Basil gazed down at the bottle of beer; this one was thin and went down easier than the others, with a hint of sweetness that was barely noticeable, but there nonetheless. He took a small sip and looked at the neatly organized row of empty containers that he had accumulated over the past fifteen minutes, a straight and kept line of bottles and cans that ascended in order of height, highlighted within the petulant bask of rotting light. There were five in total now. For reasons beyond his reckoning, his throat still felt brittle. For every breath of air he took, dry warmth would scratch at his irritated tongue.

Maybe it was the dilapidated room that he stood in, a claustrophobic box being dimly lit by a single, hanging lightbulb that he had turned on with a pull chain. The air here was horribly musty, its smell culminating into a sour taste in his mouth that was only amplified by the lingering scent of alcohol that had long since merged with his breath. From the looks of it, he was in the laundry room; two white cubes were sitting amidst a maze of rusted pipes and valves, sticking out sorely against the dirty background with their surprisingly well-kept appearance. Kel's cooler sat on top of one of them. Next to it, the wall of empty drinks that he had built up.

Somewhere, amidst the dusk, Something stared. Basil took another sip, and it didn't blink.

"Because." He said, calmly. Somehow, he found that the sound of his own voice was soothing. A soft break from the harrowing silence that had bore down on him in isolation, the rust. Something reached forward with a barbed appendage and rubbed his shoulder gently. A slow winding, the lifting of his arm, and then he struck his fist against the side of his face. A high pitched buzzing filled his ears. "Because. Because."

He was so, so thirsty. Taking another drink, he found that the brew had turned black in his mouth. A disgustingly thick sourness that ate away at his tongue and gums, biting into the sensitive flesh like chewing a mouthful of tacks. With one swift motion, he finished the rest of the bottle and then threw it on the floor. It didn't break, only making a harsh noise, jarring and unpleasant, before rolling away. Not missing a beat, he bent down to pick it up and tried again. It broke this time, fracturing into several segmented shards of brown glass.

Basil grabbed one of the pieces of broken glass; it was small enough to easily fit in his palm, but big enough to actually be tangible, just slightly larger than his thumb. An object, gleaming and deadly under the light. With slow, measured movements, he unwrapped the bandages around his left arm to reveal a small slit of dried skin, dark red and obscene. His hands shook terribly as he tucked the shard of glass between the pads of his middle finger and thumb.

The index finger on his right hand jutted out and began moving towards the scab, the nail on it long and uneven, with opaque gray dirt tucked underneath it. Mouth hanging ajar, he stared unblinkingly as the fingernail dug underneath the scab. It worked its way through, wriggling horribly as he enveloped itself within the familiar cloud of pain, reawoken from its slumber of inaction.

His whispering moans filled the empty room. Eyes bulging, he found it in himself to stare through the clouds of red and look, really look as he peeled barely-formed scab off his arm through pulls and scratches. The dried piece of skin stuck to the underside of his nail, though when he absent-mindedly shook his hand, it fell loose easily. A small string of drool fell from the side of his mouth and pooled on the top of his arm. There.

If he pulled at the skin hard enough, he could see the thin cut begin to expand, to open. If he drew his arm muscles taut and squeezed his fist until his veins popped, he could see the small drops of blood begin to gather. He brought forth the piece of glass and touched the freshly bleeding wound with it. An undeniably exhilarating coldness spawned from the contact, breaking off into webs and bringing his nerves into high alert.

Basil pushed the blade further into the wound, There was resistance at first, though it did not take much effort to overcome it. The shard of glass squeezed in between the gap in his skin and settled within the pocket of flesh with ease, now painted a glossy red that gave it the appearance of glowing, even in the faint gleam of the lightbulb. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as his mind sputtered to comprehend the radiant sense of hurt that had spawned and begun its journey throughout his body. His mouth moved and sounds came, but they were utterly nonsensical, half-words and whimpers and groans and silent wheezing. He twisted the glass some and shivered as the pain brought his lungs to a screeching halt. He couldn't breathe.

