"Sage, wake up!"

I groaned as I was shaken around by gloved hands, "Dylan, what the hell? I'm busy," as I lay in bed. I sat there, glaring at Dylan with the intention of throwing the blanket over my head and drifting back to sleep. But he persisted.

"Come on, I have to show you something!"

"And how early is it?"

"Damn it, Sage," he snarled through his abnormally sharp teeth.

    He had quite a few other "issues" aside from just having sharp teeth he would accidentally bite his tongue with on occasion. Since he was a kid, he was allegedly diagnosed with "ichthyosis"— a rare skin condition that causes the forming of bumps and scales on the skin. However, in comparison to the things I've seen online, I think the doctors decided to pack up and call it a day... if there was ever a doctor, anyway. It looked a little more like crocodilish scales on his arms, legs, and ears. On top of that, he had two green horns that had grown in as he got older. Horns that looked like a young buck's buttons, but lightly tinted green. In public, Dylan always did his best to hide them in his curly bush of hair, and he always wore long sleeves, long pants, and heavy-duty gloves to hide the scales. Seeing him would always make me question everything I knew about the evolution theory.

    After coming to terms with my chronic laziness with a pinch at his own nose bridge, Dylan sighed, "Seven thirty."

"Too early. Get me up at eight thirty."

"SAGE."

"Okay, fine. Geez."

Dylan stormed out of the room as I begrudgingly sat up. Immediately, I winced. Swiping away the blanket that covered just one of my legs, I readjusted to the side of the bed and tried my best to feel around my upper spine. It felt sore and swollen as if I'd gone to the gym.
I thought that was just a dream?
I quickly slapped my cheek as if I were swatting at a fly or if it were a reflex. I pulled my hand away, sighing as the results came back negative. Across my fingers, there was no sign of the black, sticky goop.

I clunked the bedroom door shut and walked down the wood floor, chancing a curious glance at Dylan as I turned into the kitchen. He was sitting down on the brown couch on his phone. He looked more neurotic than usual. He saw me, immediately popped up like a jack-in-the-box, and jogged to the front door. I pulled away the hand that was habitually about to open the fridge. In doing so, I realized that I wasn't actually hungry— but in spite of myself I murmured, "Am I able to grab something to eat? I just woke up," with more annoyance present than I would've liked. Dylan, with a foot out the door, gave me a confused stare before shutting the door behind him.

I stood there, with a suspicious feeling in my chest. It wasn't hunger. Something was going on and Dylan felt the need to inform me about it. What could it possibly be? Did he need help with something and he didn't want to bother Landon? Did something happen to his brother, Tom? Whatever it was, it was urgent.

Wedging my ankle into the mouth of my sneaker as I closed the door, I met both Dylan and the outside wilderness. It felt good to get outside as soon as I woke up, despite the grudge of what I had wanted to do weighing me down: sleeping. Dylan waved his hand for me to follow, and began to run into the forest. Off of the trail.

"Wait, where are you going?!"

"Just follow!"

Sprinting was not a strong suit of mine. I jumped over ferns and thorns, played parkour over an army of small stones, and used a dead tree as a balance beam before I was just a few yards behind Dylan. He finally stopped in an area that was bound by short clover-like grasses. Gray and yellow dandelions punctuated the green, and twigs were strewn around the premises. Ivy climbed up the high and mighty trees that loomed above us both, some branches threatening to crush us like ants. We were a part of nature too, and it has its order. We usually defy it. Dylan looked back to me, pointing at the ground. There sat a crumpled up ball of paper. Catching my breath, I wheezed, "What about it?"

"Grab it and follow me," he replied, briskly turning back around. Before he could lift a toe, I exclaimed,

"Slow down, would ya'?"

He nodded, letting my unfit build slide this time. I was not meant for this, unlike him and naturally built-up physique. I picked up the ball and unraveled it. A billion more questions formulated after I realized I was holding a muffin wrapper. An oddly large one. We continued with no complaint, now going at the pace of a speed-walk.

The wrapper didn't look like anything special. It was stained tan like a muffin, and had splotches of black littered between its ruffles. It still had crumbs sticking to the bottom, which fell like rain once I unraveled it. I glanced at Dylan, who briefly glanced back in a begging sort of desperation. Just a few seconds later and I bumped into his shoulder, startling me with a small, disheveled building.

The outside walls were a monotone grayish-blue, powdered with dull green moss like a tree. A fogged or a cracked window was on either side of the heavy metal door in the center, though all three looked as if they were barely sandwiched between the concrete, ready to collapse in on itself. The walls were cracked and molded, seemingly held together by vibrant green vines and ivy, which took the appearance of strong roots. To top it off, a small security camera sprouted from the top right corner of the ancient cube, aimed toward the direction we came from.

