AN: Happy Friday guys, just wanted to give a shout out to Warden of Lore for reviewing, thanks (and to anyone reading, you're cool too). Anyways, be warned there is some major gore/disturbing things in here so please enjoy:

***14***

The gravel crunched under the tires of my jeep. Before I put the car in park the heavy iron gate to the asylum creaked shut behind me. I idled for a second and read an email I'd printed out before coming. Outside was darker than I thought it would be, I should have known better than to come this late in the day, especially in November. The sun always set quickly in the mountains, though if I hadn't gotten lost on my way up I'd of been here an hour ago with plenty of light to see by.

I twisted the key from the ignition, the headlights shut off leaving nothing but dying sunlight and a glow from a too-dim lamp.

The weight of my camcorder was reassuring in my hand as I walked up to the empty guards station. Shouldn't there be someone here? I glanced back at the gate, was that thing on a timer?

Shrugging off my questions I passed through another gate. I lifted the camera to get a full shot of the asylum. It was a grim giant, with its gray stone exterior having a stark silhouette against a gray and gold sky. A flicker of motion on a third floor window caught my eye. A light came on, a man ran passed, followed by something fast and thin that was impossible to make out.

I scribbled some words into a notebook I'd brought along.

I went to the front door.

Military trucks littered the front drive, strange. They all sat empty with doors locked tight. I made sure to get a good shot of them to reference later; what had happened that they needed so much more security but hadn't bothered to post anyone outside?

I knocked on the door and waited. Nothing stirred inside, telling from the sound. I spent a minute or two trying to peer through more windows though nothing came of it.

Well, there's no sense in coming all the way out here and then turning tale at the first problem.

I walked around to the side of the building, it looked like I'd just have to get creative to find a way in. I was in luck, it didn't take long to find a hole in the fence. With a quick look over my shoulder I ducked through it. Moving quickly I considered a bunch of scaffolding next to a window for a whole two seconds before climbing my way up it.

Ok Murkoff, lets see what you've been hiding up here.

With my camera at the ready I pulled myself through a window. Just before I had the chance to get a good look at the room lights flickered and then popped, raining sparks down before dropping the room into darkness.

Well shit.

I toggled to the night vision setting.

Good thing I did, there was a pile of twisted furniture in the middle of the room that I would have walked straight into. I sidestepped it and went to the door, wondering about the weird choice of interior decorating. Had this room been abandoned?

The hall way beyond was no better, being blocked by a mesh metal door on one end and a mess of book shelves on the other. Come on guys, you're supposed to be corrupt corporation, shouldn't there be -oh I don't know- office workers in your offices? I lifted the camera and zoom in down the hall, a bright splash of red trailed across the ground.

Bingo, I knew there was something going on around here. These bastards were going to have some explaining to do.

I stepped into the room across the hall. This one wasn't a complete mess, the lights even stayed on as I walked in. I gave a quick glance, there didn't seem to be anything damning. I turned to leave in search of something useful.

Halfway to the door something screamed to my left. In a jolt of panic I jumped to the side and flailed wildly to look for the source. The room was empty but a white noise, something like static, still filled the air.

I felt like an idiot when I noticed that a TV hung on the wall, its screen filled with snow that said it wasn't getting any signal. I must have stepped on the remote. With a calming breath I made to leave once again. As I took a step I swore I heard someone speak.

"D…."

I stopped.

"Do….."

I strained to hear through the noise of the TV

"Look….d"

There was no one here, but damn if I wasn't hearing something. Maybe the TV was picking up a little bit of a signal?

Trying my best to get back on track I stepped into the hall. From here I was able to confirm what I already suspected. The red smear was blood. Under the flickering lights I saw that the walls might as well have been painted in the stuff. Jesus, what were they doing here? I went through the hall checking each room for some sign of life. There had to be workers here.

I found no one and nothing more than a patient file.

By the time I got to a dead end my boots left bloody footprints behind me and I couldn't shake the sense that I was being followed. I swallowed my paranoia. I had left an empty hall and a dead end behind me, there was nothing there.

I reassured myself with a glance over my shoulder.

Something fast and tall ducked into a side office.

Fuck.

I took a step into a break room and calmly slammed the door shut before franticly looking for a way out. The door rattled on its hinges behind me, whatever it was beat at it hard enough to shake the room and set my pulse fast enough to make my vision throb in time with my heart beat.

The frame splintered, jagged nails clawed through growing cracks.

There was duct work above a brake table. With no other options I scrambled for the vent. I heaved myself up, barely managing to slid my legs inside before the last of the straining wood gave way. With a crash that ripped the breath from my lungs something long and twisted flung itself into the room. From my spot in the vent I looked through a grate to watch it pace in circles. After it didn't find me it started to whine and scratch at the empty room.

