“Where am I?”
I couldn’t remember anything, not even my name. As I tried to gain my bearings, initially all I could see around me was the darkness. My eyes weren’t adjusting to the lack of light, so I couldn’t see anything around me. I groped around, trying to identify anything that could help me. My eyes were slowly starting to adjust as they picked up ambient light coming from somewhere nearby, when I felt something wet and sticky to the touch.
All of a sudden, I was hit by this awful smell. It was like that one act of touch seemed to jump start all my senses, and the smells that had been hidden were all round me. The strength of the stench in the room caused me to gag, and my eyes began to water. It was a smell I was unfamiliar with, and yet on some instinctual level I knew what it must be.
It was the smell of death.
Blood, piss, shit, sweat, all of the bodily fluids were mixing together and creating an overpowering stench that I couldn’t stand. My eyes, now more adjusted thanks to light, went wide at the scene in front of me. The room was covered in blood, with pieces of bodies scattered across the floor. It was gruesome, and yet is was impossible to not look. The entire room was a macabre showcase, and the more I tried to look away, the more I noticed things that made the scene even worse.
My whole body was shaking, my throat was raw from dry heaving and hacking. Nothing came up though, despite my bodies best efforts. Trying to look away from the room, my eyes darted around, trying to find the source of light. It didn’t take long. Nearby, there was a window with a soft glow coming from outside. I crawled, not trusting myself to walk, over to the window. I realized too late that crawling just made it worse, as I moved through the pieces and fluids.
When I reached the window, I pulled myself up using the windowsill, and looked at the light. The window was just above the street light, which was the source of the ambient light. I looked across to another building and then down to the ground. Judging by the windows of the building across the way, I seemed to be on the second floor.
A small fluttering caught my attention, and I glanced down to my left. A brick was holding down what looked like a piece of paper. I could see the dried blood on the paper, bringing my attention back to what was in the room behind me. Trying to distract myself before I dry heaved again, I grabbed the paper and read it.
If you are reading this, then you were lucky.
It looks like I missed you when I was cleaning up.
Count your blessings.
If you know what’s good for you, you wont talk to the cops, and you wont talk to the NDI.
If you do, I will find you.
It was all hand written, with what looked like a pencil. There was no signer, and no remarks as to who it was addressed to. The hand writing was neat and orderly. The paper itself had splotches of blood all over it. I felt sick to my stomach for a whole new reason. Me, being the only person alive in this room. This letter, saying I was lucky? My head felt fuzzy, a slight buzzing kicking in, and I dropped the paper. I couldn’t recall anything before waking up here. How did I end up here? Who left the note? Who were these people? These questions and more ran around my head, the little bit of calm I felt from the being in the light was gone after reading that note.
Are they still here?
The thought made me stop cold, my body shivering with fear. If I’m not alone, if this person is still here, why am I not dead yet? Even though these answers seemed logical, it didn’t stop me from turning around and looking into all the corners in the room, straining my eyes for any kind of movement. My breathing picked up again, even though I couldn’t see anything living in the room with me. Panic had me in a grip, and I could feel a growing tightness in my chest. The smell, the blood drying on my hands and clothes, the note. I wish I hadn’t been lucky. I wish I had died with the rest. How was I supposed to go on living after something like this?
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
The buzzing grew as the edges of my vision were going dark and the world started to spin. The note. The note! I couldn’t stop thinking about the note.
The last thing I recalled before blacking out was the distant sounds of sirens coming closer and closer.
As I opened my eyes, I was blinded by light. With a hiss of pain, I shut my eyes tight. After a few seconds, I opened them up slowly, letting them adjust. I was in a bright room, and from what I could feel around me, I was lying on a bed.
Maybe it had all been a bad dream?
I looked around the room. It was sterile and white. I saw a sink and a toliet in the corner that seemed to be a reflective metal. I sat up stretched. I was wearing different clothes than I had been in my dream, the blood stains gone. Though I felt like I could still catch a whiff of the smells I had been surrounded by.
A very vivid dream.
There was a fluttering near the foot of my bed, a black shape that was hoping up and down. I held my breath, not moving. The shape finally jumped up and with a flap, it landed on the bed. It looked like a crow, though most of it’s details seemed to be covered in these wispy shadows. The wisps almost seemed to roll off of it like a light fog that stuck close to it’s body. It stared at me, with unblinking blood-red eyes, following my movements. I didn’t see any windows in the room, and the only door I could see was sealed shut. The walls were completely barren of anything.
“How did you get in here?”
I coughed, my throat felt dry and raw. Maybe I had been screaming in my sleep? The crow continued to watch me, not blinking once. It was… unnerving. Suddenly, it moved. Hoping closer to me, I saw it was carrying something in it’s beak. For some reason, almost institutionally, I reached out with my hand. As soon as it saw the movement, it dropped the object in my hand, like it had been waiting for me to do that. It was a piece of paper, covered in spots of dried blood. I didn’t need to read it to know what it would say.
“It wasn’t a dream. All those people, i-it wasn’t a dream. What the fuck. What the fuck?!”
My voice cracked, my throat still raw. Not from screaming in my sleep, but from hacking. My body went cold again, staring at the paper, reading the words again. I needed to do something, anything.
I jumped from the bed, causing the crow to let out a squawk and flap it wings. It made a move to follow me, but kept it’s distance as I waved my arms in a shooing motion.
“Leave! Go away!” I yelled at the crow. I didn’t bother looking back at it. I didn’t need to see those eyes again. “Not like you can leave though.” I muttered under my breath.
Walking over to the sink I had seen, I turned the water on. The sound of running water helped me focus on the now, and not the bloody room. Cupping my hands under the stream, I splashed my face with the cold water. I had no delusions about any of this being a dream. This was reality. That room was real, those people… They were real too.
Am I a suspect?
I recalled the sirens I had heard before passing out. If they found me covered in blood that wasn’t mine, and saw I was alive then, I might be the main suspect. I needed to talk to someone, to explain what was going on. Tell them I was innocent.
But are you innocent?
A voice in my head spoke. My voice. An intrusive thought, nothing more. I shook my head. And yet, the question nagged at me. Having the note in my possession, and a weird bird in this enclosed room weren’t going to do me any favors though. Turning around, I looked back towards the bed, but the crow was gone. Not a trace of it left behind.
“The hell?”
My heartbeat was increasing. Trying to keep myself from passing out again, I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. It didn’t help much, but my head wasn’t spinning at least. I turned back towards the sink, to splash more water in my face when I noticed someone staring at me.
I saw a man with shaggy brown hair, grown longer on the front and sides. It seemed to curl a little on top. The eyes that stared back at me were coal black. He had a pale complexion, making it look like he wasn’t outside much. I took a step back, and so did he. I tilted my head in confusion, and so did he. As I raised my hand at the same he did, I put it together. Above the sink, made out of some reflective plastic material, was a mirror. I didn’t recognize who I saw, but it was me.
Staring into eyes I didn’t recognize, looking at the way my brown hair seemed to curl a bit at the ends, I felt a brief recognition. A memory came to me from the deepest part of my brain. Something that I guess I would not be able, or allowed, to forget.
“Raymond Ingram?” I couldn’t help but scoff. “What a stupid name.”