn't lessen this withering.
It is unlike anything else made by human hands. Even the most uninhibited museum-director would never dare show it to the most open-minded of art critics and art lovers.
Those naked and contorted human forms, some having skin torn and some without skin; the instruments of torment being fixed upon their flesh, red-hot and pointed and eldritch; they are a distraction, a inversion to the true agony expressed in its thick, gilded frame.
Embedded within the painting is something far more subtle and insidious, something far worse. It is something beyond truth and nature and human abilities to contemplate. It is both a yearning for the abyss and the abyss itself. It is something that has strode across the great gulf of Time to find itself trapped in meek borders never meant to contain it.
It is the final force of destruction eagerly staring directly into her, yearning for escape.
Gwen takes a breathe in through her nose. She smells something that hasn't been there.
A twinge of copper.
The unknown scent coils intangible tendrils within her skull as feelings of fear resurface.
She curses vividly under her breathe at smelling that thick, coppery blood smell. She runs a hand through her teal-highlighted hair that was starting to become damp with cold sweat. Her mind fires off in so many directions.
What is she missing? What is going on? What is at work? What is the secret?
Gwen peers into the room's empty corners one by one, getting her face a few inches from the plaster and floorboards so that she could be certain—certain!—that there is no space for anything to conceal itself.
The light bulb flickers. A big, limbed shadow flashes above out of the corner of her eye.
She freezes.
'My God', Gwen thinks, barely keeping herself together mentally as her limbs freeze physically, '...it's on the ceiling!'
And Gwen still didn't know what it is. She pictures one of those clear white corpses crawling above her like a huge, pale lizard. Its hands scuttling and skittering like claws.
Unable to help herself, Gwen imagines that it is over her head right now! She imagines it dangling down behind her like a spider. If she turns around, it will be there, waiting. She will have to look into its frozen, lifeless, dense eyes, with its face right next to hers.
She holds her breath. She did not want to turn around, but she has no choice. She knows that. Whatever is either behind her or above her is between her and the door.
With a quiet sob, she rounded on her heels before she could change her mind while not blinking. No matter what is there, she will see it all in all of its unnatural gruesomeness!
When her head stops moving and her body stops turning, Gwen sees everything there. She sees…!
….
…Nothing!
There is nothing there, only the blank and bland wall to the left of the right-hand sidewall that has the painting. She looks upward too. There are no ghostly beings, anywhere. She checks both the ceiling and the side of the room opposite the painting several times.
Gwen knows she should feel relief…but she doesn't. The feelings still cling strongly to her. Regardless, she decides that she's not going to spend another second in this room.
Then, Gwen hears something. It's a soft voice, bearably audible, almost sounding like a serpent or a bee trying to speak. What is it says is hard to make out but it almost sounds like an elongated "six". Already feeling fright, Gwen refuses to remain in this room.
She turns towards the door…
…and a face is there!
"GAH!" Gwen screams in fright while she recoils from the face.
"Man, Patsy, this place must be gettin' to you, eh?" A familiar voice asks jokingly.
It takes her a few seconds but Gwen soon enough realizes that it's Duncan before her.
Gwen knows she should feel relief…but she doesn't. She remains silent.
"Something got you rallied up?" Duncan asks raising a part of his uni-brow.
The image of Courtney from the vision flashes before her eyes while looking at Duncan.
"Ye-yeah…something does." Gwen finally says. "Ok, Duncan, look. We need to talk. The kiss was awesome." She lightly blushes at remembering it, causing Duncan to grin in victory. "But I don't know if we should pursue this any further…at least not right now, anyway." Duncan's face morphs into one of disbelief. It causes Gwen to turn away and close her eyes. "You and Courtney might not be a thing anymore but I don't think she knows that. I think you should break up with her officially before we even consider this. Maybe once this nightmare of a season is over, then we can consider hooking up for real? But until then I think we should just hold-"
Gwen doesn't finish that sentence. Two objects fall on her shoulders and spin her around. Before she can grasp what is happening, a pair of lips locks tightly onto hers. She feels a soul-patch rubbing against her chin. She realizes that Duncan is kissing her, now with tongue. Gwen wants to resist the invader into her mouth, but her hormones betray her once she feels Duncan's hand move to her backside before rubbing and squeezing it. She notices that the right side is getting more attention but she doesn't take much note of this. After several seconds of tongue kissing and butt groping, however, Gwen regains enough control over herself to push herself against Duncan's chest, thus ending the kiss.
