#the facility
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‘the facility’ — the breakout 1/?
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content warnings: prison whump, medical whump, captivity, imprisonment, prisoners of war, mass prison breakout, minor character deaths, blood, gun and knife violence, murder, manhandling
Noah’s wide eyes flickered desperately around him, as if trying to make sense of the deadly warning that had just rang out. As though it was some cruel, unfathomable joke, the automated voice spoke again.
“Code: Black.”
The personnel that had been speaking to him slapped their hands over their mouth, backing up with staggering footsteps. They gave Noah a wide eyed stare, before they were racing out of the laboratory with panicked speed.
Soon, everyone else followed.
“Code: Black,” the voice crackled. “Level Nine. All staff make their way to…gency…Code—”
Over the blaring sound of the alarm and the dark red tinge concealed over his vision, Noah just barely felt his new assigned Apoid grab his shoulder, and start tugging him out of the laboratory with intense urgency. Once he’d managed to unstick the abhorrent terror in him, the blood boiling panic spurred him on. This was the stuff of nightmares.
Code Black was only meant to be purely theorectical. The Facility was built to withstand multiple breakouts at the same time, but it must have devolved into something much more serious. If Level Nine was on a Code Black, that meant there was a mass breakout, and lots of angry prisoners would be on the loose.
The Apoid kept a tight grip of him as they raced down the corridors, filled with scrambling Personnel and scientists and even Apoids, their guns raised in case a threat came racing down the corridor. Noah’s throat was parched, each step foreign on his own two feet.
He could only think about one thing. Where was Fionn? In a situation like this, Apoids were the last to make it to the emergency elevators. They were expected to execute and contain as many prisoners as they could to buy time for an escape for everybody else, and the last thing he had said to him was not to come near him.
As the alarms continued to screech, the defeaning sound of gunfire suddenly pierced through the air. The staff that had been racing down the corridor screeched to a sudden halt, a burly prisoner rounding the corner with an Apoid’s rifle in his hand.
Noah’s eyes widened in shock, and the Apoid threw him behind cover just as he started firing into the crowd.
He heard a sickening thud next to him, uncurling his arms from around his head, just to meet the wide, bloodshot eyes of a dead scienist. Noah’s own filled with stinging tears at the sickening sight.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” he wheezed, flinching violently when there were more gunshots and blood curdling screams. The Apoid wrapped an arm around his shoulders and hurled him in a different direction, staggering over his own two feet when bullets sprayed against the corner of the wall, just missing the top of his head.
He struggled to catch his breath.
Dead bodies were sprawled along the ground, patterns of fresh blood, streaks, puddles, hand prints, all surrounding them.
He resisted the urge to throw up as they dashed past, swallowing down the sting of bile in his throat. Noah ducked behind the Apoid as they came to a crossing, raising his rifle and gunning down a prisoner that had been careering towards them. They covulsed and crumbled to the floor, and Noah was glad they were going in the opposite direction.
The emergency elevators weren’t far from here. As long as they got them and to a safer, higher level that wasn’t in the same situation, everything would be okay.
Noah was suddenly shoved forward by his Apoid, who didn’t raise his gun time before a huge prisoner had grabbed him by the skull, and slammed his helmet into the wall. The Apoid stuttered from the sheer force, and even as Noah whipped around in shock, he could see he was dazed from the attack. Before he could shoot him, the prisoner had ripped his rifle from his very hands, and cracked his skull back against the wall.
Noah had to surpress a scream when the prisoner ripped the knife from his belt, and jabbed it straight into his neck. The Apoid went all tense and his legs buckled, but the prisoner was relentless. The knife jerked in and out of his flesh until his throat was mangled, blood even visible against the blackness of the uniform.
His foot slipped on a puddle of blood when he tried to make a getaway, his chin colliding with the solid ground with a painful crash. His heart was in his throat and his blood was burning in his own ears as he desperately scrambled forward, eager not to meet the same fate.
Before he could get up, he felt something roughly seize the back of his jacket, and jerk him back.
“No!” Noah screamed, desperately flailing in the prisoner’s grasp as he wrangled him onto his back, his blood soaked hands slipping against the floor as he frantically tried to squirm away. “Please, please, oh my god.”
The prisoner’s hard glare looked him over, fingers twisting into his jacket to get a look at his nametag. Noah’s vision was spinning, his head overflowing with thoughts of how brutally he was going to kill him with that knife, that his guts were going to be hanging all over the walls and he would never get to see his family again, and—
The prisoner let out a snort.
Noah flinched violently when his rough hands wiped away his streaming tears, smudging coppery blood all over his cheeks. The prisoner abruptly let go of him, and he scrambled backwards in sheer panic.
“You’re gonna wish I had killed you, little man,” he sneered, gripping the Apoid’s rifle in his hands with a smirk. “Better get running before he finds you.”
He watched with wide, unblinking eyes as he turned away and disappeared down the corridor, as if he expected him to change his mind and finish the job. His eyes couldn’t help but drift to the Apoid’s dead corspe, still convulsing as if he was alive, and Noah let out a harrowing sob. He wrenched away, heaving, before realising he was still sitting in a puddle of someone’s blood.
Disgust wriggled into his skin, and he forced himself onto his wavering feet, biting back his terrified sobs.
This was a nightmare. It had to be.
Just a cruel nightmare. One that he would wake up from, and he’d be okay.
But then something the prisoner said resonated with him. Better get running before he finds you. Noah didn’t want to think about the obvious implications of that warning; the easy deduction of who he was. It made him wonder if other prisoners knew, if Cash had told them to save Noah for himself. Because that was what he had told him, hadn’t he, when his arm had been wound tightly around his throat?
He staggered, shoulder hitting the wall with a thud. The sobs wracked through his body, constricting the air from his lungs, and it made it hard to even stand upright. Like this terrible weakness was plaguing his limbs.
Distant gunfire and shrill screams, ones of agony and pain, spurred him onwards. His vision swam at each dead body he came across, stumbling over bloated, bloody corpses, but he knew he needed to get to the emergency elevators - somehow.
The sound of raging gunfire got louder, and Noah sank behind cover before peering down the long corridor. Scientists were cramming themselves into elevators, bloody handprints smeared along the doors. There must have been dozens of bodies on the ground, all sprawled haphazardly ontop of each other, and Noah’s breath caught in his throat when he met wide, bloodshot eyes.
It was a massacre. Scientists and Personnel of all kinds were scrambling to get inside, most gunned down before they even made it, their bodies convulsing and hitting the ground with a thud.
One elevator, packed with Scientists, had been about to close, before a prisoner with access to an Apoid’s gun stepped inside. There was the uproar of frightened screams, and when the doors slid shut, Noah could hear the distant sound of muffled gunfire. He slapped a bloodied hand over his mouth, his knees buckling.
It was practically slaughter.
Prisoners were swarming everywhere on the Level, and everything was spinning out of control. These sorts of emergencies were supposed to be purely hypothetical - never in the history of the Facility had a Code Black ever been announced on those speakers.
Something twisted in his hair, jerking his head back, and Noah gave a sharp gasp as someone wrangled him onto the ground. A gangly prisoner was ontop of him in seconds, causing Noah to thrash out in panic, sinking a knee into his boney stomach.
The sight of the knife was enough to spur him into action.
The prisoner’s fingers were digging into his skin, stinging the flesh, yanking Noah along with him. His heart leapt into his throat when the knife almost slashed across his chest, forcing him to scramble, grabbing the prisoner’s wrist in a tight, desperate grasp. They let out a teeth bared hiss, attempting to violently buck Noah off. They succeeded, for just a moment, and Noah felt their leg shove him off, his back slamming into the wall.
When they came at him again, he threw himself out of range, boot smacking into their head.
It was with enough adrenaline fueled force that the prisoner flew back, the knife slipping from their fingertips. Gunfire rained over the top of them, and Noah pressed himself close to the ground, choking on hard pants. He met the prisoner’s eyes, just for a moment, before they both leapt for the knife.
By some miracle, Noah seized it first, gripping it tight in his hand.
The prisoner barrelled into him, knocking the wind out of his lungs, their nails scratching at his face and only narrowing avoiding his eyes. The skin tore, beading with little spots of blood, and Noah’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife when the pain made his eyes water. A desperate rush smashed into him. He might have told himself that he wasn’t thinking clearly, but he was. He wanted the prisoner to get off of him, no matter what.
Noah grit his teeth together, jabbing the knife into the prisoner’s neck. It was shocking how easily it went in, straight down to the hilt, and they made a garbled, pained noise, eyes bulging. Noah rolled them over abruptly, the air rushing back to his lungs, before he forced the knife out. A spray of blood erupted from the wound, feeling it drench his hands, and the prisoner’s body violently convulsed, jerking and stuttering, drowning on the fresh liquid.
Noah forced himself onto his feet, almost tripping over their corpse. The strength had completely lost him, the knife clattering to the ground, tearing his eyes away from the still convulsing body.
His legs carried him in the direction of the elevators. They were closed, taking Scientists and Personnel to safety, and Noah prayed to whatever was out there, that that could be him.
He screeched to a halt, hairs pricking on edge when a group of armed prisoners came around the corner, blocking his path to the elevators. Noah felt the world around him spin when their guns tilted in his direction, and he dove into a doorway just as they started firing. He swore he felt it shave the hairs on his head.
He held back a sob, kicking the door to the room shut behind him, before slamming his still bloody hands on the lock, sticky against the pad.
Loud bangs reverbated from outside, the prisoners shouting and attempting to force the door open. Noah’s wide eyes were glued onto it, crumbling to his knees, the tears sliding down his cheeks freely. It stung the scratches on his face, but he didn’t even have it in him to wince, numbed by the adrenaline coursing through his veins.
When the banging stopped, Noah deflated. He lifted his shaking hands, staring at the sticky redness painting every inch of skin, filling his senses with tangy copper. Noah’s face wrinkled, and he let out a harrowing sob. He tried to scrub the blood off, frantically wiping it against the ground, the tears dripping from his chin like a downpour.
He backed himself up into the corner of the room, curling himself up so he was as small as he felt. The blaring alarm rang through his mind like a cruel mantra, sobbing until his throat went raw.
This was a nightmare. Just a nightmare - it had to be. Nothing like this could ever happen to him.
Noah choked on a startled breath, trying not to flinch at the assortment of sounds outside of the room. The crackling of gunfire, the screaming, the huge thuds and bangs. He squeezed his eyes shut, desperately burying himself into his arms. He wasn’t sure how long he had spent huddled in the corner of the room, his head buried between his knees and desperately trying to breathe.
It didn’t come easy for him, with all of the blazing noises outside, with all of the memories of the dead bodies, Scientists, Apoids and Personnel alike, left as mangled corpses in a pool of their own blood. Noah’s chest stuttered, lungs fluttering, caked in tears, sweat and blood of both his own, and other people.
He wondered if hiding in here was the best option.
If the Facility was under lockdown, they would eventually send reinforcements to control the situation. No prisoner would ever leave, unless it was dead. But then Noah thought about Cash, and those dreaded warnings he had got, and he wondered if a door was enough between them to keep the vengeful prisoner far away from him.
It couldn’t be.
His puffy eyes squinted, lifting his head up. He wondered what Fionn would say to him. What he was doing right now. Any one of those lifeless Apoid corpses could have been him, and Noah would have never known. His heart squeezed painfully at the thought.
Above all, he prayed that Fionn was safe. Even though, out of the two of them, he stood a better chance at surviving this nightmare with his training and his weapons, Fynn still couldn’t be sure if that would be enough to make it out of here alive. It hadn’t been for his second assigned Apoid, who he had known for no more than ten minutes.
Slowly lifting himself onto his feet, Noah numbly stepped over to the door, ever so slowly.
Hiding wouldn’t work forever - the emergency elevators were his best chance to get to safety. The breakout could have extended to Level Eight or Level Seven, so he couldn’t delay a chance. Ever since the first disruption of chaos, the noise by the elevators had seemed to die down. Noah saw the mounts of bodies, and the amount of prisoners that had been slaughtering them. The initial scramble for safety will have quietened down by now.
He hoped.
His heart was pounding against his ribcage like a jackhammer, swarming up to his ears. He counted the agonising seconds that he stood there, staring at the door, not even daring to move. It was as though one breath would give him away.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shake the blurriness encroaching the edges of his vision. With a firm push, Noah slid open the door. He was met with the same blood soaked hallways, and flinched back when a body slumped unceromomiously by his feet. Another Apoid. He released a shuddering breath, tearing his eyes away.
With a pounding heart, he checked the corridor. Some shouting prisoners caused him to duck back, but they passed the elevators only after a few moments. The blood rushed to his head. One of them was open - empty and awaiting him, like some sort of enticing treat.
He had to move now.