Hesitant to walk inside, I watched as Dylan opened the door first. He gazed at me expectantly, which made me feel confined. I felt my legs quiver as I stepped forward, whilst my eyes darted to the small, white security camera that now held its gaze directly at my forehead. I uncomfortably waved to it and crushed the muffin wrapper in my right hand as I walked, unknowing of what the camera feed may lead to.

My curiosity overwhelmed me. I had never been inside, nor seen this place before. I asked,

"Since when has this place existed?"

"For a while, actually,"

I silently accepted the statement for what it was, a bit wary about doing so. As I followed him, I ducked under a drooping canopy of wires, which revealed a giant monitor. It was split into six sections, three of them being blank. Dylan hopped up onto a wooden stool that had been placed in front of the televised views. It had coffee stains that inevitably dribbled down to the underside.

The first showed the outside of the "front entrance" of the base— though it's cluttered with old junk that none of us had had the time nor thought to deal with for the past six months. Old trash bags of DVDs, blankets, clocks, and even crumbling chairs resided there and would continue to do so until they found their final resting place: the dump. The second camera was outside the main, back entrance. It was the same porch that had always been there. Two chairs were sat next to and angles toward each other, implying the conversations that have taken place in them. Lastly, the fourth camera had a view of the forest itself. Nothing special. On the other three screens, a deep purple hue enveloped the views. In the center of each, they read in white text:

[CAMERA 3: NO INPUT]
[CAMERA 5: NO INPUT]
[CAMERA 6: NO INPUT]

Looking back at Dylan, confused, he then grabbed the mouse and clicked the bottom left screen, which seemed to be "camera four". It enlarged, pushing all of the other cameras off-screen. After clicking a few buttons, the screen faded into black. The timestamp at the bottom of the footage read as one-twenty-eight in the morning. It began to play.

A small shadow with glowing yellow, rectangular eyes ran into the sight of the security camera, its panting audible. I began to feel queasy in the stomach as my instinct told me something wasn't right. The yellow rectangles quickly darted towards approaching red slits. The shadows were hard to make out because of the video quality. The yellow began to turn away, but halted as the figure with red slits grabbed it. As fast as a preying mantis, the yellow was jerked backward, and the golden hue faded. The red slits halved, showing the figure had smiled. Before walking away, it noticed the camera, and spun it all the way around somehow, leaving a black triangle in the corner of it that slowly began to drip like oil on a pan. The footage then stopped.

That was it.

I was terrified. I looked at the wrapper in my hands as I managed to quaveringly whisper,

"Muffin's dead?"

Dylan remained silent, allowing me to process. After I looked back up at him, he gently asked, "You got any ideas?" He uneasily looked back at the screen as he continued, "I've been stumped all morning."

Swallowing, which reminded me that my saliva tasted slightly like coins, I reasoned, "No animal has glowing red eyes like that, at least that we'd know of."

Dylan was just as horrified as me of the situation. He wasn't sure how to handle it, and I knew that for a fact without even needing to ask. I didn't know Muffin that well, but the problem was that the two teenagers on the premises— Nathan and Willow— did. Muffin was the only thing that wasn't an adult that they could confide in. When I was a teenager, I told my friends everything. How were we supposed to break the news? I got aggravated and shouted, "What could even find Muffin, or want to in the first place if it wasn't an animal? Wouldn't he have been in the base last night like he always is, anyway?"

"Me."

I perked up, startled by a gravelly voice that seemed to speak from right behind me. My body shivered with the same kind of terror that I felt in my nightmares. Dylan cautiously asked, "What?"

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

I looked behind me, and I was only face-to-face with a gray, cracked wall. I turned back to Dylan, slightly red in the face. Was I supposed to be a diagnosed schizophrenic as well?

"I thought I heard someone, sorry."

"I locked the door after we came in. We're fine."

"What'd you do that for?"

"News spreads fast, like wildfire. And I'm not the only one who knows about this place."

I grumbled, shooting a small side glance. I walked closer to the screen, forcibly rewinding the footage before Dylan could tell me to stop. I paused it on a frame where all you could see were the red eyes. "Animal eyes can do that in light, right? And how does this thing not have night vision?"

"Good thinking," he remarked. Click-clacking on the keyboard as he rewinded the tape and tinkered with the filters, he thought aloud, "There wouldn't be any light. It was one-thirty in the morning." I shrugged and rolled my eyes, deciding to survey the place as I waited.

