Mona investigates the smell.
Each step downward left Mona feeling more and more uneasy, the burning smell growing stronger the closer she got to the basement. Opening up a heavy metal door, a rush of dark, smoky air hit her, causing her to choke. Even so, she continued forward.
It was hard to tell whether she was simply hearing her own heartbeat in her ears or if this gloomy space seemed to pulse with a life of its own. Turning to the right, she moved to the door opposite an out of order elevator and gripped the doorknob. Judging by the strength of the smell, this is where it was coming from.
Her hand shaking, she began to turn the knob, stopping at the last second when she spotted something on the ground out of the corner of her eye. To her surprise and, frankly, confusion, it was a red box of ammunition fit for her gun. Looking inside, there were only four bullets, but she couldn't really afford to be disappointed right now.
After clumsily reloading the magazine, she steeled her nerves and headed inside the room. The stench was almost overpowering at this point, barely making out the room through her watering eyes. It appeared to be a morgue, though there had apparently been some sort of fire given the soot coating the walls and ceiling in a thick black layer of filth.
The only exception to this seemed to be an empty body bag at the back of the room and three cold lockers side by side. Even just looking at them made her stomach turn. She had no idea why that was, but there was a very real possibility it would make her vomit if the smell didn't get to her first.
Either way, those lockers seemed to be what she was meant to look at, so the only way to advance was to forge ahead. The sooner she opened them up, the sooner she'd be able to get out of here. She'd be able to go back to searching for anything usable upstairs in peace.
Taking a few steps closer to the lockers, she felt herself dry heave, holding a hand over her mouth. Collecting herself, she continued ahead despite the dryness in her mouth and the pain in the pit of her gut. She had to see whatever was inside.
To her annoyance, she found that all three locker doors were locked. Figuring she'd have to go on a fruitless scavenger hunt throughout this place to find the keys, she did a quick turn around of the room, nothing useful to be found. She then had a positively ridiculous idea, pulling the toothbrush she'd grabbed from the bathroom out of her pocket and jamming it into one of the locks.
In an absolutely stunning display of unreality, it actually fit. Not simply crammed in there like one would expect, but as if the locker itself had been designed with the intention of opening with the plastic end of a toothbrush. Turning the brush in hand, she felt the door unlock, doing the same to the other two with a growing level of amazement and incredulity each time.
Returning the unexpectedly useful item to her pocket, she braced herself for whatever might be lurking within. Opening them one after the other, the only things inside where three body bags zipped tight, evidently with a single occupant each. Not that surprising, honestly.
Once the thought of unzipping one of them came into her head, though, everything started to go wrong. Without warning, she began to hyperventilate, stumbling backwards with her hands clasped tightly over her mouth and tears beginning to fall from her eyes. She was in no place to ask why she was having this reaction, though she wouldn't really have a good answer even if she was.
At the same time, she could hear the siren going off once more. Every locker in the room began to jostle and shake, turning from a scorched black to a brown rust, smoke and flame beginning to escape from around their edges. The tiles along the floor began to crack as well, each break pulsing red like blood running from cuts in the skin.
And then there was the empty body bag. It didn't seem to be so empty anymore, though. Its occupant – a strange, stark white creature that vaguely resembled the twisted visage of a little girl – rose from its position laying flat on the ground. A shrill scream escaped the vacant, black hole where its mouth would be, the creature bursting into flames a moment later and beginning to advance on Mona.
Scrambling to her feet, Mona tried the door. It was shut tight but with just enough give to make her think that maybe she could force it open. As the already unbearable heat continued to grow hotter as that thing came closer, she rammed the door with her good shoulder, just barely managing to break the mortise and fall through a second before the creature could touch her.
She tried to run for the door to upstairs but it was also closed, this one feeling a tad more secure than the last one. Though there were other doors in this area, she couldn't waste time trying to find one with the burning, screaming monster coming after her. Even if she did manage to get one of them open, it probably just led to a dead end.
