I holster my backpack and put up my hair in a ponytail. I put on my best grin for the Tormented zone. Why view this as real life when I would just fall apart as reality bends to fit the Torment at the center of this, taking it too seriously? Might as well do what I do best, show time!

I take off my shoes and quietly pad down the hallway. Yes, I did tiptoe, but put out of your mind the Grinch on Christmas. There are faster and quieter ways to tiptoe. A dramatic appearance in one place when I was in another would be heavily detracted from by clattering footsteps or by being late.

The purple tint was growing rather fast. I could just barely see clumps and threads of it hanging in the air, like streamers and lanterns at a party. I pause at yet another corner, looking around. Doesn't seem like the Torment has spawned Anathema just yet.

And yet...

I remain there at the corner though despite the supposed lack of the flesh-hungry monsters that characterize Tormented zones. It seems incredibly suspicious that my journey has remained unimpeded so far, so much so that since I am very much a gambler, I predict there is something important I am missing. While I figure it out, I take out ten scalpels out of my back pocket. I twiddle around with a few of them on one hand, nimbly making them travel across and around my fingers.

I know! Humans rarely look up! I chuckle. And imps too. Elisa’s face after a trap of mine pelted her with erasers was priceless.

I am going to get to her and Dennis. Me and Elisa will sit on the couch together, re-watching “The Adams Family.” I will play charades with Dennis. I intend to get out before the bell rings. I will see them again.

So saying, I check "up." I tilt my head up and look into the hallway. Oh dear. I nearly made the mistake of every side character that dies in a horror movie.

Stuck like barnacles to a ceiling, golden teeth gnash in an ever-changing kaleidoscope, one after another. The metallic growths protruded in a conical fashion, with dangling, glittering gems shining brightly with the brilliance of lights at a ballroom. I note the creatures are the exact placement of the lights in our school.

I’ve always wondered how the transformation of a Tormented zone works and what it looks like. Guess I know now, but I do wish that it did not come with the danger of having my head plucked off like a delicious grape off a bulbous vine spewing red sap everywhere.

It takes me a quick minute till my cyan and ultramarine blue eyes flash with an idea. I promptly turn to the lockers and start smoothly twisting the bronzing screws off the door hinges with one of my scalpels and picking the lock, propping the door up with my elbow so it didn’t fall prematurely, catching the hinges in my hand. I carefully settle it down before taking down a second one. I loosely attach them to my backpack with medical tape, wasting valuable time as I jury rig it with my spare preferred clothes and towel so as to avoid clattering. It was this or they could hear me. I just have to hope they didn’t have other more unique senses.

I remember reading a book by a Warrior who said that Intelligence was incredibly low in starting Anathema, so the creatures’ eyesight wouldn’t matter since they would not interpret me as human with my disguise. I don my haphazard turtle shell.

My design is laughable. I would rather throw it to the dumpster than wear such a disgrace, but unfortunately, it is literally the only thing I can think of to put between me and certain death.

I glare through the purple Miasma spiraling around everything, the tendrils of anti-magic curling amorously throughout the halls, and I start crouching and shuffling through the corridors under the growing dangling monstrosities above me, feeling for all the world like I am traveling under hungry chandeliers. My hair trails behind me like a bridal gown, which I must admit is decidedly inconvenient, as amusing as it probably looks.

*bump*

A cold feeling condenses in my sternum. I keep moving.

I gulp nervously, a smile still on my face. A person looking at me would think I was having the time of my life, but they would be dead wrong. This is deeply harrowing, and I just want to hug a pillow and cry. Instead, I am playing the English version of the song “Underdog” inside my head as loud as mentally possible while traveling under the stuff of nightmares.

🎶“...it’s not a pleasant sound I get that. Go on and call me “coward,” never was much of a fighter...”🎵

*Scraaaape*

I’m being gnawed on! I can feel the pressure of the heavy metal molars pushing down on me, making the locker doors wobble. And this is just it feeling me out!