"It goes, it goes, it goes, don't drop it don't drop it hold on to it don't let it slip"

Brilliant, burning, a shard of metal embedded into his flesh that sent spasms through his body. The pain that spawned from the reopened wound was bright and flaring, overloading him with a sort of agony that was just short of electrifying.

Because. Because, he deserved it. Because, how could he still live with the knowledge that such obstruction of justice would go unpunished, unknown? The unfairness of it was black and rotting, an obscene stain upon life that left a strong sense of distaste within him. Unable to bear it any longer, he pulled the shard out from his body and stuffed it in his pocket. It was disgusting, warm. He picked up what he could that remained of the glass bottle and dumped them in the empty cooler. It was only then that his breathing resumed.

Because it was the next best thing. Because it was all he could do in the face of the never ending loop that presented itself to him, a self-perpetuating cycle of fear, pain, and cowardice. Panting, he rewrapped his wound, sealing the bandage with a small tab of medical tape that he had stolen from a first-aid kid he found in the restroom. The pain had ebbed now, though it left an incredibly dense weight hanging in the back of his throat. His fingertip was red. The repetition of it all was red. He was red.

Where did his exhaustion go? He wanted it back. He wanted to close his eyes and feel the comfortable heaviness settle upon him. He wanted for his mind to grow sluggish and for his limbs to beg weakly for a moment's rest. He wanted to lay down on his bed and bring a heavy blanket over his body and to just be enveloped in warmth, to allow himself to be lulled into a state of sleep and never wake up.

The frigid cold haunting him wouldn't let him. The shaking, the trembling, it wouldn't let him. Whenever he closed his eyes, he wouldn't be brought under the spell of drowsiness. He would see it. Something. Or Sunny. Or Aubrey. Or simply an intertwining mass of veins, pulsating thinly in weaved webs of disgusting, dripping red with organs entangled within. How could he be inclined to allow his body a good night's sleep when all it brought upon him was pain in the form of hellish nightmares that would rob him of any energy he had by the next morning? It seemed counter-productive.

"Hey! Basil, there you are!"

Basil looked up to see Kel, slightly disheveled and panting with the looks of someone who had just ran a marathon. Kel was staring at him from just outside the door frame, blocking the outside light with his body; Basil hadn't even noticed that the door opened. In fact, he wasn't even sure if he had closed it at all to begin with. "Jeez, where the heck did you run off too? We were looking for you, man. What even is this place? And… um, did you drink all of those?"

"You… were? Oh. Sorry, I just… had to get away from the shouting." Basil said sheepishly. After they had started arguing, Basil had got up and left. Their voices felt loud enough that if he were to stay for any longer, his eardrums would shatter. Unfortunately, the party going on inside of the house didn't make things much better. Somehow though, he managed to find the laundry room, tucked away in the basement next to some teenagers playing pool. Thankfully, they didn't ask questions as he awkwardly snuck into the room with the cooler.

"Holy crap, did you finish off the rest of the drinks?" Kel stared at the row of bottles and cans incredulously. "Were you just chugging away in here for the past fifteen minutes? You're not gonna start throwing up or anything, are you? You gotta be careful man, you're pretty skinny so this stuff gets to you easier."

"Um… I'm okay, yeah." Basil scratched the back of his head.

"Well, you should probably carry a plastic bag around just in case you get sick. Anyway, Aubrey was freaking out when she found out you were missing." Kel explained as he grabbed onto Basil's arm - his wounded arm - and pulled him out of the room. He bit down on his lips just in time to choke back a scream as his arm muscles spasmed in protest of the unexpected burst of pain. "She just jumped off the porch and ran into the woods. Like, I guess she thought you were hiding there? I dunno why though, it would be kind of weird if you decided to go there."

"A-Aubrey? Ugh, I'm worrying her again… I didn't… I'm such an idiot." Basil groaned. What a burden he was, making them search for him like that while he locked himself in the laundry room and hogged all of Kel's drinks for himself. Why they would even consider him as a friend at this point, he had no idea. "I'll… I'll go find her. The woods, right?"

