When the metal pierced her skin and found its mark, Elana was at peace with what it meant for her. Death. She deserved it, just like all those before her had, and she had known that all along. She didn't believe in redemption, didn't believe in atonement, had no silly hopes that the gates of hell, heaven or even purgatory would open for her. Because death was final, someone like her would know that better than anyone and she was fine with it. Relieved, even. Elana was tired, and jaded, she had lived this life for so long that even what had once offered thrill and pleasure to her now left her numb. Even the betrayal of the man behind her, one she had called a colleague, a friend, as close to family as she could get in that twisted reality of hers, couldn't surprise her. And the knife in his hand, slicing through flesh, muscles and ligaments to end her life, sparked nothing through her but a sense of inevitability.
She closed her eyes, relishing in the pain's sudden ebb, a caress of darkness, a quiet lullaby meant to put her at ease. She felt nothing more as her heart ceased beating, blood pouring out of the gash as her past friend walked away back into the darkness he came from. It should have been it. It should have been all. Darkness and silence for eternity. Peace at last.
But Elana should've known her cursed luck in life would've followed her in death.
She waited and waited, feeling the blood pool around her but the peace and the silence never came. For a second the hard cobblestone under her limp body seemed to vanish, like she was floating in the ether, like finally she was done with this life, but it didn't last. Soon she could feel the ground again, the smell of blood permeating the air stronger even than before, a stench of death and decay seemingly surrounding her from all angles. Had she been lying there in a pool of her own life essence for so long that her body had started to rot and smell? It had felt like only a second to her.
A chilling breeze whispered through the air, carrying echoes of eerie laughter, distant screams and the low, guttural moans of creatures on the prowl. As sluggish and painful as her body felt in that moment, Elana tried to force herself to blink her eyes open only to be met with another sort of darkness, a different kind from the peaceful void she saw behind her eyelids, from the one she had expected in death. Instead, it was a suffocating blackness, thick and palpable, the air laden with the metallic and putrid smell of decaying carcasses. Closeby.
'What...the hell?' her voice came out sounding nothing like her own, small and barely audible.
The stinging pain she had felt from the stab wound was no more and this realization itself was enough to make her dizzy and confused. With whatever strength she managed to gather, forcing herself not to grunt under the tremendous effort, she pushed her body upright, every muscle screaming in protest as she sat up. She squinted, straining her eyes. The night had barely started to peek through the horizon when she had... died? But it seemed like the night was now in full swing. How long had she been out? Elana squinted and finally, even though everything still seemed like a smokey blur, she became aware of her surroundings. Shattered cobblestone streets stretched out on the horizon, flanked by dilapidated buildings that loomed like silent sentinels in the obsidian night. A full moon hung in the sky, casting an eerie glow upon the twisted landscape.
The floor all around her was covered in corpses. White as sheets floating over a pool of blood speckled with bits and pieces of skin and entrails that made her gag, despite everything she had seen in the past. She could barely distinguish the ground under the heap of bodies, dozens of them carelessly dumped one over the other, maybe more. And the weight she was feeling, pinning her down against the sticky floor, wasn't her own strength leaving her body, but a little girl, no more than eight, staring blankly at the sky with dead, milky eyes. The corpse was resting over Elana's lap, her throat completely shredded in various places, broken skin and sinews sticking out of the wound that had long since stopped bleeding.
Maybe this was hell. A fitting place for a sinner like her.
She should've been at peace with it, always believed she would be, but at this very moment she felt the rush of fear and panic engulf her, the smell of death and rot filling her nostrils as she slowly pushed the little girl off of her, looking at her body roll to the side limply. Her gaze crawled through the rows of bodies, from small to big, women to men, adults to children, her breathing hitching.
The body of an old woman draped in some sort of silk garment was the one closest to her as she shakily forced herself to her feet, trying not to step on any of the other mangled bodies. The woman's torso was naked, showing a patchwork of ugly scars in the shape of bite marks carved in the skin, one of her nipples completely ripped off, probably by the teeth that had left those gashes. Elana squeezed her eyes shut again, fighting against the pounding feeling in her skull, the bile rising to her throat.
She had seen what death, torture, pain and revenge looked like. But this was a carnage, viciousness in its primal form. And she needed to get away. Fast. She might've ended up in a hell of some kind, might be cursed by mysterious forces at play that she had never believed in before, but if she wasn't already dead, then her survival instinct was going to kick in. She needed to run. She needed to survive.
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Even as she briskly walked away, as fast as her shaky legs could take her, the bodies still crammed the street, piling in grisly mounds next to each other, block after block. She could barely see a thing, if not for the glow of the moon and she was disoriented. This wasn't the city she knew, the one she had trekked over and over again. Hell, clearly, wasn't modelled after her own memories. In her rush to turn around a corner in hopes of getting away from the decaying masses, Elana felt blood and skin squish under the sole of her foot, firmly planted on the stomach of a middle-aged man whose body was so badly decomposed it barely held itself together at the touch. The skin on his side simply peeled away under the pressure, as if it was nothing but a sodden piece of paper and his organs just fell apart and rolled to the ground under her with a squelch. Elana gagged, bile rising in her throat. The body had felt freezing cold but as soft as melted butter as her foot sank into it.
