༉˚*ೃ ᵒ⁴. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆!

𝐒𝐀𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐍'𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 back in Hawkins for a long time. Rain pelted down on her from the heavens above. She stood on the bus stop with soaked hair and a bright red backpack thrown over her shoulder. It wasn't quite yet midnight, but the impending darkness outside the headlights of the bus was creeping out of the tree-line like fog. Nervously adjusting her pack over her shoulders, Sar stretched her feet. She'd been on that bus for a good three hours. Off of the bus stop ledge she hopped, down onto the dirt path.

          The bus drove away without a second thought, and Sar found herself doused in darkness once again. She pulled a flashlight out of her bag. It was an old one—another one of Kim's hand-me-down items—but it would work just fine. Sar had to smack it against her hand a few times before the light spluttered alive. It cut through the darkness.

          Hawkins was a small town, resting on the edge of a large forest that spanned half-way across Indiana. It was surrounded by a variety of different woods, each in which you could get lost for hours. The path road stood on now led directly to the town. For a second, Sar's face cast towards the twinkling lights that fell beyond the trees.

          Home, a part of her thought. But it wasn't—not really.

          Granted, Sar didn't remember most of her life before the lab. She received glimpses every now and then. Of a father's voice, a mother's blonde hair, warm forehead kisses, the feeling of being cradled in loving arms. At the thought, she wrapped a lone arm around herself, trying to imitate the love she couldn't remember as a child. From afar, the small town looked almost... welcoming.

          Instead, the blonde girl turned towards the forest that rose beyond. The woods were cold and dark, dense and eerie. Trees towered towards the sky on spindly trunks, like reaching fingers. Just the sight was enough to send shivers down her spine. An owl called out, from one of the branches, half invisible in the night. A shudder ran through her body. This is a bad idea.

          Mist was flitting between the trees. It crept out past the roots, cold touches lingering against the earth. Sar could only imagine what could be hiding inside. Too many horror films, Sar scolded herself. This isn't the fucking Texas Chain Massacre. If anything, the thought only made her feel more uneasy. No, it was worse. Sar tried to force all the worries out of her mind. Despite her fears, she stepped into the forest—if on tentative feet. Fog touched at her arms, the air damp and heavy. But one thing that Sar could be sure of was that the feeling was coming from here. That... Something. She felt its impending darkness with every few paces into the woods.

          Now she could be sure this Something wasn't normal. Sar was hesitant to stretch out her mind, because of how suffocating it felt, but she could tell it was choking this town, filling it with darkness. The rain soaked her clothes, sent her shivering. It sunk into her sneakers and froze her toes. Her flashlight spluttered. That action alone gave her heart a jolt—momentarily dousing her in pitch-black. She hit it against the open palm of her hand as it shuddered back to life. What a miserable adventure.

          Stumbling through half-dark, Sar saw partly with her mind. Less of what was around her—she wasn't able to sense the earth, or the trees, or anything not alive—but more feeling and following that sense of wrongness, like one might follow the scent of a freshly-baked pie. The deeper into the forest she got, the heavier that feeling grew. The feeling constricted around her mind, like a headache. It made her wince.

          It felt close.

          Momentarily pausing, Sar reached into her backpack and pulled out a pistol. It had been a gift from Kim—"Just in case someone ever comes after you," the girl had told her, "use it to keep yourself safe."—back when she'd first given Sar the job. Sleek and black, it fit perfectly into her fingers, like she'd been born to hold it. Sar loaded it, just in case.

          She held the weapon out in front of her. Droplets of rain bounced off of it, as Sar felt herself getting closer and closer. Whatever it was. It felt like a pit of darkness, in the light that was the world. Sar would never be able to explain it other than a sinking feeling in her stomach, a kind of powerful dread, and a headache that wouldn't go away.

          That's when she came to the tree. It was a perfectly normal tree, granted, except for the gaping hole in its roots. That was where everything went wrong. The hole was covered with slime, a mucus-like substance, with a pulsing red glow emitting from inside. And when Sar reached out to feel it with her mind, it felt so utterly wrong, and so familiar, that she knew it was the source of energy. Somehow... the entire thing felt... alive.

          Bending at her knees, Sar hesitantly reached her hand into the goo. It clung to her skin in wet masses, sucking around her wrist. Disgusted, Sar instantly recoiled and shook it from her hand. She wiped it on the bark for good measure. This tree wasn't natural by any means, and that meant Sar could guess just where it had come from. She'd always known that what the fucking lab was doing was going to get out of containment someday. She knew that they would push it too far. That one day, all the experiments, and pushing the mind to the limits, and trying to explore the... other world was going to bite them in the ass; break loose. Hell, that had been proved with Sar and some of the other kids. And that was how she knew, right here, that whatever this thing was contaminating the psychic air that her mind traversed was from that hellhole.

          Again, this was a very bad idea.