"Uh, maybe not a great idea. It's getting dark out, you might get lost. I'll just call her." Kel whipped out his phone, a thick brick-like device that was just barely modern enough to have a touchscreen, and quickly called her from his contacts list. Ten seconds passed, and he frowned before redialing. Then he recalled again, and again, and again. Finally, he shook his head. "She's not answering. Huh. Maybe there's no signal out there or something."

"What? Aubrey…" Basil's breathing quickened. "This… This is all my fault. Aubrey's lost and it's my fault. W-What if she gets hurt? Or worse? I need to find her. I need to find her! I can't let this happen… Not again, please not again…"

"What? Oh no, now you're freaking out too?" Kel complained. "Wait. Maybe you're just drunk... Huh, drunk Basil. Never thought I'd see the day! You know, I always thought that you would start smoking weed someday but you never struck me as - hey, where are you going?"

Basil ignored him and stumbled his way outside. Retracing his steps, he managed to get back to the porch where Kel and Aubrey had their fight; the various burger wrappers and empty plastic cups that Aubrey sweeped off the rocking chair were still there.

Kel caught up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Basil didn't even notice. "Hey, Basil! Seriously, chill out. Oh wait, I know! What if we look for her together? In fact, I'll get some of my friends to help too. Wait here, I'll be right back."

Without even a glance back, Kel left as soon as he had appeared. Basil promptly walked down the porch steps and approached the web of bare trees, beckoning him with their dark, crooked limbs. Aubrey was there, somewhere. He had to let her know that he was okay. That he was sorry for everything. That he wouldn't leave her again.

She walked and listened to the crackly crunching of leaves produced by every step she took. There was no life here, no light, no hope, only the dark, and the never-changing scenery of looming trees surrounding her as well as the faintly foul stench permeating the chilling air. All she could think about was Basil, Basil hanging from a tree, Basil laying face down in a bed of leaves, Basil with his back against a tree and a knife stuck in his chest; every now and again, she saw it. Him. Dead, his corpse brutally wounded or otherwise generally lifeless and with a crown of frail twigs stuck to his hair. When she approached these mirages with spikes of fear stabbing into her heart and found that they were just malformed shadows playing tricks on her panic-stricken brain, there was no relief. Only a sense of dread that told her she had been lucky, that the next time she saw an odd shape or silhouette, it wouldn't be any sort of illusion.

"Basil. Basil, come out. I'm not mad at you, we can go home. Let's go home Basil, come out… please." Whether she screamed or whispered, she did not know. All she could hear was the crunching. Of the leaves, of the dead leaves, of the bones of Basil, the bones of Sunny and Mari and her mother dead on the couch from a brain aneurysm or a heart attack or stroke and rotting with no one to notice or care. Her nail-studded bat crushing the skulls of strangers.

Why was it so dark outside?

Something moved in the corner of her eye and she leapt at it, an arm outstretched and with a strangled yelp. It was nothing, of course. Simply a trick of the light, the shadow of a shadow of a shadow of a branch waving in the air from a slight breeze. She laughed, once, and contemplated whether or not she was lost. She was. It was so cold. When she looked up, she couldn't even make out the moon; the sky had been blotted out with layers upon layers of branches, some with nooses hanging from them, some dripping thick, coagulated blood.

"Get ahold of yourself, Aubrey. You just need to find Basil and make sure he stays safe. He isn't dead. You would know if he died, that's a fact. Just calm down and stop jumping at every shadow."

"But what if he is dead? What if he just fucking ended it? He's suicidal, he's hiding from me, and it's all my fault because he's still scared of me. Why did I bully him? Over that photo album. That damn album."

"He isn't dead. You would know. You would know, we would know. Find him, make sure he doesn't get a chance to even try anything."

"How? How would I know?"

"..."