"Was that just to shut me up?" Gwen asks; feeling conflicted.
"Not entirely." Duncan says, with a knowing smirk. He notes the conflicted look on Gwen's face. "Look, Pasty, how about this. How about we focus on the challenge and we hold off on this until after it's over, when we can really talk about it? Fair enough?"
"Fair enough." Gwen says with a small smile before leaving the room at long last.
Duncan remains in the room, allowing his lips to widen into a full-blown smile. It was moments like that one which made him believe that he truly was an awesome badass.
After all, he had done three things all at once. Firstly, most obviously, he got in some good, but quick, make-out time with the hot Goth chick. Always a worthy feat. Secondly, he had ensured that that same hot Goth chick would not break things off just yet, or at all. Duncan truthfully liked Gwen and didn't want things to end between them so quickly. He believed that she would make a much better overall girlfriend than Courtney would. However, if he could only squeeze out one night of good sex in the plane's cargo hold, that would have been plenty good on its own. Either way, he would add another notch in his 'babes conquered' tally. And finally, he marveled at the third thing he had done as he looked at what was in his hands, the scroll of Team Amazon's, from Gwen's own pocket!
The only distraction from these thoughts is a faint coppery smell he just notices. Then another comes.
Somewhere in the room a fly, or flies maybe, are trapped. They are somewhere close. They buzz and fret. But where? Against the windows? Over the painting? In the coffin? Or around the light bulb? He hears their tiny fly voices, but he doesn't question them, too engrossed in his thoughts of the game, and in the delight of tongue-kissing Gwen.
Duncan leaves the room reveling in what he had just done.
He revels in it so much that he doesn't realize that the flies have already left the asylum. Even so, there voices remain.
How they buzz, these harmless insect voices, buzz and sing and complain.
Oh, how they complain.
Even so, even with the instinctual complaining that they had saved for over fifty years, for the first few minutes at least, the newness of life had the dead masses enraptured.
After the first exuberance of their resurrection had abated, they began to break off into groups. Quietly, often still without tongues or lower jaws that didn't fall off and shatter, they spoke of what they would do now. They started to debate their first actions of life.
The final verdicts were many. Some had no idea for they were too trapped by the ghastly dramas of their first attempt at life; these souls would just cry about things that had happened to them and they were incapable of changing, even without any tears falling. Some wanted to move beyond the crumbling walls of their imprisonment and started making plans for how to do so, not knowing of the futility of any such escape attempts. Some wanted to do nothing more than joke and jest with one another, laughing at death. Some of them buried any preexisting hatchets and embrace others gently, so they didn't shatter. Some wanted to reignite old feuds, to at last end quarrels endlessly imagined.
But these were not the sentiments of an admittedly unimaginative majority of those here. Whether it was based in notions of revenge, envy, or not knowing what else they would do, many of the conversations between these corpses began to be whispered more darkly. They wordlessly spoke with a common breathless excitement of evening some score. It was decided; these breathing corpses yet to come would be brought to there shared state.
Knowledge not meant for their brains was starting to become known to them, offering them brief glimpses of what had happened since their departure from their mortal coils. It was flashes of image, whispers of words, sparks of neurological activity of new concepts.
For whatever reason, the most frequently experienced of new knowledge collected wasn't of things like the defeat of the seemingly invisible Soviet Union without the mushroom cloud, the riots and protests of the Negros, the many colonies of Europe rebelling against the nations that had beaten them into submission for a century, or the traveling of men into the realm where the stars were not above you but level to you on massive missiles. Those colossal currents in the sea of time gave way to rippling more personal, dearer.
They saw fleeting visages of those above them, they saw Asian and Spaniard not being subservient, they saw strange fashions of pieces of metal on the face and lime-green hair walking along side an amount of female clothing that was more fitting for underpants.
They heard the voices of them, and of a man whose vanity shocked those from whom vanity had been peeled away by the grave as assuredly as a butcher's knife peels skin. He spoke in crude vulgarities that were somewhat not understood and lacked in his words or thoughts even the basest of simply human decency. He'd have fit in well amongst them.