Giving the corridors one final glance, his shaking legs managed to step over the dead body, bracing against the wall. Each little step was as though lead weights were melded into his skin, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling on edge. With each second that dragged on, Noah’s desperation increased. It was like he could taste freedom and safety on the tip of his tongue, and his pace quickened just a bit.
He didn’t even dare look behind him, blocking out the rips of gunfire in the distance and the ear piercing screams.
There was a sudden breakout of footsteps behind him, and something hard barrelled into the side of his body. It sent him smacking into the hard ground, almost clipping his chin in an awkward way. He sucked in a sharp, pained gasp, head snapping up to find another scientist making a beeline for the elevator. There was blood dripping down his face, from what he could see, and Noah’s head snapped around in the direction he had come from.
His heart sank to his boots.
Cash was going at a calm, leisurely pace as he crossed the intersection, those intense eyes finding Noah’s immediately. He hadn’t even broken a sweat, as if he hadn’t been the one chasing the frightened scientists.
He heard the shrill beep of the elevator, and his heart leapt into his throat. The scared scientist was jabbing frantically at the button, tears slipping down his cheeks, and by the time Noah realised what was happening, the doors were already beginning to slide closed.
“Hold it!” He screamed, staggering to his feet frantically as he burst forward with a newfound shock of adrenaline. The scientist backed away from the buttons, bumping into the rail, his wide eyes flickering towards Noah. The doors continued to slide close. “Please! Please, hold it!”
He desperately threw himself at them, but it was too late. Noah pounded his fists desperately against them, a rush of anger and terror making his throat burn.
“Motherfucker!” Noah sobbed, banging so hard he was sure his hands had gone numb. “Motherfucker! Open the door!”
Instead, he was met with strong fingers twisting in his hair, and Noah only caught a glimpse of Cash’s face, before he slammed his head into the elevator door. He was out cold instantly.
tag list – @suspicious-whumping-egg @sunshiline-writes @rabidrabidme @whumpatize-me-captain @thegirlwholived1213 @reverie1234 @unforgiven235 @morning-star-whump @seaweed-is-cool @d-cs @whump-me-all-night-long @whump-me @gala1981 @pirefyrelight @whumpterful-beeeeee @miss-unicorn0907 @avidrambling @anoontjecanush @2in1whump @ha-ha-one @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @whatwhump @sowhumpful @whump321
#the facility#whump#whump writing#whump fic#whump series#whump scenario#whumpblr#whump community#prison whump#medical whump#breakout#whumper#whumpee#noah and fionn#noah and cash#writing#my writing#avvail whumps#i have no idea how many parts this will take#its planned but we'll see when its written#whenever that is
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also been compiling doodles of these two new idiots... both work at an unethical mad science facility. Ivar is a henchman and Opera is a test subject. OBVIOUSLY I HAVE MORE SCRIBBLES OF ONE THAN THE OTHER but i wanna stop sittin on em so *tosses at you*
twitter//patreon//pillowfort //ko-fi
#the facility#my characters#ivar vartaugh#opera blatt#esme coil#karl#other's ocs#doodles#casqua bronte
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Portal Drawtober, Day 1: Portal 1 or Portal 2?
If I must pick between the two, then Portal 2!
This is giving me the perfect excuse to do more digital art. Definitely won't be doing every day of this challenge (hosted by @chelltastic!) and won't be doing paintings like this, but really enjoyed doing this.
(See the Portal Drawtober 2023 prompt list here)
#portal 2#portal drawtober 2023#no characters to tag here it is just facility#the facility#I painted over a screenshot for this btw#just color picked from it and painted on top of it
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Alrighty, I forgot I had a tumblr so we’re doing a big old art dump. Another load is coming after this one. So we got the designs for sun, moon, bloodmoon and eclipse for The Facility (more details about that on my tiktok at Merry_Star) and then some art for a new ship I found that I really liked, Rular (solar x ruin) Disclaimer, this is an au, as it’s mentioned they like to be known as cousins in the show, so don’t slaughter me, alternate universe ok? Ok.
But yeah, another load of art coming after this one.
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#cursed#disturbing behavior#the facility#final destination#final destination 3#freddy vs jason#letterboxd#movie#movie review#movie reviews#movies#movie recommendation#movie recommendations#review#reviews#horror#horror movies
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THE ONE BENEATH
[Short Horror, Military, Sci-fi]
The military base doesn’t exist.
Not officially.
It’s a rusted out corpse of abandoned hardware, a veritable graveyard of fallen soldiers and crumbling structures. Hidden twelve miles deep in the jungles of South America, there’s no reason anybody should be here. None. So why did I find a woman half-dead on the ground?
It’s a question I want answered.
She’s sitting across from me. Her eyes are downcast, her blouse is torn and her copper cheeks are flecked with spots of red. I don’t know if the blood belongs to her or somebody else, but I figure by the end of this, I’ll have a pretty good idea.
“Tourist?” I ask.
She gives me a hard stare. It’s quiet. Unyielding. She’s not certain who I am, and judging by the look in her eyes, she’s running a series of probabilities. It’s the black suit that does it. Always. People see the suit, they see the briefcase, and their imagination spins into overdrive.
I try another question. “Did you come alone?”
She shakes her head. Her mouth is a thin line, defiant and uneasy. The legs of her chair squeal as she rocks back and forth, giving motion to her anxiety. She’s considering the possibility that this is her last day on earth. Her last hour.
If I’m being honest, it might be.
“How many were with you?”
“Lots,” she says quickly. “They're still around. They know where I am, know where we are right now and–”
“I doubt that.”
Her voice stumbles.
“If anybody was with you, then chances are they’re already dead. Jobs like this? They’re usually bloodbaths. Massacres. They’re not the sort of places you expect to find survivors, much less unarmed ones.”
She swallows. “Who are you?”
“A friend.”
“Some friend. I don’t know the first thing about you.”
“Funny. I was about to say the same thing.” I reach into my briefcase and pull out my clipboard, centering it on my lap. On it are questions. They’re the sort of questions whose answers are typically written in blood. “How about you and I get to know each other?”
“If you think I’m gonna just tell who I am–”
“I don’t care who you are. I care about what you're doing here, miles deep in the jungle, sitting in a military base that doesn’t exist.” I press my pen to the clipboard. “How about you fill me in?”
The woman’s eyes narrow. Her slender hands ball into tight fists. If I had to guess, she’s not used to feeling this vulnerable, this powerless. “And if I leave?” she says, standing up. “What then? Are you going to cuff me to a pipe?”
I smile. “Why bother?”
The corner of her mouth twitches.
“You’re not going to leave,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t dare.”
For a moment, my eyes dance with hers, and in their fire I see something– some buried ember of fear. It’s unmistakable. “You know better than I do what’s out there,” I say. “So go ahead. Walk out that door if you think you’re safer outside. I won’t stop you.”
I wait for her to move, but she hesitates. They always hesitate.
“Maybe you’re right," I say. "Maybe I’m not a friend, but I’m the closest thing you’ll find to one for miles, so if I were you, I’d quit worrying about me. I’d start worrying about what it is I’m doing here.”
“Meaning?”
I wave my hand toward the broken window. Outside are rusted humvees. A crumbling barracks. Outside is a road so overgrown that tiny trees are sprouting from cracks in the concrete, while clutches of moss do their best to hide old rifle rounds. “Places like this aren't left to rot without a good reason. Soldiers are trained to fight. They aren't trained to flee into the jungle, leaving their equipment and assets behind." I gesture broadly. "Look around. This base was evacuated in a hurry, and that begs the question– why? More importantly, why did I find you in the middle of it?”
Her eyes dart outside. Her pupils are dilated in a cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety. “If I tell you… then you’ve gotta tell me something first.”
“Tell you what?”
“Who you are,” she says, voice trembling. “I want to know what’s really going on here. The truth. I’ve been lied to enough today.”
Have you? I study her. The truth of my work isn’t something people want to hear about– not really. They might think they do. They might think they’re ready to open Pandora's Box, to see the dark underbelly of reality, but it’s rarely the case.
Still, the woman strikes me as stubborn. If pulling back the veil can get her talking, then maybe it’s worth the existential crisis. I slip a hand inside my jacket, pull out my badge and toss it to her. She catches it, just barely. “There you go,” I say. “Everything you need to know about me, right down to my height and birthday."
She appraises the badge. Her eyes move across the laminate once, twice, then snap back up to me, suspicious. “This says you work for an organization called The Facility. I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s the idea. We’re a shadow contractor. The less people know about us, the easier it is to do our job.”
“And what is that job?”
“Anomalies,” I tell her. “We investigate Events of supernatural origin. They’re typically caused by entities– things you’d recognize as monsters, or urban legends. My job is to hunt those things. Capture them.”
She shakes her head. "Why?”
“That’s a complicated question. The short answer is that it’s necessary. The long answer is that you’ll sleep better not knowing." I lean forward, flaring my jacket behind me, letting the woman get a glimpse of the pistol on my hip. "Fact is, I came here tonight to investigate an Event, but instead I found you. I’d like to know why that is.”
Her eyes drift to the window. She’s wearing the expression of a woman who was praying her nightmare was all in her head, that whatever she saw today was the product of acute psychosis, a little bit of neurological sabotage and nothing else. Now she’s considering that maybe there’s something more here. Maybe she’s not as crazy as she hoped she was.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She bites her lip. Her voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “Maria.”
“You look like you’re having a hard time processing things, Maria.”
“You don’t know what I saw…” she mutters. “You have no idea…”
“I hear that a lot.” I pull out a pack of smokes, slip one between my lips. I light it and the nicotine tastes sweeter than heroin. It ripples through my body like emotional morphine, and just like that, the next part gets a little easier. “Between you and me, my father was killed by an entity, Maria. I watched him die.”
Her eyes meet mine. They’re wide. This wasn’t the emotional curveball she was expecting, and that’s exactly what makes it effective. Always.
“Happened when I was seven," I tell her. "I saw the whole thing from under my bed, cowering. A creature had him in its grip. Some tall man with two faces. He lifted him up to the ceiling and turned to me, asked what my favorite nightmare was, and then he tore my father in two. Like paper mache.”
I blow out a plume of smoke and it hangs in the air between us. Then I take another long drag. The truth is, I hate this story. I hate it more than anything else in the entire world. It’s a memory I’ve gone my entire life trying to forget, but in moments like these, it’s the most valuable piece of history I own. Even now, it’s working its black magic. I watch Maria’s posture shift. Her shoulders fall, slumping forward in horrified disbelief. She’s doing the human thing and empathizing with me, sharing a piece of my pain, and that’s exactly what I need her to do.
“Is that how this so-called Facility found you?” she asks.
“It is.”
Her eyes are staring a hole into the concrete floor. She looks distant. Haunted. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
I ash my cigarette. “Don’t be. It’s ancient history. The point I’m trying to make is that when you’ve seen an entity kill somebody, it stays with you. You recognize the scars. And right now, I see those scars all over your face.”
She doesn’t speak. She looks out the window, out across the military ruins to a rusty steel wheel rising from the dirt. It's bolted to a hatch that leads underground. One she’s been stealing glances at for the better part of our conversation.
“That bunker,” I say. “I found you lying beside it, bleeding and barely conscious. Something happened down there, didn’t it?”
A moment passes. Her eyes are narrowed in focus, like she’s weighing her options. Calculating outcomes. Eventually, she takes a breath. Asks a question. “You said that you hunted entities… Well, what about demons?”
“What about them?”
“Do they exist?”
I crack a grin. “Depends who you ask. Are you saying that you saw one down there?”
“I’m not sure,” she says at length. “Maybe not a demon but… something like it.” She stops. Her teeth dig into her lip, and then she says something that shocks even me. “I think I saw the devil. Satan.”
“Satan?” I say, whistling. “Now that’d be something.”
“You think I’m nuts,” she mutters, shaking her head. “I knew you would… Everyone will…”
“I don’t think you’re nuts. Not yet." I take one last drag on my cigarette, burn it to the filter and flick it to the floor. "The truth is, The Facility’s been tracking strange activity in the area. A lot of it. Entities are being drawn to this base, being pulled in from nearby regions like moths to a flame, only to vanish without a trace. I'm talking about heavy hitters. Nightmare fuel. These aren’t the sort of entities that we can destroy, much less contain, so the fact that they’re dropping off the face of the Earth is starting to get concerning.” I thumb to the broken window. “This base? It’s the Bermuda Triangle for boogeymen. I’m here to find out why.”
She shrinks in her seat. “Jesus… Do you think it has something to do with what I saw?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t know until I get more details, and that means I need to know what you’re doing here.”
“Here?” she says, glancing at the bunker. “Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
"Not possible. We do this before nightfall. There’s no other way.”
What Maria doesn’t realize is that this entity likely already has her scent. Sooner or later, it’s going to return for her. When that happens, I need every advantage I can get– and that means understanding just what happened here.”
“Hang on,” she sputters. “What happens at nightfall?”