Unsurprisingly, Aubrey couldn't provide a reason and neither could her imaginary counterpart. Because really, she would have no idea. That simple fact shook her to the core, the sheer uncertainty of it all, the possibility that all of this was just to find the remains of yet another suicide. She stared at it, the unfolding scene built upon the path of leaves and twigs and moss and bark ahead of her.

Basil was sitting on the ground, staring up with lifeless eyes that looked at her without recognition. Something, something dark and twisted and with a single, bulging eye loomed over his corpse, which had a giant, bloody gaping hole in his stomach. Laying on top of a pale hand, gardening shears sticky with thick blood coating its blades. He wore his ruined green sweater, stained brown and torn from his near drowning at the lake.

Repressing the urge to vomit, she looked away, though what was that in the distance? At first glance, it appeared to be an oddly shaped mound of dirt with some sort of plant growing on it, and above it, a snapped branch that clung on to a tree through only a string of bark sinew.

The crumpled corpse of Sunny, body broken and battered from his deadly jump. With his uninjured eye still closed, his expression could have almost been peaceful were it not for the awkward angles his limbs were bent in and the ugly stains of bright red trailing over his pale skin, pooling under his body in a thin puddle of blood spawned from reopened wounds. Above him, inexplicably, was the body of Mari, dug up from her grave and practically zombified, with starkly white maggots eating away at her rotting skin and with worms wriggling within the black nest of wire that was once her hair. Her head hung at a crooked angle from the brightly colored jump rope from which she hung; her body, lightly swinging back and forth in the wind, was completely bare. Dark purple, almost black bruises colored her naked corpse in a bizarre act of body painting, complementing the various other forms of gangrene rot that marred her once angelic beauty.

Her phone rang. She dug it out of her jacket pocket and held it up to her ear and muttered, "Hello?"

"Hey Aubrey, this is Kel. Hero's dead. He suffered a heart attack, the doctors said it was from prolonged stress. He hadn't slept in days and had been running on coffee, juggling a bunch of jobs with studying for his college stuff. His funeral is in thirty minutes."

She wasn't holding her phone.

"Fuck, I need to get out of here."

"Gee, you really think so?"

"Shut up, me."

"Make me."

She suddenly pistoned her fist forward to punch a nearby tree. The bark splintered and at once, her fist was alight in a haze of burning pain. She grinned nastily as her voice grew silent, though the grin soon died out as she slowly realized what she had done. Cursing under her breath, she pressed her limp and bleeding hand against her shirt and began sprinting aimlessly, bat dragging roughly along the ground behind her. She had to find Basil and get out, get out of whatever field of nightmares she had found herself trapped in. A plan, simple but definitive, had formed. She would find Basil. If he was alive, they would find a way out. If he was dead, she would carry his corpse out of the woods. If she couldn't find him, she would look some more.

She would just keep on looking until she dropped dead.

Basil found himself walking between two worlds, the flickering red and the cold gloom of the woods. When he paused to look down at his feet, to make sure that he really was walking, he would sometimes see thick piles of twigs and leaves that snapped under his steps. Other times, he would be wading through a pool of blood, still warm and even flowing, as if he were inside of an artery.

His right hand was shoved firmly inside of his pants pocket, fingers dancing over the smooth surface of the glass shard, feeling its rubber slipperiness and allowing himself to take comfort in its cool, solid feel. Occasionally, he could catch glances of Something, darting behind trees and spying on him with its unblinking eye, always judging but never speaking. How much had it grown over these past few days? If it wished, Basil imagined that it could stretch itself to encompass the entire forest, trapping both him and Aubrey inside forever.

Aubrey.

Hesitantly, he took out the piece of glass from his pocket and looked at it. It was covered in red flecks of dried blood; even so, he could just make out the distinct silhouette of Sunny trailing behind him, his reflected silhouette warped and disfigured and tainted with dark, swirling colors. In his hand, of course, was a large steak knife, stained with Basil's own blood. Unconsciously, Basil unwrapped the gauze on his arm, peeling off the medical tape without so much as a single thought behind his actions.

