Calypso awoke to a team of doctors swarming above her. She really shouldn’t have been alive right now.
As her blurry eyesight tried to make out her reality, she wracked her throbbing brain around it. How? How in God’s name did she survive that?
A mass she couldn't make out became a man’s hand, pressing a breathing mask onto her cut-up face, forcing it down. She should have felt the irritated and painful gashes or the blood coasting down from her sliced up cheeks. But she was at a point where her pain cannot be measured not because it’s overwhelming, but because everything’s gone dangerously numb.
So it left her dwindling mind wondering. Trying to access memories, but unable to focus. As the light grew brighter and the audio cranked to a crescendo—it just made her ask the same question.
Why isn’t she dead?
Why did she survive, when her friend died horribly?
And what is lurking and breathing within her body?
***
“I think this is the place… That or Mapquest sucks a bag of severed butts—”
She was following Alice, looking at her straight, short black hair and her massive backpack from behind. Business per usual, even in the end.
Calypso laughed. “Man, you always have such a way with words…”
Alice turned back as she continued to walk. Her freckled face with her warm smile, as she simply stuck her tongue out at her friend before looking forward again.
***
Calypso screamed from the throat, her back arching from the table. Even when she stopped, it trailed off into agonizing wailing as she shook her head rapidly. The various deep cuts across her body, flexing open on their own as she trailed off in absolute misery.
“My god—she’s supposed to be under!” a panicked voice shouted; Calypso was in too much pain to care who it was.
“Well, crank the up the dosage, and let’s try again!”
***
“Y’know what—fuck it—we’re doing this live. We’re doing it live.”
Despite the jovial phrasing, it was searing cold in tone. Alice was violently stomping the map onto the black dirt. And then, she stomped on it more, grinding her boot on it for good measure.
“Fuck it, we could do it here or whatever. Why remotely plan for anything? There’s no point—especially fucking now. Why bother? Who cares? I don’t—I fucking shouldn’t anymore.”
“Hm,” Calypso always felt so small when she said that—in response to Alice’s episodes. There just wasn’t much to say. She couldn’t find the right words. Nobody could.
But as her only friend, she had the duty to at least try, but is so far down her own pit that she couldn’t if she did.
Terrible person, so that meant she was a terrible friend as well.
It was the reason why they made the trip here in the first place.
***
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“HER CUTS ARE OOZING A BLACK SUBSTANCE, SIR!”
“I-is it some type of infection? It’s nothing like I’ve seen before!”
“And she’s up again! She’s up again!”
“We cannot lose our composure, not now. Administer the proper tools and we try again.”
***
“—Stop fucking with me, Cal—” Alice pushed her friend away from her, wincing after despite her nostrils flaring. “Don’t you fuck with me Calypso, please, not you—"
Her eyes were wild, searching. To see if Calypso were like the rest, that their entire friendship was a sham despite how impossible that idea was. But it was so hard to meet that gaze, as Calypso’s eyes were swimming in her tears.
“I told you!” Calypso whined. “I saw something, I-I keep seeing things, they’re all over us! I could see them from the train--! I did see them since the train, I mean--!”
“If you wanted to bail out and leave me to do this myself, you should’ve just fucking said instead of going all horror cliché on me!” Alice spat out verbal venom, clutching her fists so tight that her fingers were white.
“I am telling you the truth,” Calypso stressed. Calypso straining in emotional pain.
Alice shouted in a huff, walking around in place, tossing and turning, fists raised high and aiming aimlessly. Calypso was twitching in fear that she was going to get hit. There was always that fear.
“F—fine, fuck it, we find a camping ground and set up and we try again in the morning or some shit, I don’t know,” Alice growled. “Because I refuse to go back home when I’ve made it this fucking far. I’ve made my choice and I’m not going the fuck back.”
As she began to walk pass a trembling Calypso, Alice stopped in her tracks. Sighing, wistfully.
The rageful girl instantly wrapped her arms around her trembling friend. And used that strength that she tightened her fists into a more nurturing, intimate hug.
“I’ll never hurt you, y’know that right…?” Alice tone was mournful, pleading. “I-I can say that, I can be proud of something in my stupid life that I never ever got to hurt you, at least…”
Calypso just nodded. She was still too affected, when normally she would just as instantly snuggle into her best friend’s lovely hold.
Alice sensed this, and slowly parted away from Calypso. Walking ahead, being eerily silent, Calypso wanting more than anything to see anything other than her back.
“Besides. All this paranoia and it could just be Smokey and his family tryna plan a reunion and we’re fucking it up, Cally—”
Calypso chuckled. She kept chuckling and held her beating chest. Closing her eyes, and letting the soft tears streaming as she laughed genuinely, with Alice joining in softly.
“We’re fine if we don’t have a lighter,” Alice walked forward, with a pep in her step. “And we’re too much of the same loser breed to smoke a doobie anyway~”
“Yea-yeah,” Calypso followed after, clutching her backpack’s straps.
But as soon as she turned away, she felt them. The stare of something non-human.
***
“We don’t know what’s going on… There’s something parasitic happening, but we have no idea what it could be and have no tools to properly handle it—with our patient slowly deteriorating—”
“—And she’s up again. Does this thing cause anesthesia to wear off quickly?”
“Then we have no choice. We have to be drastic if we are to save this girl. We can’t lose another…”
***
“Just run—go—leave, Calypso! Forget about me!”
Calypso was crying softly, whimpering at the sight of her best friend, without an arm, and bleeding fast to the point she’s become pale. Shaking.
“N-not without you!” Calypso sobbed in protest. “Your arm—your arm is--!”
“Yeah, gone, so I can’t shove you like I usually do—I’m gonna settle with my legs if you don’t use yours…!”
Alice fell onto her knees. Her eyes glazing over in real time. Her shakes turning violent as she tried to look around.
Calypso just turned, with the yellow stares of the night meeting her gaze. Mocking her for not telling her dying friend sooner.
Everywhere she looked, there was blinking, movement, glancing. If it wasn't for these stares, everything would’ve been pitch black.
“Oh god. Oh fucking god. They’re just watching. They’re letting that thing finish the job and they’re just waiting—CAL, WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!”
Calypso went limp. Standing in place with her knees were the only things moving on her.
“It’s why we came, right…? T-to let fate fall, where it m-may…?”
Calypso had her back to her friend, she was too paralyzed to meet her gaze. She didn’t have the right to anyways.
“It wasn’t… M-meant to be like this… Taking it into our own hands… For once in our miserable lives… Please, Cal… If you valu—”
There wasn’t even a scream.
Calypso turned to see her friend turned into paste.
As the beast who was framed in shadow sans its eyes, shining like a train hovered over her still body, cocking its head towards Calypso, and leaped seconds later at her.