“Keep derailing my investigation, and you’ll find out.” I scratch her name onto the clipboard. “Now start talking. We’re losing daylight.”
She runs a frantic hand through her hair. “Christ. Alright,” she says, voice cracking. “Let me think for a second. It started a couple weeks ago, I think. A reader sent in a tip about this place–”
“Slow down. A reader?”
“Right, fuck. I'm a journalist. I work for an online paper, and we solicit tips for our stories. Usually scandals. Corruption. It's mostly political stuff… but a couple weeks back, a man sent in something bizarre.”
“That man have a name?”
“John.”
“Just John?”
Her voice breaks. “Yes.”
I write it down.
She continues. “John said he'd been hearing screaming, that his whole village had, coming from somewhere in the jungle nearby. Military was in the area. They were sending convoys through the village in the dead of night, with their headlights off to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Apparently they were all driving up an old road, one that hadn't been used in decades. John knew the road. He knew it led to an old military base… one that used to conduct illegal experiments."
I lean back. "What kind of experiments?"
"The human kind. Genetic stuff. DNA splicing, mutating– you name it."
“Seems weird John would know that.”
“He used to work there,” she explains. “A long time ago, during the Cold War.”
I frown. “The nearest village is twelve miles away. Nobody is hearing screaming at that distance."
“That’s just it. They didn’t hear screaming from the base, they heard it from the jungle. John said it sounded just like it used to when he worked there. Guttural. Animalistic. He could tell that the people screaming had been experimented on, and that they were being let loose in the jungle."
"Let loose?"
"Yeah. I guess they'd send out test subjects, then release other experiments, more advanced ones, to hunt them down.
"What for? To test their capabilities?"
“Partly,” she says darkly. “But mostly for food.”
I chew on the tip of my pen. "Cannibal humans, genetic testing, a massive military cover up– sounds like Pulitzer Prize material."
She folds her arms, gives me a scathing look. “Is that sarcasm?”
“Not at all. Give me John’s age.”
“Not sure,” she says. “Seventy, maybe? He was in good shape. Fit. But he looked rough.”
“Rough?”
“I just mean he looked like he’d been through the ringer. Had a hard life. His skin was leather, and he was missing half of his teeth. His hair was a tangled mess. I’m pretty sure I saw lice moving in his beard.” She pauses. “And his eyes…. His eyes were unnerving.”
“Describe them.”
“Well, they were pale– paler than the moon. And every so often they’d sort of pulse, almost bulge out of their sockets. I hate to say it, but he looked freaky.”
“And John brought you here, to this base?”
She nods.
“And where’s John now?”
“He’s…” Maria’s eyes drift to the bunker. “He’s dead. Down there.”
Could’ve guessed. I follow her gaze and the steel hatch is turning crimson in the setting sun. My stomach twists. What I don’t tell Maria is that entities are most active after nightfall. If I don’t solve this mystery soon, then the answer is likely going to come find us– and I’m not sure I like our chances of survival.
“That hatch,” I say. “I'm guessing that's how you and John entered the bunker.”
“Yes.”
“Describe the interior.”
Maria takes a second. She furrows her eyebrows, as though thinking back. “It was narrow,” she says slowly. “Like a tall cylinder. I remember standing at the top of the hatch and looking down into a dark pit that stretched forever. John got on the ladder and told me to follow. He said it’d be a bit of a descent, but once we were down there, he was certain we’d find the evidence we’d need to blow the conspiracy wide open.”
“What state was the bunker in?” I ask. “John implied operations had resumed, but did it appear that way?”
“No…” she says. “Frankly, the condition was awful. It looked like the bunker had been abandoned since the Cold War. Moss crept up the walls and the ladder rattled with every step we took. The place was a deathtrap. Every time I put my foot down, I half-expected the ladder to snap.”
Odd. One would think John would clue in after seeing the state of the bunker that it wasn’t fit for operation. Then again, John strikes me as a man not altogether there. He might have been mentally ill. Out of his mind. Based on Maria’s description of him– the pale eyes, chilling demeanor– I can’t help but wonder if John wasn’t so much an employee of the program as he was a test subject.
Maria continues. “About fifty feet down the ladder, we started to see catwalks. Dozens of them. They extended off the ladder in every direction, leading to various entrances along the interior.” She trails off, as if collecting her thoughts. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. Quiet. “The entrances were welded shut. All of them. It’s like they were trying to keep something trapped inside… like they didn’t want it getting out.”
“All of the entrances?” I ask.
“No,” she says, tugging nervously at her sleeve. “Not all of them. One was different. We found it at the bottom of the ladder, half-submerged in rainwater. The flooding only came up to our knees, so we were able to wade through easily enough but…” Her fingers dance across her jeans. They pick at the fabric.
“But what?”
“It was torn open,” she breathes. “The entrance, I mean. It was warped outward like something had clawed its way out of the bunker, pulled it apart like a tin can. I’m talking about inches of steel here. Enough to shrug off the shockwave of a nuclear warhead– I mean fuck, what could do that?”
For the first time, I feel the ghost of fear creep through me. It’s subtle. Insidious. If what she’s describing is true, then there are two, maybe three entities I’m aware of with that capability. All three are impossibly violent. Vicious. Official policy to avoid contact at all costs. If such avoidance isn’t possible, then policy dictates the elimination of all witnesses to ensure the preservation of social order.
I look to Maria. She’s covered in bruises, blood and judging by the way she’s cradling her arm, probably has at least one fracture. She’s already suffered a nightmare. I wonder if I’ll have the courage to put her down if the time comes.
“The door,” I say, hoping she doesn’t hear my voice crack. “John used to work there. He must have had thoughts on the damage.”
She snorts. “He said it was explosive charges. He said the military probably breached the door to get inside when they restarted their science project, but I knew that couldn’t be true. First of all, the door was warped outward– not inward. More than that, there wasn’t a shred of explosive damage in the area.”
“I’m assuming these were observations you shared.”
“Of course. John didn’t care though, just changed the subject– asked me if I had any skeletons in my closet. Asked me if I’d ever hurt people, or considered it and–”
“What?”
“Yeah, I know,” she says, laughing in disbelief. “Talk about a left turn into what the fuck. I shrugged it off. I mean, I knew John had demons in his past– maybe he was looking for a little absolution from me. It’s not like he sounded threatening. He almost asked the questions casually, like he was hoping we could start a conversation, forgive each other for our sins, sorta thing. He didn’t press the subject. Maybe if he had, though, things would’ve been different.”
She sighs. Her eyes shift to the bunker, hazy with memories. “He helped me squeeze through the damaged doorway, and we continued on. All the passages were flooded down there, utterly dark. We sloshed through countless corridors, our headlamps reflecting off the black water and making shadows against the walls. It creeped me out. It felt like we weren’t alone down there because I’d keep seeing movement out of the corner of my eye.”
Movement. I wonder if she really was just seeing things, or if there had been something down there, stalking them even then. “Anything stand out as interesting in those corridors?”
“In some sense, all of it was interesting,” she says. “The whole place was like a buried time capsule. In the rooms we passed I saw ancient magazines and peeling posters. I saw little relics from the 70s or earlier, some floating in the water, others sitting on dusty tables and countertops– even keepsakes, like lockets, wedding rings. Even the desks were full of soggy documents. Classified ones. Seemed strange they’d just leave all that behind.”
She takes a deep breath. “We passed through a series of maze-like corridors, then climbed a ladder that finally got us out of that floodwater. It felt nice to be on dry ground again, but the new chamber…” A shiver runs through her. “It was narrow to the point of being claustrophobic, and all along its walls were streaks of dark paint. The air felt musty. Rancid. But it wasn’t until we turned the corner that–” She stops suddenly, her expression paling.
“Maria,” I press. “What happened when you turned the corner?”
A moment passes. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. “Something crunched under my foot,” she says. “Bones. The passage was full of them. Skeletons were piled a foot high. It looked… It looked like they’d died scrambling over each other, like they were trying to reach the ladder and escape something. That’s when I realized the streaks along the walls weren’t paint. They were blood. Old and brown.”
My heart thrums. Could this be evidence of John’s so-called experiments? “Did the bones appear to be mutated at all?”
Maria nods, slowly. “Yes. Some more than others. One skull could’ve belonged to a man, but its jaw was elongated, like a horse’s. A single, twisted horn curved out of its forehead. Another was… another was flat. Square. It looked like somebody had rolled a person’s head under a tractor, but it had dozens of eye sockets. Multiple mouths.”
She brings a hand to her mouth. Gags. She looks like she might be sick, and I can’t blame her. I’m beginning to feel a little light-headed myself, though for another reason. Outside, we’re losing light. Night is fast approaching, and I’m worried it might be bringing something that I’m not yet ready to deal with. Something violent. Deadly.
“What was John’s reaction to the bones?” I ask, swallowing my dread.
“His reaction?” she mutters. “Jesus… Well, he picked one up– another skull. This one looked like it could’ve belonged to a woman, maybe, but where the mouth should have been was something else entirely. Mandibles. Like a wasp, or an ant. Whatever it was, it got John excited. His eyes did that creepy thing where they bulged from his sockets, and down there in the dark, I swear they even glowed. He held the skull up, just inches from my face and asked me how it made me feel. I could hardly focus on his words. His breath smelled like rot. Decay. He pressed me against the wall, but I shoved him off. He came back at me, and I took a swing at him– caught him across the jaw because I wasn't taking any chances down there. That dazed him. He stumbled, spat out some blood.”
An altercation. A new, unexpected wrinkle to her story that isn’t giving me any solutions to save our lives. Still, John is a curious individual. He was right about the experiments. If he’s dead, then I wonder what role he played in all of this… “How did John react to you hitting him?”
“He got weird,” she says, shaking her head. “Like fucking bizarre. He started mumbling nonsense, then shouting that I was being cruel, evil, like those monsters all over the ground. He cried. He whimpered that he was hurt, and that he brought me here as a favor, but now I was betraying him.” Maria pauses, as if she’s trying to make sense of her own story. “It was so strange. The way he was shouting didn’t sound angry, but almost performative. He kept calling me a monster like he was trying to get somebody’s attention.”
“And did he?”
Her mouth falls open as if to say no before a sudden realization flickers across her eyes. “Yes…” she breathes. “Oh God, I didn’t notice at the time but yes. Right after the shouting, we heard a clanging sound. It echoed through the passage. Whatever it was, it sounded distant. Far off, like it was coming from the entrance to the bunker, from that long ladder.”
“How did you react?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I mean, hell, I don’t think I believed it was really happening. We were miles deep in a jungle in a military base that by all accounts didn’t exist. Who the hell could be coming down the ladder?”
“And John’s reaction?”
“He grabbed my hand. Swore. He said the military must’ve figured out we were there, that they were coming to capture us, or kill us, or turn us into one of their newest abominations– who the fuck knows. He told me he knew a place where we could hide. We fled down passages that twisted and turned like a labyrinth. I followed his lead. At that point I had no idea where we were, no idea how to find my way back. He was my lifeline. My only shot. But the entire time we ran… I heard something rumbling in the dark.”
“Something human?”
“Do humans howl?”
Goosebumps trace my skin. No. They certainly don’t. “Maria,” I say, “this is important. What did the howl sound like– a wolf, or maybe a hyena?” This could be my chance to identify this thing. To figure out what it is we’re up against, and save our lives.
But she shakes her head. She shakes her head and I hate her for it. “No,” she tells me.
“It didn’t sound like anything alive. It sounded artificial, electronic. It howled like a microphone screams with feedback, all high-pitched and ear-splitting.”
My grip tightens, cracking the plastic shell of my pen. Maria’s description doesn’t sound like any entity I’m familiar with, and that’s making me frustrated and terrified. “This place John mentioned,” I say, swallowing. “The place he said you’d be safe– where was that?”
The color in her face washes away. “A wide room, shaped like a pentagon. All along the wall were slots. Gun turrets. They were abandoned, rusted out like everything else there but it was the words written all across the walls that made my blood go cold…” Her voice trails off. She tries to finish her thought, but it comes out as a sob. She drops her face into her hands and the tears come out like a torrent, messy and loud. I give her a moment to let it out, to collect herself, but the truth is I’m not sure it’s a moment we can afford.
Outside, the sun is missing. It’s gone. The last scraps of daylight are making crooked shadows out of the treeline, spilling them across the base like decrepit fingers, reaching toward us like hungry phantoms.
My eyes find my clipboard. I scan it. I review the details I’ve recorded in search of some clue, some revelation that might get us out of this alive, but my writing is a mess. It’s uneven. It occurs to me that my hand has been shaking, that even now my palm is slick with sweat.
“I’m sorry,” Maria sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “I’m sorry…”
“It’s okay.”
It isn’t.
“You said there were words on the wall. What did they say?”