"Sunny. You came back for me after all."

Sunny didn't respond. Basil quickened his pace, and Sunny did the same in turn.

"You're probably sick of hearing this from me by now, but… I'm sorry. And I'll make it up to you, I promise. Soon."

Sunny didn't respond. Distantly, somewhere behind him, shouting could be heard, panicked and somewhat desperate in its tones. It only took a few more steps for the shouting to be drowned out, to be replaced with an eerie air of silence that was only tainted by his own footsteps. He wondered if Aubrey was okay, if she would ever forgive him for leaving her. He wasn't so sure if he could forgive himself, but what did his own opinion matter at this point?

"They don't. Sunny, are you bored? Do you want to do something else? It's okay if you do, I don't mind. After all we've been through together, I'll go along with whatever you want, really."

Sunny raised his knife. His reflection was shaking terribly, form barely more than a shifting puddle of putty. Basil turned the glass slightly and looked at himself, finding a pale and gaunt face, aged with years of exhaustion that clung to his skin stubbornly. A single damp strand of hair hung over his face; it was gray. The sight of his reflection sent a sudden wave of sickness over him, filling his lungs with a thickly acidic air that brought stinging tears to his eyes and scalded his throat. Doubling over, Basil held his hands to his chest as he vomited, a sickly thin spew of clear liquid, little more than bile and the repugnant stench it brought.

Basil spat at the ground to clear his mouth of the awful sourness before straightening himself, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn't notice how within his clenched fist, a small torrent of blood began flowing, squeezing through the crevices between his fingers. Lengthy lacerations marred his palm, deep cuts brought upon by the shard that he held.

Somewhere ahead of him, uncertainty beckoned. Basil and Sunny followed, trudging through the pool of red without paying heed. Their palms bled.

Aubrey cried out and swung her bat at nothing. It collided with nothing, and nothing fell to the ground in an unmoving heap. She shouted again, and swung her bat down again at the nothing. Her bat made a solid thunk as it bounced off the nothing and nearly rebounded to her face. She could hear them, the whispering gossip of the trees around her. That unwelcoming, harsh noise that grated her ears with sad, almost pitiful intonations.

"Get me out, get me out! Where the fuck is he, tell me! Give him back, give him back right now or I swear to fucking god none of you will live to say another word!"

In the thick cloud of laughter, Something.

"Basil!" She screamed. "Where are you?! Let me find you!"

A footstep sounded out from behind her and the voices died. She froze, taken aback by the sudden silence that the footstep brought with it. Gripping her bat tightly with both hands, she turned around, expecting to find exactly what she saw. Mari, with a noose (wasn't it a jump rope before?) hanging loosely around her neck. The length of it trailed behind her, the tip splintered into hundreds of thin, frayed hairs, as if the rope had snapped. Her eyes were open and completely white, yet Aubrey knew that she was staring right into her eyes. Aubrey held the gaze for a few seconds before breaking eye contact and turning around.

"Just a hallucination. You're stressed, you haven't gotten much sleep, you're traumatized… All perfectly natural, just ignore it."

She looked back at Mari again. She grinned, revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth and buzzing blowflies, wriggling and walking on her gray lips, flying in and out of her throat, feasting on the sweet taste of decaying meat. "It's a long way back, Aubrey. But don't be scared! We've been through so much together. We can take on anything!"

Aubrey didn't know whether she should cry or bash the reanimated corpse in the head as hard as she could. In the end, she chose neither, instead turning back around and continuing walking, speeding up a bit in the hopes that she could leave it behind. The soft echo of Mari's footfalls behind her told her all that she needed to know. Face flushed, she called out for Basil once more. No response came.

Behind her, Mari began to hum.