🎵“Underdog, wonder how long you’ll wait until the day you’re suddenly strong. Don’t you think it’s almost time? Come on, let’s move along.”🎶

I just keep crawling, each monster testing just what this rectangular metal pill bug that is walking so brazenly beneath them is. I promise you, golden eldritch decorations, I agree that this is incredibly foolish. As much as I find dying to you overly ostentatious bejeweled maws to be a unique way of going out, I would much rather live, despite much evidence to the contrary these past years.

I finally make it to the end of the hallway. Nothing like stress to make scooching down feel much longer than normal. I hunker down on my butt and pull my hand mirror out of my pocket. I examine myself and fix my hair which has already gotten fairly mussed up. I then push the mirror out from under my makeshift shelter, quickly reaching my hand out, angling it, and then bringing my hand back in. This brings to mind the Norse story of Tyr and Fenrir... which I now deeply regret thinking about. Losing my hand like Tyr is not on my bucket list. Unfortunately, it seems like the chandeliers are in the next hallway as well. My black-rimmed mirror gifts me a glimpse of the atrocities laying in the corridors. Not only had the metallic crushing mouths grown larger, with each molar now the size of my small clenched fists, but there are a couple sleeping hounds.

Now, don’t get me wrong, when I say hounds, I mean that in the loosest possible sense of the word. Take a perfectly fit, rather oversized version of a gorgeous Irish Setter (I’m a dog lover, sue me), then add so many entrails pouring out of their mouths that they are quite literally breaking the laws of physics.

The blackened entrails are squirming and worming over the floor in front of them and writhing and scything – each intestine has wicked chitinous hooks attached to them – out of its mouth. Add two massive rust-red super-floofy antennae growing out of empty picked-clean sockets rimmed with bone and you have the gist of it. My blood leaves my face, leaving me incredibly pale, but my expression is set in an assured snarl. I have assumed the role of a fearsome adventurer enjoying the thrill of this horror show, and I am going to commit to it. I check that I have moved to a relatively empty spot and ready myself. From what I can tell, there is a space between their tentacles that is a one-way trip to the hounds’ stomachs.

I really don't want to get eaten!

I am not quite ready to eschew my protection though, as much the weight will burden me. I flatten myself up against the lockers, staring warily at the living stalactites while I furtively unscrew and pick the lock of the nearby locker doors. After I finish with four, the unwieldiness is starting to get out of hand, as they may literally fall out of my hands.

This is crazy!

I slowly creep out of the hounds’ blind spots into full view of the resting Anathema, and settle down a couple of the locker doors, before thrusting two doors directly into the oversized shinies on the roof.

What the fuck am I doing! I wish Elisa was here!

I am unsurprised that they instinctively bite down. I do however underestimate just how much force they can generate when ignoring basic physics like leverage. The metal does not break, but as it deforms it makes the most obnoxious screeching.

This is so insane! I swear I’m going to have a heart attack.

The hounds shoot awake but seem to be incapacitated by the sound, their massive fluffy antennae wiggling and shaking in irritation.

Dang. Lucky break.

Ahhh! They are awake! I expected it... but ahhh, why do they need to start moving!?

The noise is certainly excruciating, but I live in a high school for most of the week: there is no shortage of mistakes – err, I mean indie rock – blasting out of the club rooms. I swiftly pick up the doors and make the slights on canine-kind deep-throat the metal rectangles, shoving it brutally into their gullets past their now-limp tentacles. Encouraged by the lack of response, I move closer to one and push. I can feel the organs tear beneath my applied force. The Anathema dog-thing collapses, the antennae stop twitching, and I move on. I could try to attack the other hound...

They are too scary! I’m running!

...but the chew toys I gave the chandeliers have already been sliced in half and the other hound is scrabbling to try to get the metal door out. It is distracted and I have no interest in making the mistake that everyone makes when the violence starts i.e. they need an injury from the enemy to get rid of their bloodthirst.

I have seen it happen to far too many gangsters when I am supplying medical services to them. I have worked out my rage at Alexa for stranding me here in the Tormented zone by killing one of the creatures. I do not wish for her to succeed in killing me like I believe she wants me to. I do not pretend to understand her motives nor her capabilities at this moment, for all I know it may not be her, but I will not make a foolish mistake.

