With a Whimper

The center could no longer hold. The last thin thread keeping mankind’s self-destructive tendencies in-check finally snapped. The bombs rained he'll down upon all major cities and skies lit up with a bright blue flash. Very few were able to flock to safety in various shelters built globally by their respective governments. Among them were little Stacey and her parents. As mutually assured destruction came into fruition the father drove his family to a bunker that he had commissioned when tensions between nations first reached dangerous heights. This structure however was never fully finished due to the team behind it inexplicably quitting without word or notice. Irregardless what protection it could provide would have to do despite the incompleteness. They sealed the metal entrance behind them. The last sight they would see of the outside being a mushroom cloud in the distance.The only belongings they salvaged were the clothes on their backs and little Stacey’s beloved teddy bear. Sadly even then they were not safe yet. The father started to lead them further in praying they could get down into the lower-chambers before radiation comes to claim them. The door to the stairwell would have quickly got them down into safety sadly would not open no matter how hard the father and the mother tried. The only hope was a scantily emergency elevator that could lead them down to the quarters. The father’s Stoic mask was starting to crack as he led his cherished wife and his little princess into the flimsy elevator. He figured this machinery could either lead them to safety or allow a quick end. Both options would save them from the godless misery that could be brought upon them by the bombs up above. The elevator doors closed shut and it slowly began its descent. Little Stacey latched onto her mother when the surrounding space started to shake from the shock waves above ground. When the quakes finally passed and nerves now almost fully shattered the slow and silent descent continued. Not a single word being uttered by the three of them all the while. In their heads thoughts of everything they have ever known and loved now being vaporized off the face of the earth. Now they stood there in that small space possibly the last of the humans and with a future ahead of them that is uncertain at best. The blue light of the shaft kept them company while lost in their thoughts. The parents, lost in their despair, forgot a timeless and self-evident truth: It can always be worse and it can always get worse. In the blink of an eye a loud thunderous noise echoed through the shaft nearly rendering all three of them temporarily deaf.The once somber blue light morphed into a sadistic blood-red. The elevator then free-dropped down at an inhuman speed much to their own horror. Little Stacey was crying and screaming as her parents braced each other expecting a deadly Impact. At what felt like the speed of light they fell impossibly into the deepest depths of the earth. The father's eyes closed and he awaited what hopefully would be a quick end. He would not be as fortunate. Somehow and someway the elevator stopped suddenly and gracefully as if nothing ever happened. Not a single physical injury or side-effect among the family reared its head. As disbelief overcame their faces, the doors to the elevator opened and a strange dark cave waited before them. After a moment of recomposure and emotional reassurance to the distraught daughter the family walked forward, the parents deluding themselves into thinking shelter and salvation laid in a cavern ahead. Little Stacey started yanking at her mother’s arm pleading with her parents not to go further into the darkness. She sensed a very real danger but sadly the wisdom of the child was overruled by the arrogance of the adults. Barely ten minutes into their journey a booming inhuman voice spoke to the family from seemingly nowhere and everywhere. “Welcome trespassers from earth. A new and joyous life can now greet you if you so choose it.” The father, putting on a mask of bravery, shouted at whatever hidden person was amongst the cave to drop the act and reveal himself. Figuring it to be one of the construction workers who he thought upped and left. He ignored the voice in his screaming at him that this monstrosity was not a human being and his behavior was nothing but idiocy. Before the father can even finish his rant and before little Stacey’s sobs could even reach a audible pitch, multiple glowing pink tendrils shot out of the dark sidelines of the cave and latched onto the mother and the father. They didn’t even have the time or chance to let out an “I love you” to their little girl. The now visible and various sentient masses of tentacles ripped apart little Stacey’s mommy and daddy limb by limb. Gleeful childish giggles coming from their unseen mouths. The mother’s blood in particular splattering all over little Stacey’s upper-body. A blank unfocused gaze overtook the once expressive face of the child. It must be noted that the father did at least had one last thought before he met his end: the workers he hired to build the bunker. He realized his final moments they didn’t quit without notice due to the imminent war. They made an unthinkable discovery and these things claimed them. The little girl stood there detached from everything and anything around her. That is until the booming voice spoke again. “Young one, you have a choice. You can either join your parents in their non-existence or you can join us so that you may find true solace. A solace that few humans have enjoyed. It is your call.” With no other choice in plainsight and with not a single thing in the universe left to lose she nodded in a grim acceptance. She shielded her eyes when a bright red portal opened up in front of her. Dropping her once beloved Teddy Bear on the ground she walked away from the cave and into a horrible fate. It was no heaven that met her. She found herself almost immediately beginning her eternity of torment. She began being tortured in unimaginable ways. Crazed torment done emotionally, physically, and often done in certain ways no child should know about let alone experience. The little girl screamed, cried, and weakly fought against the daily flayings, the fiery immolation, and the stabbings and dismemberment all done by a diverse variety of demonic beasts. Sometimes they even did these crimes while taking on the appearance of little stacey’s deceased loved ones. This went on for millenniums until her physical form had long since mutated into something unrecognizable from her former self. All memories of all her old life and her humanity gradually being lost to time. Aeons after aeons passed in the netherworld and little Stacey was simply no more. What was left could not even recall her birth name. Now she was just another denzin in the netherworld who frolicked in the beautiful pain she inflicted upon any meek lifeforms who inadvertently crossed through her dimension’s forbidden gateways which are scattered across the cosmos to this very day. In a new age on the surface of the earth a young race of intergalactic explorers, as well as one of the many successors to the human race, known as the Ashikians made their first landing onto the planet. In the following decades amidst their chartering and colonization of what homosapeins once called home, a research team discovered an ancient bunker deep within an unexplored wooded area. To their surprise there lay right at the entrance an intact teddy bear just as clean and crisp as the day the bombs originally fell. Despite the sense of inexplicable dread that grew across the team one of its members did finally try picking up the bear only to fall to the ground and began shrieking in pure unfiltered horror. This person did not settle down until a few days later and with no memory of their brief psychotic break. That is except for a single phrase of impossible alien words once uttered amongst old cults from a different age and in a different tongue than what is known to this species. “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.” As these words echoed above-ground the beast that was once a little girl now happily frolicked in her brightly colored hellscape below. On this day she whimsically devoured the flesh of an overly curious treasure hunter. One who explored too deeply inside a temple located within the seventh moon of Rygon. Even though it’s echoing cries were delicious to her she did hope that it too can someday find the same solace she had found aeons ago.