The Tunnels

Part I

I'm falling through a dark hole. I try to scream, but no sound escapes my lips. I scream and scream with no success. I tell myself that I'm dying. And then I wake up.

I awake to the sound of something dripping into my ear. I look around. I'm in a room with one light bulb coming down from the ceiling. The room seems to be a rusty brown color. I door stands in front of me, but there is no way to open this door from my position. I'm sitting on a damp mattress. Damp. It's not damp from water, its damp from blood. The room is stained with blood. It is as if I could see everything that had been going on in that room, but it was only a feeling.

I hear a voice. The voice is coarse. The voice is distorted. It's coming from a walkie-talkie lying next to me. I pick up the walkie-talkie.

"Listen closely to everything I say. My name doesn't matter, and neither does your own. I am your friend. Your enemy lies right outside the door in front of you, and you can see that they like to paint their walls with their previous patients. I want you to move your mattress to the left side of your room, and open the hatch on the ground."

I do exactly what my instructions tell me to do, and surely enough, there is a hatch. I can't see where it leads down to. I open it up. There is an old, wooden ladder.

"I want you to go down that ladder

until you find a lantern. I have already lit the lantern for you."

I tuck the walkie-talkie into my pants pocket and begin the descent down the ladder. I move as swiftly as I can, until I feel my bare feet touch the cold, stone ground. I look around and find the lantern. I can see a little better now.

"You are in their tunnel system. if you follow my directions, you will live a bit longer. You will see three different tunnels to go down. Go down the one on your right."

I begin to feel my heart race and I quickly turn around, feeling a presence behind me. I do not find a creature, but something of a warning. A warning of what I am about to deal with. A dead man lies behind me. He lies on the ground, badly mutilated, with pure horror in his dead eyes. His arms and legs appear to have been slashed multiple times, and his torso has been torn open, with his heart missing and many of his ribs removed. His face with nothing short of distrusting. His jaw had been ripped off and thrown to the ground, and his scalp was hanging in the air by a small string. But worst of all, his blood paints a smiling face with enormous teeth. Under this deathly cold smile, the blood writes: TRY TO RUN.

And at that very moment, I feel someone breathing behind my back. An in-human breath. And my walkie-talkie screams at me:

"RUN NOW!"