The Lost Civilization

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟾: 𝙾𝚞𝚛 𝙵𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚙 𝚆𝚊𝚜 𝙹𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝙰 𝙵𝚊𝚌𝚊𝚍𝚎.

I stared down the dark road. Maxwell's outline was faint as he continued walking down that roadway. I sat and pondered on one hundred thoughts at once. He seemed so crazy, but oddly so calm while seeming so psychologically broken during the meltdown that had just occurred between him and Serenity.. and Vic's dead body. The image of her face played in my head and I silently begged for it to stop. Why is Max so unsympathetic.. is he just having a real and complete mental breakdown? His smile.. it was so eery. It looked like... wait.

"Maxwell!" I yelled to him, tears gathering in my eyes and not breaking eye contact from his silhouette in the distance. He stopped dead in his tracks, and turned towards Serenity and I with a bilious look on his face. Serenity was standing beside of me, glancing over at me and probably wondering what the hell I was doing. "Maxwell! I want.. the truth," I muttered out bleakly. "What truth?! What truth do you so badly want, Alden? Tell me. What is it? Tell me!" He screamed with an absent stare. He was lost in his thoughts. I can tell. I just can't tell what those thoughts are.

I continued staring at him. My bottom lip was lightly quivering and my eyes were plastered with a thin film of tears. I mumbled out, trying to keep my words pieces together, "Did you wreck on purpose?"

His facial expression never changed, "And why would I do that, Alden? What about you Serenity? Would you happen to know?" Serenity stayed silent after his question, gazing at him. She was biting down on her lip with an expression on her face that I could only describe as feeling every emotion at one time. I opened my mouth to speak, but was quickly cut off by Max as he whispered quietly, knowingly loud enough for Serenity and I both to hear as he looked down at the ground and sighed, "I guess you both have to die now."

My heart dropped down into the pits of my stomach. It felt as if I was laying on the ground and had just had a huge weight slung onto my chest. I could feel my heart beating as fast as it could possibly go, feeling like it was ready to burst at any moment. I slowly reach down and intertwined my fingers with Serenity's, nervously taking one small step backwards.

"Max, I don't know what the f—k you have going on. I don't know what this is, but stop! You're acting nonsensical! You're acting crazy!" Spit flying from her mouth while she yelled hysterically, wiping the tears from her face. "No.. see, that's where you are wrong," he chuckled then continuing, "You don't know me. You fail to see the truth, my friends. It is obvious that you lack the intelligence required to catch the red flags that have been bestowed before you many times. You never questioned not being able to ever meet my parents, you just believed me every-time since middle school that I would say that I didn't think it would ever be a good time to meet them. You all believed anything I would say without putting any thought or question behind it. You all three believed me and trusted me with endless support. This caused me to feel sympathy in my heart for our friend group," He rambled endlessly with no emotion on his face other than a small, uncomfortable smirk. Who was this speaking to us? This was a monster, not the sweet and proper Maxwell that I had known forever. The one I had spent nights with, had group sleepovers with, went on trips with. No. This couldn't be Maxwell, but it is. I physically see that it is him.

He began slowly walking towards us, taking his time with each step, "Now, see. You didn't notice when I was the first one to become immediately hesitant of this trip since we had lunch that afternoon. You didn't notice how I silently tried to deter us from the small, little shed. You didn't seem to notice that I for one, did not attempt in the slightest to help Victoria off the ground or even try to hold the flashlight steady because I was in a quote on quote— panic. Serenity, you my darling we're too frustrated and manic to even notice that there was absolutely nothing in the road, nothing except a sharp curve that let down off of an embankment and into a stream. A top heavy SUV, topping that off with an uncontrolled vehicle speeding towards a curve that dropped off of an embankment. I figured that was enough to kill you all," He said as he sighed, rubbing the back of his head with one of his hands with the other placed on his side. I was frozen again. Frozen in fear. Frozen in the fact that what was happening before me had to be a f——ed up nightmare. This couldn't be real. This sinister, evil man couldn't have been the one that I knew for so long and loved so deeply like a brother. He cut off my thoughts, "Why the shocked faces? Oh, I know why. I mean, I understand why, I guess. Questions were never raised about why Vic was mutilated after flying out of the vehicle, but I only had a bloody nose. I thought there would be many questions, but there weren't. I had gotten completely away with swerving, and then proceeding to tuck and roll out of a moving vehicle without you dumb f—ks noticing. That's why I was going to give you the opportunity to live without knowing the truth. Now because of you though, Alden," he pointed his finger towards me, "Because of you, these woods will be the last thing you both live to see. Never heard the saying, curiosity killed the cat?"

