Zone Albrecht

16. Human

...the door snapped open, and an arm snatched out, seizing me by the front of my sweater, paining the shit out of me by the same occasion. It was the longest most muscled thing I'd ever seen, with five, sharp as fuck elongated nails, at least 6 cm long each. It felt as though it'd torn half the skin off my chest but, as I was hysterically pulling away, I noticed that it was only holding at my sweater and nothing more, dragging me towards the door with every passing second. Angela grabbed me and pulled, trying to get the thing, whatever the fuck it was, to let me go.

The sound it was making was insufferable, high-pitched like a scream of agony which would never end. Just for that I would have screamed, but that plus the added fear of impeding death, the fear that it'd bring me in there with him, and do whatever the fuck it planned on doing with me...that made me damn near hysterical. It seemed like an eternity but I don't know how long the tugging lasted, with Angela even falling to the ground but still clutching at the other side of my shirt as hard as she could. Had the thing not have caught me by my clothes, I'd be dead at this moment, because it was way stronger than the both of us, but most of all, I think that the problematic was bigger than that. It was starving.

For what? I don't know. For souls, for flesh, for fear, pain, or death I have no fucking clue, and hopefully I'll never know. I still dream of the arm and hand at night sometimes. Except I call for Angela in my dream, and she isn't there, or she's standing in the background, dead, torn into pieces, like the last time I saw her, and the hand wins and I scream. I always wake up once it drags me inside the door, into the darkness.

But thankfully for me, when it actually happened, Angela was there and alive. The two of us combined had managed to last long enough for the front part of my sweater to tear open, which made that I collapsed on her afterward. The creature shrieked even louder, expressing its rage and dissatisfaction. After that its arm disappeared, as quickly as it had appeared, and the door shut by itself. We heard one last piercing scream from inside, and then nothing. Silence.

This time, it took us a while to get over that. I was kind of against her, with her arms more or less around me, but we didn't care. The both of us were breathing hard and trembling, still staring in direction of the wicked door and whatever lay beyond it. My arm was hurting me as fuck, the broken one, but considering what had almost happened, I think that it could have been way worse than it currently was.

Slowly but surely, we managed to calm ourselves down, though not wanting to speak yet. I felt her fingers kind of searching my chest for the torn part of my sweater, and then petting my shirt, feeling bolder. I countered by lying back just a bit, pressing myself against her breasts. She slightly cringed and I could feel her nails scratching me, nervous that she was to have me against her but, as expected, she didn't say or do anything; we stood that way for a while longer, our eyes not leaving the door.

"Fuck." That was all she said.

"We should get out of here."

"It won't come back." She still had her arms around me.

"How the fuck do you know?"

"Because." Truth was, I also felt that it was over, that it wouldn't come back, but I felt no desire to check. I got up, quickly followed by Angela, and we started walking from where we came from. Regularly I saw her doing the same thing as me and checking over her shoulder to give the door just one last glance, or maybe to check if the thing didn't change its mind and chase us. Anything was possible inside the Zone.

--

Extract of Alexander Ladibbe's Memoirs

I froze. I thought I had just heard something, yet everything was all still n' silent. The only thing which could be heard was the sound of the water drops falling from the sink...and from me.

Plic-plic. Ploc-ploc.

Without realizing it, I clenched my teeth harder before grabbing the towel and wrapping it around my waist. If someone tried to get me now, I'd be dead, doomed, fucked. How would I run or defend myself naked, wet, and with a towel on me?

I perked up, tense, while the water dripping continued. No other noises could be heard for many minutes straight, and so I slowly relaxed, sighing of relief. I dried myself with the towels the creepy teens had given us, put my clothes back on, and was just about to leave when I heard something. Very slowly I turned around. There was a girl in the shower, right at the spot where I had been. Her lips were swollen and so was her skin, her eyes huge, white and gloke, dead. Her arms were resting to her sides as she stood there gazing at me, not moving. I looked back at her and, for a few seconds, no one moved, nothing happened.

"It's like Auschwitz," she said. "like Auschwitz."

For a few seconds I didn't understand what she meant, but as she repeated the words dully, then I understood. She meant that death camp during World War II.

I slowly started backing up in direction of the door.

"People die so much here. So many innocent lives taken away, you know, so many people who died."

I opened the door, and was about to step out, when she spoke again.

"And like Auschwitz, just like Auschwitz, the soap is made out of human fat."

And then she screamed, a horrible, high-pitched screech, and I soon followed, as I ran away and slammed the door behind me.

--

Extract from Angela's diary

Jordan and I were walking side by side along the hallway, turning our heads right and left to try and find the nursery. We were on our guard, and completely silent, expecting something else to come and attempt to kill us, but nothing happened, nothing at all.

That is, until we reached the nursery.

Fur and I shyly poked our heads in through the entrance.

Nothing. And no one.

After that he sighed before turning to me. I waited for him to say something and get in, but that didn't happen, he just stayed there, glazing at me, not pronouncing a word.

"Well Jordo, aren't you gonna get in?"

He once more glanced nervously inside, and I wondered what the Hell he was scared of.

"Yeah..." he slowly drawled.

"Kay. See you later then."

"Yeah, see you later."

Then I called out to him before he had the chance to lie down.

"Jordan! Wait!"

"What?"

Funny how hard it was to say. So much easier to make fun of him, be sarcastic, despise him. But not this.

"Thank you. For like...uhh..." Fucking damn hard to say.

"Saving you?" Rabbito to the rescue. "No big, plus it's not like it's something new to me anyway."

"Ass!" I replied. Only I was grinning while saying it, and not without affection. I think he caught that because he did the same, looked at me in an amused (and...affectionate? Dare I think it?) way. He did slightly smirk afterward, though, before going to lie down in that hospital bed of his.

So I walked away and got back to the dorms, thinking about collapsing on the floor and sleeping. Sad to say is this: life just doesn't work that way, for as I came in the dorms, there was some screaming, and there was some shouting. Alexander Ladibbe was wailing hysterically, repeatedly clawing his own face.

--

I know!! It's been AGES! But welcome to a new update of Zone Albrecht! Decided to continue uploading after somebody asked me to. I'll be making the updates shorter from now on though. Also 'Rabbito to the rescue' is forever one of my favorite lines, period. What about you? Ever had a friend or love interest literally save your life from something? I have. Also, what do you guys think Alexander is going to do now that he knows that the soap in the Zone is made of human fat? Let me know in the comments and don't forget to vote and add Zone Albrecht to your reading list!