Flames crackled in the heart of a cadaver inn. They radiated out a blazing heat that washed over a Witch wrapped in furs, nestled within the company of friends. The outside chill held no purchase on the slumbering minds, but for the loom of a tomorrow. For now, they slept. Autumn felt the icy nails of dreams dig into her tired mind, dragging her down into the grasp of nightmares.

Slowly, reluctantly, she dreamed.

The caustic sting of bleach and disinfectant burned her nose as she staggered into unwakefulness. It coated the sterile walls and floors with its perfume of hospitalization and clinical depression. The stark-white walls shone with the bright lights, pulsing in a dying heartbeat.

Autumn recognized this blank hallway from her memories of a cloying sickness. Everything here, as it had then, smelled of death. She dreaded taking a step forwards down that lonesome hallway, but her limbs were uncooperative; they danced on a puppeteer’s strings. Her unbidden footfalls exploded in the unnatural quietness.

There was nobody here but her and her terror. Any desperate words she had were sucked away by the haze of dreaming.

What could they have even done to help her?

At her feet, shadows flickered. They danced with the rhythm of the dying beneath broken lights. The light’s clarity shone down on naught but clean white floor, but in the darkness a carpet of writhing cockroaches revealed itself. Millions of hairy legs scuttled over Autumn’s bare feet and it took all her willpower not to scream. Retching consumed her body as the bugs crawled over her skin.

Autumn rushed through the halls, her bare feet pounding out her horror while wet eyes watched from the darkness. Looking forwards she saw a stairwell at the end of the far too long hallway. Blood poured down each step in a forever flow and somewhere above, a weak heart echoed a familiar chord on whining machines.

The only direction she could travel was up. The corridor behind her disappeared into a haunting nothingness.

Autumn moved up through the falling stream and it stained her limbs black. Footprints of crimson followed in her wake like loyal dogs.

The second floor was no less cloying than the first. At the end of the hall, a door burned in her memory. A hauntingly clean door. One she’d never wished to enter again. Sweat ran down her spine as her feet forced her towards her pain. On shaking, involuntary steps, she drew closer until her broken hands stained the handle.

It swung open with a silent ease.

The low beeping of a stuttering heart-rate echoed from within: the music of decay.

Autumn didn’t want to enter. She didn’t have a choice. Her body pulled her on broken strings into the room. In the darkened space, a single bright light shone down on a lonely bed. On white sheets, stained with blood and pus, lay a festering corpse.

Her father.

The strings pulled her closer to the bed. Her icy feet ground against the gore-coated tiles, leaving oozing sores behind. It forced her to look at the visage of her dying father. Thousands of wires carved into leathery yellowed skin stretched taut over fragile bones. Milky eyes stared up blankly as he rasped shallow breaths of icy mist.

Cancer had claimed him years ago.

Autumn tried to shy away, tried to flee, but she could not. She'd desperately wished to see him one last time, but not like this. Gone was the kind father who’d tuck her in and read her game lore as bedtime stories.

Now a mouth of worms whispered.

“You killed her.”

The accusation crashed over Autumn, stalling her heart. The words had never been spoken aloud before, only existing in condemning eyes, and this was the last person she wanted to speak them. Wretched denials and tears could never wash away her sins. Her mother was dead because of her, because she didn’t see, didn’t react.

“You killed her.”

Like another nail driven into a coffin, the words fell. Autumn’s knees buckled and fell to the tarnished linoleum. Her shoulders shook under the damnation.

“YOU KILLED HER!”

The deafening roar of the emaciated corpse knocked Autumn back. She fell backwards and through a floor of pus. Down, down, down she fell through the ether of dreams. Down she went until another nightmare caught her in a horrid grasp.

Autumn's hazy eyes settled on a series of beaten lockers made of cold-rolled steel, hers among them defaced and broken: the metal ripped, the lock crushed. The scent of adolescent body odor and insecurity hung in the air, accompanied by the rattle of a faulty air conditioner. A faceless crowd passed by in a constant stream as Autumn looked about.

Suddenly, someone grabbed the back of Autumn’s head and forcefully acquainted it with her savaged locker. She bounced off the metal with a bang and a cry, leaving behind a dent and a smear of blood.

Autumn’s cry of agony when unheard amongst cruel laughter and jeers.

“Slut! Whore! Do you think anybody likes you? That’s the biggest joke I’ve ever heard! Nobody loves you at all! They’re ashamed to be related to you! Why do you think you're the last to be picked for anything? It’s because they don’t want to be saddled with a burden. Why don’t you just die?! Save us the trouble of looking at your ugly mug.”

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The shadowy teenagers ripped at Autumn with words and claws. Hair came free from Autumn’s scalp in bloody clumps. No matter how Autumn fought or cowered, the viscous hands would find her and mocking eyes would spear her.

“Nobody would miss you. Nobody.”

Nobody did. The mass of shadowy students passed the violence by with bored, indifferent gazes. They only watched as twisted hands tore at Autumn, ripping her uniform from her body to leave her bare and bloody. She screamed for help that’d never come as they flayed her alive. Blood pooled in the icy waters before flowing down the drains with all the other filth.

“I heard that this dyke hasn’t left the closet yet. How about we put her where she belongs?”

Autumn’s locker wretched open with an air-splitting squeal of twisted metal. From within, hungry beasts of madness burst forth, sprinting across the space with baying voices. Her pleads and cries did nothing to stall the biting of sharp fangs. They tore into her limbs and dragged Autumn across the blood-slick floor.

