AN: Hello everything, this a new story I am writing even though I should be focused on my other ones, dont worry they will be updated in due time. Hopefully all before the end of this year. Good news is though motivation is coming back due to streaming the whole writing on my twitch channel. Check it out if you want to see me write live.
TT: Atomizzzer
Anyway, besides the shameless plug I wanted to give an warning on this, I changed genre about every 30 minutes and randomized every character as well so they may be slighly OOC but other then that there is some grotesque stuff as well. Either way that is all, enjoy the read.
"Hey Jax, can you run down to the town for us? We're out food for the animals, and you know how pigs get when they can't eat anything for a while." A voice calls out to me from somewhere. I look around my surroundings and see nothing but trees and bush. I shrug my shoulders and continue my journey back to home after getting the supplies needed for work tomorrow.
"Jax, you said that you were going to pick up some food for the animals. You don't want them to go hungry on us now do you?" The voice calls out to me again, I look behind me and all around yet there is no one who I can see. I scratch my head wondering who would be out here calling out to me. Ma and Pa are back home, and Sis should be helping them out. I decide to call out to them to see if they need anything.
"Umm, hello? Is someone out there?" I call out to the mysterious voice that seems to know my name.
"Jax, honey. You don't recognize the voice of your own mother? That's heartbreaking to hear" The sound of glass breaking surrounds me on all sides. I drop my supplies and start to look around trying to see if there is anyone or anything that I can find out in the wilderness. I pick up my pace trying to get away from the voice that's following me.
"What's wrong dear, you don't want to rush into the arms of your loving mother? I didn't happen to offend you?" The voice following me slowly gets distorted with tv static surrounding the area, offending my ears and I continue to run away from the voice. I try to not panic and fail as the voice starts crying like I hurt them even though I have no idea who this is.
"Leave me alone, you aren't Ma" while running away a pungent smell starts to invade my nostrils. Bile starts to rise in my throat due to how strong the smell is. I swallow the bile and the sounds start to get louder in my ears and head. I cover my ears for a small hope that the sounds will deafen slightly. I couldn't have been more wrong.
"You Don'T want to Hear yOur OwN motHer's voice? JaX dEar, plEa\A\se unCoVer youR EaRs NOW" The voice has gotten angrier with the sounds of distortion following soon after. My head starts pounding from all the noise assaulting me but I know better then to uncover my ears when strange voices start talking to me, if you do as they say then their hold on you only becomes stronger. I can't do anything to defend myself besides running away and hoping they leave me alone, whoever they are.
I take a quick bend around the trees hoping to lose the voice that's following me, twisting and turning the forest seems to go on forever. Soon the pungent smell returns, stronger than ever. As I take one more turn around a tree, I have finally found the source of the smell at least.
"OH JAx, It'S sEemS yOu FouNd youR DeaR motHEr, PleAse HelP her up ThIs InStANt." The voice and the smell both seems to be coming from a decrepit body. Their skin seems to be peeling off, empty sockets where their eyes should've been, bones visible to the human eye. A finger falls off the body's hand which causes me to throw up what was once my lunch.
As I continue to throw up my lunch, I start to hear the sound of bones cracking loudly. I slowly look up from the ground to see the dead and decrepit body slowly flex their hands as if trying to grab something. I let out a screech as more body parts start to move and crack, as if possessed by some ghost or creature. I turn around as quick as possible and start darting away from the body. While running the voice once again calls out to me.
"DoN'T LeAVe ME, i NEed yoUR SuPPle FlESh in me JAx, GiVE it TO MEEEEE" as the voice said that skeletal hands and heads start popping out from the ground trying to trip me, grabs my legs or even bite them with what little teeth they have. I stomp on a few while running on accident, they made a squelching noise as my boots made contact with their heads. I throw up once again due to the noise, but I can't stop running or else I risk the chance of death or even never getting out of this forest.
I continue to run in a direction trying to remember which way home was, seemingly lost in this forest that seems to last forever. The leaves are bunching together as I seem to go deeper and deeper into the forest trying to get away from whatever's chasing and hunting me. While running something grabs my ankle and I faceplant into the ground disoriented and dazed. I look behind me to see glowing eyes slowly inching closer and closer to my prone body.