The only thing that kept her from hurling over the remains was to focus on another strange detail. Her foot was bare. Actually, both of her feet, as well as her legs and arms were completely exposed even though she had worn long, tight-fitted clothes before her body hit the ground. She patted herself as quickly as her panicking heart allowed her to and found that the only piece of clothing still attached to her was a short nightgown, shredded in places and now more red than white. Scratches and bruises littered her skin but the only proper injury her fingertips could find in the near-blackness, wasn't the stab wound at the bottom of her back, but a huge, uneven gash right where her shoulder met her neck. It stung, a hiss slipping between Elana's teeth as she promptly took away her fingers. But no blood seemed to coat her fingertips at the touch, as if the wound had been too old, or there was already no blood left to spill from it. Something must've bitten her, hard, before she woke up.
Some kind of 'purgatory monster', maybe?
But it wasn't the time nor the place to worry about the wound or the whereabouts of her shoes when she could barely see a thing or make sense of anything, covered in death and so exposed in an alien environment. Rounding the corner was something she immediately regretted. As much as she had been hit by the gut-wrenching stench of decaying flesh just before the corner, now that she could clearly see her new surroundings and the horror it held her stomach couldn't stop the sick feeling from climbing up her chest. The same gore-fest display was awaiting her here too.
Everywhere she looked, corpses. No less than those she had found down the prior lane. From as far as the eye could see, another stagnant sea of hollow eye sockets and torn open throats filled the crooked streets. Fingers twisted into awful shapes, broken arms and legs, heads cracked and decomposed; the sheer cruelty and senselessness of the carnage was unfathomable.
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And there was little else here besides the never-ending macabre spectacle. No sounds, no movement. Strange. Even the eerie laughter and bone-chilling growls that seemed to echo in the alleys up until now had completely stopped, giving suit to complete and utter silence. Silence should be peaceful, reassuring, and yet her instincts screamed danger. Every single muscle in her body tensed, her mind going numb for a moment, watching the stillness around her, as if the bodies were about to rise like the grotesque zombies she had seen on TV one too many times. But when nothing jumped out of the shadow after ten long, silent, inhales, Elana started to take cautious steps forward again.
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Despite her wariness, the further Elana delved into the maze of collapsed structures and crooked city corners, the less unsettled and disgusted she grew with her current circumstances. Her wobbly knees steered clear of the piles of corpses and torn shreds of what had probably been clothing, stepping in the muddy pools of blood that painted the streets. The smell and the sight of it were beyond everything she had ever imagined could occur. And yet, very soon, that strange feeling of apathy and indifference found her, the same she had known in the life before her death. Her heart did pick up a beat, eyes darting anxiously in every direction, expecting to be ambushed in this labyrinth of dead bodies at any given moment, but the fear and cautiousness that remained had nothing to do with the corpses anymore, as if already they had become part of her new norm. The feeling of being watched, scrutinized and followed however, grew stronger step after step. It was becoming harder and harder for her not to come to the most likely conclusion. Elana was being hunted, like the prey that all those other corpses had probably been before her.
Slowly, carefully, holding her breath, she scanned her surroundings once again, to pinpoint the direction this unknown threat was approaching from or if there was even, indeed, a threat. Her eyes darted from one abandoned structure to another, before gazing at the few remaining spires of buildings that reached to the night sky. She couldn't see further than a few meters in front of her, couldn't hear a single thing and the shadows dancing on the broken buildings seemed to do nothing but play with her nerves. It struck her then, that if she was being hunted, staying out in the open was making her a stupidly easy target. None of the buildings seemed like they would hold themselves together longer than a few minutes and yet, for a second, it seemed to her like a safer bet than sitting duck in those rot-filled streets. So she took her chance.
She darted for the nearest building, splashing loudly in the deep puddles of blood around her, the echoing sound of her footfall muffled by something so thick she'd rather not think about it. Twisted, rusty metal was covering the entrance of a three-story that seemed to tilt more than the Tower of Pisa itself and looked ready to topple over at any time. There were windows too high above her to reach, not that she could even scale a wall in her state. The only option was the too-narrow gap the metallic door had left between it and the bottom of the doorframe, as time and desperate hands probably warped it more and more from its original position. It wasn't an ideal option, but when a faint, animalistic growl that made her skin crawl came from her right, she promptly leapt to the ground and slid through the gap, feeling her skin dragging against the floor and catching every bump and imperfection, cutting it open in plenty of tiny, burning lines as she forced herself through. Her body screamed and protested, the space slightly too small for her frame.
The growl echoed, closer and closer, louder and louder. Ignoring the pain, Elana pushed herself harder and with one more wiggle of her body, she was in. She fell heavily onto the dirty floor, crumbling dry dust and cobwebs smearing themselves on her even bloodier nightgown.
