What the fuck was that feeling...?

When we ever so slightly crossed the city's threshold, an overwhelming sense of dread took over my body as if the world was falling over me. I start to shake in place as cold sweat drips down my face and my face drops to my legs.

I barely noticed when Samuel slowly stopped the car. I'm too scared to look.

I slowly raise my head to meet his face.

I'm too scared to look.

Sam is frozen solid with an expression of pure horror looking ahead. But at what?!

I'm too scared to look.

I freeze my gaze on Sam's face, but I need to see what's happening. Don't I? I start to babble incoherently.

I'm too scared to look. Please, don't make me look.

Cold tears start to drip from my face, as my neck slowly starts to turn to face forward, and therefore... look.

I don't wanna look. I'm too scared to look.

I wanna look.

The horizon devoured the setting sun, taking with him the cast shadows along the street but not the sickening orange tint, leaving no doubt behind.

I'm looking.

...

...

...

Oh.

So that's what he is looking at.

But... What is that?

- Sam...? - I say, but a barely intelligible noise comes out instead.

He stomps the accelerator and maneuvers the car in another direction.

- Sam?! - I scream, now crying.

He maneuvers haphazardly around the unspeakable things scattered along the street.

- My family is out of town. Let's get to your parents. - he says, trembling.

----------------------------------------

The wheels tear at the asphalt as Samuel gets us home, and stops the car abruptly in the garage.

I unsheathed the seatbelt and stormed out of the car as I started screaming for Mom and Dad, but alas no answer. The house is closed shut and dark, with no sign of movement.

After the sunset, the streets are getting darker by the instant, holding nameless horrors in their clutch. I... Don't want to see it again. Gods, I hope Mom and Dad are alright.

I open my bag clumsily in search of my keys. My hands are shaking so much I can barely land the right key in the front door's lock, but after a few tries, I do it.

I open the front door from one darkness unto another. The inside of the house looks pretty much exactly as it was when I left it several days ago, as I turn the light on.

- Mom? Dad?! - I scream, but my voice echoes through the empty house, without an answer.

I hone my senses trying to hear over my own heavy breathing and shaking.

I believe I make out the slightest sound, barely more than a whisper, comes out the word "Sarah", from what appears to be my parent's room.

A sudden jolt of hope lights up in my heart, but it's instantly snuffed out by Samuel's desperate scream.

- SARAH!

I turn my head towards the doorstep to see him pointing outside into the shadows.

I come closer to him and try discerning the shapes into the dark, as I climb into Sam and follow his finger. I squint my eyes looking for any shape in the night, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever startled Samuel so much.

And then it steps into the streetlight... And I see it.

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... And it sees us.

It screeches and then dashes toward us.

- OH MY GOD! Close the door! Close the door! - I say in desperation.

We shut the door abruptly, and it immediately starts to pound on it violently.

In desperation, we throw everything we can at the door, barricading it with the table and the refrigerator, and Samuel scrambles the kitchen for the largest knife he can find.

We step away from the pounding door, and Samuel instinctively embraces me with one arm while holding the knife in front of us.

And then I hear it again, coming from upstairs: "Sarah".

Of course, I still have to save Mom and Dad! They must be terrified in their bedroom, hiding from monsters!

My vision blurs as my own breath adds up to the screeching of the creature outside. I start to see in tunnel vision.

I stumble up the stairs.

Together with the panic, the darkness makes it hard to navigate, and I have to touch my way ahead.

I head to their bedroom.

I start to think about all the terrible things I told my parents, and how happy I am about to become when we get to exchange how we really feel for each other. Soon, everything would be fine.

I reach for their door knob.

"Sarah? Sarah my dear, is that you?", says my parent's voices coming from within.

- Mom, Dad, we need to get out of here! Come on, lets-

I reach for the light switch.

My scream pierced the air, but it seemed to do little to drown out the nightmarish tableau sprawled across my parents' bed.