I lay there in shock as the eyes slowly draw closer and closer to me. Another hand springs from the ground behind me as it goes to grab my other leg. I am shaken out of my stupor when I see the other hand and look down at my leg, right there is a bony while hand gripping my pant leg. I punch the hand with my free hands to get it to let go of the grip on my leg. This seems to work as the hand recoils from the pain and let's go of me. I scramble back onto my feet before the other hand can grip my leg as the eyes get closer to me. A pale and ghostly hand reaches out from where the eyes are as if trying to grab something that isn't there.
I let another scream running away deeper into the forest trying to get away from whatever the fuck those glowing eyes are. It's as if I was staring into the abyss with the abyss looking back at me with aggression and feelings of dread and decay. My body shivers as I think about what could've been. I shake my head trying to get those thoughts out of my head. I start to slow down my pace of running as I look around, no longer seeing any skeletal hands popping up from the ground and no glowing eyes either. I take a breather and I look around my surrounding only to realize that I am lost in this dark and damp forest.
I look around trying to figure out if there is anything familiar around me, but all the trees look so much alike it's like I am in a hall of mirrors except it's made of trees and there's and a pair of eyes trying to get me. I scratch my head and start to think of a way out. I look up into the sky but all I can see are leaves cluttered together to the point where little to no light gets through them. I take a deep breath and walk to the nearest tree. I size up the tree and walk a circle around it. I nod my head as I grip onto the tree and start the dreaded climb up into the night sky.
As I climb the tree, I start to hear noises around me, baffled, I continue to climb up the tree. The noises get louder with each climb I take up the never-ending tree. Leaves start to fill my vision as the sound of cars and people talking start filling my ears. I push through the never-ending leaves and what greets my eyes leaves me in a much more confused and baffled state then before.
A whole city fills my vision, I blink a few times making sure I am seeing this correctly. I even pinch myself to make sure I am not in some weird dream state. Once confirming that there is in-fact a city siting on top of this forest. I climb out of the trees and into the city remembering to mark in my brain where the entrance/exit to the forest is, so I don't get lost.
I start to wonder the big city trying to figure out where even the hell am I. As I continue looking around, I see advertisements for this food called Pumpkin Pete's, there is a bunny and a black-haired girl with red glasses, a navy-blue shirt with a light blue cardigan around her. I have never once heard of this cereal; I think I would've remembered a cereal with a bunny and a woman as their mascot. I continue looking around until I find what I am looking for. A Police department. I rush into the doors which accidently startles the receptionist.
"Hello, I would like to report a dead body I found which also tried to kill me for some unknown reason." I speak out in a fast sentence as I'm finally given a chance to calm down.
"Ummmmmmmm, could you repeat that please" I look the receptionist in her brown eyes.
"Like I said, I found a dead body. I would like to report that but also said dead body tried to attack me. No, Im not crazy. I would like to ask for any police member to follow me, if you aren't busy. I also saw glowing eyes which tried to kidnap me." I repeat what I said while giving extra detail om what happened and what I witnessed. I start to look at the missing body reports on the wall to see if I could recognize the very mishappen body.
While looking at the missing people reports I hear the receptionist start to talk on the phone about what I witnessed.
"They said they would send one person with you, we would just need to preform a fully body search on you to make sure you aren't planning on killing them." She responds back to me.
"Thank you, sorry for being hectic. First time I've ever witnessed glowing eyes and skeletal hands attacking me." I de-tense and take a seat waiting for the officer to arrive.
After a few minutes of waiting the officer in question walking of the office doors.
"So you're the one who would like to report a missing body and saw glowing eyes. Names Yang Xiao Long" She rubs her head as if trying to get rid of a headache. "So who do I owe the pleasure to for calling me out here like this."
"Oh right, Names Jax Demitri. The man who saw a dead body, glowing eyes and crawled out of the forest underneath this city of yours." I chuckle to myself wondering how the hell I ended up in a city from a forest. The receptionist and Yang look at each other with bewilderment in their eyes.
"Did you just say from the forest that is underneath us?" Yang looks at me with a quizzical and worried look, the receptionist looks at me with the same face.
"…..yes? Did I misspeak about something cause I remember where the entrance to the forest is, twas by a weird looking bar." I hop out of my seat ready to show Yang just where I entered from.
"Look, Jax was it? What the hell are you talking about. There ain't no damn forest underneath out forest. SO where exactly did you find this body." Her tone of voice starts to raise as her eyes slowly turn from this nice lilac to a red color and her bright golden hair lights up.
I quickly wave my hands back and forth. "Im telling you the truth, I came from a forest that led into this here city. Im not lying nor pulling ya leg. C'mon, I'll even pay ya whatever you are charging me plus extra. This is no damn joke."