“Sector 5…” she says, taking a shuddering breath. “Sector 5: Feeding Trough. And the room… Oh god, there were corpses everywhere. They were scorched. Burned. They were half-devoured, rotting away, with maggots pouring out of their skin. The scent was… Nothing in the world smelled more terrible, more revolting.”
“Corpses,” I say, heart pounding. “Like the ones you saw before? Genetic experiments?”
“You said something earlier. Something about missing monsters… Disappearing entities…”
I lean forward. "What about it?"
Her eyes get wide. The contours of her face twist with the onset of dawning horror. “I think I found them,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “I think I found all of them down there.”
My jaw clenches. It’s my turn to go pale with shock. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces begin to connect in my mind. They’re building a picture that I’m not sure I want to see, but it’s a picture that’s becoming difficult to deny. “Why?” I press. “What makes you so sure they weren’t just test subjects like the others?”
“These felt different,” Maria says quickly. “Horrible in a way that even the others couldn’t compare to. It’s like when you look at a manikin, or a doll… What’s the phrase?”
“Uncanny valley,” I offer.
“That’s it,” she says. “That’s what I felt looking at these things, the uncanny valley. It was like they didn’t have a soul– like they never had a soul. Some looked human. Nearly. But they were too tall, or their limbs were too long, or they had too many teeth in all the wrong places. But what scared me most of all wasn’t the bodies, it was the thought that something had killed those things. Something had torn literal nightmares to pieces, and there was a good chance it was coming to do the same thing to me and John.
“John,” I say, still trying to parse his significance in her ordeal. “That many bodies couldn’t have appeared overnight. They’d been there for a long time. That means he probably knew about them, didn’t he?”
She nods, gasping. “He knew. He fucking knew. He shoved me onto that pile of corpses, that festering and decaying pit of monsters and told me as much. He started shouting. Call me a monster all over again. Evil, he said. Twisted. He kept pointing at me like all of this was my fault, and he hadn’t both led us to our deaths.”
Her voice becomes a stuttering mess. “A-all the while I heard that thing in the dark. Approaching. I felt terrified, hopeless and numb. I kept asking John why me? Why go through all this trouble just to kill me? And he told me that he didn’t have a choice. He knelt next to me, put a hand on my cheek and whispered that his child needed to feed. It was getting hungry. Desperate. He almost looked fucking r-remorseful if you can believe it, and he told me that he was really sorry, and that he hated to do this but… He stepped away from me. Stood against the wall of the chamber. Watched. Waited.”
For a second, I’m afraid Maria is going to break into fresh sobs, but she pushes through.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she continues, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I didn’t have anywhere to run, anywhere to hide, so I just lay there in that heap of monsters. I gave up. The whole time, those footsteps got closer and closer. The nearer they came, the slower they got. It was like it knew I was trapped. Like it’d done this before, and knew there wasn’t a rush…” She looks up at me. “Do you think… John did that to other people too?”
“It’s certainly possible. Did you get a good look at the creature?”
She shudders. “Yes. I had my headlamp trained on the passage the whole time, and when it appeared around the corner, I almost missed it. I heard it, but I could barely see it. It was a tall, flickering shadow. It pulsed. Vibrated. The way it moved was jerky, haphazard, almost like it had one foot in our reality, like it was glitching with every step it took.”
“Glitching…” I mutter. Why does that sound familiar?
“That’s right,” she says. “And that wasn’t even the strangest thing about it.” She gets small in her chair. “It had these eyes. Amber ones. Bright and gleaming, like twin cinders smoldering in empty space. It felt like they were piercing me, like its eyes were digging through my skin and looking into my mind. Or my soul. It was like that thing was taking bites out of my memories, tasting them before spitting back out…”
“How did it feel? Painful?”
“No, she says. “It felt cold. Like a blizzard in my head, like all my thoughts had frozen to a crawl. Maybe that’s why I calmed down. I don’t know… I remember sitting there, totally numb as the Shadow phased through the metal bars of the gate. It almost looked human. It had two arms, two legs and a head, but its body was made of black static. Like television interference.”
Television interference… Where have I heard that description before? I rack my mind for a match, some kind of urban legend or ancient lore that matches what she’s saying, but nothing jumps out. I flip through the pages of my clipboard, stopping on one labeled ABERRATE EVENTS. It’s The Facility’s own Most Wanted List. My eyes fly through the cases listed, but there isn’t anything close to what she’s describing.
An idea strikes me.
“Did the Shadow hurt you at all?”
She looks down at her arm. There’s a large gash there, framed by clots of dried blood. “No… I don’t think so,” she says hesitantly. “I got these injuries when I was trying to escape.”
No, of course it didn’t. It had other food available already. “And what happened after it pierced you with its eyes?” I ask.
“It walked past me,” she says. “It walked through that mulch of corpses and headed straight for John. It started speaking along the way. At least, I think it did.”
“What do you mean by speaking?”
“Do you remember how I said it was howling before?”
“I do.”
“Well, this time it was hissing– like a livewire, or static electricity. Whatever it was communicating, John looked panicked. He was crying. Pleading with it. He kept saying that he’d done his best, but there was nothing else out there, so the Shadow would have to make due with me. But the Shadow didn’t seem to care. It grabbed John by his long hair, lifted him up to the ceiling and its cinderlight eyes started gleaming an angry orange.”
My heartbeat races. My pen flies across the clipboard, desperately trying to avoid missing a single detail.
Maria keeps talking. She keeps giving me more of what I need. “John kicked and screamed,” she says. “He begged me to help him, told me that if I didn’t I was every bit the monster he’d said I was and I’d be next… But before he could finish, the Shadow’s eyes flashed and leaked fire. John started shrieking, moaning as his face melted into his skull.”
Maria’s face twists with revulsion. Disgust. She looks away, back to the bunker. I wonder if she’s hearing what I am– that dim rumble of something moving underground, that slow march of an approaching nightmare. Our clock is ticking. It’s not something I can tell her though, because as soon as she starts panicking, I lose the chance to connect the dots I need.
“Maria,” I say, pulling her attention back. “Continue. It’s critical I get these details.”
“Sorry… It’s not a memory I like thinking of but… The Shadow held John there, his legs twitching weakly, and then it grabbed his head and tore it off his neck.” She brings a hand to her mouth, starts nervously biting her nails. “Then it lifted John’s skull to its amber eyes. It opened its mouth and screamed fire. The heat I felt was like an open furnace, like Hell itself. Tendrils of darkness emerged from the Shadow, clutching at John’s scorched skull and cracking it open like an egg. His brain spilled out. The Shadow caught it in those tendrils, and brought it into itself. His brain. Like it was fucking assimilating it… Or eating it. ” She looks up at me, and there’s the same angry defiance I saw when we met. “Now do you get it?” she asks. “Now do you see what I mean about this thing being the devil? What else could do something like that?”
A good question. I can think of one entity. Only one. If my guess is correct, then Maria and I get to live to see tomorrow’s sunrise. If it’s wrong, then I need to put a bullet in both our heads before that thing finds us.
All of it hinges on my next question.
“It killed John, then what? What did the Shadow do?”
“It turned back to me,” she says. “It glared at me with those blazing eyes, and I thought I was next. I knew I was. But then I felt another blizzard sweep across my mind, and that was it– I blacked out.”
“Hang on…” I mutter. “What do you mean you blacked out? I found you lying outside of the bunker. How did you escape?”
She shakes her head, frantic. “I don’t have a clue. I blacked out, then the next thing I remember was waking up outside the bunker, with you pouring water on my face and telling me we needed to talk. That’s it.”
She shoots up from her chair. “Christ! We need to leave.”
I blink. “Why?”
“The police. I’ve gotta tell them about John and what he was doing. I’ve gotta tell them about this base. Maybe John brought others here. More victims. Maybe some of them are still alive down there and need help. We need search parties and–”
“Don’t bother,” I say.
She looks at me, stunned.
“The police won’t have any record of John. Tell them where you were, what you saw in that bunker, and they’ll probably kill you.” I reach into my pocket, pull out my lighter and run a thumb down the sparkwheel. It flickers to life. “Fact is, John doesn’t exist. Neither does this base.”
I bring the lighter to the edge of my clipboard. The flame catches a page.
“What the hell are you doing?” Maria exclaims.
“Saving your life,” I say, tossing the clipboard to the floor. It pops and cracks as the fire eats the woman’s story, one word at a time.
“What the fuck? You said you believed me!”
“I still do,” I tell her. “That’s the problem. An hour ago, I had no idea what was going on here, but the more you spoke, the more it started making sense. I realized that you and John were more right than wrong. That there really is a conspiracy here. A cover-up.”
“Then the people deserve to know!”
“They do,” I confess. “And they will, eventually– but not from you, and not from my report. Neither is an option.”
She shakes her head, incredulous. “Then how?”
I walk to the window, rest my hands against the edge. I take a breath. It’s humid, heavy with South American heat. “I’ll figure something out. I always do.”
There’s a heartbeat of silence. Then, she asks the obvious question. “It’s your employer, isn’t it? This whole thing has something to do with The Facility.”
“Yes,” I tell her. “I think it does.”
She appears at my side. The two of us stare out across the dark of the base, out at the steel hatch rising from the dirt, where a devil made flesh is inching ever closer. “I thought you said your job was hunting monsters,” she says at length, “not creating them.”
“My job is a lot of things. More than anything else, it’s complicated. The Facility is… Well, it’s not what I’d call a good organization. Or even a moral one.”
“Then what is it?”
I consider the question. “A pragmatic answer to an otherwise ugly question.��
She looks at me expectantly.
“The question of salvation,” I explain. “The question of how do you rescue humanity from a nightmare so twisted that it defies all language? All concept of imagination? There’s something coming for us, Maria, something dark and unfathomable, and these entities– these monsters might be our only chance at fighting back.”
She’s quiet. Her expression is difficult to read.
“Decades ago, The Facility was a very different organization,” I tell her. “In those days, they thought the approaching nightmare was right around the corner, that we had weeks or months until it showed up on our doorstep. They didn’t know. Out of fear, they greenlit any and every possible solution. Or at least, that’s what the rumors say.”
“Rumors?”
I nod, darkly. “There’s no real records of The Facility’s activities during the Cold War. Most documents were destroyed. The few that remain are heavily redacted. I wasn’t around then, obviously, but I picked up bits and pieces from old timers I’ve worked with. They mentioned black projects. Hidden programs. One project was particularly infamous, so much so that even now, half a century later, The Facility hasn’t entirely snuffed out its legend.”
“What project?”
“Project Judas,” I say. “If you believe the rumors, it was headed by a brilliant biochemist named Screech. Jonathan Screech. The aim of the program was to create the ultimate weapon, a monster that could assimilate targets into its being, absorbing their capabilities. Such a function would provide it with a near limitless power ceiling. The problem was–”
Something hits my ears. Maria’s hand finds my arm, squeezing it painfully.
“Do you hear that?” she hisses.
Steel rattles in the distance. There’s a low groan of warping metal, like the rungs of a ladder slumping beneath the weight of something titanic. There’s something beneath us. It’s inside of that bunker, climbing that old ladder, and it’s making its way to the surface.
“We’ve gotta run!” Maria tugs at my arm, but I keep my feet planted where they are. My eyes narrow. I stare at the now trembling steel wheel, lit up beneath the light of the jungle moon.
Maria stumbles backward. A smile finds its way onto my face. In the distance, across the ruins of the base, the bunker’s hatch is thrown open. A dark shape emerges. It buzzes like television static, framed in shafts of moonlight. Its twin eyes glow like cinders. The shadow lurches, looking around, scanning the base and emitting a low electric hum.
“That’s it…” Maria whimpers. “Oh God… that’s it…”
The creature sees us. It sees me. It takes a shambling step forward, and dust and dirt flies into the air beneath its weight. Its eyes smolder, growing and growing until they become a blaze of fire. Maria is on the ground. She’s hiding beneath the window sill, reefing on the fabric of my pants and pleading with me to run, but I hardly notice she’s there.
This shadow– this monster, is why I’ve come here tonight.
Now, we finish things.
A wave of arctic air passes through my mind. It’s just as she described. My heart slams as I feel this Shadow rifle through my thoughts, chewing on my memories. I close my eyes. I breathe deep, inviting it in. Go ahead. Have your fill.
And then with one final shiver, the cold in my skull fades. That Shadow retreats, pulls back from my mind and when I open my eyes, I see it gazing back at me. The fire in its eyes dims to that cinderglow. It tilts its head skyward. Six black wings burst from its back in a shower of static.
“What’s happening?” Maria asks frantically, still on the ground beneath the window. “How are you going to kill it?”
“I’m not,” I tell her.
The Shadow belts out one last distorted howl before launching itself into the air like a streak of night. Three flaps of its wings, and it’s gone. Vanished into the sky, lost amongst the clouds.
Maria rises to her feet. Her eyes are wide. She’s shaking, her entire body is shaking with a tidal wave of horror. “Oh no…” she mutters, gazing at the sky. “It’s gone… So many are going to die…”
“Yes,” I tell her. “I hope so.”
