𝐙𝐄𝐑𝐎 - 𝟎𝟎𝟏 𝐅𝐀𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐂 ✔️

035

[tw: more violence... killing]

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How does it feel for your greatest fears to come to life? The nightmares that left you screaming and heaving in the morning with only the wall clock in the corner to tell you it was dawn. You must have jinxed yourself with all of your pleading prayers. For now, the nightmare was alive.

And the nightmare was 001.

The funny thing about nightmares was that they were one of the only constants in your life. For that, you were grateful. A life of endless surprises was a life leading to deranged insanity. The nightmares brought you back to life. The pain kept you grounded. The visions brought you fear, but under the fear, you were stronger.

The images on the screen leave you dizzy. There were only two working televisions now. 001 is standing in one of them, he enters a room and you hear the scream of a child. The scream of 010.

He's killing 010, you think.

But there's a loud bang in the rainbow room. 001 lowers his arm and whips around in that direction, racing down the hall instead. Your heart is hammering in your chest. For a moment you fear the worse, 010 was probably dead, like all the others. The thought of his fragile body coated in blood made you want to throw up.

Then, a small figure creeps out of the room. The screen is too distorted to make out any faces, but you know in your heart that it's 010. You let out a sigh of relief. Faintly, you could see the walkman still on his ears and little did you know, it had saved his life.

The little boy rushes out the door, scampering down the blood-stained hallway. You can't bear to watch his reaction as he pools out into the hallway of corpses and blood. He would never be the same after this, but maybe, if he was lucky, his subconscious would bury the trauma deep inside his mind. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would forget.

He turns down a hallway and disappears from camera view. You were sure he was still running. And the boy—Eddie, you'd named him—would be running for far more years to come.

The only other working television is of the rainbow room. Rainbows reminded you of all things bright and cheerful, but this room was all but that. This room was littered with the corpses of children. As expected, the murderer was 001.

You see the girl you'd asked to wait creep through the entrance. 011, traumatized and shaking in her boots neared the man. The man you almost couldn't recognize.

Another body falls to the ground, dead, at the hands of 001. It was 002, and that was more than fine with you. The revenge—though not your own—was as sweet as the candy you so rarely ever tasted.

This was it. This was the plan. How many casualties had come from it? Tens, hundreds? Was it all worth your freedom? You shake the thoughts away. The dead were dead. There was nothing you could do about it now.

They could have escaped if they'd wanted to. It was not your fault that you and 001 were the only ones with the guts to break free. The only ones that even cared to. That's exactly what set you apart from the rest. 001 was right, you were better than all of them.

You rush out of the room and up the stairs. These hallways were once your home, now they were nothing more than confinement. A prison, as you'd long since come to realize.

Your lungs gasp for air as you race towards the rainbow room. Every turn is as sharp and frantic as it is freeing. Each turn brings you closer to your freedom.

You're so close, you can hear 001's voice as its ominous tone radiates off the walls. Your eyes widen as his words sink into your ears. In his rant, you can hear all the things he'd tried to tell you as a child. The things both of you were too young to truly understand.