          But Sar was curious, and determined, and couldn't help but fear what had brought her all this way. So she stripped herself of her backpack, leaving it slumped on the ground, crouched close to the hole, and tucked her gun into the waistband of her jeans—safety on. A moment of hesitance. God, James would kill her if he knew what she was about to do. Right here, she swore on her life that she was never going to tell him about this stupid decision. Here goes. Both of her hands pressed into the goo, trying to create a path for her. This is a very bad idea.

          Without the chance to regret her decision, Sar pressed herself into the goo. It was hard to breathe, wet and sticky, pulling at her clothes and hair like violent hands. Shit. She squeezed her eyes closed, felt her feet leave the solid, uncorrupted earth outside. Now, she was left to push herself through. There was a second in which she came to the realisation—as she was already crawling beneath the roots of the tree—that this was indeed a really bad idea. Maybe there was no other side, maybe she'd just suffocate in here. Then, one of her hands broke through the slime. Air touched her fingertips.

          So, it seemed she wasn't going to die in a slimy tree after all.

          Then, Sar was pulling herself through. The girl collapsed onto the ground on the other side, breathing heavily and soaked in slime. Gross. Her fingers were gripping silver-grey grass. That certainly wasn't normal. She looked up, blue eyes shining in the dull light. In front of her floated particles of what looked to be like ash, or some kind of unknown airborne material. Should she have brought a gas mask? Trees rose towards the sky, covered in mucus, and their roots crawled around the ground like worms. She realised, with a heavy hand at her heart, that it was the forest that she'd just come from. But... different. Like she'd gone through a mirror. Just... wrong.

          "Shit."

          This wasn't caused by the other world. This was the other world. She'd never seen it, never been there—only heard whispers of what the scientists had said, the other kids. It had never been much of a priority of hers, in the lab: thinking about this place. She'd had her own things to worry about. But now... shit, now this was very much a priority. She hadn't even known it was a real place that had existed at all.

          Her flashlight had stopped working. It lay dead beside her knees. Sar picked it up, shaking it around in an attempt to get it going again. But no matter how many times she pressed the button, or hit it lightly against the slime-ridden ground, it wouldn't turn back on. Even worse. Sar should probably, definitely, get out of here. God, James was going to be so mad. And yet... she was in a world that as far as she knew was a parallel to her own. Or perhaps just this forest, she didn't know. Maybe she was the first person to ever explore this place. Maybe there were... maybe there were other experiments in here. She had to look.

          Just a few minutes, she promised herself.

          Sar took the time to retrieve her gun. She didn't know what this place held, but she knew it had given some of the other kids nightmares. It was best to be on the lookout.

          Here, it wasn't raining. The sky was cloudless—was, in fact, void of any features at all. No moon, no stars. It made Sar feel incredibly uneasy. No wind, no heat, no... anything. Like... the ghost of a world.

          Sar's legs were shaking a little when she stood. Whatever she'd been expecting, it wasn't this. And when she opened her mind up to the feeling, she found the darkness was everywhere. The Something. It surrounded her like some kind of black hole, a pit of nothingness in a world of everything. It made her feel nauseous. And afraid. Sar had never felt nothing before. She could have been in the most secluded part of America, miles away from any human contact, and if she wanted to, could still feel the minds of the birds and the squirrels and the other creatures of the living. Here, there was nothing. And it was stronger than that, because it was wrongness, and muck, and ink, feeling as if it was trying to worm its way into her own consciousness. Sar was barely giving her mind any stretch, and she still felt a headache coming on.

          Out in front of her, her gun was held like a compass. She let it lead her with stiff arms. Sar's eyes darted back and forth cautiously, continuing on ahead. Twisted roots, vines, were climbing out of the ground, threatening to trip her up. She could have sworn she saw one of them move like a snake—but when her gaze turned towards it, the thing was still. Maybe she was just imagining things. Sar shuddered anyway.

          It was here, that the Something navigation came to an end. Because she could see it.

          It smelt like rotting flesh, garbage in the hot Chicago sun. Like something dead. It felt even worse. Nothing she'd felt, even in this place of void, could prepare her from the energy reeking off of this something. It filled her head like poison, thrumming as if the very feeling was alive. It was almost painful. Because this thing wasn't human. Maybe wasn't even living at all.

          The thing was slumped over a fox carcass. Blood was sunk into the earth surrounding its tiny corpse, and the fox's dead black eyes were fixated on a spot near her. Whatever the creature was that was eating it, it was slimy and reptilian, hunched with bones pushing against its thin skin. It crouched on long, horrifying legs, unnaturally long arms stretched to rest over the carcass ending with freakishly long fingers.

          Sar's breath, rather understandably, caught in her throat. She hovered back, eyes wide, wide. What the hell? Her fingers were latched tight on the handgun—her last lifeline. It shook in her hands. For a moment, she was frozen in place. Her heart was beating so fast, eyes continuing to widen in horror.

