Little Red struggled to tune out the din of voices in her mind, each one prickling and pressing, an uneasy chorus she’d long since stopped trying to decipher. The crew she rode with was a gritty blend of lost souls - bikers in black leather and faded denim, draped in spikes and insignias that dared onlookers to even try asking a question. But anyone looking closer, really looking, would see the depth in their eyes - a hollowness carved by battles hard-fought and barely won. These were survivors, haunted and hungry, each bearing scars that ran far deeper than ink on their skin.
Little Red caught a glimpse of her brother, Big Red, riding just a few paces over. She took in his rough outline - a towering man with a beard like flames, his mop of red hair wild beneath a skullcap. In the twilight, his eyes were unreadable, but she knew that if they could see each other clearly, they’d be wearing matching looks of hard determination.
The low warning light on her gas gauge snapped her focus back. She signaled to the next offramp, and as if they were wired to her movements, the others followed. Their unspoken code made them move in unison, each turn and stop a seamless flow as they veered toward the diner-slash-gas station nestled on the edge of a lonesome stretch of highway.
With a disappointed sigh, Little Red slipped her card into the machine, the rhythmic hum of the gas pump filling her ears. She felt a frantic impatience, a tension coiling in her muscles. Every second felt like sand slipping through her fingers, but there was nothing to be done - just the slow, frustrating wait for her tank to fill. Finally, with a quiet tap on the gas cap, she rolled her bike forward, sparing the next rider a nod before kicking her stand down near the diner entrance.
After setting her helmet on the handlebars, she raised a hand to signal Big Red, a silent heads-up that she was heading inside. He gave her a nod - a single, solemn acknowledgment that, for them, meant far more than words.
The diner was crowded but silent, a strange, uneasy hush filling the air. Everyone’s eyes were glued to a flatscreen above the counter, and not a single head turned as she walked in. A waitress, eyes still fixed on the screen, waved her over without looking.
“Sit anywhere you like, hun. I’ll be right with you,” she murmured, voice flat with distraction.
Despite herself, Little Red’s own eyes drifted to the screen, curiosity pulling her gaze in spite of the insistent itch to keep moving. The broadcast flickered from one image to another, each more surreal than the last. Enormous creatures, some bearing only a twisted resemblance to known animals, others looking like myth come to life - a chimaera’s hulking form, a sphinx perched ominously, a serpent-headed man who seemed to look directly through the screen. Most were stills, showing monstrous remains slumped against familiar landscapes. But some were pulled from video - short, shaky clips caught by smartphone, the figures blurry but chillingly real.
With a sigh, she tugged her earbuds out. The sounds of the newscast rushed in, drowning the voices in her head, replacing them with the frenetic tones of the anchor’s voice.
Damn, active noise canceling for the win. She thought before affixing her attention on the news anchor who was giving a play-by-play of the latest strangeness.
“Videos being posted to social media are being removed,” the 30-something female anchor was saying, “and accounts banned at an unprecedented rate. Only platforms with open anti-government policies are allowing the content to remain visible. Why these strikes and bans are happening is unclear, as the videos don’t appear to violate terms of service.”
Little Red’s fingers tapped absently against her thigh as she listened, tension building in her core. She glanced at the door to the diner, and sighed when none of her crew had yet to appear.
Her eyes flicked back to the screen, where the footage had shifted to a new clip.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"One such video depicted here was found uploaded on the X platform." The independent news reporter said.
The screen showed a striking young man with dark skin, his face etched with determination. Beside him, a woman with sleek black hair, pale skin, and sharp eyes held herself with an intensity that matched his. They moved cautiously, their leather motorcycle gear glinting under the harsh beam of their helmet flashlights as they carefully made their way into what looked like a cave mouth.
Little Red leaned forward unconsciously, her eyes narrowing. That was no illusion. The scene looked like something out of a nightmare - the gaping entrance loomed ahead of them, its stalactites and stalagmites forming the unmistakable shape of fanged jaws -it glared like a stone dragon. They took careful steps forward, flashlights piercing the darkness, but the void seemed to devour their light, reducing it to weak halos barely illuminating their own faces.
The woman on screen paused, casting a glance toward the camera. Her gaze was fierce, but Little Red could see the faintest hint of fear in her eyes. The man held up a hand, signaling for silence, and the two froze, every muscle tensed as though listening for something just beyond the camera’s range. Little Red shivered, a sudden chill prickling down her spine. The oppressive blackness surrounding them seeped through the screen, a sensation so visceral she almost pulled back.
The anchor’s voice was tense as she narrated the scene. “This footage was posted only moments before the account was banned.”
The screen flickered as the couple, still visibly shaken, hesitated under the reporter’s scrutiny. Her microphone hovered between them, picking up every nervous breath, every swallow.
"Well, we both woke up in the middle of the night." The man was saying. His wife shot him a look before turning back to the reporter.
"We were camping, and I woke up because of a nightmare. Then, as I was trying to get back to sleep -because we had a major hike the next morning, I heard the sounds of something moving outside our tent."
"So, she woke me up and after hearing the same sounds, I grabbed my .38 special and we just waited until the noises resided. After what felt like hours of tense waiting, finally, the night was still."
"Not taking any chances," the woman said assuredly, "we donned our gear and crept into the night to see what damage had been done to our campsite. But to our surprise, there was nothing."
"Nothing? Like something had taken your camping stuff?" The reporter asked.
"No," they said in unison while shaking their heads.
"There was nothing the matter. Everything was as it should have been. At least so we thought." He said.
"So, we were going to go back to sleep when a light caught our attention." She said, before falling silent.
"A light?" The reporter prompted.
"Yes," they nodded. Then she started speaking again.
"It was like those stories of a will-o-the-wisp. A flickering and dancing little light that seemed to beckon us."
"And you followed it." The reporter said matter of factly.
"Don't judge us," he protested. "You don't understand. There wasn't anything we could do but follow it. It was like we were hypnotized."
"Mesmerized," his wife corrected. "But he's right. We couldn't resist it. Thankfully we still had on our gear which had been recording nonstop since the disturbance first began."
"And what was inside?" The reporter asked once again.
"At first there was nothing. It was dense and quiet." He said.
The woman’s voice wavered ever so slightly as she recalled the incident, her cultured southern accent flavoring her hesitant words. "We... heard things. Whispers, but layered with screams - as if the stone itself was screaming.”
"The walls had strange glowing runes written along them spaced evenly every few meters." The young man interjected. "They were weird alright, like an airport runway strip, they kept alternating in brightness as if a ripple of energy ran through them." The woman finished.
Her husband clenched her hand tighter, their matching wedding bands catching the light. "And that grinding sound," he muttered, his voice thick with something close to fear. "Like boulders scraping together in the dark. We tried to tell ourselves it was an echo or... something natural. But it just kept getting louder."
The reporter asked about the location of the cave, but the couple chose not to answer. Undeterred, the report shifted back to what happened while they were inside.
"There was this constant hissing sound. It sounded like sand pouring through a sieve," she said.
The reporter leaned in, sensing their reluctance, her face a mixture of morbid curiosity and calculated empathy. “And then?”
The couple exchanged a haunted look, the man’s jaw clenched tight. Finally, he shook his head, looking somewhere past the reporter as if speaking to himself. “We just… ran. Didn’t look back.”
Little Red could almost feel their unease, a chill spreading through her own chest as she watched them. Poor kids, she thought. She’d seen a lot of things that bent the rules of reality, but nothing like that - nothing that followed you out, left its mark so visibly.