But as much as the appearances and thoughts of those above them offended their senses, the malign multitudes had the hardest time with a concept presented telepathically.
Reality…television. Entertainment. Game show.
A game. That's what they were to them, a game, something on the level of a vaudeville performance or a radio show or a double feature at the matinée. Their story had the same level of dignity to those creating this as a opening animated short before a Humphrey Bogart gangster picture about a talking rabbit outwitting a dimwitted human hunter.
After coming back to life, and feeling only the aching hollowness of what they lacked, salt was poured into the still healing wounds of the flesh that would never fully heal. They were first beings to experience a second kind of death, the kind of death that reduces humans into either a one-note historical construct or a meaningless statistic. The change of all that is left into either a Hitler or a nameless man killed in a gas chamber.
The living man called Chris was recounting brief vignettes of their lives, the mad parts. He recounted with gleeful relish and sadistic whimsy the acts of violence they had done, the parts of their brains not made full by God, and the ways that they weren't normal. All sensational, all sickeningly sweetened for the public's consumption, all stinging to them. He omitted the confusion, the anguish, the impotence and hopelessness that were in their lives. He omitted their humanity, and thus he was killing it. It was only one of the blows.
Their torments trivialized, their pains pandered to and parodied, their burdens belittled, their suffering satirized; their very existence reduced to a self-servicing punch line.
They were being represented as ghosts and ghouls, heartless abominations before God that were made of nothing more than string and latex and cloth and flashing light blubs.
These beings, broken and half-formed in body, were becoming frenzied, restless. There conversations escalated, adding more treacle black notes to the chattering and howling of their Jabberwocky.
It was decided. They were done. It had gone on for long enough. They were sick of it. They were sick beyond death of having lies and half-truths told about them, of having tricks played on them behind their decayed back, of being misrepresented and mocked. They were sick beyond death of being beyond death, of feeling so hollow and not alive.
They demanded demanding satisfaction, and devised a means of obtaining it.
They would fill the silence in their lost mute souls with their screams of agony and terror.
They would be able to recapture the warmth they had felt, with the blood of these bodies.
They would be able to find, if only briefly, the thrills of life in the deaths of these living.
Slowly like an unseen river running in reverse, a similar decision was being reached on each floor of the asylum, a train of thought was rippling from the lower floors upward.
Aside from thoughts of murder and pain, the thoughts in this terrible train were simple.
They would no longer be forgotten.
They would no longer be still.
Yet again, the thrumming rings out, this time for a third time. But it is different now.
The asylum thunder under the soil and stone still sounds, but it does so more frequently, every half-minute for several minutes ushers in a new explosive assault on the ears.
BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
The thunder is deafening. Glass starts to shatter under the strain of the reverberation. The thunder from beneath the feet of those inside of the asylum is hammering away at them. It is thrumming like a heartbeat, with the pulse of the asylum growing faster and faster.
BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
Even the bravest or most ignorant of those in the asylum have an unreasoning fear seize them. They don't seem to be in any danger, but they feel in presence of something they can't explain which is vaster than anything they have ever seen or could ever imagine.
BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
Other, less developed minds on the isle know better. They sense what is about to play out.
The ground moves as an ebony mudslide along the flat earth devoid of rapid downpour. Pouring out of the asylum is an exodus traveling on long pink feet with four claws each. The darkness blinks in pin drops of blood as thousands of shining ruby eyes dash forward.
BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
Like a stream of dead blood, a stampede of dark runs over the black blade grass growing through the asylum's tiles and the blades of soft healthy green grass beyond the asylum. In the twilit landscape a might swarm of rats run through filth and corpses without pause.
All the previous vendettas, even has the molten copper of the blood on their needle teeth still lingers, are forgotten. The herd of rodents has only one goal compelling them now.
Flee.
BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
The soil is not the soil. Instead it has become a sea past the shoreline.
A rippling sea of rats; pouring out over the dirt from the horror's beating heart.
They run towards the cliffs, undaunted by its immense height. They approach the edge. They vanish into the darkness just as black as their fur. They too pass into the night.
They feel the unutterable loathing, the drive raining down to devour beast and man alike.
They hear other things amid the isle's thrum and throb, broken sounds and voices.
The rain, which has been lacking, now returns. But it's heavier now, now it's stronger. The sky weeps, knowing what is about to unfold but being unable to stop it.
