Safe Haven

Prologue

"You ready man?" David asks. Toby smiles and nods.

"Hell yeah I'm ready," he laughs. They both put a couple of AL-LAD tabs on their tongues. "I love this shit."

"Me too. Let's watch some Portlandia until this kicks in," David replies.

An hour later, the acid kicks in. They continue watching TV until the peak.

"Dude, turn on some Pink Floyd," David laughs.

"Bet nigga," Toby says. He connects his phone to his speaker and plays some music. They melt into their surroundings and float away. Beautiful patterns fill the room, the walls move gently with the beat of the tunes. Toby laughs without reason, and closes his eyes. A knock on their apartment door interrupts the serenity.

"You didn't order, like, a pizza or something, did you?" David asks.

"Nah, I guess I'll answer it," Toby replies as he gets off the couch. He approaches the door and looks through the peephole. He sees a woman standing at the door. Toby looks back at David. "Dude, it's the hot piece of ass from apartment 11."

"Well let her in bro! I'm tryna fuck on this shit!" David exclaims. Toby opens the door to reveal the girl from apartment 11, the upper half of her at least. Her intestines hang from her dismembered torso, and her body is tossed aside from the humanoid creature that was holding it. Before Toby can react, the creature grabs him by the throat and tosses him into the hallway. "Holy fuck!" David yells. Unaware if it's just a bad trip or something much worse, he runs into his bedroom and locks the door.

"David! Come help me with this thing!" Toby screams. David remains inside, and the creature turns to Toby, who lay sprawled out in the floor. The creature's eyes are completely off-white. Its lips curl upward to reveal bloodied, mangled teeth. It's translucent skin shimmers in the light. It makes a grotesque screech before pouncing on Toby, tearing a chunk of flesh out of his throat with it's teeth. Toby struggles to survive, choking on his own blood while attempting to force the creature off of him. It grabs his skull with an iron grip, and forces both of its thumbs into his eye sockets. Toby attempts to let out a cry of pain, but all he can manage is a muffled gurgle. Before he can reach the sweet release of death due to blood loss, the creature rapidly bashes his skull against the ground, pounding his head to the floor over and over until it's nothing but bloody brain matter and skull fragments. It shoves a handful of his flesh into its mouth and turns back to the apartment that David still hides in. It lets out a blood-curdling screech before sprinting on its hands and feet towards David's bedroom.

"I'm tripping, this isn't real. This isn't real. This is not happening," David whispers to himself. His mind races, his anxiety levels spike. He can't tell real from fiction. His own brain becomes his worst enemy. The creature sniffs around the apartment and approaches David's door. It pounds on the door with its bony fist, and emits another screech. Another creature much like it crashes through the balcony window of their living room. It glares at the other, and they decide to work together to achieve a kill. They both pound violently on the door until they're able to break a hole in the middle of it. They tear chunks of wood out of the door, and create a hole large enough for them to jump through. They make their way into David's room and sniff around to find him.

Under the bed, David breathes heavily, laying in fetal position, slowly caressing his arms. An arm reaches for him, and gets a grip on his leg. Before he can let out a cry for help, it yanks him out from under the bed, and the other creature obliterates his face with a solid stomp. His skull caves in, killing him instantly. The creatures tear his body in half while fighting over their food source, and they each tear chunks out of his flesh, forcing them into their mouths aggressively. Once they've stripped most of his meat from his bones, they jump out of the third story window onto the ground below and begin their search for more victims.