A pulsating, squirming mass of writhing limbs and slick, glistening tentacles clung to the bedframe, bearing the grotesque semblances of both my mother and my father, fused together by the cheeks.

"Sarah, sweetheart," the abomination hissed, their voices a haunting fusion of my parents' familiar tones, "we're overjoyed you've returned."

It began to weep. Strange, gelatinous tears fell from the eyes that shouldn't exist.

My horrified screams gave way to a wordless catatonia. Behind me, Samuel appeared, his eyes wide with terror.

Fleshy pseudopods writhed and contorted in all directions, their movements as unsettling as the creature itself. One of them, timid and probing, reached toward my feet, and I instinctively jerked away, recoiling from the grotesque entity that had once been my parents.

"Sarah, we're so sorry," the thing continued, its voice dripping with grotesque sincerity. "We see it all now, the clarity we've gained. We finally understand now... We finally understand you, our daughter. Forgive us. Come join us now, dear. Mom and Dad love you, we love you so much."

An endless abyss reached from my insides, as my lungs felt vacuum locked into my chest, unable to contract. The unspeakable sight at hand had been branded into my eyeball with a hot poker, and yet I was unable to look away.

Samuel is grabbing me by the shoulder and shouting, trying to snap me out of it.

I thought I knew what darkness was. I thought I knew what crawled in the deepest abyss of my heart. I thought I honed my soul for all my life with all that edgy goth crap.

But I didn't, for it was this thing all along, and I couldn't ever come up with this. This nightmare is too much, even for me.

Then, the creature's screaming and pounding seemed to multiply, again, again, and again, until the sound of wood splintering, as the creatures' screeching started to echo inside the house.

- SARAH, WE HAVE TO GO! NOW! - screams Samuel, as he grabs me by the arm and drags me into my room.

He locks the door and then signals me to go to my bathroom while he barricades this door with my bed. Doesn't take long for the pounding to start on that door.

Cornered, we then take refuge inside the bathroom and lock its door behind us as we nest as far from it as possible.

- Sam... We ran out of doors. - I say, stuttering incoherently in a madness-induced trance.

Sam takes me by my shoulders and shakes me violently:

- Don't you say that, okay?! We are going to make it through. It was us against the world from starters, remember?!

As the toll of the emotional weight of recent events weighs me down, I start to remember how much Samuel meant to me, and that brings me back to lucidity ever so slightly.

A single tear drops from my eye as I finally recall my sanity enough to manage to cry again.

- We shouldn't have come back from the cabin.

- I know. I'm sorry. - he stared at me with tears in his eyes - I love you, Sarah.

- I love you too, Samuel. - and there, we said it.

We embrace each other amidst the maddening sound of pounding and screeching outside, as we wait to die. Dying in the arms of my loved one... I can think of worse deaths.

The sound of splintering wood signals they breached the bedroom door. Only one to go now.

The loud noise wakes up primal survival instincts, forcing us to release our embrace. Samuel tries his best to hold on to the door while I corner inside the shower's curtains.

They are pounding in the door so strongly, I don't know how long it will be able to hold on.

I don't wanna die. I don't want Samuel to die. This can't be...

I start to scream in horror, covering my ears, but each pounding seems to echo directly inside my mind.

Between my horrified screams, the pounding in the door, and the creatures screaming themselves, I can still hear my heart pounding inside my head.

I pray for every force from above to below. I don't even care about me anymore, I only wish for Samuel to be saved.

Please, goddammit! For a single fucking time, can you hear my prayers?!

The monstrosities outside start to chip away pieces of the door with their pounding.

My mind storms with a mix of abstract feelings and thoughts. It feels like it's splitting apart together with the door.

Through the door cracks, bulging humanoid arms ending in sharp talons try to break through, turning off the light switch in its thrashing.

I can't hear my own thoughts anymore as I start to scream at the top of my lungs.

The door splits open.

What happened after that, I know only by Samuel's testimony, and what appears to be feverish, never-ending nightmares.