Finally, the strain of this festering wound on the world becomes too much for the Earth.
Over the asylum, reality has been stretched too wide…and it snaps. Reality breaks, like a dam. Colorless eldritch waters pour through, submerging the asylum and those within it.
BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
The nine teenagers of Total Drama wait near the entrance to the next level of the asylum. It is a shocking display. The doorways that had been simple doorways during the asylum's heyday have been overlaid with a thick, electronically activated metal covering. In less than a few minutes, the modern metal covering the doorway will be parted, allowing the teenagers to cross through it to the next level before closing for the night. There are no knobs or number pads or card swaps or computer consoles. Once shut, there is no way to open these doors outside of the remote control on Chris MacLean's person.
Though they all wait for the door to open, that isn't what's on all of the teenager's minds. Instead, they focus on the game. Team Chris conceals feelings of elation across the board while Team Amazon conceals feelings of anger, and for two of its members, worry. After Duncan had taken the scroll from Gwen without her knowing it, he and his teammates had quickly discovered the locations of the pieces of paper that they needed. And that has given them the edge over Team Amazon. Naturally, Gwen hadn't realized that she was missing the scroll until Heather asked for it after she and Cody had reunited with her. While the Queen Bee hadn't shouted out, lest she give Team Chris the satisfaction, it took her several minutes to stop shaking with hate. Both Cody and Gwen are worried that the Goth would be the next one to be eliminated.
So soon that concern will be revealed to be as trivial as it is.
Without any indication, Something beyond humanity flexes itself.
The bloody smell comes back in full force. It's so damn strong. Gwen nearly starts vomiting. She and the others can feel how clammy and coppery the air is. Unbeknownst to all of them sans Gwen indirectly, there is a memory and a promise of blood and suffering in the air, a scent that lingers in the sinuses, and turns the strongest stomach.
The air seems suddenly alive: the very molecules of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen all around them become alive, jostling against the living in an intimate embrace. The air subtly changes. A nimbus starts to spread, adding a faint sheen to the asylum's ether. In fact, everything in the room finds hazy radiance attaching itself to it. It's on the fingertips, as the curves of the fingerprints glimmer in weak neon. The walls get lighter, they fade out a little. The teens see the pulsing and dancing of thick, ropy presences in them. In the tiny transparency of the walls, they see glimpses of it become maggoty with life as wall worms that had long since died don't let that get in the way of movement. The exhaled breathes, in the warm temperatures, become visible, a pinky-orange glamour that is bubbling. The ears are picking up more aside from their thicker salmon-carroty breathes. At a lower frequency, which they hear, they hear the static of distant human voices. They come from everywhere. They come from the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the furniture, the paper in their hands, and even the clothes that cover their goose bump ridden backs. It all whines in a low pitch conveyed by their solid, touchable presence.
The world is opening up, pulling back the thick curtain that has always covered them. The senses are thrown into an ecstasy. The nerves struggle to convey all that is being felt. Every fiber of the teenagers' beings is being coaxed into a wild confusion of functions. All at once, they became capable of seeing deeper. Suddenly the world is seen as a system. Not a system of politics or religions or ideas but a system of surging senses, a system that spread out like jellyfish stingers in a wrathful, storming ocean current from the living flesh to the worn out cloth of the clothing, to the aged, dirtied tile of the floor.
And further.
Beyond clothe, beyond tiles.
They see their first glimpses of what their dulled powers of perceptions can't protect them from anymore. Suddenly the abstract knowledge of their tininess in the grand scheme of the universe is made palpable, as real and felt as the urge to scratch the nose.
Their tiny corner of the world can no longer protect them as the rest of it, from the previously unimaginable Third, Fourth and Fifth Worlds, pressing against their forms. The other Worlds are hungry and irrevocable.
Next to them, a patch of floor has a particularly thick and flowing fog curling around it.
A footstep echoes in across the way. A shroud of shadows covers the space of the sound.
Another footstep is heard, slow and laborious sounding.
Then another.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
Another footstep is followed by a foot, which emerges from the solid obsidian of the shadow into the murky visibility of the partially illumined area without delay or worry.