As I walked a bit further closer to the front door, I tripped on one of many small stems that wiggled their way through the fissured concrete. On my left there was a wall that was partially crumbled down as if it were made of powdered flour. It revealed the scenery that stretched for miles and made for some air flow, but it also seemed out of place. Wires were strung above, below, and around the hole, and the same wires stretched the length of the wall. If a single metal strip fell out of place, I'd be snatched by them and strangled to death. If it was so beaten-up, how much power could one tiny, desolate building have if it wasn't connected to our main one? I must be pretty oblivious.

Once the clacking stopped, I sprinted back to Dylan's side. He closed the window before I could comprehend the image with a singular crush of the escape. He was acting as if he discovered a top-secret clearance that was under the careful watch of the government. "What was it? I didn't get to see," I said. He slowly turned, staring at me in shock with his eyes darting between my mouth and my eyes.

"Did you ever end up grabbing something to eat?"

"No, I wasn't as hungry as I thought," I replied, growing concerned. Dylan interrupted me, blurting,

"What's on the corner of your mouth, then?"

I rubbed my mouth with my fist, confused but willing to calm him down, or see what he was so concerned about. Pulling my hand away, it was clear that something had rubbed off. I licked my lips, tasting a certain sweetness that I recognized. My eyes widened as I shoved my hand into the light of the monitor, confirming that it was, in fact, syrup mixed with brown sugar.

I felt myself begin to tremble as the realization set in. I looked back at Dylan, who was now getting off his seat and beginning to slink behind the vines of wires in the direction we came from. I opened my mouth to attempt explaining something that needed no further explanation. Dylan firmly asked,

"Did you eat Muffin, Sage?"

"You really think I would.. kill someone?" Dylan began to stomp away in a multi-emotioned frenzy. I ran after him in a panic, pleading, "Dylan, please—"

I laid my fingers on his shoulder for less than a second before he spun on his heel and spat, "What?" I flinched back immediately, startled with his sudden anger. We remained silent until Dylan mustered up the courage to yell, "What exactly are you going to explain? Your reasons for eating Muffin?"

"I don't know what you want me to say, or what I'm supposed to say—"

"So you just admitted it?"

"No, I didn't. I was just about to—"

"You liar. I KNEW IT! YOU. ATE. MUFFIN!"

"NO! I DIDN'T! SO WOULD YOU SHUT UP BEFORE I ACTUALLY GET PISSED?!" I was breathing heavily, and my fists shook with such an enormous force I couldn't describe. I suddenly felt numb from head-to-toe, just like in the nightmare from last night. I didn't know I could get angry like that. Dylan was frozen in front of me— his cold, staid expression trying to decipher what was going on. I couldn't help but continue to spout off, "I WOULD NEVER MURDER SOMEONE. ARE YOU SERIOUS?!"

He said nothing. Not even a single change of stance before he asked me, "What's wrong with your eye?"

"My eye?"

The monitors suddenly powered off. The gentle buzz of the computers faded away into a hiss before they were completely gone. We stared at each other in the dark, petrified. The only lights were the glowing rays of sunlight that stuck through the windows, refracting off of the cracks that esse spiderwebs— and me. The only reason I could see the terror encapsulated in Dylan's eyes was because of my one glowing eye. Normally I'd only be able to see where his own glowing irises were located because of some "genetic mutation" of his, but now it was as if a dim flashlight was aiming right for him. I cupped my black and white eye with my hand, closing it as a precaution as if the surprise hadn't already been ruined.

Dylan coaxed, "You can figure this out with everyone else, but let's get out of here first of all. I'm not sure why the monitors would just turn off like that."

I nodded, following the purple hoodie. It was then when I got struck by a horrible headache. It wasn't just a migraine... this was different. Intently scanning the room, I couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Was it all in my own head? It must've been. My own internal voice that was once begging for answers became multiplied by ten, at the least. Ten different thoughts spiraled through my head at random intervals, and they weren't something I could ignore. They screeched and screamed— nearly sounding like tortured hogs, or styrofoam squealing against a balloon. They growled and rumbled, making my brain feel heavy and shaken. My own breathing felt detached as I clawed at my shirt, unknowing of how to make it stop. I grunted as my knees hit the stained, concrete flooring. Someone had kicked the back of them and made me falter, yet there was no one. I scratched at my skull, wishing I could rip out my own eardrums but I knew it was pointless. It was all in my head and I could do nothing.

"He knows too much. Kill him."

These... voices... sounded grim and raspy. I tried to get back up, but I just couldn't. There was a weight placed on my ankles, chained down as a sacrifice. The voices continued, "If this gets out, your life is done for. You have to kill it for your own good."

Only then did I really comprehend the words floating around my mind. What kind of horror movie did I fall into? They persisted, howling like a whirlwind, "Execute it, and get revenge for everything. Think of what would happen to you. What would happen to you if you were discovered to be a monster?"