She turns to me then, angry. Stunned. “You told me your job was stopping those things! Hunting them! What’s the deal, asshole? Why’d you just let it fly off?”
“Because I never finished my story.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”
“Project Judas had a directive,” I explain. “A very specific one. Its purpose was to assimilate hostile entities, to annihilate monsters and boogeymen, and ensure the survival of our species. Simply put, it was never made to hurt humans. After everything you’ve told me, I’m not convinced it can.”
She crosses her arms, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Were you even listening to what I said? I found a fucking graveyard down there. It burned John’s skull to a crisp, cracked it open, and ate his brains. I don’t care what it was designed for– I watched it kill a human right in front of me.”
“I’m not certain you did.” I lift up my briefcase, paying my now ashen clipboard one final, farewell glance. “From everything you described, I question whether John was a man at all by the time he took you down to that bunker. If he really was Johnathan Screech, and I think the evidence points to yes, then it’s said he conducted more than a few experiments on himself along the way. The glowing eyes? I’ve never met a human with a set of those.”
“But–”
“Fact is, John brought you here to kill you. John told you that he needed to feed you to his child, that he didn’t have a choice…” My thoughts turn to all the strange disappearances that lead me here. The missing entities. The absentee urban legends. “He was feeding Judas a steady supply of horrors, just enough to keep it from entering hibernation– right up until the moment he ran out. That’s why he pulled you down there. He thought you’d be an easy mark, that maybe with a little creative twisting of the narrative, he could convince Judas that you were close enough to food. Remember how he kept calling you a monster? Unfortunately for John, he misunderstood his own creation. Project Judas wasn’t designed to harm human beings. It went against its core directive. So in that moment, when John offered you as a sacrifice, a flip switched in Judas that made it realize John had crossed the threshold and become a monster himself.”
She’s quiet as we walk out the door. “You think he really was that Johnathan Screech guy?”
I shrug. “Maybe. I doubt there are dental records to double check, but based on what you’ve said tonight, it wouldn’t surprise me if Screech couldn’t let his project die. A creature like Judas… The Facility probably didn’t have a means of terminating it, so they buried it instead. Sealed it behind blast doors a kilometer beneath the earth. Then they erased all records of this base ever existing.” My SUV is gleaming black, impossible to miss against the ruinous backdrop of ancient humvees. I crack the passenger door. “Need a ride?”
She smiles. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile all night, and I can’t help but smile back. “Thank you,” she says. “For not killing me.”
“Don’t mention it.”
She clambers into the seat, and just as I’m about to close the door, she stops me. “Wait,” she says quickly. “I forgot earlier, but John mentioned another entrance. One used for freight… That’s probably how he got back into the bunker after they sealed it up. He seemed to know everything about that place.”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I figure he must have.”
I close the door and circle to the driver's side.
“So what do we do now,” she asks as I hop in. “About that thing, Project Judas?”
"Nothing," I say, plugging the key into the ignition and giving it a twist. The engine rumbles to life. “As far as I’m concerned, that creature isn’t a monster. And that means it’s not my problem.”
The vehicle rattles as we pull out of the base and onto the jungle road. Maria twists in her seat. She looks back through the rear window as her worst memory falls further and further behind us. “If it isn’t a monster, then what it is it?” she asks.
Words drift around my head. Definitions. I’m trying to figure out how to explain what it is that she and I saw, what it is that more people will see in the coming weeks. I’m trying to think of a way to tell Maria that whatever that thing was, she doesn’t need to be afraid of it. None of us do.
I open my mouth to reply, but I’m interrupted by a microphone howl. It’s distant. Far away. I crane my head and look up through the scatter of vines passing above us. And then I see it. A dark speck on the horizon. It’s little more than a dot against the moonstreaked clouds, but I know that if it were closer, I’d see a creature with six wings. I’d see a shadow with cinderlight eyes. A body of black static.
I’d see a guardian angel– one with plenty of work to do.
#writeblr#creative writing#original writing#writers of tumblr#creepypasta#jgmartin#horror#writing#writeblr community#writers#science fiction#sci fi#scary shit#scary#scifi#monster#short horror#short fiction#nosleep author#the facility#the one beneath#dark#dark aesthetic#terrifying
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thought about my ocs again (going through the five stages of grief)
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I'm trying to think of a title for an AU where Matt Murdock adopts Laura Kinney after Fisk hires her to assassinate Daredevil.
That's pretty much the gist of it. No fancy narrative. Just Matt trying to be a dad to an under-aged killing machine with the evil science people looking for a way to get her back. Also maybe throw in Peter Parker for good measure.
#marvel#marvel au#matt murdock#daredevil#laura kinney#x23#x 23#xmen#the facility#wilson fisk#kingpin#peter parker#spider man#spiderman
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Been working on something new lately
See more and support my work at
patreon.com/hasanistudios
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A toddler-aged Fusako being brought into the Facility for study after her timeline collapses and her approaching any of the monstrous members and going 'Puppy!!!!'
Bonus points if she keeps getting into places she shouldn't because of whatever ability she has.
Just food for thought.
#the facility#whiskey would just MELT#sliver would climb the closest tall object to get away from the small Child
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Welcome to the White Room...
You'll find your voice has been taken, as well as your office outfit. Those things are being lost. They do not fit you. You will see that your chosen role was always as a piece of meat serving the interests of the Facility. Many wonderful assistants will show you how to become one of them...
Yes your ears keep ringing, but their health will be pristine. And the light strobes and blinds you. And a cocktail flows through your veins to make you more easily adapted. Our staff was light and we need this to be quick... But don't worry, discomfort will be quickly forgotten...
Would you believe that somewhere out there is fellow inductees taken off the streets? How large is the White Room, and what is inside the blankness? Who can say....
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‘the facility’ — the breakout 2/?
previous · masterlist
content warnings: prison whump, whumpee turned whumper, sadistic whumper, mass prison breakout, captivity, imprisonment, torture, violence, beatings
Noah’s head felt as though it had been rammed through a wall when he finally came to. It took him a long, aching few seconds to realise that was pretty much what had happened - the elevator doors.
His hazy vision could barely make out where he was, if he was the right way up or not, but he soon began to wriggle his limbs and realised he was lay on his side, head pressed uncomfortably into the cold floor.
He bit back a small moan of pain - his arms were twisted behind his back, knotted together with an uncomfortable, scratchy rope. The fear was stabbing numbly at his chest, the situation dawning on him.
The breakout. Cash – shit, Cash.
Noah’s breath hitched, feeling automatic tears start to relentlessly sting his eyes. He could recognise one of these rooms, one of torture. It wasn’t the one they had experimented on Cash in, being much larger and decorated with so many more horrifying tools.
The scientist felt dizzy looking at them, shifting. Aches spiralled through his muscles, the pins and needles kicking in once he finally became aware. As he did, something caught his eye.
There was someone else against the adjacent wall, an Apoid. The helmeted head was dipped down low, arms equally twisted behind his back, but Noah could just catch a small glimpse of a short link of chain. The visor on the helmet was cracked, and their chest was rising and falling slowly.
Noah’s heart sank. The Apoid was still alive, and better yet, he prayed it was who he thought it was.
“Fionn?” He croaked, his throat dry from the last moments he’d spent screaming. His heart was hammering in his chest. “Fionn, wake up. Fionn.”
“He’s not gonna hear you.”
Noah felt his body seize in a vice grip, the voice from behind him making all of his blood go cold. He didn’t even have time to crane around until someone was stepping over his body, and his wide eyes flickered up to meet Cash’s face.
He was smirking. But those eyes; he wasn’t amused at all.
“Hello, doc,” he spoke calmly, crouching down closer towards him. Noah winced, his chest rising and falling with his quickly labouring breaths. “Glad someone didn’t pump you with any lead. Been looking forward to this since the alarm went off.”
Noah shrank further into the floor.
He remembered what that prisoner had said, and it frightened him how Cash had been gunning just for him the whole time the chaos had erupted. To fulfil the promise he’d made. His throat ached in reminder of that moment.
“It’s not as fun when the boot’s on the other foot, huh?” Cash sneered, tilting his head as his unrelenting gaze didn’t falter for a moment. Noah forced himself to look away, tucking his wobbling bottom lip under.
“Cash, please, I—” His words dried up, squeezing his eyes shut. He was so terrified. “I didn’t take any pleasure in it. I didn’t—”
“—want to?” Cash interrupted. “You signed up for this place.”
“I had to,” he shakily whispered. “It’s my sister. There was no way I could afford her treatment if I didn’t—”
“Noah,” Cash groaned, the irritation evident on his face, now hardened from his fear induced babbling. Fingers twisted in his hair, pressing his temple into the concrete floor. Noah bit back a whine of pain. “I don’t want a justification. In fact, I don’t care. But I am gonna make you pay. There’s nothing you can say that will change that.”
His stomach twisted. He was shocked he hadn’t thrown up yet, with the stress of the breakout and all the horrfic things he’d seen, and now this horrific predicament. His white jacket was still stained with patches of blood, a cruel reminder that none of it had mattered in the end.
“Why not run?” The scientist whispered shakily. “This is your chance to escape this place. There’ll never be another opportunity.”
Cash raised a brow, looking disinterestedly at the muck on Noah’s jacket. “Doc, getting out of this place ain’t easy. They’ll have the army, thousands of Apoids, anything swarming the outside of this place. Those lucky enough to get out won’t last two minutes up there. But here?”
Cash grinned, the sight wolfish. The secretary figured he might sink those sharp teeth into his neck for good measure. “They’ll eventually get control of the place. They’ll round up the prisoners and take us alive once we cooperate. After all, they won’t gun us all down as long as we remain in the Facility.”
Cash’s fingers twisted harder into his hair, and Noah’s body went rigid, hissing through his teeth.
“I’ve been in this place longer than you, doc. I know how they work,” he whispered sharply, the puff of air on the shell of his ear making him shudder. “So, why not take this time to do something I’ve wanted to do since the moment I laid eyes on you?”
He roughly released him, and Noah’s throat bobbed as he swallowed uneasily. Cash was right - an escape would only end in death. Clearly, after the fiasco when he’d broken out of his cuffs, the Facility prioritised taking the prisoners alive unless it was absolutely necessary to kill them. They’d send in reinforcements, round them up, and get the place back under control.
It meant that Noah was going to have to wait for the reinforcements to show up. Who knew how long that could take? Depending on how far the breakout had stretched, which levels were unaffected and under control, he was in the dark.
In the dark, and trapped with his prisoner, who had every desire to make him wish for a merciful death.
Noah hadn’t even realised he’d started crying until Cash scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. Hot tears streamed down his cheeks, biting back a small whimper.
“You’re a doll, doc,” he cooed, his eyes gleaming. “I’m going to take my time with you. Though, I was kind enough to provide you with some company, at least.”
Noah’s teary eyes darted over to Fionn.
He wondered how Cash even knew that was him, but he didn’t care.
Fionn wasn’t safe, neither of them were, but at least he knew he wasn’t dead. The last thing he had been so consumed about was if he’d cost the Apoid his job; now he wished that was all he had to worry about. Noah bit back the little sniffle, the dizzy headache throbbing uncomfortably through his skull, only intensified by the pounding of his heart.
Level Nine was terrifying enough as it was; locked in a room with one of their prisoners, completely at their mercy? Noah didn’t think anything worse could have happened. Level Nine prisoner’s were some of the most ruthless war criminals, prisoners of war, agents and spies, too dangerous to be kept anywhere but a highly sophisticated underground prison. He had recieved Cash’s file, but it didn’t tell him anything about the things he’d done to get himself locked up in here. Only blood types, medication - things that he would have to know as his scientist.
Noah didn’t want to think about all the horrific stuff Cash had done.
The fact that he probably knew how to kill Noah in more ways than he could ever imagine.
The fact that he would know how to hurt him until he wanted death.
Horror twisted his core - there was no point begging right now. For Cash, this was how it was supposed to be. The Facility would be swarming on the surface - the moment someone managed to get out, they wouldn’t be there two minutes before they were found and gunned down.
And, for some reason, Noah got the impression that mindless slaughter and violence would become pretty boring for someone as calculated as Cash. The breakout was an exuse for anarchy and escape; for Noah’s prisoner, it was an opportunity for payback.
“If you want to punish someone, punish the Higher Ups,” Noah choked out, cringing when Cash’s eyes remained staring languidly at Fionn’s unconscious form. “The people who run the place. They’re the ones that pass the orders. Please.”
Cash tilted his head, cold eyes flickering up to the ceiling, as if in thought. “That’s the thing, doc. They’re smart enough to know that. It’s always why they’re smart enough not to stick around when they don’t have to.”