The foot is faintly glowing, and white. It has a fitful phosphorescence, like the glow of deep-sea fish, cold and charmless. The flesh is smooth, like polished marble, and translucent, like unblemished glass. An elegant crisscrossing of blue and purple snakes in and around worn patches of tightly wound up crimson that drape over aged rough yellow. It is a ghastly sight of a foot, which any person would have hidden to not repulse others.
The opinions of those who see the foot are meaningless to its owner, who approaches.
As the foot takes another step, the pieces of whatever is beneath jiggle haphazardly. The skin looks like it's as elastic and soft as jello, before appearing to harden afterwards.
The teens don't notice that. Instead, there eyes all widen at a linked fact about this man.
The man is inside out!
Or, at least, that is the first impression the teens have as they see the profusion of exposed internal organs; the intestines twitching and glistening in the faint dusky light, the lungs rising and falling like royal purple sponges being squeezed by unseen hands, the laboring burgundy heart hammering against a alabaster ribcage that looks like its cracking; the exposed bones of an exterior skeleton. As the slaughterhouse grotesquery plays itself out, the teens realize something, this thing, whatever it is, isn't actually inside out.
He isn't inside out, he still has flesh on the outside, but it is altered. Somehow it has been made transparent, revealing the true, repulsive inward body for all to see. It is as if the comforting lie of the skin has been phased out, leaving only the bleak, messy bodily truth.
Every inch of this body, the inside and the outside, is visible to the appalled witnesses.
"Wow…" Duncan says in awe. "Chris really stepped up his game! That looks so real!"
While most of the teens agree with Duncan, Gwen doesn't. She starts to shake violently. "W-w-wa-wa-we…we ne-need to ga-get out of here…now!" She says softly with fright. The savage spectacle that she has been a witness to is starting, ready to play itself out.
Everyone looks at Gwen in confusion. They don't know the depths of the inhumanity at work. They believe that what they see now is a very elaborate and well-done human trick.
The Goth's fright increases when one by one; more shuffling shapes step out of the shadows. Soon there are somewhere between a dozen and two-dozen of them are walking towards the teenagers. Again, most of them assume these are costumed interns or robots.
Gwen knows better, or at least she thinks she does. The ether-faces of the dead are quite clear in front of her. There expressions are distant and alien, indifferent and unnaturally bright. She can see the profundity of their suffering and coldness it leaves in its wake.
As the number of corporal corpses goes over three dozen, Gwen has a realization. She is not just staring at the dead but a very special, savage kind of dead. She is not staring at the happy, idling masses of the ordinary dead, of people who had been loved and who had died peacefully content, who'd say that they had gotten a pretty good deal out of life. No, this asylum by some means has opened up a gateway to a realm only inhabited by the victims and the perpetrators of violence within this building's stonewall of the past. The men, the women, and most shockingly of all, the children who had died enduring all the pains nerves had wit to muster, with their minds branded by the circumstances of their deaths.
Eloquent beyond words, their eyes speak their agonies. Their ghost bodies still bear the wounds that had killed them. Gwen sees so many varieties of bodily maltreatment.
She sees necks spurting blood that is a mournful mauve down their decolorized chests. She sees poppies in some chests, which are now, not whitened windows to behind them. She sees limbs that are now uneven and jagged stubs that look like broken beer bottles. She sees eyes hanging from the sockets by nerves which dance and jug with every step. She sees bowels dragging over the floor, with their owners seemingly unconcerned. She sees some groins so eviscerated that she is unable to tell what use to be a penis or a pussy.
She could also see, mingling freely with the insane innocents, their slaughterers and tormentors in doctor's robes. Now they appear to march as one army of the arcane.
The Goth has never felt more frightened than she does at this exact moment.
Owen sees Gwen's fright and has an idea. He remembers how she had soothed his nerves when they had arrived here. Smiling, he comes up with a way to return the favor. "Don't worry, Gwen!" Owen says, as cheerfully and compassionate as he always does. "I'll show you that there's nothing to be a afraid of. These guys are going down!" Then, the Obese Teen mimics the sounds of a trumpet, poorly, before shouting, "CHARGE!"
With that, Owen takes off at full speed towards the growing mob of ghouls. Gwen tries to stop him but her confusion and fright are like two meaty hands squeezing on her throat.