What the fuck was that thing? I raised my camera to get a recording of it.

It slid across the room, long limbs seemed to drag it more than let it walk from one spot to another. It seemed starved and little more than a walking skeleton. I had been holding my breath in my hiding spot; I only noticed when I had to breath in but the thing reeked to high heaven. Bits of rot clung to it, leaking puss and weeping infection from every joint on its body. I zoomed in on it, I couldn't tell, but there could have been scraps of fabric clinging to it, or maybe not? Was that just more dead skin? It was all the same putrid gray shade.

While I watched it's screeching picked up in volume.

I forced myself to tuck the camera away and crawl on, I didn't want this thing to follow me up here. The vent ended in another grate that was already knocked loose from the wall. Trying to be as quiet as possible I dropped to the ground. I was on a walk way that looked down over the lobby.

The whole place was a goddamn mess. I made sure to get a good shot of it all. Dead bodies littered the ground and blood ranging from fresh red to an aging brown painted the walls. Had someone written something over there? I couldn't tell through the glass.

At this rate I wasn't going to find anyone worth talking to, and I'd gotten enough footage to crucify whoever was running this place, probably enough to bring hell down on Murkoff as a whole too.

I looked back at the vent.

I wasn't going back that way.

The ends of the walkway were blocked off with more piled furniture. Had people been barricading the halls? With more questions than answers I turned to open the door that was labeled library. The door swung open with a creak revealing a gaping black hole.

I lifted the camcorder and toggled it to night vision. I was going to run out of power for the thing at this rate.

I didn't have time to lift it level with my eye before something came barreling out of the room and slammed into my chest. I was left without the breath for even a surprised yell. Some other thing, hot and with charred skin pushed into me as I flailed back. It ripped at my shoulders and knocked me through the glass that separated the walkway from the floor below. The clear material gave way like it'd been made of tissue paper and I plummeted to the unforgiving ground. I landed with a thud, shards of broken glass digging into my back through the leather of my jacket.

Before I took a breath the burnt thing crashed onto me. Hot fingers, hard with charred and exposed bone clawed at my face. I struggled and swatted at the thing in vein. My back stretched and strained at each movement, I had to have dislocated a shoulder for all the hell it was giving me.

My vision of the struggle was confused and blurred. A limb here, pain there, something glinting white and sharp. I kicked out, glass ripped at the small of my back. The beast pull me to the side as it fell. My skin under its hands burned with pain while every other thread of muscle seemed to smolder with an angry ache.

For a second I felt no weight pushing me down, I stumbled upwards and made to sprint for my life.

Less than a step in and I was barreling back to the ground. Hot claws shredded the battered and bruised flesh of my back. I clawed forward desperate to be anywhere but here.

Run damn it! Run!

I couldn't see the thing. It ate at me. I would have screamed if I could focus enough to breath. Hot bone scraped against my own. The sinew of my back gave way, my arm stopped moving and brought a new wave of agony that I never thought possible. I swung with my leg hitting nothing but air.

Live. Just live.

The fire through my nerves couldn't tell me what was where, just that this was the end.

I couldn't breath. That feeling of death burst through my chest. I couldn't breath, the air in my lungs replaced by fiery blood. The thing on my back dug deeper.

Just end it already.

In a hellish lifetime that couldn't have lasted more than a second the beast shredded organs and shattered bone.

The world went black. I stood up. Blood and flesh and bile and who knows what else fell from my back with a fresh wave of agony.

Was I dead?

I swayed in place, the black around me twisted into cruel imitations of the world that I used to know, a gray tree grew out of a heavy sky, I found charred ground beneath my feet. A howl that shook something deep and primal carried itself on wind. The sound clung to the air next to a heavy greasy scent that could only have been that of burning rotted flesh.

I moved without deciding a direction. Heavy limbs carried me, leaving slivers of muscle and pools of blood in my wake. A street formed around me, like some suburb that had pissed off a volcano at midnight every new detail had to be picked out from under a layer of heavy ash.

I ducked behind a parked car that looked like it lost a fight with a grenade. Every breath was gurgled and wet, I felt the air for it being drawn through the mangled sponge of exposed lung that began where the remains of my back ended. This had to be some layer of hell. Sticky red spit came up with each labored breath, I searched for the monster behind the howl.

With my one working arm I ripped the soot covered rear view from the car. I wiped the black onto my ruined jacket and used the dingy mirror to get a look of the street.

