Blur

His eyes snapped open caused from a panic of which the origin was unknown. He curled his fingers and felt the cold rough ground beneath him. His eyes slowly cracked open and were assaulted with the blinding light of midday. He was outside? But, where? He waited for his eyes to adjust to the light and slowly looked around from his laying position. Buildings seemed to go on endlessly in two parallel lines on either side of him. However everything he could see was, distorted, blurry and unclear. He dimly remembered that he was supposed to wear… what… why couldn’t he remember. He could clearly picture them and yet could not think of the… glasses! That’s what they were. Why couldn’t he remember that they were called glasses? Come to think of it, why couldn’t he remember anything? His name… What was… his name? Grunting, he pressed his hands to the ground beneath him and pushed up, moving to a standing position. He found he could see slightly more clearly if he squinted and did so at the buildings that lined either sides of him. He saw all sorts of coloured and shaped establishments, none of which were clear enough to make out what each individual store made or sold. He examined with a frown that he had been laying in the middle of a… road? Road! That’s right they were called roads. Why had he been laying in the middle of a road? Why had no one come to his aid? Had he been in an accident? no, no it didn’t seem likely, he examined his body and found he wasn’t hurt and his clothes, a bland white shirt and thin cloth pants, were in pristine condition. He carefully edged his way over to the side of the road making sure not to trip on the curb. He found a bench to sit on in front of one of the buildings. He was now able to see that this was a store which specialized in animal products. He lowered himself onto the bench and out his head in his hands, trying to remember anything about who he was, or where he was, or where anyone else was. He looked around, listening, trying to see if anyone else was nearby but was unsurprised in finding no one was. Come to think of it, he couldn’t hear anything. Was he deaf? He panicked and quickly smacked his bland shoes against the sidewalk to check. Upon impact a loud smacking noise resonated from his feet, ok so he could hear, good, but where is... everything? He heard no birds, no cars, and most noticeably he heard no people. He was clearly in the middle of a city why were there no people? After a few minutes deliberation he stood up and started walking along the building to his left. He kept one hand on the building to help guide him as his eyes weren’t going to be of much help. And so he walked, and walked and walked until over an hour must’ve passed. He occasionally had to cross the street when one intersected his own but faced no danger as the roads remained abandoned. He could see that the sun had begun to set in front of him and he squinted his eyes to avoid taking the brunt of the oncoming light. He found no comfort in the idea of spending the night in this seemingly abandoned city and quickened his pace. After a few more minutes he found he could open his eyes slightly more without being blinded and soon saw why. Ahead of him was something blocking the road and despite the fact that it was only about a hundred yards ahead his eyes would not let him discern what it was he was looking at. He closed the distance between him and the object and came to the realization that it was a wall. It appeared to be about eight or nine meters high and his stomach turned with the sick realization that it was topped with barbed wire and appeared to be stained faintly with something red. He placed a hand against the wall and called out for someone on the other side. There was no response. Despaired, he struck the wall with his fist and felt the pain shoot through his arm. He recoiled, cursing himself for the action and took a step back. His foot landed on something which wasn’t solid and it slipped out from underneath him. He fell, arms reaching out trying vainly to find purchase before he hit the ground hard. He cursed aloud and felt the raw scrape on his elbow, wincing in pain. He moved his foot and felt the object he had slipped on. He got to his knees and spun around to get a look at it. It was a warning sign that appeared to have fallen off the wall. It was bent and the paint had been scraped away in many places. It looked old. How long had he been here? What was going on? He could just barely make out the words that were on it and squinted his eyes to read it. The majority of the words had been scraped off or were unreadable but two were very clear. Evacuation, and Quarantine. His eyes went wide and his body tensed. Quarantine? What were they quarantining? Which… Which side of the quarantine was he on… He jumped to his feet and called out over the wall again, there was noticeably more panic in his voice this time. No one answered. He spun around, in his head he ran through the possibilities. The possibility that he could be sick. The possibility that he could be dying. He backed away from the wall and ran at it full speed, he jumped and his hands reached for the top of the wall. They came up short by several meters. Angry, and scared he turned around and began to storm away but stopped dead in his tracks as he looked down the street. There was someone there. They appeared to be about a hundred feet ahead of him and were very hard to see but they were there. He called out to them cautiously, unsure of who they were or if he could trust them. They didn’t respond. He called out again, louder, and took a step towards them but again he stumbled to the ground slipping on some broken glass and when he looked up… they were gone. He needed to leave this place. He needed to get out of this city. He walked back to the last intersection and began walking parallel to the wall, looking for a gap. His eyes darted back and forth, eyeing every building, every dark alleyway. A few times he could’ve sworn he saw something moving out of the corner of his eye yet when he looked… nothing. The sunlight lasted for maybe ten more minutes. After that the streetlights flickered on and he decided he needed to find shelter. His legs were killing from all the walking he had done and he was very tired, not to mention hungry. He approached the closest building. He squinted at the sign and found it was a discount clothes store. He knew the odds of finding food inside were slim but figured there might be something warm he could use as a blanket. He tried the door. Locked, damn. He cautiously walked back to the street and searched the ground for something with which to break the window. He grabbed a rock about the size of his fist, turned around, aimed, and hurled the rock at the window. It shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. He climbed through the window making sure to avoid the sharp edges. The interior of the building was dark and there weren’t any visible light controls. He shuffled his way through clothes and shelves until he found a row that appeared to contain multiple sweaters of different colours and sizes. He grabbed a black one that appeared to be his size. He hadn’t realized how cold he had been until he started to put it on. He only now noticed how slightly his breath