Even with his abysmal physical abilities, Owen reaches the walking wraiths quickly. The impact's sound is loud, like a bowling ball that has gotten a perfect strike. In seconds the mob is no more, and the pins are not just knocked down but in several pieces each.
Everyone's mind, even Gwen's, feels at ease while looking at the leaps on the floor. It proves that these things were merely very convincing animatronics. They breathe easier.
Then, Owen looks at the teens and his face shows horror. Turning to see what he sees, the faces of the others change too. There breaths become hard, so hard they clog their throats.
Right next to them, where was only mist…there's a woman!
She's lying on the ground on her back, just as ghastly and glowing as the others. Her eyes are closed, though they can be partially seen through the semi-transparent eyelids. Her face appears to be in the process of losing all coloring. She is motionless, breathless.
Then, there's a long-drawn sigh, at the end of which the last color from her face vanishes. As quick as a flash, her eyes shoot open, shining an awful light from her ghostly irises. What shines from those eyes is a great wonder, which goes to the far corners of her face. Her mouth is a full and happy smile, basking in the simple joy of being alive once again.
In an instant, the wonder fades. What fills the space previously for the wonder is fear!
Starting at her face, her muscles begin to hideously convulse with an unnatural shaking. Quickly though it travels, as if moving along her spine and nerves and arteries. The shaking is escalating, as if the soul of this woman is struggling and shuddering within the house of the flesh, as if the soul sees the flesh for the first time and is repulsed by it.
But the worse part of this unnatural display is what happens when her limbs move. Every gesture, no matter what kind it is, leaves in the air behind the gesture a solid seeming after-image. The visual impressions this trailing translucent nature caused is hard to describe. The flailing arms become fans of bone like the wings of phantom swans.
After those closest to the flailing female shape move away from her, the eight teenagers near the still closed door look at Owen. Once they do, they feel a whole new dread.
The space around Owen…changes, it looks like something has hit the universe's rewind button. The corpses come back together. Hand attaches to arm, leg attaches to hip, head attaches to neck, nerve attaches to nerve, bowl attaches to bowel, brain attaches to skull.
Suddenly, with it happening so quickly, Owen is surrounded by the mob of three dozen. But it is larger now; at least another dozen or two beings also surround the Obese Teen.
Suddenly, it seems as if the horror changes directions, and focuses mostly on Owen. Not knowing or even barely grasping how it is happening, Owen's body begins to betray him. His mind has no strength to take the panorama in — it cannot control the overload that runs through his every nerve. His heart stops; a revolution overturns the order of his system; his bladder fails, his bowels fail, his limbs shake and his obese form collapses.
The ghosts start to slowly surround him. Gwen sees this and knows their intention: she can see it in their eyes — there is nothing new about it. These are the savage spirits of those that had their insanities morphed into more sadistic streaks by abuse of the body and mind by those who were support to help them or they were the doctors and nurses who by direct action or indirect silent aided in the suffering. There is no mercy left in any of these creatures, Gwen knows that for certain. What she doesn't know that is just as important is that they have had enough of their mockeries. They have endured the levity and insolence, the idiocies, the oversimplifications and disrespectful representation, the fabrications that had made a game of their ordeals and their lives. They approach Owen.
Gwen sees this, and develops a foul fillip in her stomach, of how this is bound to end. She hopes with every fiber in her being that she is wrong.
She isn't.
Without warning, the returned start to enact their revenge against those who slandered them and the forces of death that has rendered them numb and hollow. They start to set their vengeful hands with the bones visible through the epidermis against the fresh skin.
Owen screams as the fists under the flickering florescent lights start to turn his creamy white flesh black and blue. There blows are unfocused and softened by limbs that haven't so much as moved in over half a century. But the ferocity and number of the strikes makes up for this. His rolls of fat jiggle under the blows, which makes the dead angrier by reminding them of the sharp hunger in their own bellies like shards of swallowed glass, some of them having died due to that hunger.
The Obese Teen sways his meaty arms in defiance of the apparitions mauling him. He writhes and screeches. He fights back, knocking some of his attackers away, while pouring out insults that vary between his usual silly and overlong ones and never before heard obscenities. The glowing ghouls take no notice. They swarm around him, deaf to any plea or prayer, and work on him with all the enthusiasm of creatures forced into silence and inactivity for far too long.