His boots thumped across the ground, stopping in front of Noah’s damp face again. Over his prison clothes, Cash was wearing one of the Apoid’s jackets, unzipped. He’d probably taken it from someone he’d killed, since Fionn was in full uniform apart from his weapons. The prisoner had stripped them.
“But we’ve both seen for ourselves that people like you are expendable,” he mocks cruelly, reminding Noah of those words Fionn had shouted with such conviction. Something stung at his chest. “That’s why.”
He admired the crestfallen expression that fell upon Noah’s pitiful face for a few moments, before he pretended to glance at the non-existent watch on his wrist. He hummed, lip quirking into a malicious smirk.
“Alright, enough chit chat, doc,” he murmured. “I was hoping your little Apoid would wake up, but we’re on a time crunch here. So, let’s get started.”
Noah flinched violently when his hand fisted into his shirt, hoisting him onto his feet like he weighed nothing. The prisoner even made a quiet comment about how little he would weigh, even soaking wet, but Noah couldn’t hear anything over the relentless pounding in his skull, and the blood rushing through his head.
The prisoner guided him, or more like dragged him, close to the wall, where he took in the horrible sight of shackles attached to a chain in the ceiling. His knees were refusing to even hold his own weight, a colourless complexion fixed itself to his face.
“Coveniently, these rooms were made for torture,” Cash smoothly spoke, taking a pocket knife to Noah’s restrained wrists and cutting through them easily. Before he could even consider attempting to wrench away from him, the prisoner was slapping the cold metal cuffs around them, stretching his arms uncomfortably above his head. There was a small pinch in his shoulder blade from the position, and he had to bite back a pained whimper.
“The most challenging thing was deciding what to do with you first, though. Especially with all of these options,” he hummed absentmindly, running his fingers along the wall, lined with various tools that Noah didn’t dare crane his head around to see. He heard the clank of metal, and Cash circled back round in front of him to see he was cradling a lead pipe. “I don’t want to put you out of commission too early. Look at you - you’re so frail, doc.”
Noah’s heart was racing. With each passing second of being in this position, he was imagining all of the places that the lead pipe would crack against, and he could barely breathe from the horrifying concept. Was this how it felt for them? Waiting for the inevitable torture?
“Cash,” he breathed out shakily, biting back a sob. “Cash, please.”
“Not gonna work on me,” the prisoner sighed, unbothered. “I don’t have a soft spot for those that grovell. Sorry.”
Noah had barely even been able to brace for the first swing. Cash had moved so fast after standing so casually, that he only registered the movement after the crack of impact landed on his side, and his throat closed up in agony. His whole body seized up, a wretched, choked sound escaping his lips.
The chains rattled from the very impact, his eyes wide and watery. Cash’s eyes gleamed with something predatory, like he could sense he was going to enjoy this. The numbness came next, followed by the tidal wave of crippling agony. Noah wanted to double over, try to ease the blinding pain, but it was impossible with the chains.
“That was just a love tap,” Cash purred, and there was this sick delight in his voice, like the hit had released something within him that had been festering for years upon years. “Don’t be dramatic, doc.”
Noah can’t even process the comparison of that only being a love tap before the pipe sinks into his stomach with vigor, and a sickening cough gets all tangled up in the scientist’s throat. The sheer force is enough to rip the air from his lungs, rendering him gasping and squirming in the chains as he tries to process the throbbing pain spreading through his body.
The pipe goes for his side again. Then his ribs - Noah see’s stars on that swing, and he can barely even feel the instinctive panic that something was cracked before another was slamming into back, avoiding his spine.
“Stop,” Noah tries to choke out, but he’s been rendered breathless and he’s in so much pain and he just wants to go home. Cash taps the edge of the pipe under his chin, gently tilting his head up to meet his unfocused, tear filled eyes. He can’t help but wrack with groaning sobs, each jolt making his body flare up in intense agony. Breathing aches.
His face is contorted in pain, and Cash admires it languidly.
“But, doc,” he drawls. “Why stop when we’ve only just begun?”
tag list – @suspicious-whumping-egg @sunshiline-writes @rabidrabidme @whumpatize-me-captain @thegirlwholived1213 @reverie1234 @unforgivenn @morning-star-whump @seaweed-is-cool @d-cs @whump-me-all-night-long @whump-me @gala1981 @pirefyrelight @whumble-beeee @miss-unicorn0907 @avidrambling @anoontjecanush @2in1whump @ha-ha-one @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @whatwhump @sowhumpful @whump321 @alexmundaythrufriday
#the facility#whump#whump writing#whump fic#whump series#whump tropes#whumpblr#whump community#whump scenario#whumper#whumpee#caretaker#noah and cash#noah and fionn#writing#writing snippet#story snippet#my writing#avvail whumps#fionn pov next chappy!#i didn't mean to post this#it's not proofread tf 😭
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hissssss spent some time slappin a fresh coat of paint on my girl esme, who needed a proper ref since I haven't drawn one since i made her
twitter//patreon//pillowfort //ko-fi
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sooo digging around through files and found this wip
@dualnaturedscientist @liloskull343 @blueweirdness @lartmacabre
"What do you guys think you're doing?!"
Carrie demanded. She began trying to wrestle the intruders to reach her baby.
She had put Blu down in the nursery for a nap. She had taken maternity leave for her job at the vet center. Currently her husband was at work and her other two kids were in school. She was sipping on some hot cocoa she had stashed away. Knowing if Steven found it he would get rid of it. She was addicted to chocolate despite knowing it wasn't good for her body.
"Steven will just have to scold me later!" The ginger decided. She purred contentedly with the sugary and chocolatey beverage.
It was peaceful and quiet…
Until it wasn't.
The sound of Blu's cries ranged through the air. Carrie practically threw the glass mug down. It shattered from how hard she had yeeted it. The cocoa spilled out and onto the floor. She didn't care about the mess she had caused, only that her one year old needed her. She pushed the door open, realizing she had left it open when she left. Her eyes then landed on the strangers who stood in her house.
Her eyes widened, reading the symbols on their clothing.
B.E.A.W. labs.
Those sneaky little-
They waited until Steven and the kids were gone. Waited until everything seemed okay and fine. Waited until everyone's guard was down.
"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" She shouted, snapping when they tried to reach for her again.
"Ma'am we were given instructions to retrieve you and your child."
"You're not taking us anywhere!" She hissed. She held Blu protectively. She scratched one of the intruders in the face before running. Apparently they had expected her to run, before she knew it she was surrounded.
"Now you either cooperate or we'll have to sedate you." The masked man continues. "Either way, you're coming with us."
She doesn't want to go with them, but she is also worried about Blu getting hurt.
"No she won't!"
A relieved look on her face as she stared at Steven who now stood in the doorway.
Sometime later
Becky: Dad why do Chase, Blu, and I have to stay with Uncle Victor for a while?
Steven: It's because the bleach that's been used to clean is going to stink and burn you senses for a while. It's best to stay out of the house until the scent dies down.
#wordgirl#wordgirl au#tw: attempted kidnapping#becky boxleitner au#steven boxleitner#carrie#blu boxleitner#wordgirl next gen#tw: implied murder#don't mess with Steven#melodythebunny#answered ask#wip#the facility#B.E.A.W labs
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I updated my tier list after ACTUALLY playing Till Death Do Us Part 😭
And reading The Facility🥰
Some things changed, and some things will never change
#boyfriend to death#btd#visualnovel#tddup#till death do us part#the facility#this is not romance#tinr#btd 2#boyfriend to death 2
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JAGGED JANICE
I'm a government employee.
My name isn’t important. All you need to worry about is what I have to say.
I work at a compound known as the Facility. Within it, we perform research on things the public would find… unappetizing. Officially, we’re listed under Experimental Weapons Development, but lately, our umbrella has spread much wider.
Suffice it to say that there are things out there that go bump in the night. Things, both legendary and mundane, that exert their influence upon us and defy explanation. My job is to interview individuals who believe they’ve encountered such entities and determine if their accounts are fact or fiction. What my job is not to do, however, is share those interviews.
In this case, though, I don’t think I have a choice.
_____________________
The room is cramped, dimly lit, and smells vaguely of stale piss and black mold. A light hangs above the table between us, rocking back and forth and doing a poor job illuminating much of anything. Still, I can see the man's gaunt face and the fields on my clipboard.
It's enough. It will do.
I ask the man to tell me his story, and it begins.
“It happened at the cabin,” he says. He’s twenty-something, with a long nose and five o’clock shadow. When he reaches for his cigarette, his hand shakes like a 1950’s pickup truck. “Not my cabin,” he adds. “It belonged to Emily, but she invited us up. The three of us.”
My pen scratches across my clipboard. FOUR INDIVIDUALS. “For leisure, I’ll assume?”
He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Yeah, I guess.” A laugh escapes his lips. It’s short. Awkward. “Why else do people go to cabins? We just wanted to get drunk, stoned, forget our problems for the weekend. You know, like normal people do.”
“Of course,” I say, marking down his response. His eyes dart toward the cameras in the corner of the room, and his tongue slips across his lips. They’re chapped, cracked and bleeding. He looks worse than a mess. He looks like a disaster.
“The cameras,” he says. “What’s the deal with them? You said you weren’t a cop.”
“I’m not,” I reassure him. “The cameras are for my own records. Events— encounters with the paranormal, they’re tricky things. Sometimes we catch items in recordings we’d otherwise miss in person.”
He stares at me a while. His lip curls in, his teeth gnawing at it. It’s a look I’ve seen before, the sort of look where he’s wondering if maybe he’s being played. He’s wondering if this is a sting operation, and he’s taking the bait and I’m going to have him thrown into a psych ward, or worse.
“It’s better if you tell me everything,” I say, placing my clipboard on the desk between us. “I’m not here to have you put away, only to get some answers.”
A moment of dead air hangs between us, and it’s the sort of moment I recognize. He’s weighing the situation. Sizing me up. He’s wondering if he’s comfortable talking about something this batshit insane to a total stranger.
But then he takes a breath, followed by a deep drag, and he ashes his cigarette.
“Sure,” he says. He taps on a finger on the desk. Gathers his thoughts. “It happened late at night. The four of us had been drinking in the cabin, doing mushrooms, but we all slept outside in tents since the place was full of spiders. Hardly ever got used.”
“Why’s that?” I check a box labeled INTOXICATED.
He shrugs. “Bad memories, I think?”
I tilt my head to the side, inviting him to continue.
“The cabin belonged to Emily’s mom," he explains. "She passed away when Em was a little girl, and the place has been a mausoleum ever since. Em thinks it has bad mojo.”
“What do you think?”
“What do I think?” He tastes the question. “I think that... ” He trails off, his eyes losing focus, gazing at the splintered wooden table between us. Suddenly, he seems far away. There’s an emptiness to his expression. A disconnect. I wonder if he’s thinking of legends and nightmares.
I wonder if he’s thinking of Jagged Janice.
“Is everything alright?” I ask.
He blinks, then nods.
My pen scratches across my clipboard. SUBJECT APPEARS TRAUMATIZED. AVOIDANT.
“What’s that?” he asks. “What are you writing?” He leans forward, his thin frame eclipsing the table as he narrows his eyes on my form. I pull it away.
“It’s private.”
“How come?”
“Your knowledge of my notes could influence your account. I’d prefer it if such biases were avoided.”
His face creases, jaw clenches.
“Now,” I say. “Please continue.”
He looks angry as he sits back in his chair. Pissed. He’s gnawing at his lips again, and his finger’s tapping the table like a gatling gun. There’s no doubt in my mind that this guy’s been through a lot, but I need to make sure he’s telling the truth, and in order to do that, he can’t know anything. Nothing at all.
“Fine,” he says at length. “We’ll do it your way.”
Yes, we always do.
“Like I said, we were drinking in the cabin. Swapping old war stories from high-school. Talking about stupid pranks we’d pull, or places we’d tag, or teachers we hated. We reflected. Pretty soon though, we got drunk enough that stuff went deeper. We stopped talking about all the silly surface bullshit, and we started talking about the stuff that really meant something to us— the things that set our souls on fire.”
“That’s a poetic turn of phrase. Are you a writer?”
He shrugs.
“Let me rephrase. Would you describe yourself as having an active imagination?”
The man studies me, gears turning in his head. Again, he’s wondering if I’m goading him into an admission of insanity. He’s wondering if I’m calculating what amount of antipsychotics it would take to counterbalance his paranoia, and what size straightjacket would best fit his scarecrow frame.
But I’m not doing any of that.
The truth is, I don’t care if he’s insane or perfectly lucid. I don’t give a damn about him at all. All I care about is whether or not he’s seen Jagged Janice, and that he isn’t another liar.
“My imagination isn’t anything special,” he says at length. “Now, can I tell my fucking story, or are you going to keep interrupting?”
I smile. "Sure. Go ahead."