Just as the word "monster" spat out of my demon's mouth, I felt a sense of weightlessness as if I were about to pass out. I wanted to shout for help but my mouth was sealed shut against my own will, and it instead followed someone else's commands. It felt surreal, like a parallel to my own nightmare. Then, it hit me.

The voices. They were there.

——————————

I'd realized that Sage wasn't following me, but I didn't bother to turn just yet. I wanted to stay as far away from him as I could for the time being, given that his eye can suddenly glow. I couldn't shake that image out of my head...

I felt a trickle of sweat creep down my forehead and disappear behind my eyebrow. My lips trembled as my heart began to race. I felt panic strike me— but that wasn't all.

Something from behind me shot into the doorknob that I leaned into. It was as if a small bazooka missile had crashed through it. I yelped as I was jabbed with something as sharp as a pencil-point at maximum velocity. Whatever it was exploded at the tip upon impact with a tarrish, black substance, smothering my arm in it. It smashed... jammed into the skin that stretched between my thumb and index, making a bloody hole the size of a large marble. At first glance it could've been a large hose, but as I followed its trail behind me with my eyes, it was revealed that I was horrifically wrong.

"Sage?"

His eyes were black, and they held pupils as thin as cat-slits with the hue of a red stoplight. He cried tears of slime that slugged down and around his viscous smile racked with knives for teeth. His fingers were topped with claws that could've been mistaken for obsidian arrow-heads. Above all, four inky, black tentacles swayed ever so gently through the air, jeering at me with the face of death itself. I glanced back up to his face. We made eye contact and kept it. Sage venomously hissed in a low, echoing voice,

"I can't let you go, yet,"

Sage removed his tentacle from the door, leaving a golf-ball sized hole where the doorknob should've been. Light simmered across the floor as if everything was fine. Now it was a matter of escaping or being stabbed to death since clearly this was not a friendly visitation. I clawed at the hole in the door, hoping it would be enough of a handgrip to pry it open. Stagnant air wisped around me as another tentacle shot through the door, missing my jugular by inches. I pestered it away like it was a fluttering moth. I glanced back toward Sage as I struggled to budge the door open. I would've gagged if I had the time to do so.

Sage leaned back and left his torso available to strike. He glanced down expectantly as something began poking around beneath the fabric of his green undershirt. He let out a gravelly laugh comparable to a lion's growl that made the hairs on my neck stand up. After visibly expanding his ribcage with a large breath in— and detaching some kind of skeletal structure by the looks of it— a fleshy snake broke through his shirt, jutting out like it had a mind of its own. After poking a handful of other holes in a relatively straight line, Sage keeled forward and violently swung backward, ripping both his shirt and his own gut apart. This gash is what housed the sentient flesh-noodle, and monstrously sharp cones that resembled teeth.

I vigorously pounded on the door to get it open. I couldn't help but belt out a curse as the psychopath behind me let out a chilling chuckle. His claws elongated at will like a sword from a sheath. I failed incessantly... I was going to die here. It was all so sudden, how I was going to go out. I dared to stare into Sage's red eyes. They carved terrorizing imprints into my psyche that would never be erased no matter how hard I would try. The soles of his brown sneakers clicked along the floor, drawing closer with every step.

Sage pounced at me without warning, pinning my neck against the metal door. I noticed that his breath smelled eerily similar to old pennies or dimes. The claws felt like box cutters as they made their microscopic cuts in my epidermis. His top left tentacle pulled backward, winding up to punch through my skull. I whispered my final goodbyes to the world as it came barreling toward me— whoosh.
———————————

I gasped back to life as I fell forward, grunting once my right hand acted as a shield. My other hand landed on an ankle. Dylan's ankle. I shook away the lightheaded mess that shrouded my eyesight, and he was gone. I overheard grass crunching as he took off sprinting. After standing up and regaining my balance, I used a cornflower blue wall to hold myself. I also happened to see it in the rubble at my feet. A few steps backward and I saw the whole picture: the wall of the security building that was once partially crumbled is now entirely destroyed. Metal scraps that had once kept the wires in place littered the floor like sprinkles made of cat claws, and watched as the copper snakes threatened to collapse and drag the entire place along with them.

"Oh God."

I caught myself staring down the direction which Dylan had run off to. Through the trees, the ferns, the bushes, the logs, the grass, the weeds, the poison ivy, and the prickers all over again. This was going to spread like wildfire, but I ultimately figured I couldn't delay getting help with something like this. That's exactly the moment I officially met him. I heard,

"Nice to meet you, but I sure as heck wouldn't want to be you."

—————————-
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