So saying, I crouch down and run through the hallway. I step over the blood-soaked objects in my path.

After a couple minutes, my heart freezes as a realization hits me. The music score that would be playing at this realization would be a purposefully discordant but soft violin drop-off.

A certain chill runs up my back as my now terror-frozen heart plummets into my stomach. My eyes widen in terror. I have passed no doors as I am running down the hallway. There should be bathrooms and class entrances in this hallway on the way to the gym. This corridor is... growing.

Sweat beads on my neck. There are already spatial shenanigans going on this rift. Which means... well, all that comes to mind to describe this is “fuck.” More than a few people have been killed.

Sapient creatures getting eaten by Anathema fuels both their personal strength, inducing evolution, and increases the miasma, which means the environment changes to suit the Torment’s message, whatever inhuman logic its very existence is made to simultaneously follow and force upon the world.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

As if the Torment wanted to prove my conclusion correct, the rasping sound of stone against stone prompts me to glance behind my back.

Neon purple stone cylinders, like the stone version of purple glow sticks, rupture out the cheap plastic tiles, cracks spiderwebbing the area around... pillars? They continue until, wait a minute, I- that doesn’t make sense. They should have reached the ceiling by now.

Oh... I see, the ceiling is changing too, rocketing away from the floor.

I do not trust that the chandeliers are finished growing, but they should be far enough away that I should be safe enough to analyze these rapid-fire changes without my head being plucked like bread from a handbasket. I need to make sure I keep my bearings.

Just breathe.

Calm down.

You will crush them.

The pillars connect with the ceiling once it stops running away. I wait there for a minute, the 15-minute rule thrown out of the window by now, so I might as well move cautiously. So far, there is nothing else of note. This hallway is now just a particularly oddly proportioned rectangular prism with an overly far away ceiling in comparison to the width between the walls, and all of the unearthly decorations too, obviously. I reach out to touch the pillars in a moment of carelessness, though no reprisal results.

This cold stone... this fascinating marvel... more than a few had to have died for it. A tear runs down my face. The adventurer role I have taken unnecessarily drives me to take a moment to give my respects to them, something I would have done already, at least I think would have...

The best thing I can do is attempt to immortalize the rift that their lives fueled. I... I have no idea... no idea whether it would actually be a fitting tribute to them, but I probably know them, so sit down in a lotus position and take out a large journal from my backpack and scratch a few notes on the pages in cipher (you never know when a bully will try to take your journal to read it) and a quick sketch and shading of the environment. Afterwards, I continue to take advantage of the time this shifting has given me to stand up unhindered and run down the ever-lengthening halls, keeping a watchful eye on the faraway.

“Woaoaoh!”

I skid to a stop. At this moment, I am seriously peeved. I am going to the gym to supply myself with potential ways to defend myself. It is, or was, pretty close to Chemistry class. And yet, I have not arrived at the gym and instead I am face-to-face with yet another threat. This time the creature is... a maid? Assuming Anathema do not spawn as the incorrect gender like humans are occasionally born as, I believe this maid is female given the exaggerated chest and hips.

Though... the secondary sex characteristics that would make one think female are exaggerated to the point of blatant ridiculousness.

That cannot be good for her back, right? Oily black tentacles are tied up in a messy bun on top of the head I have just brought down my metal locker doors with great alacrity. A white comedy mask with a red handprint painted on the right cheek cracks with my over eagerness to wail down on the creature.

I grin as the maid drops the crystalline broom she had been sweeping with to swiftly block and grab the metal rectangle, crumpling it within her perfectly manicured human hands. I have no intention of letting her use the obvious weapon that the broom is.

I also expected her to be far faster than me, so the moment she had reached up to grab it, I drop one of the doors onto to her reaching hand, and switch to slamming the thin side of the other door straight into her throat.

I certainly appreciate that these creatures have thus far remained animalesque and not completely deviated from earthly biology like later Anathema tend to.

I knock her off balance and she falls onto her flouncy, Victorian, overly-elaborate dress, the black-and-white maid uniform puffing up with caught air.