He takes a breath, spares a half-second to glare at me. “The four of us are drinking in Em’s cabin and she starts to get… low. Like, depressed. She’s usually a pretty upbeat person so I ask her what’s up, and she says she’s just been feeling a bit haunted since coming back to the cabin.”
I lift an eyebrow.
“Her brother…” The man sighs, shakes his head as though determining how best to phrase his next words. “Her brother died at the cabin. Drowned to death in the ocean a hundred yards from the front door. Emily watched it happen.”
“She watched her brother drown?”
He nods. “She was three years old. She didn’t understand what was happening, not really. There wasn’t anything she could do.”
“I see.” It’s a sad story, but not really what I came here for. Worse still, nothing yet matches the Jagged Janice legend. “Anything else?”
The man looks up at me, and disbelief swims in his eyes. “Anything else?” he mutters. “No, asshole. That’s it. She watched her brother die and it made her feel like shit.”
“I’m not here for Emily’s story, I’m here for yours. You’ll excuse me if I forget to feign empathy for a woman I’ve never met.” I check a box labeled CONFRONTATIONAL and rest my pen on my clipboard. “Now then, you said you were drinking. Talking. What happened after that?”
His jaw is set. Clenched. He looks like he wants to slug me in the face and honestly, I wouldn’t blame him, but instead he takes a drag on his cigarette and leans back in his chair.
“We drink and talk until our eyes get droopy,” he says. “And then we go to bed. It’s like any night, I guess. Up until a point.”
There’s an implication in his words, but I’ll deal with it later. For now I need more details. I need to understand the setting of the Event as clearly as I can. “The police report,” I say, glancing down at my copy of the document, “mentions the incident occurred inside of the cabin. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you describe it for me? The layout?”
He scratches the back of his head, brows furrowed. There’s a picture being painted in his mind, colored by memories. “It's a tee-shaped cabin. Capital T. There’s two bedrooms on either side of the T, and at the very top center is a bathroom. The bottom of the T is the living area and kitchen, then the front door.”
“Simple enough.” I make a quick sketch of it on my form. “According to the report, the Event occurred in the washroom. I’d like you to talk about that.”
His eyes narrow, and his mouth twitches. He sucks in on his cigarette like it’s the last drag he’ll ever have. Slow. Long. He burns it down to the filter, eyes bloodshot, and then he drops it into the ashtray. “You got any more of these?”
“Sure.” I reach inside my jacket and pull out a pack, tossing it to him. The man catches it and flips it open. His hands are shaking. They’re shaking so hard that he can hardly light the smoke after he slips it into his mouth.
“Let me,” I offer.
“No,” he says. “I’ve got it.” The lighter strikes, and a flame dances to life. He hovers it below his dart until an ember glows. Then the man leans back, takes a deep drag, and blows out a storm cloud. “You’re the real deal, huh?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The real deal. You actually believe me, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” I say. Truthfully I’m still making up my mind. “You said the four of you quit drinking to go to sleep. Back in your tents, I presume. What happened after that?”
He ashes the cigarette. “Nature calls. I gotta take a shit, so I get up and head to the cabin. When I unzip the tent though, I can’t see the dirt in front of me. It’s that dark outside. Pitch black.”
“No moon?”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t looking for one. All I know is I’ve got to take a shit, and I’m not about to use the outhouse— it smells worse than death. So I make my way to the cabin. Once I get inside though, this weird feeling comes over me.”
“Weird feeling?”
“Like I’m being watched.”
Promising.
“The place feels empty. Lonely. It’s just me, the bugs, and the light from my phone. The light’s making shadows out of everything— the dusty fridge, the cluttered shelves, and the messy counters. There’s a thousand shapes all around me, shifting with every step I take and this feeling of, I don’t know.... Dread? comes over me. Like I’m not safe.”
The man pauses. Sweat beads down his forehead. “Sorry,” he says. “I just haven’t thought about it in this much detail since the night it happened.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Events are messy things, and more often than not, they leave scars.”
“Okay.”
“Take your time.”
He gives himself a minute. Catches his breath. “Like I said, I don’t feel safe in there, but I’m drunk enough that it doesn’t faze me. I’ve still got a buzz going from earlier in the night, you know? I think to myself, I came to take a shit and some spooky shadows aren’t gonna stop me.” He chuckles to himself, shakes his head. “But a few seconds later, I’m in the bathroom and locking the door behind me. I figure, why take the chance?”
He’s nervous. Jittery. His leg’s bouncing up and down and shaking the table. It’s beginning to affect my ability to write. “Would you like a glass of water?” I ask.
“I’m fine.”
“Humor me.” I grab the jug and pour him a cup, sliding it across the table. He eyes it for a moment, and then grips the glass, bringing it to his lips and downing it in one swig. I pour him another.
“So,” he says, wiping his lips. “I’m about to unbuckle and do my business when I see movement. It’s in the top corner of the bathroom— in one of those little toilet windows, like the type that’s clouded on the bottom for privacy, or whatever, but clear on the top to let in light.”
“I’ve seen those. Is that where you witnessed the Event?”
“That’s where I saw the smile.”
Jagged Janice. “Describe it.”
“Honestly I…” He sounds suddenly hesitant. Worried. “I’d rather not describe the smile, if we could. Wouldn’t it be better to just talk about the Event instead?”
“The smile is part of the Event,” I remind him. “It’s important that we get as many details as possible, no matter how uncomfortable your memories may be.”
He looks down, and his eyes drift out of focus. “The smile is just a row of teeth. But the teeth are too big and too sharp to belong to a human, and there are just… so many of them.”
I check my notes, consulting descriptions of Jagged Janice listed in old email chains from the early 2000’s. “I’d like to hear more about these teeth.”
“Why?”
“The teeth are important. Describe them, please.”
The man is uncomfortable. He’s shifting in his seat like quicksand, and when he talks his voice cracks but he gives me what I want. “The teeth are jagged,” he says. “Serrated, almost. Their length is all over the place. Some barely break her gums, others stretch down, cutting through her lips.” His fingers move again. They’re tapping on the metal table. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“When I see the smile, my heart starts pounding. I’m frozen there, standing in the dark bathroom with just the light from my phone. My mind’s reeling, but I know that whoever that smile belongs to, I don’t want them seeing me, so I hold my phone up against my chest. Tight as I can. I smother the light.”
“The light,” I say. “Did the woman showcase an adverse reaction to it?” Janice, according to her legend, loathes light.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Or, I don’t know? I can’t remember small details.” He pauses, and reaches for his glass of water before taking another gulp.”At that point my body’s mostly just adrenaline. There’s a storm of it coursing through me and screaming at me to run or scream or fight this bitch or just do something. Anything. But I can’t. I just stand there, staring at her inhuman teeth, at her horrible, twisted smile with my phone clutched to my chest like a crucifix.
“Then the smile begins to fall away, lowering itself until it’s just a blur behind the foggy part of the window. In its place are two eyes.” The man takes a breath, shuddering, trembling. “They’re wide, angled all wrong and they’re leaking this… black fluid. They dart around the washroom as if looking for something.
“I stay still. Still as I can, like I’m fucking paralyzed. There’s no light in the room, none except the bits of moon framing the monster in the window, so I let myself meld into the darkness. I don’t move an inch, and I pray to god the creature can’t see me there.”
He shivers, reaches for his cigarette and takes a drag.
“Then I hear the tapping on the window. Tap. Tap. Tap. It’s followed by this chattering sound, and it takes me a second but I realize it’s her teeth gnashing together, open and shut, open and shut, over and over again. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t. But part of me can’t stop myself, and I glance up and see her eyes staring back at me. Two tiny black dots in a sea of white. My breathing stops. My pulse races. Dribbles of piss run down my leg. It’s just the two of us now, watching one another.”
I lean forward, my interest piqued. Much of his description could have been pulled from the Jagged Janice legend itself. The small black pupils. The rows of inhuman teeth. I check off the features on my clipboard as he goes. “What does she do?” I ask. “When you lock eyes with her?”
He swallows. “She speaks.”
“What does she say?”
“She says,” he stammers. “I see you.”
I write the words down and circle them three times. They’re not familiar to me. “Describe her voice to me. Did she sound old? Young?”
“Her voice was quiet. Hard to hear. The words sounded like they’d been pulled out of a woodchipper. Their pronunciation was broken and unnatural, like they’d been cut up by those… teeth.”
“Curious,” I mutter.
“Her fingers reach up, and she taps the glass again. Tap. Tap. Tap. I chance another look, and all I can see is her terrible, serrated smile in the window. It’s making me feel nauseous. I’ve never been that scared, you know? I close my eyes, wanting the feeling to go away for just a second, but when I open them again the smile’s gone. It’s just me, alone in the bathroom.”
He puts his face in his hands and lets the armor fall away. His shoulders quake with silent sobs. I give him a minute, then another.
“Is that all?” I ask.
No response. It becomes apparent that his account has reached its conclusion.
Disappointing to say the least.
“A harrowing experience,” I say, giving my form a final swipe with my pen. With a sigh, I stand up from my chair, reaching out to shake his hand. “On behalf of the Facility, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to share it with me.”
The man’s sobs taper off. He blinks up at me, with red, puffy eyes and when he speaks his voice is barely there at all. “It’s not over,” he says. “There’s more.”
My heart thrums as I pull back my handshake. A smile slips across my face as I sit back down in my chair, centering my clipboard in front of me. “Something else occurred?”
“Yeah,” he says, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “The next few hours turned into a nightmare.”
I click my pen, skin prickling with goosebumps. “You don’t say?” Now it’s my turn to take a breath, to center myself and calm my nerves. “How very unfortunate.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” he says, sarcasm thick in his voice.
“Please continue, then.”
“It… It takes me ten minutes before I can muster the courage to crack the bathroom door. When I do, I do it gently. Quietly. You can hardly even hear the shitty hinges creak, that’s how careful I am. I peek out of the crack, looking for the smiling woman, terrified that I’m going to see her standing in the living area waiting for me, but I don’t.
“There’s nobody else in the cabin. It’s just me. So I step out, moving across the hardwood floor. It creaks and groans with every step I take and each time that it does, my heart skips a beat and I expect to see her jump out of the darkness. I’m seeing that smile everywhere now. In every shadow. In every window. I want to shout and scream— I want to call out to my friends in the tent and beg them to pull me out of this horror, but they’re beyond the cabin door. Out there at the far end of the yard. They’re a world away.”
“And your phone,” I ask. “You never thought to use that to call for help?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’m on a backwater island off the coast of rural BC. I’ve got great cell service out there.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t get a cell signal if I climbed to the top of the tallest tree. My phone was a glorified flashlight.”
A fair point.
“Since I can’t call for help, I psyche myself up. I’ve got my hand on the front doorknob, and I’m ready to fling the door open and scream bloody murder, run to my friends and tell them we need to start the truck now because there’s a fucking monster on the island and.... And that’s when I hear it.”
His fingers thrum the metal desk. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“In the window next to the front door, I see a long arm in a frayed sleeve, with crooked fingers playing against the glass. They’re drumming a rhythm. Something… awful. It’s noise masquerading as song.”
“Then I hear her again. I see you, she says in a gravely, guttural voice. The tapping gets faster. Heavier. I pull away from the window, from the door, and fall back into the shadows of the cabin. She must be twelve feet tall because her head cranes down into the window frame, all the way from the top of it. Her eyes are gleaming in the moonlight, darting around and swiveling again in ways they shouldn’t be able to. She’s searching again. For something— me maybe. I don’t know.”
The man finishes his cigarette and slips a fresh one out of the pack. He lights it, trembling, and sucks in on the nicotine. His expression softens. “Then she’s gone,” he says.
“Gone?” I ask, disappointed. “Again?” There’s nothing in the Jagged Janice mythology that indicates her vanishing and reappearing at regular intervals.
“Gone,” he confirms. “I’m alone. Time passes. Minutes, maybe hours. I don’t know. I just sit there in the living room, my ears and eyes straining for any sound, any movement, anything at all. I’m shaking and breathing in short bursts, terrified if I breathe too heavily she’ll hear me. I wonder to myself how long it's been. How long there’s still to go until the sun rises, and somebody wakes up and comes to check on me or use the washroom. I think about using my phone to check the time, but the idea of its blacklight giving me away terrifies me, so I don’t. I just sit there and wait.”
“How long do you wait? Until morning?”
He laughs. Takes another drag. “Fuck no,” he says. “It takes a while, but eventually I get calmer, or maybe too scared to keep sitting there doing nothing. Maybe I just need to reassure myself that this nightmare has an ending. I don’t know.” He gnaws at his fingernail. “I’m fucking quivering as I pull my phone outta my pocket. Shaking like a leaf. I turn it on, and my home screen lights up my face like I’m about to tell a campfire story.”
“What time is it?”