Trying her hardest to control the instinctual shaking of her hands, she dragged herself up, trying to see what new nightmare she probably crawled into. The shadows surrounding her seemed to pulse, every intake of breath loud and eerily clear, heart beating fast and wild against her chest. But no sound came from behind the door again. Nothing lept against the door to break it down or climb the walls to crash through the already broken windows to get inside. No horrifying beast with twisted antlers, long claws or any other kind of hellish monster prowled, ready to gut her like a fish. There was only silence and dust and dark.
A heavy breath of relief escaped her lungs, her shoulders slumping. Crouching down, eyes trained on the door, her brain started spinning, trying to come up with a good explanation for this grotesque situation, a way out of the mess she seemed to be in, or most importantly, a way to survive. Because who knew what was out there, slumbering in the dark, watching her? She mentally cursed herself for being so anti-religion in life, for knowing nothing about hell or purgatory or wherever else she had clearly been sent to to pay for her sins. Maybe if she had been prepared, she'd know what kind of creatures, monsters and nasties were crawling the streets, and how not to fall prey to them like the hundreds of corpses outside had.
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Her heart hammered so wildly against her ribcage that if she stayed a few more moments where she was, huddled next to that thin metal door with seemingly brittle walls, she felt like whatever was out there would hear her because of her heartbeat alone. The room was spacious but seemingly empty, a few chairs, tables or bookshelves broken and scattered all over the floor, dust and splinters covering the entire space. She walked around the entrance until her knees grazed the top of a wooden desk barely illuminated by the low glow of the moon coming through the high windows, glancing briefly at the papers and books spilt all around it. A library maybe?
Hadn't everything been so filthy, the dust, spiderwebs and crumbles, Elana would've never guessed it. She trailed a hand over the dusty cover of an old hard-cover book, the letters "The C plet His y of V pir ." still visible despite the rest of the golden words being scrubbed off by time and neglect. Slightly intrigued, she leaned forward and pushed the book closer to her face, trying to make out what the full title could be. Or trying to understand why people would need books in Hell.
All of a sudden, a subtle movement caught her eye from deeper into the room, taking her attention away from the old tome. Her blood ran cold, her body paralyzed in fear that someone - or most likely something - had found a way in with her. Instead, two white, emotionless eyes pierced straight through her in the dark. Elana instantly clenched her jaw, biting down on her bottom lip to hold back the scream of surprise and terror that almost ripped through her throat. Cursing in her head, she scrambled back up. The figure seemed to do the same. Elana placed her arms in front of her, like a shield from the inevitable oncoming assault. The figure followed suit. She stopped her feet from taking her one more step back and the figure froze in unison.
Watching, wary, Elana lifted her hand only to be mirrored by the figure. Same speed, same exact gesture. She realized then, with a disbelieving gasp, that those eyes were attached to a body wearing a shredded, bloodstained nightgown and that they did not belong to a person hiding in the darkness but to the reflection of a person in an antique, partially broken mirror standing upright against a rotting bookshelf.
Confused, Elana took a step forward and another, watching as the body moved in perfect synchronicity with hers. The closer she got, the louder her heart slammed against her chest and the better she could make out the features of the person staring back. Her skin was so pale it could've been as white as snow if not for the very slight pink-ish undertone, her hair looked like a long, tangled mess of coagulated blood staining pure white strands and her eyes, that she had believed to be white at first glance, were actually an extremely pale shade of grey, the life seemingly completely drained out of them as colors had been.
'Who are you..?' Elana asked, watching as the pale woman's lips spoke the words she had intended to utter herself.
She knew the answer but it didn't make any sense.
'Who are you?' she asked again, in a stronger voice, staring at the reflection. Her, reflection, she knew.
'My, my, such a noisy little thing.'
A voice, high pitch and nasally, made Elana and her reflection jump in harmony. She whipped her head around and found... nothing. Nobody. Glancing around the entire room, her body in panic mode, her hand instinctively looking for something to grab onto for protection, she couldn't find a single figure other than the one in the mirror. Until she blinked. And a... thing appeared only inches from her. Calling it a person would've felt wrong and yet it should've been one, with a head, eyes, mouth, two arms and two legs. But something was wrong with it. Everything was wrong with it. And it chilled Elana to the core.
The back was bent at an odd angle, like it had once been broken and healed without being straightened. The fingers were too long and bony and the eyes glowed a dim shade of red that was not only eerie but unnatural. And when it smiled... God, Elana had never seen horrors quite like it. Rows of sharp, pointed teeth glinted under the pale moonlight, some crooked, some broken, some missing but every single one of them stained with spots of old, dried blood, pieces of skin trapped between some. A mix between a hiss and a growl rose up the thing's throat as a slimy, rotten tongue came to lick its teeth in delight and visible hunger.
'A loud, lost, little girl.' it giggled, the sound so out of place it sent shivers down Elana's spine. 'My favorite food.'