Nothing to the left, nothing to the right. Nothing behind me either. I leaned against the car, the surface hot enough to sear my raw flesh. I smelt myself cook before getting the chance to pull away. That new agony sent me stumbling forward. The howling drew closer, my head whipped around in a panic to find the source.

Nothing to my left, nothing to my right.

Behind me was some shadowy creature, rushing for me with a grating sound, like something a pig would hear just before being slaughtered. I rushed to get a grip and flailed forward. The creature of shadow and dust caught me before I made it to standing.

Run!

I scrambled again, the bones in my body twisted and popped. For a second my vision warped itself again, a new sensation twisted through me. The heat of the world around me gave way to something cold and sharp, I could move my ripped shoulder once again and the organs had stopped leaking from my back. Without twisting around to see it the shadow was still there I made a break for some other hiding spot.

The howling could have been coming from my own head when I dove behind dead and twiggy bushes. I laid flat on the ground, taking in the ability to focus on the blisters forming from the skillet like ground now that my organs were back on the inside.

From my spot in the ash I saw the thing hobbling over molten asphalt. Skin was burnt and cracking in a way that made it look like brunt armour more than anything that could have been alive. Between the charcoaled skin was cindered and throbbing muscle. Occasionally blood or pus broke the surface and trickled into a pool of the same that was already drying into some new horrifying plate.

The beast howled again. It's face could have been human, under the throbbing muscle and broiled skin. The nose was gone, lips nothing but a memory, ears shriveled to black nubs. It had no eyes. Black craters that could have lead to the center of the earth for how deep and dark they were claimed the lion's share of its head.

I huddled deeper into my spot.

Run!

Down the street sharp metallic noises spilt through the beast's howl drawing it away from my sad excuse of a hiding spot.

Was some other poor bastard trapped here? I stood up again.

Oh well, he's not my problem.

I searched for somewhere better, somewhere not so exposed.

Without hoping for much I tried the nearest front door. The dry and brittle wood swung open with nothing more than a tired groan.

The windows of the place were as blank and hungry as the rest of the street, through the opening door lead to somewhere blinding bright and cold. For a second I couldn't help but stand in confusion. The only thing to jolt me from that blissful surprise was the death of the grinding metal and the return of that warbling howl.

Without a second glance I stepped through the door and slammed it shut behind me.

The other side was warm and welcoming. Gentle sunlight drifted through the large window that faced the street; the haunting howl didn't carry through the walls. The door was solid and painted white, not shriveled and nearly in splinters like it'd been from the outside.

I didn't dare question it.

I didn't dare call out hello. That thing could be out there listening. Where was I? Dead?

Maybe.

I took a step away from the door and glanced out the window. It was the same street, now placid and bathed in a pleasant light that gave everything a sharp edge. I put a hand against the glass. It was cool to the touch. Was it fall out there? Everything was green or blooming. Early spring?

I took a step away.

My jacket hung in tatters over my shoulder, though there was smooth skin beneath.

I went to the kitchen that was separated from the living room by a counter with barstools at it. A sewing kit sat by one of the chairs

That's odd.

Leaving the kitchen I walked down a little side hall. There were no windows but it was filled with the same clean light as the living room. I took a step into it.

The last door to the left slammed shut.

I learned my lesson last time. I left the hall and went back to the kitchen. There was no way in hell I was walking outside again. Sure it looked fine, but I wasn't about to believing everything I saw now. Instead I pulled a knife from a little cutting block in the corner of the room.

I took a step back down the hall.

Come out to play you overcooked piece of shit.

As I walked down the corridor I swung open each door I passed; I didn't need to have something sneaking up behind me now. The first room on the right had a bed and desk in it and was plastered in sports posters and equipment that was just disheveled enough to say that someone played with it regularly. The door to my left was empty too, like the last one it could have been a kids bedroom although it was a bit cleaner, like someone had been straightening up but stopped before getting to the other room. I passed a home office, a guest bathroom; both were devoid of life.

I stopped short of the last door, readjusting my grip on the knife. A last glance over my shoulder told me nothing had followed. The hall sat still bathed in it's cool and crisp light, a couple of dust nodes drifted gently to the ground, occasionally twinkling to silver as they fell.

Maybe I would get lucky and nothing would be on the other side.

As quietly as I could manage I sent the door swinging on its hinges.

With muscled tensed I peered into the room.

There was nothing there.

Nothing living and ready to jump out at me. No cool light. Nothing at all, not even a room.

I dropped my guard and stood looking at the black void that did nothing but look back.

I would have shut the door and gone back down the hall but the door disappeared when it swung open and the hall was busy being consumed by the the cold light that had seemed so gentle just a minute ago.