          A monster, she thought, feeling like a terrified child. Monsters aren't real. They're just fairy-tales that Brenner told us as children, to keep us afraid. And yet, it was right in front of her. Just there. Eating a recent kill. Gun raised, Sar slowly backed away. She took weary steps, careful not to make a sound with the vines littering the ground around her feet. Her breathing came out in small harsh breaths. She'd always been pretty brave, even as a little girl, but now she couldn't hide the fact that she was terrified.

          Hell, she was a bank robber. She didn't sign up for this monster hunting shit.

          And then her shoulder brushed up against one of the trees, some slime got caught to her jacket and made a horribly gross sound. She froze, hoping that it wasn't too loud. Every part of her body system shut down in fear. The monster turned.

          It would have looked like some kind of mutated reptile if it'd had a face. But it didn't. The creature straightened itself. It was much taller than she could have anticipated, towering over her from even so far away. Then its mouth opened into five pieces, like a kind of really fucked-up flower, revealing a gaping red throat and layers and layers of sharp teeth. She had half a second to think—what the fuck? what the actual fuck?—before it screamed. That shriek sent a primal kind of fear down her spine.

          Sar held her handgun and fired a shot into its face. Then another, and another. The bullets ripped through its tough skin, spraying black blood up into the air. The monster shook itself in irritation. One bullet caught in its mouth, and the monster shrieked again furiously. Shit, now she'd really pissed it off. And yet, Sar kept firing, pistol held in front of her and face twisted into determination. This thing surely couldn't survive a full magazine to the face.

          Then the gun clicked. Once. Twice. She pulled at the trigger again, eyes wide. No bullets fired. No, no, no. She slammed the gun against her hand. No. Whatever it was—slime, or just Sar's terrible, terrible luck—something had jammed it tight, and it wasn't coming loose.

          Almost freakishly calmly, the monster was coming towards her, long claws nearly dragging on the ground. The fact that it wasn't charging was somehow more terrifying. A little like it knew that it'd catch her eventually. Its jaws hung open, saliva dripping, waiting for her. It was so close. One more attempt to fire the gun. Nothing.

          The monster momentarily hung back on its legs, sinking down a little, like a deer or lion might before they sprung forward.

          Panic. Sar draw her arm back and threw her small handgun as violently as she could at the creature's face. It lodged in the monster's mouth, the creature lunging to eat it. Sar turned on her heels and sprinted. She ran faster than she ever had in her life. A shriek, behind. Maybe it was struggling with her pistol caught in its teeth. The air was heavy with her panting. Then, no—the ground shook as the thing took chase. All that was filling Sar's mind was that pure fight or flight. Run or die. Where's the exit? Where's the exit?! She searched frantically, mind stretching out too, for the sliver of light that was the way back to her world. For just a second, Sar glanced behind her.

          The monster had crouched to half run on all fours, a bit like a twisted out of shape bear, body proportions all wrong. It was way too fucking close—.

          Sar ducked under a low-hanging branch, lurching to her left, and the monster skidded past her, mouth open in a scream. She lost her balance, tripping over herself, but scrambled to her feet. She could see the entrance now: still with that faint red glow, and the goo having attached itself. Sar threw herself forward as the monster crashed behind her. Its body broke through the twisting trunk of a tree, raining wood shards down upon the both of them.

          Sar supposed she would make a better meal than a little fox.

          Sar did not take the twisted-tree hole so carefully this time. She threw herself into it, shoulder jarring, and burst through it onto the other side. Clean air. She hadn't realised how much her lungs had been screaming for it, in that polluted air of the... other world. Dirt and slime exploded around her as she scrambled out. With a single hand, Sar reached out and grabbed her backpack as she sprinted, not stopping for even a second.

          Her feet pounded against the forest floor. Panic, hot and terrified, was plastered across her pretty features, between a gash caused by a root and the mud and slime from that gateway. There was a rumble of the ground behind her, an explosion of dirt, and the monster screamed. Whatever it was, it was in here with her now. She wove between trees, fuelled only by instinct, the urge of flight, and adrenaline. Sar could hear it chasing her, its footfall and screams.

          Branches tore at her clothes. She had muck throughout her hair and blood on her lightly-grazed hands from the way she'd roughly scrambled across the ground. Sar didn't look back, not daring to risk it. Look forward and run. Wind—she'd never been so grateful to feel wind—rushed in her ears so that she could barely hear anything other than the sound of her own ragged breath and the cries of the monster. Her legs blurred in the undergrowth.

           The monster was still screaming behind her. Sar could no longer tell if it was still chasing her or if it was simply loose in the forest. Only now, she took the time to look back—still sprinting onwards. She was running at such a fast speed that it seemed like her legs were going to eventually stop catching up. The figure of the creature, once dark against the moonlight seeping between the trees, seemed to have disappeared. Still, she looked behind as she ran.

          Her legs burst through a bush, feet half-tripping over each other. And when she turned her face back to the front, bursting out into a shade of slight moonlight, Sar caught a glimpse of a dark shadow looming inches from her.

          She ran straight into a tall figure.

༉*ೃ༄

word count: 3,170

originally posted, 18.12.2017.

revised and rewritten, 06.11.2020.