All she could do was try to fight. Running as far as she could down the hall, the metal fencing that appeared under her feet flexing and bending precariously like it was threatening to drop her into the endless sea of flames burning beneath her, she drew her gun and focused it on the monster. It was easy enough to get a bead on it given the flames burning around its body acted like a huge, flashing target.
That didn't make it any easier to pull the trigger, though. Dangerous as it was, it still looked a lot like a child. A child that wailed and screamed, coming towards her in what almost looked like an attempt to find comfort. In the end, though, she had to survive.
Steadying her hands as much as possible, she fired a single shot toward the monster, striking it in the side of the face. Though it stumbled a bit, it didn't stop moving, the sounds it made now resembling something like crying. Appropriate given tears had long since begun streaming down Mona's face.
She fired once more, this time hitting it in the hand. The fingerless clump was blown off at the wrist, though this did little to actually stop it. It was around this point that she realized simply shooting without a plan wouldn't work, as she'd most definitely run out of bullets long before she could put that thing down for good.
Then she looked up. While the ceiling pulsed with red similar to the cracks in the floor before, at least one aspect of the old hospital had stayed in this alternate world – the sprinkler system. Though it didn't seem to be doing its job all that well right now, she could only hope that there was still something running through the pipes overhead.
Taking aim, she squeezed the trigger while ignoring the pain she felt moving her arm up at that angle. It struck the side of one of the sprinkler heads, though this didn't seem to work. With one bullet left, she tried again, watching the tiny bit of metal soar through the air as if it was in slow motion.
It was almost like she'd just witnessed a miracle occur right before her eyes. The bullet hit its target, breaking open the pipe right as the monster passed beneath it and raining blood down on top of it. It screamed and squealed as the fluid began to extinguish its flames, evidently causing it a great deal of pain.
Gun still held tightly between her hands, Mona slumped down against the wall, stress evaporating from her body. She may not be safe, but at least she overcame this hurdle. Any second now, that thing would fall to the ground and she'd be taken back to the world of fog and steam to continue her search.
But it didn't fall. It just stood there screaming as the blood continued to pour onto it. And then the blood stopped pouring once the pipe ran dry, leaving the creature still very much alive.
Though it remained stoic for a few seconds, it wasn't long before the screaming began again accompanied by the sound of hissing, boiling liquid. Seconds later, the creature burst into flames once more, continuing its walk towards Mona with what seemed to be even greater heat than before.
She wasted too much time just sitting there, she realized that now. Maybe if she'd taken the chance to attack it or look for another weapon she could have capitalized on her gamble, but she'd allowed herself to think she was in control. She was never in control here.
Her body refused to get up now, paralyzed with fear and weak from exertion and blood loss. Watching helplessly as the thing got closer and closer, she felt her skin begin to burn. It was like placing her face directly over a campfire and being pushed toward the flames against her will, some kind of cruel joke that was inevitably going to go wrong sooner rather than later.
"Sooner" came moments later as the monster was finally upon her. Mere inches from her body, she felt the hairs on her arms and legs begin to combust from simple proximity, fruitlessly shielding her face and body from the thing as it wailed in front of her. Next were her clothes, easily setting the hair on her head ablaze at the same time.
As she screamed, she couldn't help but notice that the two of them almost sounded alike now. This thought was fleeting, though, as it was quickly overtaken by indescribable fear and pain once the fluid inside her eyes began to boil and her tongue blistered and melted inside her mouth.
Fully on top of her now, she couldn't even make a sound as the thing began to force its way inside her mouth and down her throat, seemingly contorting its burning body in impossible and unnatural ways to fit inside. What it hoped to accomplish by doing this was unclear as Mona was long since dead by the time it reached its goal.
There's been a lot of fire in this place. I wonder what it could mean.
Things didn't turn out so good for Mona this chapter. I wonder where we go from here. She was pretty close to figuring something out, too.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Share if you're enjoying. Always remember to check your sprinklers.