For a second I stood, wondering what to do next. The dark beyond the door sat unmoving but the blinding white of the hall came closer, bringing with it something cold and sharp. An angry wind swept the hall. With my jacket in shreds I shivered under it. Dagger like shards of ice and snow burst from the white and dug into the skin of my face.

Move or die.

I took one last second before seeing something thin and hollow move in the white. Some twisted shape crouching in the silent wind.

Move.

Against the frozen tornado of wind I tumble into the void.

I could have fallen into it, or maybe I landed on solid ground from the beginning. Who knows. I didn't take the time to wonder before sprinting from the growing glow that was coming from the door frame that I had just stumbled through.

There was still no sound here, nothing from the wind or my own heavy foot falls. Not even the sound of my breathing found its way through the void.

I must have run for miles before the last of the sharp light faded behind me. I shambled to a stop, my limbs heavy with fatigue. Where the hell was I now? Nothing rose from the dark. I struggled to calm my breathing; it could have taken me a second or a year, there was no sense of time here, but eventually I did it.

With nothing else to do I took a step in the nothing.

A scream shattered the silence. My head whipped around, a leg sank into the ground that wasn't there.

Shit! I said it but no sound came from my throat. The scream hung in the air, I fought to pull myself from the ground. The black around me became a thick tar; every movement I made did nothing but push me further into it, every frantic movement only brought more force down on me. I struggled like a fly in glue, the free leg came to rest twisted into some space away from the first, my shoulders and head followed an arm through the ground.

The screaming grew though my ears had to be covered by the floor. I gasped from breath from under the panic, still I heard nothing from my own struggles.

If there was gravity here it shifted. I was in the floor no longer, instead I was held upright as if in a wall.

The screaming morphed into words, dry and raspy as though the throat that made them was raw and bleeding.

"No! No, not again! Nonononononononononononono-"

They stopped, cut in half by another scream, different from the first. More voices came to shriek in chorus. Sometimes a word or two would stand out against the roil.

"God help me-"

"I didn't do-"

"Stop! Please!"

Men, women, there were sounds from both. I did all I could to struggle against the void that held me. The dark parted ever so sightly. I could see them moving now, the screaming people. They scattered in the shadows, some crawled on bloodied nubs that used to be arms or legs. The ones standing tripped over spilling organs and slipped on their own sickly green bile. I saw a man, missing his hand and swatting at the air around him. He looked at me and screamed, just loud enough to rise over the other voices. The darkness around the man swelled, something within it or maybe even the void itself distorted to slice into him. More severed limbs dropped to the ground to join the putrefying mound of flesh. The rest of his body ripped to gory shreds before being carried away by the dark currents of the void.

Rinse and repeat something out there ate away the dead and dieing, pulling each strand of flesh from its bone and letting what remained to rain back down in a horrifying slurry.

The screaming went on. Whenever some soul was ripped to shreds the body came shambling back from some dark corner, made whole again by whatever rules governed this place. There had to be twenty, thirty, maybe even forty screaming corpses down there at a time, being slaughtered and summoned back for another bout of agony.

"Make it stop!"

"Why?!"

"I'm sorry!"

The same black force that mangled those below forced me to watch. My head was held still, something dark and primal that came from nowhere held my gaze steady on the massacre.

Some new dead man came to the center of the slaughter.

He had more narrow shoulders and pale graying skin, like all the blood that coated the ground could have come from him alone. The void didn't twist to consume the man where he stood, he did not suffer from the same hungry force that the others did. He didn't even scream in terror or pain.

How long had that man been here?

The storm of death raged around this unmoving man. He had three wounds, small and old things. They seemed more like something from a gun or knife than whatever this place was. Were they closer now? Was this how it ended for me? Was I getting thrown in, just another victim of whatever this place was?

The man seemed so much closer now. He had pale blue eyes, reddened as if he'd been sobbing for a lifetime. I could smell the copper tinge of blood, the sharp angry scent of bile, the ammonia of stale piss.

My shoulder popped from its socket, the force of the wall pulled too hard in too many directions. I yelped but only heard the growing screams.

The man was just a yard from me now, the flurry of death swirled around the both of us.

Did I know this man?

Someone dead or dieing fell in a mangled heap between us.

Did I know him?

"That project failed!"

A woman bellowed somewhere behind be.

Did I know her?

Piles of quivering flesh fell to my every side. There couldn't have been any actual wall keeping me in place because there was nothing stopping strands of torn muscle or the rain of blood from splattering against me.

The crying man looked at me, then moved his gaze away, like someone who was trying to forget an old memory. I didn't have long to dwell on it before another voice rose above the screams.