Yang rolls her eyes and lets out a huge sigh "whatever you say dude, just show me where you exited and we can figure this shit out quicker so we can get you in the looney bin quicker. But first let's preform that full body search, make sure there are no drugs on you or any weapons either."
I let out a sigh I didn't know I was holding. "Thank you Officer Xiao Long, c'mon, it's a quick walk to where I came from."
After the full body search was conducted, I lead Officer Xiao Long to where I exited the forest and as I remember there being, just the top of a few trees gathered in the middle of the sidewalk.
"Alright, here we are. The trees that I have exited from, I told you I wasn't lying on anything." I present the tops of the trees to Officer Xiao Long. She takes a step forward, cocks her hand back which made a noise for some reason, like a gun cocking, and punched down onto the concrete which breaks and falls revealing more trees to us. She punches again this time the sound of a gunshot rings out which makes me jump and look at her in shock. The leaves ignite and slowly start to burn away.
"What the fuck Officer, how did you punch so hard it sounded like a gunshot and produced fire." I am amazed by the display of power that this Officer just showed off.
She looks back at me and winks "Trade secret farm boy, a lady never tells her secrets to strangers she has never met before." Her face forms back into a serious expression and picks up her police radio. "Yeah, seems he wasn't lying at all. Call for back up, this mess could get hairy real quickly, 'specially with this civilian here" She turns around and faces me in full.
"Yeah, this calls for the higher ups and more back up to deal with, thanks for showing this to us. You said there was also a body that you found down there as well?" She pulls out a notepad and a pen to go with it.
"Yes, that is correct. Sadly, I couldn't see any distinguishing features on their body with how old and decayed it was. Main thing that stood out to me was the peeling flesh, no eyes in the sockets, and a finger that fell off as well as it pointed at me. Couldn't pick it up due to running away. Those were the main things I remember, so this body has to be very old"
She writes down everything I heard with a serious look, she clicks her pen and places it back in her shirt pocket, flips the notepad closed and sits down.
"SO what I'm hearing is that this is royally fucked up and we are gonna need some samples of the body to see if we can identity who this person is. Anything else happen when you ran into this dead body." She rubs her head once again and massages her temples. "I'm gonna need a drink after this"
"You and me both sister" I respond to her. "The other main thing that happened was the body seemed to move on it's own and caused a bunch of other skeletal hands and hands to try and stop me, said it wanted my flesh."
"Why the hell did I sign up for the police force, should've just been a huntress but noooooooo, Dad wanted me to play police officer after destroying the bar. Stupid bullshit rules and parents." She whispers to herself. We hear another pair of footsteps behind us. We look up and see a dude in a police officer's uniform who has brown eyes and some form of blue hair in an undercut style with his long hair swept to one side and lightly hanging down the side of his face. I hear Yang sign off in the distance.
"I ask for backup and they send you of all people Marigold, just my shitty luck today. First, we get Mr. Crazy over here telling us a strange ass story and once it's confirmed true, they send you of all people Mr. Flirts and fails a lot" Yang stands up and shows the note pad to this new guy, Marigold his name is apparently.
"Look, I don't want to be here either Yang, but we got a job to do." He quickly combs through the notepad and nods in understanding. "Alright, let's get this show on the road so I can go back to wooing the ladies with my amazing police officer skills and uniform."
I shake my head and ask if either of them has a flashlight. Marigold throws me a flashlight which I strap into my belt loops on my pants and turn it on. I wave for them to follow me as I crawl back into the foliage of which I escaped from earlier this day. As we climb back down the tree the darkness slowly envelopes us but with the flashlight the darkness is no longer as oppressive as it once was.
Once we reach the bottom of the trunk, we do a quick stretch before I start looking around to remember which side I came from.
"Um, can I have a flashlight back. It's very spooky down here and I am not the biggest fan of the dark." I hear Marigold ask me.
"Sorry dude, I'm guiding us so I need to see where the hell we are going. Go hold onto Officer Xiao Long or don't be a coward" I hear Yang stifle a chuckle and Marigold sighs in response. Once I find which way I ran from I motion them to start following me. My eyes making sure to watch out for anything that we could happen to run into with my shoulders tensed up and legs ready to bolt at moment's notice.
As we continue to walk out of the forest I see where I was tripped and faceplanted into the ground, I subconsciously rub my nose due to the pain that caused me.
