Madeleine's tears soak the fabric of my gloves as I keep my hand cupped around the one she's already clamped on her mouth. An action I can't afford as I try to help her remain silent. I curl my lips inward and have been biting down on them for the last minute to keep myself silent.
We stare at the hulking shadow in the mouth of the dark room's door. Though I highly doubt the original architects of this building ever foresaw this occurring. By some act of perfectly planned construction the door opens inwards towards us. Blocking any light in the main hall from possibly shining on us and showing where we are. We're two trapped bugs compared to the size of that thing. A tyrant. That's what Ben and Madeleine called it.
It walks forward from what I can observe in the dark. The shoes its wearing must be made out of fucking brick, or the thing is just that loud as the outline of its head swivels around. The fedora it was seen wearing in the camera still there like this is an action movie with a nightmarish take on a henchman in the mafia and not actually some monster trying to kill us.
Please for the love of god let this thing be something that can't see in the dark. Madeleine implied it's human. Surely Umbrella couldn't have managed to give it night vision.
Another step forward, then another. That walk threatening once again, to make me piss myself in absolute fear. I saw a lot of horror movies the older I got and with the money I could buy tickets with from odd jobs I'd do around the neighborhood. Seeing a horror film, and living one is the difference of night and day though.
Then I hear the grating of something impossibly heavy being shifted in the middle of the room. Madeleine jerks, and unwillingly I press my hand tighter against her mouth. A flinch on my behalf to whatever is being moved and her. I don't want to die here. Not here, in this godforsaken city. If I die, she'll die too, and then there will be nobody to spread the truth of what happened.
I hear it turn around quickly. Stepping, advancing closer to us in our corner. Her body is shaking, and I debate for a moment on risking the noise to grab a flash grenade like Madeleine did and throw it to allow us to get away. I quickly decide that'd be stupid though, it'd just render us both deaf, blind, maybe even concussed no matter where it landed in the room. What would that do for us then? Especially if by chance this thing doesn't have the same reaction as us?
It stops, and the hair on my body stands on end as a sense says its standing there. The creepiest part of this thing is as it attempts to scour in the dark for us. I hear no noise follow it besides the footsteps. There's no breathing, no ruffling of the coat cladding its body, it's almost robotic. If it really was human once, it's nothing remotely close to it anymore.
What feels like an eternity passes with us hiding in that cramped corner. My legs grow sore, numb, and even begin to cramp in their want to move. At last, the thing walks over to the door, and unlike the other ones we heard get slammed into the walls. This one is calmly opened before it exits the room without a single realization of where we are.
Our hands remain on her mouth for several more minutes. We dare not move in the case it's somehow an attempt to psyche us out and catch us when we try to escape.
My hand drops first, "I think it's safe," I keep my face angled towards hers as I speak.
My head falls back against the metal with a thump as I release a torrent of withheld breaths and press a hand against the metal contraption behind us to stand. Rolling out the kinks in my shoulders, I turn and lean to help Madeleine stand.
I wanted her to trust being close to me, to be comfortable if I even grazed her elbow. Now a part of me finds her closeness unnerving. Ever since that breakthrough in the basement about how she felt I was treating her, ever since we almost ran into each other in the shooting range, ever since... She outwardly told me she's not wearing a bra and it caused a nervous feeling in my stomach like that's what I was going to see even though I knew I wasn't.
YOU ARE READING
The 0714 Files: File #1 Inferno (Remake 2)
Horror"I think you're going to learn a lot of things about this city and the people that you won't want to." Madeleine Sówka has spent the last twelve years of her life believing she knows what monsters look like. They are the people who hide in the backg...