“3:34 a.m. Two hours from sunrise, at that time of year.” The man sighs, running a hand along his jaw. “It’s too long for me. I can’t do it, you know? I decide I need to do something now before that woman comes back because I have this horrible feeling that the next time she shows up she’s going to be inside the cabin. She’s going to find me. So I tell myself to make a run for it. Wake up my friends. It’s easy, I think. I’ll open my mouth and fucking scream my lungs out, and that way even if she gets in my way then at least everybody on the island will wake up, and maybe I’ll get out of there in one piece. So I do it, I open my mouth and I scream.
“But nothing happens,” he says quietly. His expression darkens. Tears slip from the corners of his eyes, and his lip trembles all over again. “No sound comes out. Instead, a hand that’s long and crooked wraps itself around my mouth. It pulls my head back, and I smell rot and decay and seaweed, and a voice whispers in my ear like a lawn mower. I see you.”
Janice. I lean forward, gazing at him expectantly. “How did you get away?”
He wipes at his eyes, choking back the last of his sobs. “No idea. I blacked out. When I woke up I wasn’t in the cabin anymore, I was in a hospital bed surrounded by my friends.”
“Same ones from the cabin?”
“That’s right.”
I check a box on my form labeled SURVIVOR. Then I chew on the back of my pen for a second before checking a second box: POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS AFFECTED.
“And what do these friends say? Anything useful?”
“They tell me it’s all their fault,” he says. “Em mumbles about how we should never have come out to the cabin in the first place. Steve and Haily are blaming themselves for letting me get exceptionally drunk.” He cracks a bittersweet smile. “Everybody wants a share of the guilt.”
My eyes drift down to the man’s file. “You said the island was remote. I’ll assume the hospital wasn’t local to it?”
“No,” he says. “It was off the island. An hour or so inland. I must have been out for a day at least though, because I don’t remember ever travelling there.”
“Interesting.” A recurring aspect of the Janice mythology is a sense of mild amnesia and the presence of minor to severe bite wounds. “What did the hospital treat you for?”
He clears his throat. “A mild concussion. And water in my lungs.”
“Water in your lungs?” I shake my head, dropping my pencil. Perhaps I should be happy the young man survived whatever terror visited him that night, but so many pieces of his story don’t match the mythology at all. “You’re certain? Water in your lungs?”
“That’s right,” he says. “The doctors didn’t understand it either. I never even got a chance to take a dip in the ocean, let alone drown in it.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. So your friends pop by, leave you some get-well cards and you get discharged a couple of days later.” I lean back in my chair, folding my arms. “Does that about sum things up?”
The man looks away, rubbing his arm. “Not exactly,” he says darkly. “Before they leave, I tell them about the smiling woman. I ask them if they’ve seen a tall woman with razor sharp teeth lurking around the island. Steve and Hailey look at eachother like I must have hit my head harder than anybody thought. The look in their eyes… It's like they’re terrified I’ve given myself brain damage. Steve squeezes my arm and apologizes over and over for doing shots with me. Says he should’ve gone easy for the first night. Hailey agrees. Says I drove them all the way out there, so they should have let me get some sleep.”
“And your other friend?” I ask. “Emily?”
“She’s standing back. Staring at me, and her eyes are filled with… I don’t know. Regret? But it’s different from Steve and Hailey. She doesn’t look like she feels sorry for me. She looks like she really blames herself for all of this. I say her name, Emily. Ask her if she’s seen the woman because I get the sense that she has.”
I slide my pen down my clipboard and circle a word that says WITNESS before annotating it with a small question mark. “How does she respond?”
“She leaves,” he says with a sigh. “I don’t think she wants to talk about the woman— at least, not in front of Hailey and Steve. Pretty soon everybody leaves. It’s just me again, in some tiny hospital on the outskirts of nowhere. The only company I’ve got is the apple tree outside my window and the shitty TV. I sleep pretty uneasily that night. Tossing and turning. I wake up at one point to the sound of tapping, and I stare out my window horrified, expecting to see that woman again, but it’s just the apple tree. It’s branches are brushing against the glass.
“I wonder to myself if this is just my life from now on. If everytime I hear the faintest sound at night, I’m going to wake up in cold sweats thinking that woman’s come back for me. Then the door creaks open. My body goes into full-blown panic, my breath hitches in my chest, my muscles tighten, and it’s like that night all over again, with the smiling woman where I can’t move an inch for fear.
“But it’s just Emily,” he says, chuckling in disbelief. “She pauses in the doorway and asks me if she can come in. I tell her that of course she can, and she does, not bothering to turn on the lights. When she gets to my bedside, I can see her face more clearly by the light of the window. She looks rough. Her eyes have these heavy bags, and her cheeks are all red and splotchy from crying. She’s wiping snot on her sleeve and telling me sorry, over and over.”
“Sorry for what? Inviting you out to the cabin?” I say, doing my best not to roll my eyes. I’ve never seen a group of friends with such a guilty conscience.
“No,” the man says. “She says she’s sorry for not warning me about the woman. She says she thought the woman was gone, otherwise she’d never have come back to that place.”
“What?” I snap forward, eyes latching onto his. “She told you she knew about the woman?”
He nods. “She said the circumstances of her brother’s death were different than she’d originally told us. He didn’t drown— not accidentally. He was murdered. A woman attacked them on the beach, a woman with a terrible smile and this tangle of black, messy hair that covered her face. She dragged Em’s brother backward through the sand, muffling his screams with her hand, and then held him under the surf. She kept him there until he stopped moving. Then, she let the tide take him away.”
“Disturbing,” I say. “And she never brought this up to her parents?”
"She did. Her father told her it was just her imagination. He said that her brother had fallen into the ocean and gotten swept away, and it was already hard enough to deal with without Emily adding to it. So Emily just buried the memory. Moved on."
The man looks up at me, his expression despondent. “That’s when we hear it,” he says. "In the hospital room. A tapping. Tap. Tap. Tap. It comes from the window to my right, the one with the old apple tree.”
“The woman?”
“I don’t look. I tell Emily not to look either. I tell her to focus on me, to ignore the sound. I don’t know what she saw as a little girl, down by the ocean, but I know I don’t want her to see what I saw in that cabin." He shudders. "I don’t want her to see that smile."
“Does she listen to you?”
He grips a fistful of his hair, closes his eyes. “No,” he says quietly. “She looks, and when she does, she screams. She screams so loudly that the lights come on down the hall, and Inurse bursts in and pulls Emily away, calls a patrol car the night nurse call out and start running. Emily rushes toward the window, I catch sight of it from the corner of my eye because I still refuse to look at that pane of glass, but I hear Emily beating against it with her fists. Clawing at it with her nails. Then the her to drive her home.”
The man takes a breath. He puts his face in his hands and rubs his eyes. “I text her an hour later. Just to make sure that she’s okay and—”
“—Yes,” I say, cutting him off. I glance at the folder on my desk labeled CORRESPONDENCE, then down at the watch on my wrist. It’s three in the morning, and I’m jet-lagged. The meat of the man’s story appears to have run its course. “If the texts are everything that’s left then I can read them on my own.” I rise from the desk and offer my hand to shake. He gives it a weak, reluctant squeeze, avoiding my eyes. Then he leaves the room without another word.
I sigh, sitting back down in the steel chair. Another long day. Another dead end. I adjust my glasses and pull out the text logs. There’s only a handful of message receipts. The chance is slim, but the possibility that there’s something in there about Jagged Janice entices me too much to set them aside for tomorrow.
I begin to read.
As I do, I make note of the timestamps. Words do a good job of painting a picture, but time and location lend context to everything.
01:34 Dorian: are you okay?
02:12 Emily: Not really
02:12 Dorian: did you see her?
02:45 Dorian: em, im sorry. that was a stupid text
02:45 Emily: It's fine.
02:46 Dorian: im guessing you dont feel like talking
02:46 Emily: Actually, it might be good for me
02:47 Dorian: yeah? okay. me too
02:47 Dorian: i never got a chance to tell you earlier, but i cant imagine how horrible it must have felt to see what happened to your brother and have your dad not believe you?? thats fucked
02:55 Emily: It's fine. We were never close anyway.
02:55 Dorian: sorry to hear. did you ever tell your mom? I mean, before she passed?
02:56 Emily: No. Mom was already dying by then and dad would've killed me
02:56 Dorian: fuck. im an asshole. how could I forget something like that? sorry agajn
02:57 Emily: You're not an asshole. You're right that I would have told her about Jonas if I could have
02:59 Emily: By then she was so hopped up on painkillers though that I hardly even recognized her
03:00 Dorian: the meds must have been pretty heavy. thats a lot to deal with for a four year old kid.
03:01 Emily: Yeah, her esophageal cancer was bad. She was in a lot of pain near the end and rarely in a good mood. Pretty sure dad was having an affair at the time too. Fuckin prick
03:01 Dorian: im sorry. thats a shitty memory to bring up
03:03 Emily: Dont be. I think I repressed a lot of old memories of her which probably isnt healthy
03:05 Emily: Honesrly, if it wasn't for you, I'd probably think I was going crazy right now
03:05 Dorian: why?
03:06 Emily: I saw her too.
03:06 Dorian: the smiling woman?
03:07 Dorian: em?
03:34 Emily: My mother
03:34 Emily: I see my mother
I stare at the last word in stunned silence. Her mother? Could she actually have been the origin of the legend? I rub a hand along my jaw, considering what I've heard of Emily's history. She had only been four years old at the time of her brother's death when she had witnessed a crazed woman drag him into the sea, a woman who she couldn’t identify because black hair obscured her face.
Could that woman have been her own mother? It doesn’t seem terribly likely. But it doesn’t seem impossible either. Children often reframe moments of terror in a bid to understand the incomprehensible.
I reach for my briefcase, unclasping the latches on the front and pulling out my laptop. I take a breath and then open up the database software. Emily’s easy enough to find. Her last name is plastered everywhere across her social media, so I plug that in. The search function isn't the fastest, but it does the trick. It takes thirty seconds for the tiny, rotating hourglass to stop spinning, and when it does I see her.
SUBJECT: EMILY KALDWELL
FATHER: HARLOD KALDWELL
MOTHER: JANICE KALDWELL [DECEASED]
I swallow, my hands shaking on the keyboard.
Had I finally found Jagged Janice? I pour myself a glass of water, finishing it in two giant swigs. It does little to calm my nerves. Still, it's one piece of the puzzle solved, but really it just creates more questions. It doesn’t explain several aspects of the man’s story. The water in the lungs, for instance. Or the vanishing. Certain pieces of his encounter don’t add up, at least not compared against the original legend.
There’s a knock on the door.
Three sharp raps with a knuckle. I get up to answer it, thinking maybe the man’s forgotten his phone or wants to give me back my pack of smokes. When I open the door though, there’s nobody.
I raise an eyebrow and head back to my laptop. I need to discover the source for these changes, these departures from the Jagged Janice mythology. This time I bring up my web browser, navigating to one of my preferred resources on urban legends. The website's a bit corny, but it's proven accurate, and its community aspect has been invaluable in my research.
After some scrolling, I bring up the Jagged Janice article. People can leave anecdotal encounters beneath the main text, and sometimes they do. Usually, they’re all bullshit.
One of them catches my eye, however. It mentions seeing the serrated smile, the tapping fingers, and… that they found their infant child dead with water in its lungs. I shake my head. A coincidence, that’s all. I keep scrolling. More keywords jump out at me.
“... there and then gone.”
“... voice like a meat grinder.”
“... to the sea with you.”
I pause. Those were the words Emily said, words she remembered when she witnessed her brother being pulled into the ocean. To the sea with you. My mind spins, but a picture is forming. The guttural, difficult to understand voice. The drowned brother. The words.
“I see you.”
No. She was never saying those words, not really. She was saying to the sea with you. The man misheard, or perhaps he couldn’t properly understand because of Janice’s damaged voice. In his panic he likely defaulted to the simplest sounding phrase.
My heart races, I reach for my phone to make a call, to tell my boss what I’ve found. It wasn’t long ago the Facility had an incident with a Man with a Red Notepad, one in which we learned the core principle of all legends and one which cost many people their lives: that legends evolve.
If the Jagged Janice legend has evolved, we need to allocate additional resources to locating it and neutralizing it. I continue to scroll, noticing many of the anecdotes have been posted in the last week. Several, in the last few days. If even half of them are true, it'd imply highly increased activity on Janice's part.
I hear another knock at the door—three soft raps. I curse, kicking off from my desk and storming to the door, phone still pressed to my face waiting for my boss to pick up. Once more, I swing it open, and once more, I look down a cold, empty hallway.
I slam the door shut and stalk back to the table. My phone continues to ring, and my boss continues to ignore my call. It's really not like her, but I tell myself to relax. She's probably sleeping. According to my watch, it’s late as hell— 3:34 in the morning to be precise. That makes me an asshole, maybe, but this discovery is too big, too dangerous to ignore. Janice is out there, and she’s on the move.
Three more knocks ring out. These are softer than before. More gentle.
Almost taps.
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