Test Subject

Ariel stood across the house in front of its walkway. She could feel the suspense building up inside her body, but was soon able to let it go. It seemed like ever since Ziplock stopped talking, she was much more calm. It was weird, but at the same time she felt relieved. Slowly and carefully she took one step closer to the house. When she succeeded that simple task, she took another and soon made it to the front door. Reaching her hand up, she rang the doorbell once. Suddenly, it struck her. What was she going to say? What was she going to do? Would doing this be just like asking him to end her life?

Her mind was filling up with questions, but they were silenced by the fact that no one was coming to the door. She took her shaking hand and rung it again. Again, there was no answer. Taking a big gulp, Ariel took the doorknob and turned it. To her luck or dismay, it was open. Without walking in she pushed the door open to look in. It was dark, and there was no one around. Slowly, she took a step in the house.

"H-hello?" she called out. The room's atmosphere was bleak and eerie. "Hello? Is anyone home?" After not hearing an answer again, something caught her eye: a little black book on a writing desk. She walked over to the desk and picked up the book. "This… looks familiar…" she mumbled to herself. She opened the book and started to read it silently.

Dear DIE-ary, Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats, I put them in the blender. I'm wondering if, maybe… She stopped reading and looked up, "…there really is something wrong with me." She looked back down at the book, seeing the words she had just said out loud, "I've read this before… but… where…?"

"It's impolite to walk into someone's house without being invited in first," said a creepy voice. Ariel froze for a moment. Realizing her situation, she tried to run for the door. But before her hand could even reach the knob, she felt a hard object slam on her head. As the dizziness hit her, she fell to the floor and things began to go blurry. She tried to keep her eyes open but blood started to leak down her face. She saw a steel boot step in front of her face, but it was all she saw before she was completely knocked unconscious.

It seemed hard to breath at the moment, but Ariel started to wake up. She felt weak, and she couldn't open her eyes. She then gently tried to more her arms, but they too seemed to be stuck. With more strength this time, she tried to open her eyes again. This time, she succeeded. Obviously, the blood that trickled over her eyes had dried them shut. Ariel looked up to see why she couldn't move her arms. Her wrists were chained up to the wall along with her elbows. She painfully looked down to see that the same things were done to her knees and ankles. She sighed in shame and looked up to see where she was. But the room was dark. The only light was a small light bulb that loosely hung above her head. Thinking that maybe someone might be around, she spoke out.

"Wha…what did I do?" she asked, her voice cracking a little. There was silence, in which she dropped her head at.

"You'd think that you would notice your own mistake," said the voice from before. Ariel looked around quickly, but it was no use. She could only see clearly in the spot where she was.

"Where are you?" she asked. She heard footsteps from the left side of the room trail over to the right side. Suddenly, the lights flashed on. This blinded Ariel, so she closed her eyes again. She opened them slowly, looking over at the light switch. Even though she was squinting, she got a clear description of the person she was sharing stares at. It was a young man. He was thin, and looked a little taller than her. He wore a striped black and white shirt with ripped up black shorts and black steel-toed boots. His face was unforgettable. He wore a band-aid over his left eye and his eyes looked as if he hadn't slept in days. But his black hair was a little strange, for it looked as if he had left in the middle of a hair cut.

"… Are you Johnny C.?" she asked after studying his image. The man gave one quick and deep nod.

"Yup," he answered. Her heart began to race.

"I see…" she said, "Guess I finally found you." He looked at her curiously, and then began to walk over to her in a fast pace. Seeing this she held her breath and hoped for survival. But he stopped in front of her and leaned into her face.

"Hey… I remember you now!" he smiled a typical evil guy smile, "You're that girl who's always talking to Squee!" She exhaled slowly.

"S-Squee?" she stuttered.

"Uh-huh," he then leaned back up and turned around, "You're also that girl who's always standing outside my house. That's incredibly rude, you know. Not to mention annoying." Ariel looked down and thought about her actions. Now that she thought about it, it would be enough to drive someone mad. As if it would of made a difference anyway.

"Why is my head bleeding?" she asked him, off the subject.