"... know, and that's why… That's what I told them. They were so loud, I tried to ignore them but they kept pushing. They said that I could go to juvie. They said that I might have to see a therapist. What if they found out, Sunny? What if they found out what happened to Mari? That's why… I had to form a truce. With S-Something. I hate it. It's evil, it killed Mari… It got us all into this mess. But it knew how to hide things. It knew, it knew Sunny. It put me in some room called RED SPACE. A lot of weird stuff happened in there. It was almost like a dream, though it wasn't a very nice one. I saw someone there who looked a lot like you, Sunny. He even had the same eye wound that… Oh. I'm really sorry about that, Sunny. I'll never forgive myself for doing that to you. Maybe, one day, you could take one of mine? An eye for an eye right? What's with that look you're giving me? D-Did I say something wrong? Of course I did. Sorry. And, I tried to help Sunny, I really did. If we were both gone, then no one would ever know. Not now, not ever. Our friends could go on with their lives and we would be forgotten… Wouldn't that have been nice? Almost like heaven, I think. No one to remember you, no one to disappoint, no one to ask questions, no one to accidentally hurt. I don't know about you, but I'd really like that. T-Though if you would prefer to be remembered, I totally understand! I'm not saying that you should be forgotten, I was just… Oh, what's wrong with me? Everything's going to be okay, isn't it? I can't ruin this for you. Sunny, I love you. She said I was just obsessed, but I really do love you. You're my best friend… Well, maybe not anymore. You must not think of me as a friend, right? Not after all of this. That's okay though. I deserve it. I mean, even after everything that's happened, I left Aubrey. Can you believe that? How stupid am I? She's done nothing but try to help me and I abandoned her. Maybe that's why everything hurts. Maybe that's why I have a headache and my hands hurt and I'm bleeding everywhere and… I-I'm not sleepy. I don't feel tired, Sunny. I'm not hungry either. What does that mean? Why can't I see straight anymore? Sunny? What's wrong with me?"

Basil stopped walking and looked at the piece of glass. There was nothing but red. Frowning, he wiped it on the sleeve of his shirt before holding it up again. Though somewhat smudged, he could once again make him out in the reflection. A faint smile danced on Sunny's lips as he met Basil's stare.

"I hear Mari." Sunny said.

"It's not real. I'm just stressed out. Or having a nightmare. Or both." Aubrey said to herself as she ran through the woods, weaving in and out to avoid tripping on the various sorts of decrepit debris scattered in her path. Behind her, Mari followed her pace, panting with tired exertion all the while. Aubrey didn't want to look, afraid of what she might find. A shambling, crooked corpse sprinting at her with clouds of flies and a crown of worms? The thought of that thing chasing behind her was enough to make her speed up.

"Nightmare, it's a nightmare. Everything's a nightmare."

"Aubrey, slow down! My knee…"

She tripped over something and gave out a small yelp as she tumbled to the ground, arms outstretched to catch herself. Her bat slipped out of her grip as harsh, stinging pains streaked her exposed skin, which was now stained with an ugly combination of dried red and scattered brown. Groaning, she pulled herself up and tried to ignore the screams of protest coming from her injured hand, which was now coated in a thin layer of blood. She grabbed her bat.

Behind her, the footfalls came to a halt. She didn't look.

Something was in front of her. A single bulging eye stuck out, bloodshot and furious. Despite this, it grinned at her. Grinned at her with its horrible mouth of immaculate, white teeth, sharpened to points and taunting. Behind her, Mari said something, though she couldn't make out exactly what. It didn't matter. She was dead. She wasn't real.

Aubrey tightened her grip on her bat, and took a step forward.

Basil heard them clearly, the screams of anguish coming from his right. They were savage, horribly guttural noises that pained him more every second. The voice was unrecognizable. Barely human. Brutal.

Behind him, Sunny nodded. Basil didn't see this, but he felt the air around him shift and he understood.

He approached the screams.

"Leave me alone. Leave me alone! You think you can take me on, huh? A fight's what you want?" Aubrey swung her bat and Something crumpled, its body disfiguring further as it sunk to the ground with a deep hiss. It still grinned. It still stared, stared that accusatory look to peer into her soul and judge every sin that weighed upon her. Basil's torture, her anger, Sunny, her mother, all of it. Aubrey screamed, shamed and violated. Turning her bat to the side with the nails, she swung as hard as she could at the taunting figure in front of her.