was misting wan he exhaled and the fact that he was shivering. He debated trying to find some food and decided it could wait till morning. His legs and feet were what needed attention now. He groaned as he took off his shoes and began to rub the days wear from them and before he knew it his eyelids were becoming heavy. He yawned and turned his body to grab a few more sweaters from the rack to use as a blanket. As he turned around he gasped, seeing something which made his heart stop. There was someone on the street looking right at the building. He covered his mouth with a hand to avoid making any noise. There was something very wrong with this person. They were just close enough and happened to be standing under a street light so he could make out some of their features. They were tall, far taller than anyone he could remember ever seeing. Their arms seemed too long for their body and their hands were long and massive. Their fingers nearly scraped the ground. They were a shade of milky white that was lighter than snow. They didn’t appear to be wearing any clothes and yet he didn’t see any reproductive organs. All colour drained from the man’s face as a sick realization washed over him. This was who he had encountered in the street earlier that day. Who was this twisted person and what did they want from him? He cursed the fact that he had no glasses, he wanted to see more of this person, and yet, wished he had never saw him in the first place. He slowly moved his body to the end of the shelf across from him and positioned himself so that he was out of view from the street. He was praying that the darkness in this store had prevented that… thing from seeing him. He sat there for what seemed like hours even though it could’ve only been a few minutes before gathering up the courage to peek out around the shelf and see if the thing had moved. It hadn’t, it still stood in the exact same place perfectly unmoving but the man’s stomach lurched as he came to a sick realization. There were two now. Off to the left of the original creature stood what seemed to be an exact duplicate of it. Of course he couldn’t be sure they were identical since he could barely see them but from what he could tell they were very similar with long arms, twisted misshapen bodies and pale white skin. He sat there completely immobile struggling not to let fear consume him. He tried to think rationally, what do I do, what do I do?! He needed something to defend himself, some kind of weapon. He quickly glanced around the darkness around him and grabbed the only thing he could make out, a brick from the corner of the room. He eyed the brick in his hand, silently praying that it would be enough to, at the very least, help him escape unharmed. But the question remained… escape from what exactly? He glanced back around the shelf and the fear that he had barely been keeping at bay consumed him. This was impossible there was no way this could have happened without him noticing. The street outside the store front was filled, with dozens, no, hundreds of these things; all appearing identical and all staring directly at him. He had to move. He had to move right the hell now before even more of them appeared from what seemed to be thin air. He clumsily rose to his feet, trying to be as stealthy as possible in case somehow they couldn’t see him. Suddenly as if on cue a noise, an earth shattering ear splitting screech emerged from the crowd and the man fell to his knees grabbing his ears and screaming in agony. He managed to raise his blurry eyes to the street. They were moving. My god they were walking towards him! He panicked, exit! He thought, where the hell is the bloody exit!? He scanned the room crazily as his eardrums began to tear. He could barely hear the screams from his destroyed ears. He looked to the back of the store, tears of pain streaming down his face. There! An exit! He stumbled to the door, fell, and got back up begging his body not to stop. He turned his head and saw them, those horrible beasts, walking through now broken windows towards him. He screamed at them, barely holding onto the last shred of his sanity within him as he backed up against the exit door. Crazily, he began to pound upon the door and pushing it. Something was blocking it from the other side. With one final shove the door gave in and he fell to the ground outside, laughing crazily at his now assured escape…before seeing the pale white feet in front of him. They were close enough now for him to see all the details he previously was unable to, its toes, long and bony and ending in sharp claw-like points. Fear glued him to the spot and as he shook, terrified of what he was seeing. His eyes slowly travelled upwards taking in every sickening detail of this monstrosity standing mere inches in front of him. Like the others, this one was unclothed, and its legs were a sickly shade of white that resembled only one thing to him, decaying flesh. As his eyes passed over its legs he saw a complete lack of muscle and instead just skin and bones. Large portions of sickly white flesh were hanging off in several different areas. Its joints were protruding at odd angles that looked like they would be extremely painful and he didn’t understand how this man in front of him was even standing, even living! What he saw next answered his question… this was no man… His eyes saw its completely bare crotch and sunken stomach above as well as his chest. But there he saw something that made him want to scream, want to run for his life but he found his body paralyzed with fear. His chest was a gaping, bloody, dripping maw. Ribs that should’ve been covering his inner organs had tore through the skin and were bent and cracked into what resembled teeth, snapping at him viciously as black fluid dribbled onto its stomach and splattered on the ground beneath them. Suddenly a hand with the same features as the foot reached out and grabbed the side of his head quick as a bullet and the claws tore through his hair and into his scalp as he began to scream yet again. He managed to finally face his attacker through eyes filled with tears and this… this is what finally broke him as he looked into where eyes should be but instead there was nothing but black pits, blacker than anything he’d ever seen before and leaking the same black fluid as if they were tears. The worst part was, that’s all there was, no mouth, no nose, no anything! Just these black pits which felt like they were cracking open his skull and shredding his mind, like they knew every awful thing about him. He could do nothing but cry as he was slowly pulled towards the gaping maw in the chest which was now excitedly reaching forward trying to tear a piece of flesh out of him. The consistent screaming from the monsters behind him had torn his eardrums apart and he unconsciously felt a trickle of blood flowing down his cheeks. Despite this, he heard a whispering, not in his ears though but deeper as though it was in his thoughts, it quickly became an audible voice and he heard the same phrase being repeated over and over as his head was lifted into the chest of the creature and its teeth sunk deep into his face.

“You should never have woken up. Now you’ll sleep forever”

Sweet dreams everyone :3 Your newest writer, PretendManatee