"Ah!" he stated and walked over to a cardboard box. He rummaged around it pulling out knives, chains, and nails. Finally, he pulled out what he was looking for: a bloodstained aluminum baseball bat. "I hit you with this," he said waving it around in the air, "I don't know where it came from, but I found it after returning from the horrible void that is the afterlife." Ariel recognized the bat immediately.

"Blood Bat!" she said. Johnny stopped waving the bat and looked over at her.

"'Scuse me?" he asked. She held her tongue about the bat, but she still wondered how he got a hold of it.

"N-nothing… Um, Mr. C…?" she began to ask.

"Please, call me Johnny!" he told her, taking somewhat of a bow.

"Um… Mr. Johnny-,"

"JUST JOHNNY!!" he screamed. She shot her head back in terror, hitting her head-wound on the concrete wall behind her.

"O-Okay! Johnny; I get it!" she agreed, and started to feel more blood spill out from her head. She tried to forget it and continued. "Wha… What do you plan on doing with me?"

"Well naturally I would have killed you already," he explained, "but for some reason, I didn't. It's really weird. Do you know why?" She shook her bleeding head. "Me neither. I don't have to feed the wall anymore, so that would kind of explain it…"

"The wall?"

"Yes, the wall! You see, there was a thing on the other side of the wall. I had to feed it blood so that it wouldn't come through. But now it's gone. Damn it, I never even got to see what it looked like…"

Wall monster? She thought, "I think I had a dream about something like that. It was chasing me… and it had a bunch of legs. No, not legs… tentacles." Johnny raised his eyebrow as he listened to her babble.

"You are a little strange one," he said, "But I think I might have some use of you."

"What's that?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"Mmmm…. I know!" he blurted out, "You're my new test subject!" He ran over to get a pencil and a small post-it note. He wrote 'Test Subby' on it and smacked it on Ariel forehead.

"W-what?" she stammered, "Test subject?!"

"Uh-huh," he nodded his head, "For some reason or another I don't have the urge to end your life right now, but maybe tomorrow I will. If you're able to live in the next three days, then that means I'm not crazy anymore! But if you die… well, what else is new?"

She exhaled cautiously. She had been holding a little bit of her breath the hole time.

"Well, I'm in the mood for a Cherry Fizz-Wiz!" he said heading to the door, "I'll see you tomorrow, 'kay?" With that, he turned off the light and slammed the door behind him. Ariel gazed at the ground in the sol light if the light bulb.

Three days… Jeez, I hate my life.

St. Jimmy

She guessed it was morning, even though there were no windows in the room to see the morning light. She could barley sleep, due to the pain in her limbs. It was day two, and she was still alive. Ariel looked down to see the 'Test Subby' post-it that was on her forehead had fallen off somewhere during the night. She knew that sometime or another, Johnny would come back. She tried to budge again, but the chains were strong, even though they were old and rusty. Or maybe it was because she was too weak to actually use all of her strength. She looked around the room. There wasn't much in it, just the cardboard box and a crate full of weapons, the old Blood Bat on the floor, the door, and a painting on the wall that had the letter Z and a question mark in red paint. Or so, she thought it was paint. The door suddenly swung open. There stood Johnny drinking a Cherry Fizz-Wiz.

"You're just now getting back?" she asked a little surprised, "Do you never sleep?"

"I don't need sleep," he said, crushing the now empty can, "I have better things to do. How 'bout you? Comfy?"

"… No," she answered plainly, "I couldn't sleep because I was in so much pain."

"Excellent!" he squealed, dropping the empty can, "That means you're still alive."

Of course I'm still alive… "Sir, if you don't sleep, then what do you do?" she asked him.

"Work," he answered simply, "It requires a large amount of my time."

"You have a night job?"

"I work all day!" He then walked over to the box and pulled out a knife, "It's always lot's of fun! I wonder if I'm in the mood for killing today?" he grinned manically. Ariel started to sweat. She seemed pretty freaked out about the knife he was holding but she soon forgot about it when she saw a cockroach crawl out from one of the cracks in the wall. She gasped loudly and tried to move backwards (as if she could move anymore). Before the roach could get any nearer to her, Johnny's knife flew through the air and stabbed the roach right in the middle of it's back.

"Damn it, Mr. Samsa," Johnny stated taking his knife out of the bug, "You just won't die will you?" He looked up at Ariel. "Mr. Samsa doesn't bite; why are you scared of him? Hmm. Well, I guess it'd be natural for a little girly-girl to be scared of bugs."