The other teens watch in horror. Some of them don't even think of helping Owen. Others do but find that they can't fight against the fear that weighs down their limbs and minds.
Then, something changes. One of the attackers, with a right arm like a broken beer bottle, lands an effective strike on the mammoth belly of the teenager. Owen screams anew.
Those watching look down, and their stomachs almost see it before their brains do. Those of them with food in their bodies find the food being halfway up their gullets, getting caught in the backs of their throats. They all take in several large gulps of stale air.
Their heads are saying the same thing. One single word, which none of them can banish. Their minds refuse to accept what was in front of their eyes and brightly contrasting with the dull colors of the area around it. They reject the sight as preposterous, as a fantasy. Their reason says it can't be real…while their flesh knows that it is. In microseconds stretching out into centuries, they can't deny the truth of what is presented to them all.
BLOOD!
Owen is now bleeding with a gaping wound on his stomach!
Cody feels spreading warmth, and he realizes that he has just pissed his pants. Heather notices this and is tempted to mock him…until she feels a similar spreading warmth. Alejandro feels the smallest twinges of guilt for ever hating the Obese teenager. Tyler struggles to even comprehend what is playing itself out before his very eyes. Gwen nearly collapses from the feelings of guilt that are constricting her like a grand python.
It becomes apparent to all of those watching this that this isn't a poly from Chris MacLean.
Owen screams louder as the fists and stubs like broken glass skip against his flesh, as they plough it up, with rivers of red starting to branch off into smaller ruby tributaries.
The teens hear a sound behind them. Turning around, they see that the doorway is finally opening. It takes them a minute to realize this, and that they must cross through it now.
Alejandro, Duncan, and Heather run through the door as soon as the opening is big enough. Sierra and Tyler linger for a few seconds longer before following them. Cody and Courtney start to go next until they see that Gwen has not moved from her spot.
Each teen takes one of the Goth's pale hands, which are slightly trembling, and moves her backwards through the door that is just starting to close. Gwen doesn't fight it. She can't take her eyes off of Owen, who has since stopped screaming, though his eyes are wild with terror and pain. The Goth is offering a million sincere and silent apologies but they mean nothing, they change nothing.
As the doors slowly close, Gwen is witness to one last sight that horrifies her more than any of the others that she has seen. She sees one of the phantoms holding something. It is long, with its end reaching to at least the waist of the phantom's waist even though its hand is as high over its head as it can be. It swings and dangles above the filthy floor. Its brown and seeming both dirty yet shining. It almost reminds Gwen of seeing fresh sausages from the local deli still in their casing. But blotches of a horribly bright crimson coat it, adding a repulsive beauty to the object. More than anything, she sees that it's slightly phosphorescent, faintly glowing in the dark. And, more so by natural human curiosity than logic, Gwen's eyes follow the long length of the object until she sees where the other end is coming from. The instant she does, Gwen thinks that she would rather have burned her eyes out than realize the truth.
The other end is coming from Owen's bulbous belly, which is now an open cavity.
The sickening specter is holding the end of Owen's large intensities!
Right before the door closes, Gwen looks at Owen. His face is rigid and frozen, his mouth opened as wide it could go, but for once it isn't because of devouring food. Then she looks back at the ghoul, and reels as it places a piece of one of her few friends on its shoulders. With it draped over the pale ethereal glow of the creature's rawhide, the phosphorescent nature of the intensities increases.
That is when Gwen has one last horror flood her skull. She has seen this before…in the vision! Those were the things like phosphorescent fox furs that she had seen earlier! For whatever reason, she had been given omniscient knowledge of this, but she had been unable to stop it. The Goth's legs nearly give out from the weight of her guilt.
Then, she hears a screech from her side. Turning her head, the Goth only hears the shouts of warning from the other teens before a pale fist with visible finger bones strikes her.
The punch hits her with shocking force. Even the hulking size and muscular build of the particular being that hits her doesn't explain its raw strength. It isn't the punch of a brittle corpse that is almost nothing but dust with self-evident frailty. It is the punch of a being with powers greater than the ones contained in its shredded though compact muscles.