Fingernails broke off as she clawed at the tiles. With ease, the beasts hauled her into the dark locker and the door imprisoned her with a resounding bang. Autumn’s breath came in sharp, fast panting and her dilated eyes locked onto a bright yellowed pair through the locker’s slits.

“Enjoy yourself in there bitch. We’ll be seeing you soon!”

Fright forced Autumn to back away, and she tripped on the dream’s unseen edge. Tumbling backwards, she left behind her stomach. A web of dreams stretched around Autumn where spiders of nightmares perched, eagerly awaiting the Witch.

The third nightmare caught and bound her in a silken horror.

Autumn stumbled onto a cracked driveway. Glancing up, a condemned ancient house loomed out of cloying fog and a weed-filled lawn. Three stories festered with peeling paint and windows of shattered teeth. All across the rotten yard lay the burnt tiles of a peaked roof.

Reluctantly, Autumn approached with a battered suitcase in hand, her worthless life packed inside. Around her ruined body wound constricting bandages stained with blood and infection.

A warped door stood in a slanted frame. Beside it, a tortured buzzer barely clung to life. Autumn pressed it with a nailless finger and it screamed and squealed inside the haunted building. Drawing her finger back hurriedly, it left a sticky fingerprint behind. From within the house came the howls of young monsters.

Ice winds cut into her naked flesh as she waited.

Over the chaos reigning inside came a set of booming footfalls of a giant. Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum. The warped door cracked and splintered as it opened. From the darkened gap a set of empty sockets peered out, slicing into her like razors.

“Yesss?” The voice hissed like a gas-leak.

Autumn opened her mouth to speak, but she had no words–they’d been stolen by dread. The monster within the door frowned in reply, and its furious intent scoured the streets behind her before zeroing back in on her lonesome body. Fright iced her again.

“You must be Autumn, right?” The voice hissed once more.

Autumn could only nod in reply, her body uncooperative.

Across the waxy skin stretched a too-wide grin of stained teeth. Long stick fingers beckoned her inside the broken home. The fingers were long enough to wrap around a thin wrist. The door yawed before Autumn like the great maw of a hungry beast.

“Welcome to my home. I am Mr. Lecocq.” His voice hissed.

The creature was tall and thin, like a stick insect. Long limbs were constantly bent as he crawled through the corridors like a bottled spider. A weathered suit adorned his body in a mockery of cordiality. Greasy hair draped in clumps down his scarecrow visage.

A cacophonous boom resounded behind Autumn. The wrapped door closed heavily to trap her, and the walls crept ever closer to devour Autumn.

As much as she didn’t want to, Autumn followed behind the thin monster as he scuttled down a hallway. Bloody footprints followed in her wake once more. Ink and blood mingled on the walls, infesting it with drawings most macabre. Fairies and ghouls taunted Autumn amongst the bloody handprints, and demons and devils danced across the stains in a mockery of all things good.

In her mouth, Autumn’s chattering teeth softened into a putty and glued her jaws together.

A double pair of crimson goblin eyes watched Autumn with hunger. The thin man gestured a lanky limb out towards them, almost grasping onto them despite the distance.

“Those two gremlins are Willow and Maybell.”

Thus named, the young monsters screamed in fright and mischief before disappearing deeper into the twisted hallways. Roars and challenges of larger beasts rocked the house, sending dust down upon Autumn’s bleeding head.

The thin man climbed up a set of groaning stairs like a spider. Hollowed sockets stared down at Autumn as she carefully crept up the creaking column.

“You’ll have to forgive them. They’re rather young and excitable. Aside from yourself, there are six others living here. The two youngest you’ve already met, Willow and Maybell, then there’s the three boys Justin, Peter and Tomi. Finally, there’s the oldest girl, Trian. You’ll be rooming with her.”

Thus, Autumn was condemned again.

They pushed Autumn into a dilapidated bedroom. Blood and water lapped at her skinless ankles, black eels squirming inside like a magnificent beard. Infinity gazed up from below. Two beds made of children’s bones lay in opposition to each other. Offal stained them, a beating heart gushed lifeblood onto Autumn’s pillow.

A herald of doom spoke from the doorway.

“It’s all your fault. You know that right?”

Whirling in fright, Autumn saw a gaunt teenage reaper. Black veil and jeans clad her skeletal frame. A halo of dark light framed her as she stood in the doorway, blocking Autumn in. Eyes cried black blood as they bore into Autumn.

The heat beat loudly behind Autumn as her torn open chest clenched.

“It’s all your fault that they all die. Your father, your mother, those villages. It won’t stop, you know? You are a curse on existence. A blight. You bring naught but pain and horror in your bloody steps. In all futures I have seen, you are but a harsh mistress to life. Alone you will be, forever. Hollow. Broken. Bloated on fear. You’ll exist as a sin upon the world until some brave hero shall rise up to slay your putrescence. You think of yourself as the protagonist? You are the villain, predestined to die.”

The foul prophecy crashed down on Autumn’s mind. An incomprehensible horror.

In the harsh light of truth the nightmare grew till it dwarfed Autumn and she quailed before the nightmare’s wrathful might. Autumn scrambled backwards and tripped on the bed of bones, and it shattered under her weight. The black oiled girl watched on impassibly as Autumn fell down a well of despair.

A Witch’s black eyes ran with violet oil.

As the horror consumed her aching heart the teenage reaper whispered. “Goodbye sister.”

Autumn’s eyes snapped open.