"Take that!" She shouted as Something oozed black blood. It stared. She adjusted her aim and struck it directly in its unblinking eye. There was a quiet popping noise, unimportant and nearly unnoticeable. Finally, finally, the eye vanished in a sea of black and red, and all that remained was a hollow socket. But it still smiled. "You fuck! Just die already, die and leave me alone!"

"Something behind you. Something in the woods. Something in the dark."

Aubrey whirled around to find herself facing Something. It extended a black, jagged appendage and she was wholly unsurprised to see Mari's decapitated head, cut cleanly from the neck down and bleeding dull, coagulated blood that poured out of her throat in chunks, almost like expired milk.

She swung her bat and it cut cleanly through the tendril. "I hate you! I hate you!"

"Hey Aubrey, what's the matter? Are you okay? It's me, Basil. Just calm down, okay? Deep breaths. Everything's going to be okay."

She shivered and saw that Something had appeared. It held an arm out to her and she swung her bat down at the open hand. It cleaved it in two.

What was that noise? The rustle of thin branches above her, the clicking of teeth chattering together. She looked above her to find nothing. An empty, moonless sky free from obstruction. Sharp prickles, hot and itching terribly, danced on her scalp and she cried out in frustration. She raked her free hand through her hair, dragging her nails through her head roughly. A few strands of hair came loose and she began to cry. Something stared at her and she bashed it with her bat.

Something smiled, and she killed it.

Was that really Aubrey that he was looking at? That disheveled, crazed monster, screaming and shouting in an incomprehensible jumble of words? Stumbling around like an old drunkard and swinging at empty air with that bat? Strong, reassuring Aubrey, the same who saved his life and took care of him while he wallowed in self-pity and wished for an end? The same Aubrey who he left so selfishly? The same Aubrey who made him suffer for so long, and still made him suffer?

His friend?

He looked out from behind a thin wall of trees in a sort of awe. Sunny took Basil's hand and squeezed it. It hurt, but in a nice way. A way that made him feel grounded, more alert.

Basil's hands stopped shaking.

"Why is this happening to me? Why can't I wake up? Where's Basil? Am I going crazy? Is this what going crazy feels like?"

Aubrey took a single, shuddering breath and glared bitterly at Something standing in front of her. As if her withering glare alone could break down the ghost haunting her, make it leave her alone, make it bring Mari back, make it keep Mari dead and buried six feet under in that birchwood coffin behind the church where she belonged dead as a doornail never to be seen again left to be decomposed by the bacteria living on her cold, lifeless corpse.

It was an open-casket funeral. Aubrey wished that it wasn't. When the coffin was being lowered into the ground, it was entirely possible that Mari opened her eyes.

"Morticians sew the eyes shut so that stuff like this doesn't happen."

She pulled her fist back and punched Something right in its eye. It disintegrated and Aubrey felt no satisfaction. Just a terrible anger at the unfairness of it all, because it appeared again. Unharmed, smiling, staring, and god fucking damn it just die why won't you die haven't you done enough you stupid thing what's your problem what even are you why are you trying to do all of this why can I even see you you're nothing you're a ghost this is all a nightmare i want to wake up now please wake me up i can't stand this anymore i just want to see Basil again see him smile see him act like himself again i just want to wake up and see Sunny again and Mari and Kel and Hero and everyone all together and happy and just leave me alone please just die what do I have to do to just make you die?

She swung her bat. Something fell to the ground lifelessly and turned into a cloud of black smoke.

Panting heavily, she gripped her bat with both of her hands and propped it against the ground, a sort of walking stick to put some of the weight off of her aching legs.

In, out. In, out. Dirty, frozen air, but air nonetheless.

