Below Ground

Chapter 13: Do-Over

Your body aches and feels stiff, you feel heavy, like a ton of bricks floating to the bottom of a lake. You groan as you open your eyes, seeing nothing but yellow, green and dark blue in your hazy state. You're barely able to sit up before you feel a stitch in your side, you wince as you sit bringing your hand under your shirt to your side, bringing it back out you see dull grey blood smeared on your palm.

Blood? Grey? Isn't your blood supposed to be red?

You lift your shirt to make sure it was in fact yours, a large open wound is your answer. Great. You feel a bandage on your cheek, you have a feeling that it was dirty by now, and you see a stick at your side. They aren't the best of items to have but at least you had something, right? You look up seeing the stars out of a small opening, did you fall down here? You don't remember but you do remember tripping on something. . .you look around you and see you were sitting on a bed of yellow flowers. They must've broken your fall, they look so familiar but you can't remember why. Like you know what they are but the name won't come to you.

You pick up the stick and try to stand up, feeling a sharp pain in your leg but you manage to stand nonetheless, you look around seeing a dark hallway in front of you, should you go through? Well it's either that or waiting for help to come, whenever that may be, it could take hours, days, months. You don't have the proper supplies in the first place so it's a no-brainer. You limp towards the hallway, holding your side to keep whatever 'blood' you had from oozing out.

Pressing your other hand against the wall's smooth surface as a prop and also a guide into the dark passage, you continue down the hallway, slowly but surely. You wonder what happened to you, why you are hurt in this way, some of the bruises are obvious but some others aren't, those are weird scratches on your wrists and arms. Especially this weird flower that is wrapped around your left wrist and won't come off, it's glowing orange and looks like a trumpet, you decide to call it a Bugle flower until you know it's real name. The name really toots it.

*The corniness of the bad pun oddly fills you with determination.

Travelling further, a light cascades down on a small green patch of grass that holds a small yellow flower, since the wall has a sharp turn you realized that you are in another room so you can't use it as a prop or guide anymore, you use the stick to help you walk instead. Curiosity gets the better of you and you limp closer to the patch of grass, as you get closer you realize that the flower has a face, it's odd to you but what has your attention the most is the fact that its eyes are pitch black. Almost soulless. It's a little unsettling but you decide to ignore it for now. The flower seems to smile wider the closer you get but you could see a slight shiver in its stem, you wonder why it's shaking.

"Howdy!" It says in a high pitched voice, "I'm Flowey, Flowey the flower."

The moment it says that something triggers in your mind, a sharp pain appears out of nowhere, it's so severe that it causes you to fall to your knees, clutching your head and gasping in pain. Your mouth opens to scream but a staticy sound comes out instead, you can't speak. Could you even speak? A scene starts to play in your mind, a memory perhaps?

Grey coated his green, viney hands and dripped from his mouth, grey specks were scattered all over his body, and a menacing smile on his face. His eyes soulless as he forced himself into me again, I screamed for help. . .but no one came. No one ever comes. My back hurt more each time he came back, his 'interrogations' always ended the same way no matter what happened, and no matter how hard I fought he would always come back more brutal than ever. And each time I could feel my determination to fight back dwindle more and more.

You came back to reality, gasping hard to level your breathing, the flower shivers with a 'worried' gaze, looking to see if you are alright. The memory is so graphic, so detailed, and so embedded in your brain now. You want it to go away but it won't no matter how hard you try to forget it.