Before he muttered out his last words, I felt Serenity squeeze my hand tightly before screaming, "Run, Alden!" I took no hesitation to begin sprinting with her. Taking the largest strides we possibly could, running as quickly as our legs could take us. I'll be honest, nothing was running through my head except pure panic and distress. No specific thoughts, just the emotions. I could feel myself hysterically crying while running, but I myself was not crying. My brain and eyes were crying, but physically I felt nothing. I didn't want to look back, but I needed to. I needed to know how close he was trailing behind us. In my sprint, I glanced back behind my shoulder. I looked back forward, slowing my sprinting and slowing Serenity down with me.

"Alden, what the fuck are you doing?! We have to run!" She sobbed before I placed my hand over her mouth, trying to keep her quiet. There was no keeping her calm, there was really no keeping me calm either. I could act like I was though if it meant getting out of this f——ed up place alive. "Serenity, listen to me," I whispered while making direct eye contact with her. "Maxwell is no longer behind us. Which means he is hiding somewheres waiting for us," my voice shook.

I kept my hand over her mouth as she now acknowledged why I was doing so, giving me a panicked and unsure nod. I slowly crept over to the shrubs on the side of the road pulling her with me, crouching down and her following my lead. "We have to hide, Serenity. We have to. We have to hide and fight with everything we have," I reassured her, "The park is only maybe a mile back that way, if we even made it that far. The park is a dead end. The road ends there. If we go passed the park, we risk running into whatever those inhumanly looking bastards were. If we go that way, Maxwell is probably hiding and waiting for us just barely out of sight using the night's lack of light to his advantage. We turn that around, we use the f——ing night to OUR advantage." I stared at her, waiting for any response even if it was disagreement. She stared directly into my eyes, no response being given. Just a blank stare. That was before she took off up the side of the mountain we were crouched in a ditch at the bottom of. I followed behind her, understanding the unspoken agreement. We dug our hands into the dirt that was covered with leaves and pine needles scattering the top of the mountain side floor. The dirt felt thin, almost as if I stood in one place for too long, the dirt would swallow my feet. We were practically clawing our way to the top of this mountain. The top wasn't far from our reach as I could tell from the moonlight casted over.

Suddenly, there was a noise like clanking metal and the ripping of my pant leg. Simultaneously, I couldn't keep moving up the mountain anymore. My right foot was stuck with a sharp, unbearable pain shooting from the bottom of my foot, to the top of my knee. I let out an agonizing scream, reaching down and grabbing my knee. I moved my hand further down towards my ankle, where the worst source of the uncontrollable pain was deriving. I knew instantly, that I had gotten myself in some sort of trap. An animal trap, but the thoughts racing through my head wanted to think it was never even placed here for an animal at all. I could feel that it was rusty, letting me know it had sat here for a while. Maybe nobody remembers the trap was here. Can Serenity get me loose from it? Can I even walk anymore? I could feel that the blades on the trap had dug deep into my ankle, possibly reaching bone. My pant leg had been completely ripped off up to the knee, unable to even feel where the piece of fabric even lied now. Blood protruded from my ankle and down into my shoe, dripping onto the leaves that lie underneath. I felt cloudy and nauseous, direct acknowledgement that I was bound to faint. Words were becoming hard to push out and my arms felt like they couldn't hold me sitting up anymore. I slowly lied on my back, my right ankle and foot entrapped completely. Serenity was beside of me, she had been since I got my foot caught, but I never noticed. She was struggling to pull my hoodie off of me, I'm assuming to tie around my right leg. As she tugged and struggled, sweating and crying to get the hoodie off, I could faintly see the shadows of things in the surroundings behind her. The trees, the shrubbery, the foliage hanging down from above. My eye sight got more blurry from what I could make out, feeling my eyes become impossible to hold up and an overwhelming nauseous feeling. As my eyes closed, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Maxwell was standing not far behind Serenity on the edge of the pitch black darkness, just enough for his silhouette to show through. With my eyes closed and feeling my consciousness fade out, I tried with all of my strength to force out, "Behind.. you."