Sam
4 days ago.
Saturday.
Something is wrong.
It's dark. It's so cold, I can't move-
A deep, shuddering ache pulses at the base of her spine, pulling her bones taut, stroking each inch of her skin. A sharp burn that slowly settles into her skull, takes root in her mind, leaving her a shallow husk.
She takes a sharp inhale of air, sputtering and coughing as she comes to consciousness.
Her surroundings are blurry, as if viewed through a broken fish-eye lens. Bursts of light gather at the edges of her vision only to recede away.
She can feel the press of cold concrete against the back of her neck. The dry rasp of her breathing. Her sweat-soaked clothes clinging tight to hypersensitive skin. The reek of mildew, of dead things left to fester and rot.
She is an ember set aflame- left to simmer and burn until nothing is left except a brittle husk.
There is a sharp pinprick of orange light that expands into a deafening abyss.
She remembers an old ladder, the rust flaking onto her pams like snowflakes. The curve of her hand pressed against a wall. The grinding echo of stone splitting apart. A red light, pulsing like a heartbeat. Someone screaming her name.
Sam. Sam.
But no one is here except her.
She remembers falling, her entire body clenched tight with a hunger that gnawed her bones apart and shredded her skin.
She opens her eyes.
Stuck.
Her limbs are stiff and stained with bruises.
What the hell just happened?
Panic flares across her entire body, digging its gnarled hands into her skin, taking hold of her spine. Her limbs spasm. Her fingers scratch against the concrete.
She feels so brittle. Like she’ll break apart at the slightest touch.
The seconds seem to suffocate her.
She drags herself upwards, pulling herself onto her knees. Her skin scrapes against the concrete.
A sharp burst of pain curls across her arm. The one pockmarked with residue from the tunnel’s writhing walls. Her entire body flinches at the sight of it. She feels her breath catch in her throat.
She remembers what happened, now.
Her brain flickers like static at the images pouring across her skull like hot oil.
Her friends. And the new kid- Orion. The way they all practically flung themselves downward into the awaiting depths of what lay below.
She remembers the bright blue sky and the way it shrank to a finite circle, collared by the circular opening that led to this place. The way the glare from it shrank like an ember crushed by the passage of her tentative footsteps.
A sudden flash of light curls towards the ceiling. A wave of thin amber luminescence that flickers like firelight, illuminating the bruises on her arms and her dirt-smudged converse.
The light wavers, curving around the tunnel, highlighting dark passages that branch off from the stone walls.
She is in a tunnel. Not the one she ventured into- but a different one. One that’s much worse.
Sam takes a strained step forward. The toe of her shoe hits something, sending a metal object sliding across the floor.
She scrambles for it in the semi-darkness. Her fingers curl around the cold handle of a lock. A shudder works its way through her entire body, the chill caressing her skin like the bite of a strong breeze.
She remembers the locks from Elliot’s story. The one about tunnels set aflame and the kids trapped in there, unable to leave. The way they would have crumbled like dry leaves, their brittle skin turned to ash.
Her heartbeat is slamming against the wall of her chest, now. It stabs through the fog of pain and exhaustion, snapping against her limbs. Like someone has lit a fire inside her lungs, leaving it to smolder until she is nothing but burnt skin and broken bones.
She scrambles towards the wall that her body broke through. Looking for cracks, for fissures- for any evidence that what happened can be reversed. For a slit that she could slip through. A scar to mark the rupture of her passage.
There is nothing but cold, coarse concrete. Her fingers slide over an unmarred surface. A strangled sob claws its way through her, sending black spots staining her field of vision. She stumbles backwards, crashing against the ground. Her body crumples onto cold concrete.
Sam is screaming now. Her hoarse voice cracking against the empty air, filling it with agony. She is a yellowed piece of paper curling in on itself. A girl trapped in a stone coffin, a corpse that can still breathe and talk but a corpse nonetheless.
Please, someone help me-
A sharp intake of breath.
Her hand slamming against the wall like it’s a locked door that just needs the right amount of pressure from her fists to break.
It will not break.
Elliot? Orion-
Don’t leave me here.
You can’t just leave me here!
She is not alone in here.
She knows that now, as the amber light flickers like a living entity. As her hands scrape against more locks strewn across the cold ground. As they stumble upon a length of rusted metal fencing, one with yet more locks still attached.
There is something else in here, pulsing against the stone walls, sliding across the concrete. As her entire body seethes with pain, as it throbs in time with her heartbeat. The sobering realization that she is trapped, that she cannot leave.
The amber glow in the distance casts shadows on the wall. They pulse in time to her rapid breathing. The world blurs as she struggles to remain afloat amongst the waves of fear threatening to drown her, to suffocate her. She could slip away in their listless tides and no one would know. No one would hear her scream. No one knows she's here.
Here.
Something else is in here.
YOU ARE READING
This Was A Bad Idea
Horror17 year old Orion has recently moved to a new town due to the harassment and transphobia they faced at their old one. They're a person stained with old memories that they'd like to forget. Thats why they're ecstatic when the local group of queer o...