Everything seems to slow down. So much happens that Gwen's brain can't process it all at once. She feels the ungodly throbbing pain from the blow to her, and she swears that she actually feel a portion of her brain as it is forced away from the rest thanks to the hit. She feels her hair swirl up from her head, flailing like the snake hair of the Gorgon Medusa. She feels a lethargy that is so hard to fight off attempting to paralyze her. She feels the blood draining from her extremities and the brain reeling from lack of oxygen. It only occurs to Gwen that she hasn't taken a breath since seeing Owen's final, foul fate but the memory of that is drowning her in invisible waters.
Her eyes refuse to blink, being unable to close off the appalling scenes before them through a duo of curtains made of thin, curved flesh. She sees all of the others fighting off various hordes of the same breed of being. She sees ghosts grappling with human.
Her eyes flood with tears, finally unable to repress the despair strangling her anymore. She's almost glad that she's crying because her tears are fogging up her vision, blotting out the atrocity.
But then the blotting changes, instead of becoming blurred everything starts becoming black. One by one, the forms of human and ghoul alike vanish in ebony tidal waves.
Gwen has a feeling of all of this happening before…then she remembers the end of the vision. Only this time she knows that it is no vision. The size of the truth is crushing.
'N-not…not again.' Gwen thinks, unable to think of anything else amid such enormity.
Looking through the walls that now more resemble glass than rock, she sees one last image. Right as her brain processes it, Gwen feels a familiar tugging on her very soul.
As everything gets cold and dark, Gwen's teal lips release one last, final, tiny breathe.
Even though her eyes are wide open, an expansive ebony sea floods everything.
The final image that Gwen had seen was the same as it had been during her vision. Through the walls, Gwen had seen a massive chasm of night black. And just like in the vision, she had seen that the lower half was moving and that there are countless equally black shapes bobbing up and down. None of that had changed since the vision.
But what had changed was that lightning now flashed its electric whip crackle silently over the lower half of the blackness. Now Gwen could see what made up the lower half.
It had been the ocean, with the majority of its vast length un-illuminated by the moon or the lightning. The waves moved to and fro, in an aquatic panic of elemental dimensions. That hadn't been what had caused the horror.
The horror came from what had been caught in that panic. The flotsams in the waves.
They were so hard to notice at first. They were just as black as the night sky and sea. But then, there was a sign, a signal. Gleaming. The lightning allowed a small gleaming to be visible. Even though each individual gleaming was only a tiny pinprick of light amid the dismal waters, one fact about them made them easier to spot.
They always came in twos. Every dot of ruby light came with a partner.
Though art and reality have an awkward relationship most of the time, every so often the stars align and a truth emerges from a fiction. Such was the case when playwright Christopher Marlowe had Mephistopheles say the following words to convince Dr. John Faust of why Lucifer would want his soul in exchange for infinite power over the Earth; 'It is a comfort in wretchedness to have companions in woe.'
The truth in the demon's words was unsettling in the terrible tide outside of the asylum. So many bodies of matted black fur and starting to bloat with the gasses of decay float together. None of them leave the surface; even the sharks and gulls won't consume them. The thousands of pairs of rubies in the surf were eyes, the eyes of an un-human species.
Rats.
Thousands upon thousands of rats, all once joined together in a stampede of suicide. Drowning in the waters of the ocean was preferred to drowning in the ones that didn't have hydrogen or oxygen and were submerging the entire isle they had fled from.
These beasts of dim intellect had seen what even the smartest of the smartest species hadn't. But then again, the intelligent not seeing the obvious had familiar precedent.
Only after selling his soul to Hell, did Faust, acclaimed doctor and scholar, ask Mephistopheles what Hell was like, most importantly where it was located.
Those in Cornwall Heights Hospital already knew the answer to that question.
"Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
In one self place; for where we are is hell
And where hell is, there we must ever be." –Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"
And there you have the latest chapter of this story. As always I hope you all liked it. Now that this story has crossed over into true horror, I'm very eager for feedback.
I had planned on using the closing quote to close out this chapter for near a month. I had discovered it as a opening to Russell Kirk's "Balgrummo's Hell" and it wasn't until today that I discovered that it was a quotation from Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" after looking up the specific scene that the other quote came from. It turns out that they're in the same one; Act I, Chapter 5. Shocking discovery, eh?
Despite what this chapter might lead to believe, Gwen is NOT dead!
Consider this story update a very early Halloween present! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Until the next chapter of this story comes, please read, review, favor, follow, and spread the word!