Obviously unencumbered by her form, her hand grows many different hinges as it reaches and slams the screen-white nails to the floor right in front of me. She pulls herself upwards and towards at the speed of a stone from a slingshot.

Speedsters are notoriously unpredictable, but for the briefest second, I can predict her trajectory. I dash towards her, my short legs moving fast past her distended arm to shove four scalpels into each of her tar-purple eyeholes. The thin metal knives and their handholds sink into her head all the way with ease, purple goo sprays out of her eyes all over my hands.

She still retains her momentum, launching past me and... tears pour out of my eyes. I crumple like a wet rag doll, an excruciating pain radiates throughout my face. I can’t fucking handle it. I gingerly touch my cheek and promptly fall unconscious.

_________

I wake up. HAH! I wake up? I'm alive! I completely ignore the torture of the feeling of my right cheek flapping in two separate parts in the air as I stand up, blood dripping down from the separated muscles!!!

Yes, I have completely ignored it in favor of the fact that I had taken out the maid, evidenced by my continued survival, though I cannot see that lasting much longer with the blood pouring down my face. I put all analysis of the situation on hold, pulling out my mirror. I desperately hold down my bile at the site of my beautiful face marred by the injury.

For a brief second, I think that maybe this actually pretties up my face, the ugly thing that it was.

I could seriously infect or add acid burns to wound if I threw up. I crawl simultaneously limping and rushing to the house cleaner Anathema.

I just want to fall asleep....

My face flushes at the stupid thought, blood pouring out a little faster. I told Dennis that I would live life to the fullest. I have always stopped my own suicide attempts. I can refuse to lie down now too. I grab the fabric under the tough dress.

Dang girl! This is high-quality silk fabric. This would be nice material for our costumes in the play next week. I tear a clump out easily, and gently tuck it in my mouth to restrict the flesh and skin’s movement. With shaky legs, I stand up, avoiding moving my head, and walk unsteadily to my backpack. I rummage frantically through the backpack for medical glue and breathe a sigh of relief out through my nose once I find it. I grab out gloves and disinfectant for my hands. Wait... where’s the purple goo that splattered on my hands from stabbing the Anathema? I thought I was going to need to wipe that off. Now that I think about it, that purple goo was odd. It was weightless and... I couldn’t feel it when it landed on me. It acted like goo, but it did not give me the sensation of wetness. I analyzed my scarred hands: nothing. Nada.

I mentally shake my head. It’s not the time to get distracted. I disinfect my hands and place gloves on. Now for the part that will be the most difficult: lifting the thick gushing flap of muscle and flesh of my face to apply the glue.

The tears flow freely down my face as I pull up my cheek and liberally squirt the medical glue and push both parts against the silk in my mouth so they align, salting the lacerations that cut through my face. I am not brave enough for this. I can think of their faces, the faces of my brother and my girlfriend, to give myself strength, but it is... so difficult. Rallying in the face of this torment... I’m just so tired. I should do stitches as well... I’m so tired...

It feels like I have been in this new world, in the Tormented zone, for hours

I am alone... Again... There is no one else in this vast, wide world.

Really though, when has that ever not been the case?

Mom never thinks I am genuine. I trusted my parents with my identity, and they use it against me every day, every time we interact.

I never truly trust my friends. They always leave before I can confide, I always hide it. I always dance around issues, sharing only as much as will continue our friendship, only enough for there to seem to be mutual benefit.

I can-can-can n-not even say I trust Dennis. I did but... d-d-d-do I still trust Denn-him now? I avoid talking about my personal iss-issues, manipulating the conversation, only purposefully making mistakes like yesterday, letting him glimpse through my mask. Can...

*sob*

I clasp my hands against my mouth, not in terror, but in sheer embarrassment that someone might hear me. Mom said I do not deserve these emotions. It is stupid of me to feel alone. I’m just making a victim of myself.

I'm perfectly fine.

Nothing's wrong with this situation.

This is just my lot in life, right?

Yeah, totally.

I focus on my surroundings, though it is incredibly difficult with the pain and constant threat of impending doom.