Aubrey stopped swinging at the air and became still, the only movements being her tired breathing. Slowly, Basil walked out from the small enclosure of trees. He pulled Sunny by the arm, who followed without protest.

"A-Aubrey? Are you… okay?"

Aubrey turned around.

"Aubrey, I'm sorry. I… I was still at the house, I just left because… I don't know. I just wanted to be alone. I'm really sorry. K-Kel found me and he told me, told me that you were looking for me. So…"

Aubrey straightened up and tightened her grip on her bat. A tired, resigned look descended upon her.

"Aubrey?"

A distinct ear-splitting whistle filled the air, complementing the resounding ringing of tinnitus that had already settled in his ears. Black smoke began to fill the air, only to dissipate as the sheer cleanliness of the atmosphere filtered it out. Still, he could see it through his closed eyelids. The hints of life. The red, the pink, the black. Or was it death? Either one was a much preferred alternative to the muteness of nothing, so it really made no difference.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at Sunny. Basil's bleeding palm was held firmly against an expansive white wall, staining its immacualte beauty with red.

Sunny looked at him. An angel. Beautiful.

The pain faded and Basil sighed in relief, the enormous weight finally being taken off of his shoulders.

What was he ever worried about?

When they found her, she was kneeling down next to Basil's corpse with a faraway look in her eyes. Her bright, harsh hair only served to augment her countenance, which had gone ashen gray. She was muttering something under her breath. She limply held a blood-splattered bat, the side with nails resting against the ground. Basil was nearly unrecognizable; his face was reduced to a brutal mutilation of twisted skin, flesh, and blood. One of his eyes had been punctured, and sat in its socket as a sagged, deformed pouch that oozed some sort of pinkish liquid. Deep, dark red stained his clothes and formed a small puddle around his head and neck, framing his mauled features.

"Why? Why does this keep happening?"

Kel stepped next to her and took the bat from her hand. She didn't resist or say a word otherwise. A sharp, raking fear had taken hold of his heart and it was all he could do to not break down right then and there. With sweaty hands, he took his brick-phone out of his pocket and dialed Hero. He didn't know if it was the right thing to do or not, but he needed something to do. A distraction, something to, even if just for a little bit, get him away from it all.

But of course, Hero didn't pick up. It went to voicemail.

He wanted to scream. At Hero, at Aubrey, at Basil, at the people who were now crowding around, talking in hushed whispers and standing around doing nothing with their hands shoved in their pockets. He wanted to break down and start crying, he wanted to shake Aubrey by the shoulders and make her say something, he wanted to run away from it all and hope that all of this was just a bad dream.

Instead, he just dialed 911 and brought his phone up to his ear. He began to talk in a quiet, composed voice that was entirely unlike his own.

She took a deep drag from the cigarette held between her fingers and spared a glance at her reflection in the black screen in front of her. There was a moment of consciousness, of self-pity and disgust, and then it was gone. Around her, the foul stench of garbage and rotting food. Lazily, she lifted her arm up and turned it on with the remote. The remote, thin and caked in grime, coagulated brown slime from cold rotisserie chicken and sticky, melted ice cream eaten straight from the pint. The screen flickered to some sort of documentary. She didn't know or care what it was about.

Upstairs, locked in a barren prison, there was a small bunny that sat curled up in a tight ball, relatively motionless; the gnawing pains of hunger had sapped its energy. In a few days, it would be reduced to a rotting carcass. No one would be around to care or notice until too late.

Sinking into the couch, she settled in and allowed herself to feel comfortable. The next day, she would awaken to her door being broken down. She would be incarcerated and questioned about her daughter before being prosecuted for gross negligence and child abuse. She would be found dead in her cell before the trial even started, having died from severe cardiac arrest. But for now, the drifting away, the background noise pulling her mind to some far away depths, it let her feel sane again. Somewhere behind her, she heard knocking on the door. It continued for a while, the unwelcome rapports that gave her the starting pains of a headache. With a tight-lipped scowl, she increased the volume on the television.

Whoever it was, they could wait.