"Hey, can either of you two examine this spot or anything around it. I was tripped up by a skeletal hand and saw the glowing eyes here as well." I kneel looking to see if I can find where the hands popped out from. After a few seconds of sifting through the dirt I find a small hole. "Over here, this is where one of the hands came from"
The two walk over to where I am and start to examine the hole in greater detail. They take pictures, rub the dirt between their fingers, place some in a plastic bag and dig down in the hole.
"Hey, come get a look at this, it's like a whole system of small tunnels and skeletons. What did we stumble into" Yang calls out to me and I take a closer look into the dirt with them. What I saw would shock me. It was a line of bones that seems to be originating from somewhere. "guess we have a lead now guys, lets follow dem bones to the culprit."
Yang springs back up and starts to follow the way the bones went checking to make sure that we were still on the right path of the bone system by punching the ground to see where the bones were headed to. As we continue to follow the bony trail the sound of low static starts to fill my ears. I start looking around frantically making sure there are no eyes following us.
"This is one of the noises I heard while being hunted/chased. Should we head back now that we have a lead of where we can go?" Yang and Marigold look at each other and shake their heads.
"Nah, we gotta get more of a lead then just a trial of bones. Let's at least find this dead body first and get some form of sample from them, also what static are you hearing, I hear nothing dude." Yang answers back to me with dismissive tone of voice with slight worry.
"Yeah, I hear nothing either. What static are you even talking about" Marigold looks at me like I'm losing my mind.
"How do you not hear that low static sound, its like an old radio or tv station" I answer back in a frantic hurry. They shrug at me and continue following the bony path as I start look at them like their crazy but follow suit not wanting to get lost yet again in this maze of a forest.
As we slowly get into the lighter parts of the forest the static noise starts to get stronger and stronger to where I cover my ears for protection. "How do you guys still not hear this static, it's driving me nuts"
They look at me and see that I am grimacing in pain as I cover my ears trying to block out as much of the noise as possible. "A- you su- yo- a-nt just c-azy" I could barely hear what they said due to how strong the static was in my ears.
"I can't hear you, just keep going forward, I'll be fine, hopefully." They look back at me in concern but continue on forward staying on alert to make sure nothing too crazy happens.
We finally reach the body which I found earlier that spoke to me. "That's them, now please get the evidence so we can finally get out of this damn forest." The two of them start to do their thing before a voice reaches out to me, it's that same voice from before.
"How does it feels Jax, knowing you are the only one who can hear the call of the static. You better start running or else they might get you. You wouldn't like what happens when THEY get you" the voice cackles at me as the dead body once again raises their finger at me. The two officers step back and Yang punches the head clean off the decaying body. The mouth cackles yet again and speaks so all can hear, their voice is raspy and quiet. "You didn't think you'd get away did you Jax."
Out of the body come a pair of glowing eyes from the eye sockets as zombified and skeletal hands and heads once again raise from the ground to make sure I don't escape this time. I see Yang and Marigold leap into action, which just means Yang picks me up bridal style and Marigold runs after us. Yang dodges the hands expertly as if she's done this her whole life. I look back and see Marigold shooting at the hands and heads making sure they don't get too close to us or himself. I also see the glowing eyes once again and freeze up in Yang's arms. Yang, too busy dodging things trying to trip her doesn't notice anything. I call out to Marigold.
"RUN MARIGOLD, IT'S BEHIND YOU" I try to raise my arm but find all strength sapped as if something is taking my energy.
Marigold looks behind him only see a pair of glowing eyes slowly catching up to him. He let's out a scream and shoots at the eyes, but the bullets just go through them. He turns around and darts forward trying to catch up to us. While running I see he gives up on shooting as we slowly make it back into the darkness of the forest where the eyes no longer follow and hands no longer spring from the ground. We make it to the tree where we came from and climbed back up quicker then I've ever seen anyone climb. Once on the surface again, Yang drops me on the sidewalk gently as she lays down catching her breath. Marigold is soon behind us and on the surface as well, he sits down trying to catch breath properly.
"Can anyone tell me what the fuck we just ran into and why we didn't leave any sooner. WE COULD'VE DIED DOWN THERE" Marigold starts ranting as he tries to gain back his sanity. Yang answers him
"Why we didn't leave was so we could get the evidence needed for the report, which we luckily got, and even more. As for what that was. That was a Grimm called a Chill, they can possess human bodies. They only tell are there is due to their glowing eyes. Seems we found out even more about them, we gotta alert Beacon about this."
"Um, I have a quick question. What's a Grimm?" I tilt my head wondering what the hell even happened today.