"It was him!"

My head couldn't move to see the man who yelled. Something ripped into my thigh, the mood of the floor shifted from fear to rage. The people behind the crying man started shuffling with a purpose towards me. The void still twisted to rip into them, sending a slurry of organs spilling from ripped torsos. The few who didn't turn to mush slopped past the crying man. Torn bodies clawed at my own.

"You!" a barking groan came to my left. The skin of my arm split underneath jagged bone.

"Killed me…" someone wheezed from behind me.

More shambling corpses dug into me. Brittle bones slivered into straining sinew. Tendons snapped and more joints were pushed from their sockets under the weight of these angry things.

I had to be screaming - howling in agony- but the only thing to reach my ears were their words

"Because of you!" "Bastard" "Die damn it!"

They were closing in on me. I could see the edges of the movement at the corner of my eye. The crying man still looked numbly at the floor.

I knew these people. A memory came burning back with every fibre of flesh that gave way under the assault. A man fell in front of me again. The dark twisting into his back and pulling the spine free from him.

I knew him. He was the first Murkoff executive I killed. It was ten o'clock at night and he had just turned the news off and was getting ready for bed. He brushed his teeth and let the dog back in from outside. He went to the kitchen for a glass of water when I came through the window. He didn't know who I was or why I was there. He didn't have the time to ask before I had used the swarm to slice his belly open and sent his guts tumbling to the floor.

His little dog was barking the whole time, some kind of terrier mix. It hid under the couch when I turned his lungs into a slurry while they were still in his chest.

How powerful I'd felt then. Ready to take on the world that had wronged me and so many others. Now here I was being ripped to shreds by all of those terrible people.

Somebody came running in from the dark behind the crying man.

I remembered him. Some time a couple of months ago I had let myself into his house through the garage -they never locked the garage door. I'd picked my way past his kids bikes and the families camping equipment and stalked through the kitchen to his bedroom. He went quietly, with the swarm melting through skin, body, and bone. The man lasted all of a minuet before nothing solid remained and the bed was soaked in gory globs of red and white and brown. His wife was next him. She would wake up to a putrefying smear that used to be her husband.

I had patted myself on the back for not waking her up.

I remembered it all.

This isn't real. Couldn't be real. The dreamers were still out there somewhere. Ripping me to shreds in Iowa. Where was I know? My own head? Their minds? Was this just another elaborate hallucination?

I saw a woman crawling over her fallen co-workers.

She died half a year ago. It was a Thursday afternoon, she had just gotten back from a date at a little cafe and was chatting on the phone about it. I waited until she got out of her car and walked up the driveway to go inside. First thing I did was cut her legs out from under her. The phone went tumbling across the ground and the rest of her fell after it. She started screaming, I used the swarm to rip her throat out. It split lengthwise, the trachea stretching away from the esophagus an inch or so before the skin gave way and a flood of arterial blood gushed from the wound. I left her making wet gasps for air on the pavement.

It was sunny and I still remember the sight and sound of the cracked phone on the ground.

"Ashley? Ashley!?" The contact read mom.

I'd been so in the right, these weren't people, not anymore. They looked the part with their faces filled with rage and fear as they ripped me to shreds in the dark. But they were monsters and I had brought them to justice. They couldn't have really been here, no. This wasn't some place where the dead roamed; this had to be some trick by the dreamers. Maybe even by the Walrider too.

More groaning creatures bit away at me, pulling organs from their places and digging their hands into the remains.

To think just a month ago I had slaughtered ten of them at a time. It'd been an overcast summer day and maybe a dozen of them had clumped together for the funeral of another monster I had rid the world of. A few tears were shed for the fallen, but they couldn't have been real, not after they had caused so much misery and so many other deaths. They didn't deserve to mourn.

I let a thin cloud of swarm engulf the group. The floating gray blended in with the wet air and none of them knew what was happening when it began peeling back layers of skin and biting into slick muscle below. They screamed and tumbled in the swarm. It didn't matter. They were in a cemetery, a place for the dead, no one was there to save them. The group danced in the swarm for a not-long-enough time before the little beads of metal flayed the muscle they needed to move or scrambled their insides. I don't know which came first, but all ten of them laid unmoving on the ground by the time I left.

That was such a good day.

Bony remains of finger gouged at my eyes. The last thing to flash before me was the crying man, was that Waylon? Before the thought finished crossing my mind the ragged jerking at my limbs flashed to a stop. The void split apart into some new layer of abyss dragging me along with it. The howling of the dead chased after me, wheather in angry of my escape or in their own agony I had no idea.

Good, let them rot here. If I die, at least I took them with me.