"Don't stereotype," she finally spoke out, "It's only roaches for me."

"Oh? And why is that?" he asked, pulling up the wooden crate to sit on.

"Well, when I was little, my brother and I lived with my Abuela. Uh, I mean my grandmother. One time I went in the basement when no one was home and I got locked in. For about three hours all I remember seeing were roaches crawling all over the pla-," she stopped herself to figure out that she was having a perfectly sane conversation with the same man who said that he'd kill her. "…And why am I telling you this?" she grumbled.

"Probably because you want someone to talk to, eh?" he said, smearing off the roach guts with a glove, "You're lucky I'm here to listen to you, or you'd probably end up hearing spooky voice-thingies in your head." Ariel sighed.

"Too late for that."

"Oooh! You have them too?" he smiled, looking a little more interested in her.

"Well, not anymore. I told him to go away." Johnny's smile wiped clear off his face. He turned around and gripped the knife.

"You were strong enough to get rid of it?" he said in a deep voice. Ariel stared at him in confusion.

"Yeah…" she said, trailing off, "He wanted to make me do things I didn't want to do. So I got rid of him." She could see his body start shaking. Finally he turned around, pointing the knife at her.

"HOW?!" he yelled at her. Ariel was again, taken back.

"Whu-what?!" she stuttered.

"HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO GET RID OF THEM?!" he continued, "I MEAN, SURE THE DOUGHBOYS ARE GONE BUT I CAN STILL HEAR THAT FUCKING BURGER BOY!!"

Oh, God! This guy is out of his mind! She panicked inside.

"I-I'm sorry! I don-,"

"SHUT UP! YOU MAKE ME MAD WITH JELOUSY!!"

He swung the knife up and started to swing it down to her chest as Ariel shut her eyes as tight as they could go. But suddenly, the doorbell rang. He stopped his action and looked up.

"Fuck!" he yelled, "And I was so close too!" He dropped the knife at Ariel's feet and went upstairs, again slamming the door behind him.

"Oh, jeez…" she said, exhaling, "Thank God the doorbell rang. Whoever rang it must be a saint…"

The Sounds From Upstairs +Extra+

Ariel began to hang loosely in the chains, due to her exhaustion and discomfort.

"One more day…" she told herself, "I just gotta keep him busy for one more day, and I'll be okay… right?" Suddenly, she thought of something she didn't bother thinking of before. What if even after the three days he didn't let her go after all? What if he decided to kill her in the end and didn't hold his part of the deal?

"Oh, god…" she whimpered, "This isn't happening… Tell me this isn't happening!" She looked around the dark room and started to panic. Pretty soon, she started to get desperate and finally broke. "Ziplock!" she called out of nowhere, "Ziplock, help! I'll do whatever you want! Please, help me!" She continued to call his name, but there was never an answer. Her head sunk down with the rest of her body. "I… I don't want to die…" she whispered, "Not here… please… I want to-"

"EEEK!!" she suddenly heard an agonizing voice from an upper level scream. Ariel stopped herself from going anymore into the pathetic void she was falling into and looked up at the ceiling. A loud series of thuds followed the scream.

"Wha… what was that?" she asked herself. There was silence for a while. Still, Ariel waited to see if she could hear any more of what had happened.

"Okay. First lesson!!" yelled a voice. She recognized it immediately; it was Johnny's. She then heard him say something else, but she couldn't make it out. Maybe he was speaking softer rather than screaming. But he continued. "Second- Just because we've similar interests does not guarantee you're going to like me!" –mumbling- "My delusionary hell does not agree with yours!!"

"What's he talking about?" she said, still looking up, "Is he arguing with someone?"

"And though this gets me no absolution, I Would Never Do What You Did To That Girl!! You Abomination Of Mental Subversion!! Oh, Look!! An Orifice! How Do You Like Being Fucked With Steel?!!" After a while, it seemed that he had finished. Ariel then heard a faint whimpering, probably from the other person. She listened closely. A loud BLAM ended it, followed by another mumble. She assumed whatever was going on ended and let her head sink back down to where it was before.

"One more day…" she repeated, "Just one more day…"