It's fine. Haha.

While I had been unconscious, the pillars had grown into monuments in of themselves, their girth rivaling that of a house with eerie purple light hiding the purple reliefs in their stone.

I really don’t think I had been out that long. Feels like a weeping angel/ Doctor Who scenario. In other words, it changed more just because I hadn't been looking at it.

The ceiling had shifted into a storied arch covered in art that depicted larger-than-life scenes of horror in war. Millions bowed down before a looming entity of many lines at various angles, specifically Prussian blue, velvet-red, and purple degrees wide, which then flattened them into paste because they had not broken their spines to bow low enough.

A thousand hearts were stolen from a glistening star, which sent billions of burning regal-purple grins, a fleet of “diplomacy,” to punish a living green-and-blue marble.

The King placed his boot on the stretching, cracking neck of an indeterminable person of every shade while his shining iron-covered tentacled hands curled around the necks of indeterminable many in the shade of submission.

Unbeknownst to me, the irises in my enraptured eyes dilate, devouring my pupil, turning Tyrian purple with thin black striations. What I do notice though is the change in taste as the tears pouring out of my eyes and over my lips switch from salty water to the acrid tang of iron. The oddity niggles in the back of my head until it allows me to tear my wide eyes from the impossible murals. I look back in the mirror and sigh in relief, stopping halfway through the sigh when my cheek stretches alarmingly and elicits additional searing agony.

I do not pay for the view with blood from my cheek though. The medical glue did its job in closing the cheek together. I pull out a sterilized needle and choose surgical thread – versus silk and nylon – and set it aside for the stitches. I grab out some previously pilfered expensive anesthetic and antiseptic. I dab on the former via cotton ball with great relief.

Sweet bliss... I may be nowhere near as amazing as Alexa, but for those in need of cheap health services in my neighborhood, though most disparagingly call it the ghetto, I am the go-to doc for a reason.

I need to move quickly though this procedure, because the anesthetic is strong enough to mildly impair my motor capabilities given time and I don’t want add insult to injury for my muscles by making a mistake.

I peer at the lower half of my face with the small mirror, carefully threading loop after loop along the massive gash, sowing my own cheek together. It looks like a ghoul is trying to sew their all-too-wide mouth closed.

Funnily enough, the way the maid cut my cheek open won’t impede smiling at all. A neutral face strains the stitches uncomfortably, and I found that anything besides that is a no-go after the pain that crawled throughout my face nearly knocked me out again despite the anesthetic. I better not become a cheap Joker knockoff, and I tell myself so too.

“Don’t you dare mimic the Joker. If you become evil, choose something that is actually original! I mean, smiling is still on the table. But clown aesthetic so passe."

I then realize there is another option that’s even worse. What if I was connected to Jeff the Killer? I would be the discount of a discount Joker... that would be terrible!

*sigh*

The humor would normally make me laugh, and it actually would not be difficult or painful to laugh, but I can finally rest.

I have been moving under incredible tension for too long, however long that is. Going any longer is going to get me eaten. Electronics never work in zones so there is no point in checking what the time is. I cannot remember whether Anathema are willing to eat each other, but the maid and her supplies could be useful, so before I collapse, I painstakingly drag her ridiculously heavy body over to the locker. I shove her up, blowing both her and my hair out of my face as her body “tries” to fall on my face. One of the things I have to work around to remedy in plays and such is my height. I am about 1.57 meters tall, or about 5 feet 2 inches, which makes it rather difficult to push her up into the locker. She’s got at least 22 centimeters, or about 9 inches, on me.

“Just... need... to put my back into it! Whew.”

I close the door and move into the next one over, breaking down a couple of separation dividers between different lockers. Actually quite spacious!

I look up at the terrifying and alluring royal murals with gnashing golden mouths dotting it all over and place my backpack behind my head, curling up in a ball.

I close the door and close my eyes.

I promise myself that I was not attached to Wilbur and Helix. Those soaked objects I stepped over... No, better yet, I never saw their corpses. Yeah. That’s how it is. They are totally still alive.